Munjeong - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“Are your knees hurting again? I told you not to overdo it, just like the doctor said.”

“Well, what can I do? If I want to send my daughter to college, I have to earn the money.”

Chaeon opened her mouth to say something but then closed it again. Ever since her father, Euicheol, had died suddenly in a car accident two years ago, Chaeon had to give up playing the piano, something she had done for a long time, and the responsibility of earning money fell entirely on Heejung.

Euicheol also played a significant role in shaping Chaeon’s ambivalent feelings—envy and disgust—toward the wealth of the so-called privileged.

Outwardly a good person, Euicheol worked as a salesman, living hand to mouth. His income was extreme—sometimes he’d make a large sum at once, but other times, they’d barely scrape by. Despite their modest circumstances, he seemed intoxicated by the few times he handled big money, developing a penchant for vanity.

Golf, scuba diving, a foreign car with maintenance costs that drained them. He strove to emulate the upper class, but what he brought home was barely enough to scrape by. No matter how much Heejung nagged him, his vanity proved hard to shake. To Chaeon, he was just a pathetic, contemptible father.

And yet…

“What the hell are you staring at? Huh? A girl glaring at her own father like that.”

Sales was a job that constantly piled stress onto Euicheol. No matter how much he pretended to be well-off and strutted around outside, he was acutely aware that to the truly wealthy, he was no more than a dog chasing their heels. That realization weighed on him at every moment.

The anger that built up, combined with his deeply rooted inferiority complex, was eventually released in a twisted way onto the weakest person within his reach—his daughter, Chaeon.

“Dad, it hurts. Please, I’m sorry… Agh!”

“Shut your mouth!”

She had to beg for forgiveness even when she didn’t know what she’d done wrong. There were times when she was beaten so badly she fainted from the pain, ribs feeling like they were being crushed. Even when she knelt and sobbed for mercy, he would drag her by the hair and beat her relentlessly. Choking back her sobs, Chaeon would cry quietly.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts, it hurts. It hurts so much. It hurts. It hurts.

Please stop, stop…

After enduring those hellish moments, he would always end by gritting his teeth and threatening her.

“If you tell your mom about this, we’ll all die. All three of us.”

Then die. Just go die somewhere, for all I care. She answered obediently while silently cursing him over and over. Even now, she wished her mother, who was rotting away inside day by day, would never know the truth. That was how Chaeon learned to resign herself to her circumstances.

But her mother loved her too much to remain completely oblivious.

“What… what’s all this?”

“Mom…”

“Did that bastard, that man, lay his hands on you?”

One night, Heejung discovered the scars all over Chaeon’s body. The devastation in her expression was unbearable. That night, Heejung and Euicheol fought violently. When Euicheol turned his fists on his wife, who was screaming and clawing at him, he left the house without a second thought.

And then, that hollow ending.

Euicheol had downed several bottles of whiskey, worth nearly a million won, before getting behind the wheel. He drove off a curve in the road and plummeted down a cliff, dying instantly. The one-billion-won luxury sedan he had been so proud of was crumpled into a heap of scrap, and his body was found in an equally wretched state. He really had gone and died.

But the relief she had hoped for never came.

Everything he had enjoyed was left behind for Heejung to bear. Credit card debts and loans taken out in her name, all to support his extravagant tastes, were overwhelming. On top of that, she had to use all the money she had earned to compensate for damages he had caused by wrecking a commercial property during his crash.

The weight of responsibility she felt as the head of the household after all of this was beyond anyone’s ability to judge. Even telling her to take it easy or to quit her job felt like an indulgence. Chaeon had lost and suffered much, but Heejung had too.

In the end, unable to say, “Take it easy,” or, “You should stop working,” Chaeon quietly sat next to Heejung and began massaging her swollen calves.

Perhaps exhausted, Heejung fell asleep leaning against the sofa while sitting on the floor. Chaeon fetched a pillow from the bedroom and laid it on the floor before gently laying Heejung on her side. When she removed her mother’s socks, even her toes were swollen.

“…”

For some reason, the sight of it was suffocating. Just as she was about to get up, the phone on the living room table began to vibrate loudly.

—

In front of a memorial portrait of an elderly woman with neatly combed hair adorned with a traditional hairpin, incense burned steadily. Though she had been visibly unwell in her final days, the woman in the photograph smiled warmly, exuding a gentle and serene presence.

