MOON Ch 3

“…”

It was a distance where the sound of breathing shouldn’t have been audible, yet the moment their eyes met, Chaeon unconsciously tensed up and had to hold her breath. Like a herbivore holding its breath in sheer tension upon encountering a natural predator.

The man’s languid, dry gaze flowed down like water, as if appraising an object. Chaeon’s frozen Adam’s apple moved heavily. While she forgot to breathe, the man’s gaze slowly descended from top to bottom, resting for a moment at her feet, before being neatly withdrawn.

Had she drawn back the tips of her toes where his eyes touched? Even though his gaze had already bypassed her, breathing was a little uncomfortable.

“I heard there was a sit-in demonstration for some time. I was told it was wrapped up well.”

At President Kim’s question, the man replied with a subtle smile.

“It was.”

“The Chairman must have been displeased in many ways. Everywhere you go, there are plenty of people making noise over useless matters.”

“Well…”

As if clenching his teeth tightly, the man’s jaw twitched for a moment.

“Generally so.”

“Pardon?”

“Noisy, slow to know their place.”

The dry voice crushed an unspecified majority without mercy, as if reciting a poem. It was then that his gaze, after a brief pause, touched Chaeon’s feet once more.

“And shabby.”

“…”

Startled, Chaeon looked straight down at her feet where his gaze lingered. The worn and frayed tips of her white socks were threadbare, revealing the color of her skin. Enough that it couldn’t be hidden no matter how much she tried.

Ah… Only then did she seem to understand the reason why his gaze had stayed there a bit longer. When Chaeon gently bit her lip and raised her head, the man was no longer placing his gaze on her, as if she wasn’t even worth that anymore.

With a feeling quite different from a moment ago, her toes shrank back.

The very first thing Chaeon did as soon as she returned home was to immediately pull off the socks that felt like they were suffocating her feet and shove them into the trash can. Looking down at the white bundle stuffed inside the trash can with a somewhat humiliated and annoyed feeling, she pushed the trash can to the far corner of the room as if she didn’t even want to see that.

Throwing off her school uniform blouse carelessly into the laundry basket, Chaeon collapsed face down onto the bed with a thud.

‘Noisy, slow to know their place. …And shabby.’

She couldn’t know whether he happened to look at her feet at the exact moment he uttered those words, or whether he uttered those words with her feet in mind, but either way, that contemptuous look had already remained like a scratch.

Chaeon, who had been staring at the white wall, buried her face deep into the pillowcase. Recalling the cool gaze that had slowly scanned down her, dry saliva swallowed down her throat again just like at the funeral home, and her toes shrank back. How should she express this feeling? Those indifferent pupils that were like pitch-black glass beads…

He was an arrogant and overbearing man. It was the first time she felt so uncomfortable without even exchanging a single word. Was that why everyone naturally bowed and groveled before him as if their neck bones were broken?

While she was breathing a long sigh with her face buried deep in the pillowcase, Heejung, who had said she would come up after making a quick phone call, was entering the house just wrapping up a call with someone.

“…Of course. I know, Ma’am. How could I not know? You’ve been so good to us all this time.”

The temperature, pitch, and tone of the voice. She could tell by those things. That the person Heejung was talking to was Im Soyoung.

“Oh my, of course. For me, I’d love it so, so much under those conditions. It’s just…”

Heejung, whose voice trailed off as she approached near Chaeon’s room, lowered her voice again to a whisper.

“I have to tell Chaeon too. For me, the sooner the better. Yes. Yes.”

After a few more words were exchanged back and forth, Heejung, who hung up the phone, tapped lightly on Chaeon’s room door.

“Chaeon. Mom’s coming in, okay?”

“Yeah.”

As Chaeon sat up on the bed, Heejung carefully opened the door and stepped inside. Pulling up the chair placed in front of the desk to sit down, she smiled a bit awkwardly and took Chaeon’s hand in hers. It was Heejung’s habit whenever she was bringing up something difficult to say.

“Chaeon. Mom has something to tell you.”

“What is it?”

When she looked at her with suspicious eyes, Heejung gently bit her lip and let out a small sigh.

“Let’s…”

What was she trying to say that she was hesitating this much already? Just as Chaeon was about to ask what was going on again, unable to stand Heejung’s mouth moving with hesitation for a long time, Heejung spoke again.

“Let’s move.”

“…Huh?”

Holding tightly onto Chaeon’s hand as she asked back with a blank face, Heejung smiled with watery eyes.

“Let’s move, the two of us.”

“…”

“Mom… honestly finds it a bit hard to stay in this house.”

It was understandable. Since it was not too long ago that debt collectors kicked the front door at any given moment, frequently coming in and out to threaten them, and red provisional attachment stickers were put on the few household items they had. This house was now a space with far more painful memories than good ones.

“The Hannam-dong Ma’am introduced a really good job.”

