#132

There was no destination. Getting away from the church immediately was the priority. With fields so green they were dazzling on the left, Tae-heun drove along a quiet farm road when two patrol cars approached, sirens blaring. Tae-heun pulled the car to the side of the road to let them pass. He might get beaten up a few times, but the Village Chief and the head of the youth association wouldn’t die.

“Ji-hye, do you want to go to So-jin’s?”

The Man, sitting next to the the child in the back seat, asked quietly. The the child, who always went to So-jin’s after Sunday service and lunch, nodded vigorously, saying, “Yes!” Tae-heun glanced at the man in the rearview mirror and drove to So-jin’s house.

Fortunately, it wasn’t far. The the child wiggled in her seat as soon as she saw So-jin’s house. She was impatient to get out right away. Sure enough, as soon as the car stopped, she threw the door open.

“You’ll fall if you do that. Slow down!”

The the man shouted belatedly, but the the child was already running. She burst through the red gate with a bright smile.

“Tae-heun, I’ll go talk for a bit.”

“Okay.”

The the man disappeared through the gate after the the child.

Tae-heun called Detective Oh again. The ringing tone continued, but he didn’t answer. Just as he was wondering if this guy was going to throw away the second chance he’d given him, the call connected.

Chief, I’m busy, I’ll call you back later.

Detective Oh said this and hung up immediately.

It seemed he was doing something. If he was involved with Kwon Il-taek, or rather, because he was involved, he couldn’t just sit still. Whether he knew it or not, at least he hadn’t run away with him, so Detective Oh had a share to bear.

Everyone knew that Detective Oh and Kwon Il-taek were very close. Even if Detective Oh hadn’t directly encouraged him to invest, there would be people who had invested in Kwon Il-taek, trusting his position. Maybe Detective Oh had stepped in shit too.

He almost contacted the Helper but stopped himself. He was already busy enough monitoring various places due to the Il-gwang matter, and he also had to investigate the orphanage that Tae-heun had asked him to, so he must be swamped. Even though he grumbled, he would also be looking into the 150,000 pyeong of land that Tae-heun had requested.

The Helper was that kind of person. A person who was prepared to give his life for Tae-heun. No, a person who had given his life.

Speak of the devil, a text message arrived from the Helper. He had included the word “[Passport]” in a loan advertisement. Finally, a passport had been issued in the name of Kim Tae-heun. A pass to fly away on an airplane had been issued.

Should he be deeply moved?

He chuckled.

Neither Detective Oh nor Detective Park had informed Tae-heun of this important matter. He didn’t know if they even had the intention to. Recently, both of them had been doing a terrible job, but Tae-heun hadn’t corrected them. What lingering attachment did he have that he was trying to give them a chance? It was his own heart, but even he was confused. Was he weakened by love, or was he originally this kind of person? He was confused.

Ssi-peol. He picked up a cigarette and then put it back down.

The the man came out after a long time. Unlike when he went in, his expression wasn’t good. As expected, So-jin’s family had also suffered damage.

“Is there any house that hasn’t?”

Tae-heun asked as soon as the man sat in the passenger seat.

The the man sighed softly and shook his head.

“How much did Ki-beom invest?”

“…….”

“Even roughly.”

The the man remained silent.

“Um, I was wondering if we could stop by the house for a bit.”

Instead, he suggested going home.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Tae-heun said “Okay” to anything the man asked. So he immediately turned the car around.

The the man only looked out the window. His neatly dressed shirt and suit pants, which he had deliberately worn, were overshadowed as he returned home with bad news.

“Let’s ask just one thing.”

Tae-heun said.

“Did you know?”

He couldn’t help but ask. The Man’s expression he had seen at church earlier lingered in his mind.

The the man turned to Tae-heun.

“Did you know that Kwon Il-taek ran away?”

“…Yes.”

Tae-heun stepped on the brakes. Because he braked suddenly, both of their bodies were thrown forward as if bouncing out and then returned to their seats.

“When?”

His voice was sharp as he asked.

“Yesterday.”

In contrast, the man was calm.

“Yesterday when?”

“Yong-joon called while Tae-heun was showering.”

Ah. Kwon Yong-joon.

He had underestimated the relationship between the man and Kwon Yong-joon. He had forgotten that they were quite close, in a way that Kwon Yong-joon had confessed his love to the Man.

“Ssi-peol.”

Tae-heun cast his gaze out the window. Tsk, he made a displeased sound.

“He called crying. Saying he was sorry.”

“Does crying make it all okay?”

“It’s not Yong-joon’s fault.”

That was true. At the same time, it was also wrong.

The perpetrators of the fraud were Kwon Yong-joon’s parents and brothers. Kwon Yong-joon wasn’t a black sheep in the family, he was the youngest son who had been coddled until he got married. There was no way he wouldn’t have known what they were doing.

“He’s an accomplice, Ki-beom.”

“No, he’s not.”

The the man insisted.

“That bastard didn’t know anything at all?”

“…….”

“See? He knew everything. He saw everything from the side.”

“But.”

He still sided with Kwon Yong-joon.

“He didn’t know that his Father and brothers were taking the villagers’ money and racking up debt?”

“That’s.”

“The debt collectors came, right? Even loan sharks came.”

“…Yes.”

“He saw everything. Kwon Yong-joon knew everything too.”

“…….”

“That bastard is an accomplice.”

The the man shook his head to the end.

“Yong-joon cried. He said he was sorry. He said he wanted to die.”

“Ki-beom! Who can’t say those words! Everyone says it. I want to die, I’m sorry, I apologize. Everyone says that!”

Tae-heun shouted.

He was furious at Kwon Yong-joon for making the man think like that. He loathed the Kwon Il-taek family for committing fraud using trust as collateral. And he felt pathetic for the Man, who was worried about them even in the midst of losing everything.

