The Grandfathers.
The Grandfathers.
Grandma went inside the vinyl greenhouse, and Grandpa stayed outside talking with Jong-hyeon, who was a bit younger.
I wondered for a second if I should be calling Jong-hyeon "Grandpa" too...
My grandfather, who wasn't past his mid-sixties yet, looked younger than Dad, practically dodging the passage of time.
Next to Kang Jong-hyeon, with his white hair and random black strands left, my grandfather looked like the younger one.
While Grandma, Da-yeon, and I were eating sweet potatoes, Grandpa finished his talk and came back into the greenhouse to join us, and we started a card game.
Namely, Old Maid.
Peeling tangerines, listening to the firewood crackle, playing cards together—
anyone watching would've called it peaceful.
The next day, Dad showed up early in the morning with Lee Gi-seok's whole family in tow.
Da-yeon and I were squatting down digging up potatoes when we ran into him.
"Si-yoon~!!"
I gave him a vague wave as a greeting, and Da-yeon had already made her way over to Lee Gi-seok.
She was frozen there, not knowing what to do with her dirty hands, so Lee Gi-seok spread his arms as if to ask her what she was worrying about, and Da-yeon nestled right into the hug.
"Honey! Give me a hug too."
"No."
"Whyyy~"
"Get away. I'm busy."
"Si-yoon~"
Dad glued himself to me and wouldn't peel off.
My grandfather and Lee Gi-seok's first meeting.
Whoa... Grandpa wasn't fazed at all, smiling as he welcomed the Lee Gi-seok family.
The two grandfathers gripped each other's hands firmly.
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Kim Kang-woo. Si-yoon's grandfather."
"I'm Lee Gi-seok, Da-yeon's grandfather."
After a brief flash of something crackling between their gazes, Grandpa smiled and showed Lee Gi-seok to the guest room.
Dad was hugging me from behind, burying his face in my hair and breathing in.
"Could you go away?"
"Just let me stay like this a little longer~"
I got up like it was nothing, gave him one tight hug, and then said it.
"Now go."
"Okay! Have fun playing~"
"I'm working, you know."
Dad watched Da-yeon and me with the kind of look you'd give kids playing house, then left.
The reason I was annoyed about being treated like a complete child was that Da-yeon and I were getting through twice the work per hour compared to Grandpa and Grandma.
The good thing about Grandpa's garden plot was that Grandpa and Grandma found harvesting too tiring, so they'd just water things and leave them alone.
So whenever I came and pulled everything up at once, the yield was overwhelming for the size of the little plot.
You could call it labor, in a way, but doing it once in a while made it feel like a hands-on learning experience—and it was actually pretty fun.
And today, same as always, Da-yeon and I wandered every corner of the little plot, gathering things up.
"Jin-seok."
"Yes, Father."
"We're going to have a conversation. Why don't you wait outside."
"Yes."
As Lee Jin-seok headed outside, Kim Ji-ho spoke up.
"Want to go fishing or something?"
"Well now, that sounds fine~"
Lee Gi-seok watched the scene with a pleased expression, then turned his gaze to the old man who was drinking tea with refined composure.
"Si-yoon is remarkably bright."
"She takes after her mother. Ho ho..."
Kim Kang-woo, Si-yoon's grandfather, probing Lee Gi-seok right from the start by deliberately steering things toward her late mother.
"It's truly tragic... The way Ji-ho held on so well and Si-yoon has grown up so well—I'm so proud of them..."
Satisfied with the answer, Kim Kang-woo nodded and smiled.
"More than my own son, honestly, my granddaughter Si-yoon makes me truly proud. It's thanks to her that Ji-ho has managed to carry on so well."
"I see. Ah, I heard from Ji-ho that you were a writer."
"Yes. I'm still lacking to be called a writer, but I have authored a few books."
The many books filling the space behind Kim Kang-woo...
Every last one of them was a book he had written.
"Oh-ho... You wrote For Only One?"
"Yes."
"I truly enjoyed that work. It's been so long since I read it that the details escape me, but I do remember thinking the content was remarkable."
"Ah, thank you. I'm always grateful to those who read my work."
Lee Gi-seok's eyes drifted downward, and after spotting something, he spoke to Kim Kang-woo.
"Oh-ho... You play Go?"
"Just a bit, a long time ago..."
The two of them started playing Go, as naturally as water flowing.
The best game for stripping off the other person's mask and grasping their true inner character...
That was exactly why Lee Gi-seok had been wanting to try playing Go against Si-yoon all this time.
A type of little kid he had never encountered in his whole life—Kim Si-yoon...
Her character was tough to pin down, even for Lee Gi-seok, who had dealt with countless people.
Kim Kang-woo naturally picked up a black stone and placed it on the upper-right 5–3 point.
Lee Gi-seok thought right from the opening that Kim Kang-woo was provoking him.
But it was still too early to judge the other man or draw conclusions...