“Until the day before, she was still eating porridge and talking….”

Kim’s mother had passed away peacefully, as if she were merely asleep. No one had been present at the moment of her passing, but she had gone quietly. Heejung, who had cared for her until the very end, couldn’t hold back her tears. It wasn’t necessarily out of deep affection; rather, the tears were likely remnants of complex emotions accumulated over time.

“Still, it was a good death.”

While Im Soyoung dabbed at her eyes with the ribbon of her mourning clothes, not a single tear fell. Watching the ridiculous charade unfold, Chaeon sighed and turned her head away. She wanted to fulfill her obligatory duties and leave as quickly as possible—why were they insisting on keeping them here?

Even though they all wore the same black suits, the people gathered in clusters around the room exuded an air of wealth and privilege. Snippets of conversation drifted over: talk of stocks benefiting from interest rate cuts, leveraging strategies, and prime real estate. At a funeral for someone who had departed this world, where earthly desires held no sway anymore, the living remained vulgar and relentlessly preoccupied.

Those people, they must have been the same ones her father had so desperately shadowed and mimicked. Letting out a small sigh, she hugged her knees and watched the comings and goings of the mourners at the funeral parlor.

They would hand over their condolence money, sign the guestbook, exchange solemn greetings with the bereaved family, and then invariably take a seat to discuss money-laden topics. It was like watching a strange black-and-white film endlessly replaying meaningless scenes.

The bored look on her face subtly shifted when her indifferent gaze suddenly landed on the hallway outside the funeral room. Chaeon lifted her chin from her knees and raised her head.

For a moment, it felt like time was slowing down. The steadily playing tape seemed to elongate. A mourner who had just appeared from the far end of the hallway captured everyone’s attention as if the flow of air itself shifted toward him.

With languid eyes and a stride that was unhurried yet not slow, the man with sharp, chiseled features advanced, followed by a group dressed in black. He moved with a presence more suited to someone arriving to settle an issue than to mourn the deceased.

From his broad shoulders to his feet, the suit he wore seemed like an insincere veil draped over him. If it wasn’t her imagination, the surrounding noise seemed to diminish subtly as he drew closer.

From a distance, he appeared tall and well-proportioned, but up close, the man was even more imposing. As he glanced around for a pen to sign the guestbook, someone hurriedly handed him one with a deferential bow. A man who seemed to be his assistant pulled a white envelope from inside his jacket and placed it in the donation box.

“Oh my, I didn’t expect you to come. I heard you’ve been so busy these days; how did you manage…?”

The man barely nodded his head, not even glancing at the person addressing him. Even as he scrawled his name in the guestbook, he exuded elegance. Chaeon found herself curious about the name he had written.

“Goodness, it’s the young master from the Jang family…” someone whispered. Hearing this, Chaeon turned her head to see Im Soyoung, who was adjusting the white ribbon in her hair and tidying her clothes before scurrying over to the man.

The sight of Im Soyoung, who had stubbornly remained seated for most of the day, now moving with such urgency intrigued Chaeon. Even Kim, the host of the funeral, was nodding incessantly at the man with an ingratiating air. It was a peculiar sight. To think that someone who lived in a world so far removed from Chaeon and Heejung’s could make even those seemingly lofty figures grovel.

“Young master, you’ve arrived.”

“Madam.”

Only three words, yet the deep resonance of his voice made Chaeon’s scalp tingle. Everything about him seemed like the epitome of an adult man, worlds apart from the immature boys of her age who tried to act grown-up but betrayed their immaturity at every turn.

After exchanging a brief greeting, he completed the incense offering, then bowed to Kim. Though it was a mutual bow, it somehow looked as though Kim was prostrating himself before the man.

Chaeon had seen plenty of people with money while accompanying Heejung to her many gigs for ostentatious clients like Kim or Im Soyoung. But this man seemed innately accustomed to having others beneath him. Among the many gaudy fakes in this place, he alone felt like the real deal.

It was a moment that overturned the sense of disdain Chaeon had always felt toward the so-called “haves.”

So there really are people like him…

As the man straightened up with dignity, his gaze suddenly met Chaeon’s, who stood like a still life in the corner of the room.