#40

Since meeting Detective Park in town, Tae-heun had become gloomy and drank alone, only taking a taxi after midnight. Both the man and the child were asleep.

How long had they waited for me?

Around 11 o’clock, the man had called Tae-heun’s cellphone.

When are you coming?

His voice was timid, as if he had done something wrong by making the call. The one at fault was Tae-heun for being late without any notice.

The moment Tae-heun heard the man’s voice, he realized that he had a home to return to. A place where someone was waiting for him.

He felt pathetic for wasting time on alcohol without any purpose. Still, he had bought the promised pork belly. He had asked the bar to keep it in the refrigerator, worried it might spoil. He justified that he was a foolish man, but not a completely foolish one. He carefully placed the bag containing the still-cold chunks of meat into the freezer.

To avoid waking the man and the child, he quietly entered the room and closed the door. He spread out a thin mat and lay down on it.

Yesterday, or rather the day before yesterday, since it was past midnight.

The day before yesterday, Detective Park had shown Tae-heun incomprehensible documents after he had worked for seven hours upstairs. The documents from the morning were excellent, but the ones from the afternoon had strange content.

The documents sent by the advisory group consisting of tax accountants and accountants were scribbles in numbers. Detective Park cautiously mentioned that Tae-heun had worked on them. He conveyed that Detective Oh was very worried that Tae-heun might have lost interest in this work. He also did not forget to apologize for the significant mistake they had made regarding the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Chief.

Tae-heun pretended to still be angry about the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Chief matter and reassured Detective Park that although he was disappointed, he had not lost interest in the work.

After Detective Park left, he pulled at his hair in frustration. He had no memory of what he had done at all. He thought it had been a long time since he had focused solely on work. He had concentrated so completely on the numbers that he had even refrained from going to the bathroom. Yet, the results Detective Park had shown him were completely different.

The reason they had helped Tae-heun become the ‘Kim Tae-heun’ he was now, both materially and spiritually, was because they had that much information. If, by any chance, the same mistake were to happen again, they would suspect Tae-heun this time. The moment their trust vanished, Lee Seon-jae’s death would become nothing more than a cheap show.

All sorts of thoughts swirled in his head. He slept a shallow sleep, far from deep slumber. Whenever he managed to doze off, that two-story house would inevitably appear. It should have been getting blurry, yet it became clearer day by day. Tae-heun raised his hand and stared blankly at his palm. Even though it was a dream, he couldn’t help but scrutinize it, wondering if there were still traces of pink flower juice left.

4:30. The alarm rang as usual. The sound of the alarm felt like a breath of fresh air. He could hear the sound of water, perhaps the man was washing up. He fumbled around on the blanket, then, with his heavy head, went out to the living room. Standing on the floor, he looked at the brightening sky. It had been so beautiful yesterday, but today it felt tiresome. The overwhelming sense of having to live through another meaningless day tightened his chest.

“Are you up?”

The man asked while drying his wet hair.

“Yes. Did you sleep well, Ki-beom?”

“Yes.”

When Tae-heun turned to smile back, the man blushed slightly, a beat behind.

“Um… do you want to wash up first? I’ll wake up Tae-heun after you’re done.”

“Sure.”

As he stepped into the bathroom, he became curious about the man’s schedule.

“Where are you going today?”

“To Yong-jun’s rice field.”

“Are you planting rice?”

“That was finished last month; today is for weeding.”

“You’re doing that, Ki-beom? What about Yong-jun?”

“He can’t do that. And it’s not land that Yong-jun farms himself.”

The man said it as if it were obvious.

“You’re not doing it alone, right?”

“I’m doing it alone.”

“Isn’t it too big?”

“Using a brush cutter makes it manageable even if it’s big.”

From the man’s mention of “big,” it seemed like it was indeed quite large.

“Weeding will take all day, right?”

“Yes. So today, I’ll just finish up at Yong-jun’s rice field.”

“How many brush cutters do you have?”

The man blinked, as if he didn’t understand the intent behind the question.

“I have to do it too. Did you think I was going to work while leaving me alone?”

Tae-heun had no intention of going out today. He hadn’t, but the words slipped out again. He was beginning to doubt whether the head on his shoulders truly belonged to him.

“You struggled with the melon house work too.”

The man said, almost teasingly.

“I didn’t throw up because it was hard; it was because I was feeling unwell.”

Tae-heun protested. However, the man seemed skeptical.

“Weeding is really hard work. If you’ve never used a brush cutter, you can get hurt.”

“Why would you think I’ve never used a brush cutter? I’ve been to every field and mountain across the country. I’ve even gone to someone else’s grave to do the weeding.”

