#42

The man’s face gradually turned less red. Did he even realize it? It should be natural, yet I felt a twinge of disappointment. I must have liked the man who blushed at even the smallest comment.

After finishing their meal, the two returned to the youth association office and settled onto the sofa. The man quickly fell asleep. Tae-heun lay on his side, covered with a blanket, facing the sleeping man. Even with all the fluorescent lights turned off, the man had pulled the blanket over his face and was acting up. What if he suffocated like that?

Worrying about the man’s life and death, I forced myself to sleep, but sleep that wouldn’t come at night was unlikely to come during the day.

I had developed two illnesses I had never experienced before: lethargy and insomnia. If I were to ask which was the more frustrating of the two, it would undoubtedly be insomnia. Perhaps it was insomnia that had made me lethargic. Because of insomnia, my thoughts multiplied, and as I thought, everything seemed futile.

If it’s insomnia, I shouldn’t even dream. Nightmares came at any time. Every time I dozed off, it felt like those dreams were there to disturb even that brief sleep. The beginning was always the same, and the ending varied depending on the length of sleep. Sometimes it would end with big guys taking a dump. At those times, my already foul mood would plummet to the worst.

Damn it. What a shitty dream. Shitty insomnia.

Sleep only comes when you’re dead.

I could almost hear my uncle’s words in my ears.

I wondered how my uncle was doing. He must be grieving. Not because his adopted son Lee Seon-jae had died, but because Lee Seon-jae, who was in charge of the main business of Ilgwang Financial, had died, and he would be grieving and angry. Lee Hyun-jun might have thrown a party to escape such a father. He would have had more than enough to spare.

“Hey, I told you I’m not going.”

Tae-heun returned to reality at the sudden voice.

“Hey, you bastard. You should go to the funeral too. Aren’t you the eldest grandson? Aren’t you ashamed to see your younger siblings? I want to hold my grandchild just once, and so does your mother. You know Young-soo from the next town? He’s two years older than you and just got married after going to Vietnam last month. The girl is said to be twenty-two.”

“How can you marry a foreign girl you can’t even communicate with?”

“What does that matter? Have you seen me talk to your mother? As long as she eats well, works well, and gives birth to kids, that’s a wife.”

The youth association president and the village chief were bickering loudly in front of the office door.

“With just ten million won, you can marry a woman twenty years younger than you. That’s unthinkable in Korea. What does age matter? All the women you’ve met are over thirty-five, aren’t they? Those women can’t even have kids. They’d freak out at the thought of farming. Enough of this nonsense, you must get on a plane next month!”

“I’ll handle it myself!”

Under the village chief’s one-sided attack, the youth association president retreated into the office. He childishly locked the door to keep the village chief from coming in. Bang, bang, bang. The loud knocking soon subsided.

“Damn it. Is the old man losing his mind? Why would I marry a Vietnamese woman?”

The youth association president cursed his father as he sat down in frustration.

I didn’t particularly want to know the youth association president’s personal life, but it helped clear my mind of distractions. Tae-heun let out a short laugh.

The weeding work, which resumed at 4 PM, didn’t finish until after 7 PM. I sweated so much that even after drinking a lot of water, I didn’t need to pee. The man took the exhausted Tae-heun home to pick up the child.

“Dad, make me some soybean paste stew.”

“You just had it a few days ago.”

“Make it again. I want to eat it.”

As soon as the child got into the truck, he started asking for soybean paste stew. Just hearing about it made Tae-heun’s stomach churn. It was because he had been exposed to the sun for too long for two consecutive days, from yesterday to today. Plus, he had drunk a lot.

“Why are you dying?”

The child asked.

“I’m not dying; I’m dead.”

Tae-heun replied with his eyes closed.

“Pfft. Who dies just from weeding?”

“The weeds are no ordinary ones. They come back to life when you kill them, and they come back again. It was a mess. They were so persistent that we almost lost to the weeds. Right, Ki-beom?”

The man didn’t respond. When I turned to look, I saw him smirking. Tae-heun laughed along with him.

While the child fed the puppies, the man busily prepared dinner. If we were to compare who was more tired, it would have been the man, yet he didn’t show it at all. Eight thousand pyeong was nothing; it seemed like there were several thousand more than that. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be blisters on the soles of my feet.

The man brought over a box labeled emergency medicine. Tae-heun heated a needle with a lighter and burst the blister on his little toe. It stung, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

“Stop whining.”

The child, who had come in without anyone noticing, clicked his tongue at what Tae-heun was doing.

