The world filled with old villas ended at the boundary of the four-lane road. Across the street, newly built apartment complexes clustered tightly together rose like a massive barrier. And like a foreign object in that new world, one shabby old shopping complex stood its ground like the last trace to gauge what this area looked like before redevelopment.
There was no need to check the map. Though the sign had fallen off leaving only the characters ‘진’ (Jin) and ‘상’ (Sang), Taesung could immediately tell that was Baekjin Shopping Complex.
If you’re only going to leave the two characters ‘진상’ (troublemaker), you might as well just take the whole sign down.
Taesung waited for the signal to change. From across the street, that husky woman’s voice rang out again.
“Plums, one bag for 2,000 won! Father, father, ah where are you going? I said plums are one bag for 2,000 won. These originally sold for 5,000 won but it’s a closing sale. If you just peel the skin, they’re really sweet. Should I cut one for you to taste? Ma’am! Just buying cucumbers? If you’re making gimbap, you need burdock too. I’ll give you burdock cheap. Hey Jungwoo, give the lady burdock for just 1,000 won.”
Baekjin Shopping Complex first floor, ‘Singsing Fresh Produce.’
Taesung opened the PPT file saved on his phone again. It said that the ‘speculative forces’ who had entered to compete with Wonin Construction had opened a fruit store by securing a shop on the first floor.
He’d thought it was unusual that it wasn’t an unmanned store for squatter’s rights, but they were doing business quite seriously. The new apartment complex shopping area was bleakly empty, but people were bustling only in front of that Singsing Fresh Produce.
“Plums are sold out!”
The woman tossed the megaphone aside and started stacking the empty baskets neatly. Whether they sold all the neighborhood’s fruit here, there were almost no products left outside or inside the store.
“Hey.”
At Taesung’s call, the woman raised her head. At most early twenties? Taesung was slightly flustered by her more youthful face than expected.
“Where’s the boss?”
The woman thumped her chest as if hearing the most ridiculous thing, with an expression that said she was hearing nonsense.
“Here.”
What kind of fruit store boss is someone who doesn’t even look dry behind the ears?
Whether she was young or just looked young. Taesung grumbled for no reason out of embarrassment.
“No, who’s the store owner?”
“Mister, it’s me.”
“Mist…”
Taesung squeezed his eyes shut. Fuck, it’s true that this side started the conversation first, so let’s endure it. Soothing his boiling insides.
“Hey, boss. So the one holding 38 percent of the building shares including this store is you? Huh?”
“Ah shit, ask like that from the beginning. I’m the boss and he’s the business partner.”
The woman roughly threw the stacked baskets to the back of the store.
“I’ll call him, so don’t block the display and wait over there.”
What’s the point of fighting with a kid? Taesung sighed and followed her words.
Office workers just getting off work poured in from the subway station direction. Among those casting curious glances at the unusually crowded store, a few broke ranks and peeked at the displays. The woman who’d been typing a message with a frown rushed over like lightning and wore a business smile. Melons are easy to prepare. Cut in half like this, flip it over and cut in half again. Slice it up and just scoop out the inside. She explained kindly and offered pre-cut melon pieces.
Soon the one remaining melon sold. People who swept up the discounted vegetables also left the store one by one.
“Tsk, I told them Shine Muscat won’t sell because it’s expensive.”
On the now-sparse display, only green grapes piled in a tacky red basket remained awkwardly. The woman grumbled as if dissatisfied with that one remaining inventory while organizing the empty fruit boxes.
When the hell is this so-called owner coming?
Thinking he should have bought cigarettes and a lighter at a convenience store if he’d known it would drag on like this, Taesung fiddled with the empty cigarette pack.
The sun that had been tilting westward, coloring the sky a gloomy red, finally fell behind the dense apartment buildings. In the twilight, Taesung’s shadow stretched long.
-VROOOOM!
A delivery motorcycle passed by making a loud noise. Taesung rubbed his ringing ears. He couldn’t keep loitering like this forever. Just as he decided to properly intimidate the ‘boss’ this time.
White light poured from the streetlight.
Taesung’s shadow that had stretched long across the sidewalk disappeared.
And into the spot where the shadow had been erased, someone wearing white sneakers approached and stopped right in front of Taesung.
Taesung unconsciously raised his head.
