MOON Ch 2

“Is your knee hurting again? The doctor told you not to overdo it.”

“Well, what choice do I have? If I want to send our daughter to college, your mom’s got to earn.”

Chaeon started to say something, her mouth opening and closing. Two years ago, after her dad Euicheol suddenly died in a traffic accident, Chaeon had to give up the piano she had played for a long time, and the burden of earning a living fell entirely on Heejung.

Euicheol also had a massive influence on the background of Chaeon developing ambivalence—both envy and disgust—toward the wealth of the so-called privileged class.

He was a good person only on the outside, a salesman living hand-to-mouth. Extreme earnings where big money came in all at once, but when business was poor, they had to suck their thumbs. Even so, as if touching big money a few times gave him grand illusions, he liked to indulge in vanity more than anyone despite their modest circuMisstances.

Golf, scuba diving, and an imported car whose maintenance costs were so overwhelming he struggled to keep up. He tried desperately—stretching hiMisself to the tearing point—to follow the upper class, but what he actually brought home was nothing more than a paltry amount for living expenses. No matter how much Heejung nagged, vanity was a hard habit to break, and Chaeon found such a father simply pathetic and contemptible.

And…

‘Fuck, what are you glaring at? Huh? A girl looking at her own dad with eyes like that.’

The sales profession constantly built up stress in Euicheol. To relieve it, even when he roamed around pretending to be somebody, in the end, Euicheol’s existence to the truly rich was nothing more than a dog chasing their heels. He realized that every moment.

The layered anger and deeply ingrained inferiority complex finally poured out in a twisted way onto the weakest target within his reach. That target was his daughter, Chaeon.

‘Dad, it hurts. Please, I was wrong… Argh!’

‘Shut your mouth!’

She had to beg without even knowing what she did wrong. There were times she was beaten unconscious from the rib-crushing pain. Even when she dropped to her knees, rubbed her hands together begging, and cried, she was dragged by her hair and beaten for a long time. Every time, swallowing her groans—ugh, ugh—Chaeon cried.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts, it hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

Please stop, stop…

After enduring those hellish times, he always threatened Chaeon at the end with gritted teeth.

‘You, if you so much as tell your mom, all three of us die.’

Then die. Go out somewhere and just die instead. How many times did she hurl such curses internally while answering submissively? She wished that at least her mom, whose insides were rotting away day by day even now, would never know this truth. That was how Chaeon learned how to give up from back then.

However, her mom loved Chaeon too much to pass by without knowing anything.

‘You, what is all this?’

‘M-Mom…’

‘That bastard… Did that human lay a hand on you?’

One night when Heejung discovered the scars left all over Chaeon’s body with a heart-wrenching expression. Heejung and Euicheol ended up having a massive fight, and Euicheol, who unleashed merciless violence even on his wife who rushed at him screaming in rage, left the house just like that.

And, that futile end.

Euicheol poured down several million won worth of hard liquor and got behind the wheel, then crashed off a cliff on a curve in the road and died instantly. The 100-million-won sedan he had been so proud of turned completely into a scrap of paper, and the corpse found inside was in an equally horrific state. He had truly died.

However, the wished-for joy did not come.

Heejung had to take on everything that had accumulated as much as he had enjoyed. The credit card debt drawn to indulge in vanity beyond his means and the loans built up under Heejung’s name were at an unmanageable level, and the damages to a commercial building he ruined in the accident also had to be compensated in full by scraping together every last bit of money Heejung had earned.

Having gone through all of that, the weight of responsibility she must feel as the head of the household was not something one could dare judge carelessly. She knew that even telling her to take it easy was a luxury. Chaeon had lost a lot and been hurt, but the same went for Heejung.

In the end, neither “Rest a bit while working” nor “Can’t you quit your job?” could come out of her mouth; Chaeon, who sat quietly beside Heejung, only pressed firmly on her severely swollen calves.

Whether she was exhausted, Heejung fell fast asleep right there, sitting on the floor and leaning her body against the sofa. Chaeon brought a pillow from the master bedroom, placed it on the floor, and laid Heejung on her side. When she took off the socks on Heejung’s feet, even her toes were severely swollen.

“…”

It was right around the time she stood up from her seat because watching it felt somehow stifling.

Vizzz—

Heejung’s cell phone lying on the living room table vibrated noisily.

∞ ∞ ∞

Incense was burning in front of the framed portrait of an elderly woman with finely combed hair pinned with a hairpin. She must have shown clear signs of illness until right before her death, but in that photograph, she was smiling with a gentle and warm face.

