NTH 14

About ten days later, the day came to pick up the two pairs of leather shoes. Haegyeom, accompanied by the same servant, returned to Doyaji’s house. He stood before the wicker gate, expecting to see Meokmeoki diligently working on the platform as before, but the platform was empty.

Neither Meokmeoki nor his tools were there. The courtyard felt desolate. The startled servant shouted loudly, “Is anyone here?”

After calling out a couple of times, the door of the thatched house opened, and the elderly man emerged. Upon seeing Haegyeom, he immediately burst into tears. The flustered servant spoke up.

“What are you doing? We’re just here to pick up the shoes for the master. Why are you crying? Where are Doyaji and that deaf guy?”

As soon as the servant finished speaking, the elderly man wailed even louder, sobbing uncontrollably. Haegyeom calmly tried to soothe him.

“Look here, old man. You need to tell us what’s wrong so we can understand.”

After sobbing for a while longer, the elderly man finally swallowed his tears and spoke. “They… they’re all gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

“Sniff, that… that wretched Doyaji sold Meokmeoki to the Qing Empire, sob…!”

The elderly man collapsed onto the courtyard ground, crying like a child. The servant helped him up and sat him on the platform.

“Come now, are you going to keep making a scene in front of the master? Stop crying and explain properly.”

“Well, it’s like this…”

Through his tearful, disjointed account, the elderly man’s story came together as follows.

Three days earlier, after Meokmeoki had completed both pairs of shoes Haegyeom commissioned, Doyaji suddenly took him and the elderly man to the marketplace.

Meokmeoki, who had been forbidden from leaving the house freely, was overjoyed to see the bustling market. Doyaji, saying he had worked hard, bought Meokmeoki warm clothing with cotton padding and, though not leather, a decent pair of shoes.

After eating a hearty bowl of meat soup, they returned home in high spirits, only for people from the distant Qing Empire to barge in unexpectedly.

They were servants of a Qing envoy staying at the house of the wealthiest interpreter in the town. The envoy, having seen the interpreter’s leather shoes, inquired about their maker and approached Doyaji, not to buy shoes but to buy the shoemaker himself.

The amount they offered for Meokmeoki was enough for Doyaji to purchase a gongmyeongcheop, a document granting yangban status, and start a new life. Without hesitation, Doyaji sold Meokmeoki for his own wealth and glory.

Unaware of what was happening, Meokmeoki was dragged off to a faraway land without a single word of complaint. The very next day, Doyaji also disappeared somewhere, leaving the elderly man alone, weeping.

Sniffling, the elderly man went back into the house and returned with a bundle. He unwrapped the silk cloth to reveal two pairs of leather shoes, one large and one small—Meokmeoki’s final works.

Haegyeom never saw Meokmeoki again for the rest of that life.

*

Waking from the dream, Jeha tossed and turned in bed. It was still the dark predawn hours.

Once awake, sleep wouldn’t return. Jeha went to the living room, slumped onto the sofa, leaned back, and recalled the past life from his dream.

To think such a thing had happened. It was a memory he hadn’t thought of at all, as if someone had deliberately erased it.

Now that he recalled it, just like in the two previous lives from his earlier dreams, Haegyeom in this third life didn’t dwell on Meokmeoki for long. In that era, people were sharply divided by class from birth, and the vast majority, aside from a few yangban, lived miserable, desperate lives. Meokmeoki was just one of countless lowly commoners.

But to Jeha, who had dreamed of three past lives in a short time, a strange commonality emerged that he hadn’t noticed before: in all three, there was a clear victim and an exploiter.

• The tenant farmer Chubok and the man, Nounjae, who was supposedly his lover.
• The slave Soondeok and her fellow slave Gudoli.
• The shoemaker Meokmeoki and his supposed master, Doyaji.

The victims had all been stripped of both their hearts and bodies by their exploiters, and at a young age, they either took their own lives or vanished without a trace.

There was another similarity.

Though Haegyeom had never seen Nounjae’s face and couldn’t be certain, the other two exploiters, despite differing appearances, both had sanpaku eyes. According to Nana, the head of the absurdly named loan agency “Angel Cash Loan,” Mr. Cheon Sagang, also had sanpaku eyes.

The dreams of past lives that Jeha only had on days he met Nana, their contents, and the recurring sanpaku-eyed exploiters.

Could all of this really be a coincidence?

Why was Nana’s presence so faint to everyone except Jeha and Mr. Cheon? Why were only Jeha and Mr. Cheon able to remember and recognize Nana’s face? What was Mr. Cheon’s motive for keeping Nana around and making him do tasks?

And if Nana and Mr. Cheon, like Jeha, had been reincarnating through different bodies, why hadn’t they become higher souls?

From what Jeha knew, only a rare few souls reincarnated repeatedly, and those souls, like his own, were supposed to live successive lives as part of society’s elite, with increasing physical strength and wealth. No matter how many luxury cars Mr. Cheon drove or how many designer watches he wore, a loan shark could hardly be called elite.

Jeha began to wonder if he had encountered Nana in other lives beyond the three he’d dreamed of. To find out, he would need to have another dream. And to have another dream, he would likely need to meet Nana again.

But Jeha had no idea where Nana lived, and with no phone or workplace, there was no way to contact him. How was he supposed to find someone like that?

The only clue was “Angel Cash Loan.” But he couldn’t just call them up and demand to see Nana. Not only was it a bad idea, but the fact that Mr. Cheon’s eyes were sanpaku, like those of the exploiters in his past lives, deeply troubled him.

Even if he managed to track Nana down, what would he say was his reason for wanting to meet again? Jeha couldn’t even bring up the word “past life” to Nana.

How could a university professor say, “Actually, I’ve been reincarnating for nearly a thousand years, and I think we’ve met in several past lives”? That would make him sound like a bigger lunatic than a cult recruiter.

With nothing resolved and a restless feeling lingering, about two weeks passed when, unbelievably, Jeha ran into Nana again.