The man laughed. “Go wash up.”

Instead of going to the bedroom with the wet towel, the man went down to the yard. With each step he took, his large body swayed. That sight still felt unfamiliar and awkward. If he hadn’t been limping, would the man have lived in a better environment than now? Without realizing it, Tae-heun felt pity for him.

The man’s swift and decisive steps and actions rendered Tae-heun’s shallow pity meaningless. He hung the wet towel on the clothesline and took down the dry laundry one by one. He handled everything quickly, yet he didn’t seem rushed or lacking in leisure.

Compared to his own impatience and impulsiveness, along with his sense of helplessness, the man was much better off. It was embarrassing to be boasting just because he had one more functioning leg. Tae-heun scratched his eyebrows and headed to the bathroom.

Compared to the melon house, there were many more supplies needed for weeding. A wide-brimmed hat, a towel, a change of clothes, a long-sleeved shirt, and a frozen 2-liter bottle of water that had been in the freezer for who knows how long. He packed everything into several bags. He also grabbed two cucumbers to munch on while working. He almost asked if there were any chocolates or chocolate bars but decided against it. In this weather, bringing a chocolate bar would surely result in it melting and becoming sticky in the sun.

The man asked Tae-heun several times if he was really going to work. He was worried that Tae-heun might have another episode. He could have said he wouldn’t go, that he would take a break today since the man was worried. No one would think of Tae-heun as weak or a freeloader for that. But he wanted to go out. He enjoyed laboring alongside the man, sweating together. When his body was tired, his distracting thoughts disappeared, and when those thoughts vanished, life felt somewhat bearable.

After dropping the child off at the village hall, the man headed towards Kwon Yong-jun’s house. As they passed the village hall and went a bit further in, a two-story country house that looked quite expensive appeared. In the spacious garden stood a beautifully trimmed pine tree. It seemed he had no particular interest in gardening, as there were no other plants besides the pine tree.

The man passed by the parked Grandeur, Damas, and a large BMW sedan outside the gate and parked the truck.

“Wait a moment.”

Instead of entering the gate, the man disappeared around the wall. There was a sound of the iron gate opening and closing, and before long, the man returned to the truck.

“Here’s the key to Yong-jun’s warehouse.”

“Aren’t you going into the house?”

“No. There’s no need for that.”

The man drove again.

After about ten more minutes from Kwon Yong-jun’s house, three massive warehouses appeared in a row. The man parked in one of them. It was a storage facility for Kwon Yong-jun’s four tractors and farming equipment, and the brush cutter was there too. It seemed he was indeed wealthy. All the farming equipment was state-of-the-art, and some had not even had their plastic packaging removed.

“The chairman loves machines. Whenever a new product comes out, he buys it right away, often taking a loss. But he rushes to every new product presentation.”

The man referred to Kwon Yong-jun’s father, Kwon Il-taek, as the chairman. There was a hint of affection in his tone.

“He bought a good and expensive brush cutter, so it’s easy to work with.”

It was a Japanese brush cutter that Tae-heun had seen before. While domestic ones weren’t bad, he recalled a landowner who had boasted that Japanese ones were still the best.

They each strapped on a brush cutter. The man carried the gasoline can, while Tae-heun took the oil can. They walked out of the warehouse, laden with their supplies, towards the truck. The heat was intense.

“Today’s weather is no joke.”

“Right? If it gets too hot, you must take a break. Otherwise, you’ll get heatstroke.”

“Who would say that?”

The man, who had just suffered from heatstroke yesterday, smiled awkwardly.

After loading all the items into the truck bed, they moved the vehicle again.

The cellphone antenna lit up. While the man was driving, he left a short message for his assistant. The man glanced at it, but that was all.

The land owned by Kwon Il-taek occupied two-thirds of the rice fields in Dongjam-ri. As they drove in the truck, the man pointed out each area with his hand. Tae-heun wasn’t particularly curious, but he listened intently. He wanted to match the man’s enthusiasm, seeing him excited even though it wasn’t his own land.

“From there to there, the president of the women’s association is farming, and the land above is being worked by Mr. Jo from the front village, who has been doing it for three generations. And over there, do you see? The one with the utility pole. That’s where Mr. Hwang from the big village is farming, but his youngest son, who used to help him, has gone to the city, so he’s having a tough time.”

The land seemed endless, and the names of the villagers flowed from the man’s mouth, names that Tae-heun couldn’t recognize. Including about ten households that rented large plots of land to grow rice, more than thirty farming households were farming on Kwon Il-taek’s land.

“What are those people doing while Ki-beom is doing the weeding?”

“I’m working on a different piece of land.”

The man smiled slyly as he mentioned the different land.