“Ji-hye, wash your hands.”

The man, who had eyes in the back of his head, immediately noticed the child’s presence. The child stood up, saying, “Yes.”

As I wiped the fluid from the blister with tissue, I looked at the man’s back. The man, standing in front of the fire, wiped his sweat with a towel around his neck and pushed the ingredients he had sliced on the cutting board into the pot in order. The pot began to bubble, and the man tasted it with a spoon. Only after adding the tofu did he go to the small window in the kitchen to catch some air.

The child, who had washed his hands, stood next to the man. He looked up at his father, observing his every move. He gazed at the man with eyes full of affection. Tae-heun, watching the scene blankly, stood up slightly. It was an excuse that he couldn’t just lie around on the floor as a lodger; he wanted to interrupt because he was envious of the father and daughter.

“Do you need any help?”

The man, who hadn’t noticed Tae-heun’s arrival, jumped at the voice coming from behind him.

“Oh, sir! How can you suddenly speak without a sound?”

The child shouted angrily.

“I’m not a ghost; how can I move without a sound?”

Feeling embarrassed, Tae-heun turned to the man for agreement.

“Isn’t that right, Ki-beom?”

“Yes. I’m a bit slow.”

The man took the blame.

Isn’t it that he’s sensitive rather than slow? But that didn’t mean the man was a sensitive person at all.

“My dad gets startled easily.”

“Sorry. I’ll be careful.”

“Ji-hye, serve the rice.”

The man quickly changed the subject, perhaps worried that the child would start nagging Tae-heun. The child glared at Tae-heun, showing the whites of his eyes, and went to the red rice pot.

“Were you really startled?”

“…No. I’m fine.”

“I’ll be careful next time.”

“I’m really fine.”

The man’s face turned red.

“Dad, fried eggs.”

At the child’s words, the man hurriedly turned on the heat under the frying pan and poured in some cooking oil. The child took out six eggs from the refrigerator and handed them to the man. The man skillfully cracked the eggs and placed them in the frying pan. In an instant, six fried eggs were ready. The child held out a plate, and the man took it and arranged the eggs nicely. They worked together seamlessly.

Tae-heun, standing awkwardly and watching them, stepped aside slightly. The child placed bowls of rice for the three of them on the table. As soon as he placed a towel cut into a stand in the center of the table, the pot was set down as if waiting for it.

The side dishes were just two types of kimchi and fried eggs. It was a simple meal, and in some ways, a shabby table. Nevertheless, the child looked at Tae-heun with a proud face.

“It’s really delicious.”

Seeing the child’s expectant expression and the man’s excited face, it seemed difficult to make an excuse that I didn’t have an appetite this time.

The man opened the cupboard and took out three cold noodle bowls. After placing one next to each rice bowl, he sat down at the table, and the child followed suit. Tae-heun faced the father and daughter. More precisely, he faced the man.

“I wonder if it will suit your taste.”

“It looks delicious.”

I picked up my spoon while saying something I didn’t mean. It was because the man gestured for me to eat first.

Even after eating one cold noodle, I didn’t feel hungry, let alone have an appetite. I would probably just take a few spoonfuls and stop. No matter how famous a restaurant was, soybean paste stew was still soybean paste stew, and kimchi stew wasn’t much different either.

As I was about to scoop some stew into my mouth, the child poured a whole bowl of rice into the cold noodle bowl as if waiting for it. Then, as he tried to put his spoon into the pot, the man blocked the child’s spoon with his own.

“Wait a minute. I’ll give you a ladle.”

“Eh? What’s wrong with just eating it?”

The child pouted.

The man handed the child a small ladle. The child filled the ladle with ingredients and placed it on top of the rice. The man, without waiting for Tae-heun’s taste evaluation, did the same as the child. They were both eating to show off to Tae-heun, yet neither of them seemed to care whether he ate or not. It felt oddly uncomfortable.

As the child said, the soybean paste stew was quite good. Despite its dark color, it wasn’t salty. It was moderately salty, enough to have a savory taste, and the aftertaste was rich. There was nothing that upset my stomach. However, it didn’t feel as “really delicious” as the child had said. I thought I would take a few more spoonfuls and then get up. At least until the child made bibimbap with the soybean paste stew.

The child mixed the rice topped with stew and ingredients with two fried eggs and some young radish kimchi. Naturally, the man followed the child’s order. The eyes of the child and the man were focused on Tae-heun. It was a look that said, “What are you dawdling for? Eat like us.”