The beauty of Go only truly begins after the opening stones are all laid—starting from around move thirty to fifty.
Move 2... Move 3..... Move 6........ As the game began in earnest, Kim Kang-woo wore a relaxed expression the entire time.
The fact that he wasn't an experienced Go player was obvious just from the dust-covered stones alone.
And his technique, too—frequently invading the 3-3 points during the opening stage, his approach to dividing and splitting the board—it was all old-fashioned.
He liked knight's-move attachments, but not to the point of clinging.
Move 30.....
Kim Kang-woo's character began to reveal itself.
Like life itself, I suppose... every single move in Go stands at a fork in the road of choices.
And Go directly connects those choices to the outcome that follows.
Put nicely, Kim Kang-woo's stones were far too free-spirited—but depending on how you looked at it, in a word, they were scattered.
They roamed here and there, sometimes building sandcastles, sometimes prodding at Lee Gi-seok's ramparts.
At times Kim Kang-woo stood somewhere without even realizing it was a minefield.
Curious to see how the man would react when caught between a rock and a hard place, Lee Gi-seok pressed him further into a corner.
But... that was when... the stones Lee Gi-seok's eyes had dismissed as sandcastles began to look different.
A formation that seemed as though it might swallow up the walls Lee Gi-seok had built...
"Hm..."
Even so, in the end, Lee Gi-seok secured a light victory over Kim Kang-woo.
But Lee Gi-seok couldn't shake off a lingering, unsettled feeling.
Lee Gi-seok had set out to read his opponent through Go, but he got the feeling he had been the one read instead.
Kim Kang-woo was, albeit still young, entering his mid-sixties.
Yet Lee Gi-seok nodded at Kim Kang-woo's Go—as supple and free as a little child's—and thought to himself.
If, just hypothetically, Kim Kang-woo had actually learned Go... Lee Gi-seok would most certainly have lost.
For Lee Gi-seok, who approached the game with sincerity, that was the highest praise.
I looked over at the grandfathers, who were deep in their Go game.
Lee Gi-seok, sitting in a full suit with an air of dignity, playing Go with formal elegance and impeccable composure.
In contrast, Grandpa sat there comfortably, looking like someone who was enjoying the moment more than anyone else.
"Grandfathers? Grandma says it's time to eat."
"All right, let's be off, then."
A little while later, Lee Gi-seok came out changed into Grandpa's clothes, and the imposing figure he'd cut in his suit was nowhere to be found—he looked exactly like a country man.
He even looked more like a country man than my grandfather did, and those loose work trousers suited him better than anyone else here.
Grandma had been quite overwhelmed by Lee Gi-seok, but Grandpa wasn't at all.
After chatting a few times over Go, they'd started dropping the formal speech with each other.
At first, when Grandpa addressed him as the older one, Lee Gi-seok had said that at their age there was no point fussing over who was older or younger and suggested they just be friends.
Grandpa, treating Lee Gi-seok as naturally as a close friend.
"I heard you enjoy golf... Let's play a round together sometime."
"Now that's welcome news to my ears. I'll do the hosting then."
""Ha ha ha ha ha ha.""
Come to think of it, their laughs sounded alike.
Lee Gi-seok, who hadn't even talked much during meals, was melting into our family's atmosphere faster than I'd expected.
Watching Roy and Rosa running around and playing, Lee Gi-seok ate with a smile spreading across his face, as though he'd finally gotten used to the peacefulness.
After playing a bit more Go with Grandpa, Lee Gi-seok followed his lead and started looking around the house.
Grandpa's house was full of spaces imbued with Grandpa's own sensibility,
and Lee Gi-seok, admiring the interior design, nodded and said he'd make a space like this for himself too.
And then, he headed for what you could call the most valuable room in this house—my art room.
Walking behind the grandfathers as they talked, Da-yeon and I were chatting too, and the whole scene looked like something out of a painting.
Lee Gi-seok had arrived at my art room before I knew it.
It was packed with ironclad security measures, but they were only left open when I was staying at the house.
Those security measures might seem excessive, but any single painting hanging in this room... could buy this house.
And putting price aside, this was the room Grandpa had carefully put together piece by piece, filled with my paintings.
A huge room where, no matter where else you went, there were more of my works than anywhere else in the world.
These days, even if not as often as before, I still finished one piece every two weeks to exchange paintings with Farzier.
The SIYUN - In Her Brain 994 I'd just sent Farzier this time was my most recent work,
but I'd never shown it to the world—only Farzier knew of its existence.
And among the ones here, 989 was the most recent painting.
SIYUN - In Her Brain 989.
A painting that anyone with even the slightest interest in art would acknowledge as the work of a master...
My paintings had now ascended to a level where the modern art world treated them as equal to Farzier's—or perhaps even higher.
Recently, Farzier had suggested we raise their value through scarcity rather than quantity.
Once we did that, my paintings began skyrocketing to astronomical heights...
One reason the value of my paintings had risen was that Farzier had steadily promoted and exhibited them.