“Is this the time for you to be saying such naive things, Ki-beom?”

The the man turned around with a face that said he didn’t understand what Tae-heun was saying.

“I’m not naive.”

“That’s what’s naive. That attitude of believing Kwon Yong-joon’s words as they are is naive!”

“I know everything too. But does knowing change anything? What can I do?”

The the man argued back.

“Even though you know everything, you still want to take their side? Huh?”

“Yes……. I want to.”

The the man stared straight at Tae-heun.

“I wanted to.”

He frowned as if in pain.

Ssi-peol. Tae-heun stormed out of the driver’s seat. He came outside because he felt suffocated, but it was terribly humid and hot. He wanted to gulp down cold water. Or jump into the water.

He messed up his hair, which he had carefully styled for the first time in a while. Ssi-peol, ssi-peol. He cursed and kicked the ground with his shoes, again and again.

After a while, the man followed him out. He watched Tae-heun rant and rave, then took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. Then he offered one to Tae-heun as well. He was such a carefree person. Tae-heun glared at the Man. The the man told him with his eyes to quickly take the cigarette.

Tae-heun, who was already craving a cigarette, couldn’t refuse and took the cigarette. Then a lighter followed. The Man’s hand trembled. It took him three tries to light Tae-heun’s cigarette before he lit his own.

The two stood silently, just smoking.

“Why did you stay still? Knowing everything.”

Tae-heun opened his mouth after a long time.

“Because I didn’t invest with the intention of getting money back in the first place.”

The the man replied nonchalantly.

“If it weren’t for Chairman Shin and Yong-joon, it would have been difficult to settle down in this village. Even though I’m from here, the localism was no joke. Besides, who would welcome a widower with a child and no money?”

He chuckled.

“The house and the vegetable garden we live in now, Chairman Shin took care of and cultivated them himself on behalf of my family, so we were able to move in and live there right away. If it weren’t for that, Ji-hye and I would have been out on the streets. I thought that even if I gave up all my assets, it wouldn’t be enough to repay that favor. So when I received the investment offer four years ago, I thought it was a good opportunity. I thought it was a golden opportunity to repay Chairman Shin.”

Having said this, the man looked up at the sky. The sky had a stuffy color as if it were foggy. It looked just like the situation in this village.

“At first, everyone started modestly. But the monthly interest was more than two or three times that of commercial banks. Some months, nearly 50% of the principal came in. From then on, people went crazy and started pulling money from everywhere. They gathered all their relatives, even distant ones, and as soon as they had money, they took it to Yong-gi Hyung’s investment company. Not only that, but they even took out loans without fear.”

Huh! Tae-heun let out a hollow laugh.

What Kwon Yong-gi had done was a typical investment scam. It was a method of deceiving people by giving the money invested by person A to person B as interest, rather than the interest generated from actual investments. Since money didn’t have names written on it, everyone was easily fooled.

Tae-heun, who was involved in that world, knew the scam methods inside out, but ordinary people didn’t know such things. Above all, who would dare to suspect that it was the investment company run by Kwon Il-taek’s eldest son, of all people?

In particular, when a pillar of the community like Kwon Il-taek got involved, the scale of the fraud grew exponentially. Even if he didn’t know, there would be fraud victims all over Hanju City, including the town.

“Then the IMF hit. At first, I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t understand what it meant for the country to go bankrupt. The news was full of bankruptcy reports, and banks were collapsing. It was a mess, but I couldn’t feel it, so I was rather indifferent. It was only later, after learning that Yong-gi Hyung’s investment company had gone bankrupt, that I realized things were really bad. Chairman Shin was very flustered at that time too.”

Recalling the past, the man laughed continuously. It was close to mockery. It was unclear whether it was directed at Kwon Il-taek or at his own ignorance.

“But Chairman Shin didn’t avoid it then. He called all the people in the neighborhood to the sarangbang and explained it to them. He said that the country had gone bankrupt, so Yong-gi Hyung’s investment company had also gone bankrupt. Yong-jae Hyung’s manufacturing company had also closed down. It wasn’t that he had made a bad investment, but that the country had gone bankrupt, so it couldn’t be helped. He said that if he sold his land and farm equipment, he could return all the principal, even if he couldn’t give them interest. But the country’s situation was a mess right now, so land and machinery were worthless, so he asked them to wait just one year.”

The the man continued to speak quietly. It seemed like he had already said a month’s worth of things, not just a week’s worth. The cigarette burned down in the Man’s fingers.

“So everyone agreed to do that. No one blamed Chairman Shin. They comforted Chairman Shin, saying that there was no way to withstand the country going bankrupt. Chairman Shin was harassed by debt collectors, but if they went to him saying they needed tuition for their children, he would somehow find cash and lend it to them, and if they needed hospital bills or medicine, he would somehow get the money. So everyone had no choice but to trust him. It’s not that we were ignorant.”

As the old man of Namchon Village said, the number of children in Dongjam Village also increased during the IMF. They were the children left behind by their own children. Their children had been laid off from their companies, gone bankrupt, or closed their businesses, so they couldn’t even put food on the table, so they left their children with their elderly parents. The elderly parents also urgently needed to make a living, but they thought that at least they were farming, so they wouldn’t have to worry about starving. That was true. They didn’t starve. But that was all.

Chairman Kwon, who had asked for just one year, asked for another year. The villagers also watched the news and knew that the country’s situation was still difficult. The whole nation was selling gold to save the country. So they waited another year.

As the third year came, more and more positive news came out. There were rumors that merchants and companies were starting to breathe again. Cameras showing the vibrant streets of Myeongdong, and city people enjoying leisure again, everything seemed to be returning to normal. But even after the the child returned, the village situation did not improve. The the man was the same.

Chapter 133