Hannam-dong Ma’am. It was a phrase referring to Im Soyoung.

“What job?”

“She said they are looking for someone to work at the Jungwang family residence in Munjeong.”

“…”

“Since it’s such a grand mansion, it seems they are looking for someone to stay resident and help with the work. Not for Mom to do it alone, but taking turns with a coworker.”

“…”

“She said they’d also provide a place to stay.”

Heejung had a face that somehow looked desperate. Chaeon, who was quietly looking down at her hand caught in her mom’s, held Heejung’s hand as if wrapping around it in reverse and asked.

“Is Mom… okay with it?”

“Huh?”

“Are you really fine with leaving?”

At the sudden question, Heejung’s eyes widened slightly, and Chaeon met her gaze and asked once more.

“Honestly, I don’t care whether we move or not.”

“Then?”

“I respected Mom because I knew you protected this place so fiercely.”

“You…”

“I thought Mom felt that way too… Without even knowing that you actually felt like this inside.”

Truly like a lie, at that single phrase, the corners of Heejung’s eyes flushed red. Feeling her eyelids grow hot as well, Chaeon held back her tears tightly and wrapped her hand around hers even more firmly.

“If Mom is okay and Mom says let’s go, I’m going. What does it matter as long as the two of us can live together anywhere?”

Again, Heejung’s hand covered the top of Chaeon’s hand. The touch caressing it as if cherishing something precious and lovely was incomparably gentle and warm.

“My goodness. My daughter is all grown up…”

Folding the corners of her moist eyes, Heejung pulled Chaeon in for a tight hug.

A few days after that, Chaeon left behind the house where she had spent nineteen years deeply, heading to Munjeong City together with Heejung. Since they had been living without much to begin with, the luggage for the two of them wasn’t all that much.

Over the neatly folded clothes inside the moving boxes, Chaeon’s books, and small household utensils, an album containing the sweet moments of the three of them was placed. Looking down at it for a moment with a complicated mind, Chaeon let out a long sigh and reluctantly closed the lid of the box.

The truck to load the few moving boxes arrived, and Chaeon slowly looked around the empty house one last time with her mom. The familiar smell of home hovering at the tip of her nose. This smell too would probably be forgotten before long.

The tiny elephant drawing Chaeon had drawn on the wall when she was a baby had become faint, just as much as the worn-out time. Even up to the moment when her dad praised that drawing as if it were the finest masterpiece in the world. Looking back, there certainly were such small, happy moments. It was just a brief flash. Misfortune always diluted happiness very easily.

Chaeon, who looked at it for a brief while, quietly closed the door of the house that she would never open again.

∞ ∞ ∞

Sea fog was thick all around.

Going from Seoul to Munjeong didn’t take as long as expected. Starting from the Eunpyeong-gu house and driving for about 30 minutes, they soon passed the sign announcing the entry into Munjeong City located in the middle of the road.

“Sigh. Every time I come around this area, the sea fog is just…”

The taxi driver reduced his driving speed and grumbled as if talking to himself.

“Does sea fog often set in here?”

When Heejung, who was leaning against the back seat window with a bored face, caught that phrase and asked, the driver who made eye contact with her through the rearview mirror nodded his head as if it were a familiar matter.

“Yes. If you go just a bit further up ahead, it’s Geumso-dong, and there’s a huge lake in that area. It’s named Geumso-dong because it was built on a gold vein site. You know that, right?”

“Is that so?”

“Ah, you didn’t know. This whole area used to be land where gold was mined. As time passed, it closed down, filled up with water to become a lake, and the neighborhood started to settle in.”

The driver, boasting and showing off the knowledge he possessed, scanned all around wrapped in delicate sea fog and continued his words.

“The sea fog setting over that lake comes all the way down here. Normally it’s only like that at dawn or early morning, but maybe it’s because after it rained.”

“If sea fog sets in like this, it must be inconvenient to live…”

“Well, people just think it’s only for a short while. Especially since villages are settled around the lake, the scenery here is absolutely killer. The land prices are ridiculously expensive too, but even just with that scenery, the people here think living here itself is like some kind of trophy.”

As if it worked out well since he was bored, the driver poured out his answers at length, but it seemed he didn’t view the people living in this neighborhood all that kindly. Since it could be read from a slight click of his tongue at the end or his tone that wasn’t particularly friendly. It seemed like a passive attack or a substitution for envy toward those living lives that could never be reached in a lifetime.

“By the way, this address over there is Chairman Jungwang’s private property, so even though I’ve traveled around the vicinity a lot, I’ve never entered it even once. Seeing that they permitted it, I guess you work at that house.”

“Yes.”

“Wow. It’s a house that others are dying to get a look at even once…”

Heejung only smiled a bit awkwardly, and as the driver focused on driving carefully through the fog on his end, the conversation soon cut off.