Thanks to that, I was recognized enough that when I went to Switzerland or Italy, I got treated like honorary nobility.
And 989—was a painting I had made.
A single landscape painting of Grandpa's house...
Lee Gi-seok couldn't tear his eyes away for a long while.
Lee Gi-seok's own house had a few of my paintings hung up too, but this one seemed to hit differently.
And the paintings hanging here held a different kind of value from the ones in the other storage room.
Farzier had wanted them desperately, but for the sake of our connection, he'd sent them back out of pure loyalty, filling his letter with regret.
So over-the-top and emotional, you'd think it was a farewell letter...
After staring at the painting for a long time, Lee Gi-seok turned his head and asked Grandpa.
"This one..."
"Even if Si-yoon gave permission, absolutely not."
"Hm... Is that so. A pity."
Grandpa absolutely loved it when I did creative work.
Especially wanting to preserve every single memory, Grandpa kept everything—from Dad's songs to his own writings.
If I told him to give that painting to Lee Gi-seok, he would give it, of course, but he'd definitely sulk for a while, just like Dad.
Except that while Dad could sulk as easily as Grandpa but get over it quickly like Grandma,
Grandpa... doesn't get over things so easily.
Then Lee Gi-seok paused in front of a painting modeled after a certain woman.
It was a painting of Amy Allen.
The woman I had loved most passionately, with all my heart, in my life as Kang Han-seong.
But the woman who, unlike those fiery memories, had returned to me in the coldest form.
The woman who, because of that, had steeped me in madness for a time and made me more brutal than anyone else.
That was the Amy Allen etched into my mind to this day.
I had painted only five images of Amy Allen.
One was in my room, another with Farzier, and the remaining three were here.
After Dad and Da-yeon, Amy Allen was the person I had painted the most.
The reason was that, every time I painted her, it helped me pull myself together.
Grandpa looked at Lee Gi-seok and nodded.
The woman in the painting was smiling, yet she somehow made the viewer feel an inexplicable melancholy.
"This is a painting Si-yoon did, imagining her mother."
They kept insisting Amy Allen was my mother, so much that I'd eventually just given up and gone along with it.
There were three reasons people mistook Amy Allen for my mother.
One, because as a child I'd already been sharp enough to be considerate of Dad—I purposely drew her differently so he wouldn't be shaken up.
Another, because even though she looked nothing like my mother, who had radiated an Eastern beauty, people who had actually met my mother said the aura she gave off was exactly the same.
The last reason was that people interpreted my feelings of loss and sorrow over Amy Allen as me missing my mother.
So I'd just given up on explaining and, sorry to my real mother, gone around calling her the mother in my imagination.
"Indeed... exactly the same..."
"Right..."
Da-yeon and I were running around the yard with Roy and Rosa.
Roy and Rosa loved people, and they were panting and bounding around, overjoyed that we were playing with them.
The way they were goofing around with each other, the two of them got along much better than Alpha and Beta did.
The grandfathers were back on the wooden floor, staring at the board as they began another game of Go.
Clack.
Clack.
"Si-yoon really is remarkably bright."
"That she is. Our daughter-in-law was a real sharp one, and so clever."
"Normally, when someone brags about their grandchild, praising the other person's grandchild back is the natural course of things..."
Clack.
"Ayy~ our Si-yoon's the best."
Clack!
"Oh? Our Da-yeon's no slouch either, I'll have you know!"
"Ahem... I'm sorry to say, but in your whole life, have you ever seen a child with the sheer range of talent Si-yoon has?"
"....."
Clack!
"And that child happens to be my grandchild~"
Smack!
"Ahem... In this day and age, where exactly do you think you'll find a child as warm-hearted as our Da-yeon!"
Smack!
"My grandchild just isn't the type to show it on the outside, but inside, she's as warm as her late mother, hah..."
SMACK!!!
After a crackling current passed between the two old men's locked gazes, Lee Gi-seok raised his voice.
"Oh?! Da-yeon! Come here, child!"
"Okay!"
Da-yeon, who had been playing with Roy and Rosa alongside me, ran over at Lee Gi-seok's call.
Watching the scene, Grandpa called out to me.
"Si-yoon!"
Having watched these two ridiculous old men's showdown from a distance, I ignored him.
'Are we freaking Pokémon or what... Will they only be satisfied if I fire a Water Gun at Da-yeon?'
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! See how good our Da-yeon is—call her and she comes right away!"
"Ahem... What use is it to order your grandchild here and there... You have to let them be free..."
Lee Gi-seok looked at Grandpa with a smirk of victory.
"Ha ha! Just go on and admit you're jealous! Go on!"
"Ayy, jealous? Who's jealous..."
Insisting he wasn't jealous, yet shooting envious glances at Da-yeon, Grandpa...
I let out a sigh and walked over to him.
"Si-yoon~~~"
My grandfather, abandoning the Go board to rush over...
That was the moment I knew for certain who Dad took after.