“Even until the day before, she ate porridge and spoke well…”

They said President Kim’s elderly mother passed away comfortably, as if sleeping. At the statement that she quietly departed at a moment when no one could watch her end, Heejung, who had cared for the deceased until the day before she died, could not continue her words with tearful eyes. It wasn’t particularly out of affection, but rather, those tears were likely due to the subtle emotional residue built up over time.

“Still, it was a good death.”

Im Soyoung, who was actually dabbing the corners of her eyes with the ribbon of her mourning dress, didn’t shed a single tear. Chaeon, who was watching the unfunny farce, let out a sigh and turned her head away. She wanted to quickly go back after fulfilling the necessary decorum, so why were they persistently holding us back?

Even though they were wearing the same pitch-black suits, snippets of conversation were heard here and there from people gathered around, oozing wealth. Something about stocks benefiting from interest rate cuts, something about leverage, something about prime land… At the funeral of the deceased who had entered eternal sleep into a world that no longer had anything to do with worldly desires, the living were still fiercely vulgar.

Those were the very kind of people her dad had chased like a shadow and tried so hard to imitate. Letting out a small sigh, she hugged her knees and followed with her eyes the people coming and going from the funeral home.

Paying condolence money, writing names in the guestbook, offering greetings to the chief mourner with a solemn face, and then without fail taking a seat to share stories reeking of money—it was like a strange black-and-white movie playing on a loop without any meaning.

Her expression, which looked bored to death, shifted in a flash the moment her listlessly turned gaze suddenly stopped on the hallway outside the funeral home. Chaeon had no choice but to slowly lift her chin off her knees and raise her head.

For a moment, she had the illusion that time was flowing slowly. As if a tape that had been playing at a constant speed all along was stretched out long. The condolence guest, who appeared exuding such a distinct presence even from afar, focused the entire flow of air right there just by his appearance.

A languid look in his eyes, and a stride that was neither hurried nor ever slow. A man with a sharp, cold impression as if carved with a chisel was gradually coming closer to this side from the other end of the hallway, leading a pitch-black group behind his back. His momentum in approaching without hesitation was less like someone coming to mourn the deceased and more like someone coming to dispose of something.

The suit wrapping him from his broad, right-angled shoulders down to his toes was like a carelessly draped veil. Unless it was Chaeon’s illusion, as he drew closer, the surrounding noise seemed to subtly quiet down.

Even when he approached from afar, she had already felt he was tall and slender, but the man who came close was even larger. As he rolled his eyes as if looking for a pen to write his name in the guestbook, someone bowed obsequiously and handed him a pen, and a man who appeared to be an attendant standing by his side pulled out a white envelope from inside his jacket and put it into the box.

“Oh, to think you would come like this again… I heard you were busy these days, how did you…”

The man lightly nodded his head without even looking at the face of the person offering words in front of him. He looked elegant even in the moment he scribbled his name in the guestbook. Chaeon suddenly became curious about the name he must have written.

‘Oh my, the Jang family young master…’

Hearing someone mutter like that, Chaeon turned her head and saw Im Soyoung—who had neatly adjusted her white ribbon pin in her hair and checked her attire—trotting toward the man.

To think he was a person capable of making Im Soyoung, who barely lifted her hips off the floor the whole time, move like that. Looking now, even President Kim was nodding his head to him repeatedly and adopting an utterly servile attitude. It was quite a strange sight. A person who made even those she thought lived in high places—so far away from Heejung’s and her own circuMisstances—grovel like that.

“Young Master, you’ve come.”

“Miss.”

Even though it was just two words, at that low, echoing voice, Chaeon felt a sudden pulling sensation at the back of her head. Because everything surrounding him was like the specimen of a perfect adult man. Something qualitatively different was felt from guys her age who spilled immaturity all over from unrefined vessels no matter how much they pretended to be adults.

After exchanging brief greetings and completing the incense offering, he stepped back from the altar and exchanged bows with President Kim, the chief mourner. Even though they were clearly bowing to each other, it somehow looked as if President Kim was prostrating flat before him.

Having followed Heejung, who was often called by President Kim or Im Soyoung who liked to show off, she had seen many people who handled money, but that man naturally seemed accustomed to keeping anyone under his feet. Among the countless vulgar fakes here, he alone seemed like an elegant real deal.

It was the moment her worldview, which used to 100% agree with the sentiment vulgarity expressed as ‘those with money,’ completely flipped.

There are people like that too…

Just then, the gaze of the man, who was haughtily straightening his body, landed on Chaeon, who was standing like a still life in the corner.