Under the white streetlight, light-colored curly hair fluttered gently. A man with such a radiant impression that for a moment everything around him seemed blurry curved his eyes roundly the moment he spotted Taesung.
“Well, well, who is this?”
His heart suddenly sank. Taesung couldn’t even think to close his parched lips as he stared blankly at the existence that had appeared before him like a ghost.
“Hyung?”
Hyun Jaeha.
He who had disappeared after his grandfather Chairman Hyun Hongwon’s funeral had appeared after three years.
2.
“Hyung.”
Taesung tightly grasped the hand of a child dressed in a private elementary school uniform that fit perfectly like a children’s clothing model. The white, soft fingers of the young child wriggled and dug between Taesung’s rough, calloused fingers. The ticklish sensation felt strangely unpleasant. Though it wasn’t a hot day, sweat seeped clammily into his palm.
“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to take me to school.”
The child whispered as if revealing a tremendous secret. Taesung looked down at the child. Under the light-colored curly hair, olive-colored eyes sparkled. Because of this distinctive appearance and coloring, rumors circulated that the child’s ‘alpha biological father’ might be a foreigner. That could be true. Or perhaps there was a Saekmok-in among distant ancestors and it was atavism. But what was the point of investigating such things? The most important thing was that the child’s ‘omega father’ was Korean, and moreover, was Chairman Hyun Hongwon’s only son.
Hyun Sejun.
When he became pregnant with the child of some unknown alpha, he left home to avoid Chairman Hyun Hongwon’s eyes, who would nine times out of ten tell him to abort the child, and gave birth to Hyun Jaeha while moving between goshiwons and rented rooms. Both father and son were incredibly stubborn, so Hyun Sejun did all kinds of hard labor with his delicate hands that had played the piano or cello or some instrument without asking his father for help. Chairman Hyun Hongwon had long known his son’s whereabouts and received photos, but waited for him to crawl back on his own.
If you coax and cajole someone who’s already broken the reins and left to bring them back, they’ll try to leave again. He has to come back crying on his own. Only then will he never think foolish thoughts again and live satisfied within the fence.
Chairman Hyun Hongwon saved a photo of his son and grandson secretly taken by an employee as his phone wallpaper and would sometimes stare at their faces for a long while. When someone worried what if he never came back, he answered as if it was no big deal.
You know when poverty is scariest? When my poverty devours my child. Right now he might think he just needs to give love even without money. But let the child enter middle school. If he thinks his stubbornness is blocking the path of his smart kid, he’ll come back.
The chairman’s words might have been right. Except that things in the world didn’t go according to logic. Hyun Sejun was hit and killed by a drunk driver before his son even graduated elementary school. It was an accident that occurred in broad daylight in the middle of the city center. At that time, Chairman Hyun Hongwon was playing golf in Cambodia, and because the employee monitoring the Hyun Sejun father and son also accompanied him on that trip, the chairman could only find his son’s funeral altar just before the mourning period ended.
Since there were no solo photos, the portrait photo used a cropped picture taken together on Hyun Jaeha’s elementary school recital day. On the brightly smiling Hyun Sejun’s chest remained a bell from the child’s party hat like a button. The chairman hugged the grandson he’d only seen in photos in front of his son’s portrait and cried like a young child.
The child, neither crying nor smiling, was held in the chairman’s arms and carefully scanned the men in black suits lined up behind. Blinking his glass bead-like eyes while pondering something for a long while, the child finally stretched out his two drooping hands and hugged the chairman when his wailing subsided.
Grandpa~ Watching the child burst into tears, Taesung felt a sense of loathing.
Just a young thing, he must have been surprised at first—one could have felt sorry for him, but the reason for deliberately twisting that view was also…
…because Taesung didn’t know his place.
The child’s eyes resembled the Han River. At least that’s how they looked to Taesung’s eyes. Both the eye color like a drop of green paint dropped into a murky water container mixed with gray-tinted paint, and the eerie feeling that made it hard to look away once you looked into them, as if a water ghost dwelled inside.
Due to the sweat seeping into his palm, their skin stuck together stickily. The damp fingers gripping Taesung’s knuckles felt just like those of a water ghost.
Taesung swallowed dry saliva and avoided the child’s eyes. Looking down at the dark shadow ahead of them, he muttered.
“…I don’t dislike it that much.”
“Really?”
The child’s hand slipped out slickly like a minnow swimming away through net gaps. The air touching his empty palm was cold.
