Moonjeong - Chapter 2

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

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

Chae-on opened her mouth to say something but then closed it again. After her father, Euichul, suddenly died in a car accident two years ago, Chae-on had to give up playing the piano, which she had practiced for a long time, and the responsibility of earning money fell entirely on Hee-jung.

Chae-on’s mixed feelings of envy and disgust toward the wealth of the so-called privileged were also greatly influenced by Euichul.

He was a good person outside the home, but he worked as a salesman who lived day to day. When he made a big sale, the money came in all at once, but when business was slow, they had to scrape by. Despite their tight finances, he loved to indulge in vanity more than anyone.

He was into golf, scuba diving, and owned a foreign car that was hard to maintain. He tried to keep up with the upper class, but all he brought home was a pittance for living expenses. No matter how much Hee-jung nagged, it was hard to curb his vanity, and Chae-on found such a father pathetic and contemptible.

And then…

‘Damn it, what are you staring at? Huh? The way you look at your dad, girl.’

The sales job always accumulated stress for Euichul. Even when he tried to act as if he was someone important to relieve it, to the truly wealthy, he was just a dog chasing their tails. He felt this constantly.

The anger and deeply ingrained inferiority complex he accumulated finally erupted in a twisted way, directed at the weakest person within his reach—his daughter, Chae-on.

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

‘Shut your mouth!’

She had to beg without knowing what she had done wrong. There were times when she fainted from the pain that felt like her ribs were being crushed. Even when she knelt and begged while crying, she was dragged by her hair and beaten for a long time. Each time, Chae-on cried, swallowing her sobs.

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

Please stop, stop…

After enduring those hellish times, he would always threaten Chae-on in the end, grinding his teeth.

‘If you tell your mother, all three of us will die.’

Then die. Go out and die somewhere.

How many curses had she silently hurled while obediently answering? Even now, she hoped that her mother, whose heart was rotting away day by day, would never know this truth. That was how Chae-on learned to resign herself from that time on.

However, her mother loved Chae-on too much to pass by without knowing anything.

‘You, what is all this?’

‘M-Mom…’

‘Did that bastard, that man, lay a hand on you?’

One night, Hee-jung discovered the scars all over Chae-on’s body, and her heart broke. Hee-jung and Euichul ended up having a huge fight, and Euichul, who mercilessly hit his wife as she screamed and charged at him, left the house.

And then, he met his futile end.

Euichul, after downing nearly a million won’s worth of whiskey, took the wheel and drove off a cliff on a curvy road, dying instantly. The sedan he had been so proud of, worth a hundred million won, was reduced to a crumpled piece of paper, and the body found inside was just as mangled. He really had died.

But the anticipated joy never came.

Hee-jung had to bear all the accumulated debts. The credit card debt and loans taken out in her name because of his vanity were overwhelming, and she had to use all the money she earned to compensate for the damages to a shop he had destroyed in the accident.

The weight of responsibility she felt as the head of the household during all this was unimaginable. Even saying to take it easy was a luxury. Chae-on had lost and been hurt a lot, but so had Hee-jung.

In the end, unable to voice either “Take a break” or “Don’t quit your job,” Chae-on silently sat close to Hee-jung and gently massaged her swollen calves.

Hee-jung, seemingly exhausted, had dozed off right there, leaning against the sofa. Chae-on had brought a pillow from the bedroom and placed it on the floor, gently laying Hee-jung on her side. When she removed the socks from Hee-jung’s feet, she noticed that even her toes were swollen.

“……”

Feeling uneasy watching this, Chae-on was just about to get up when—

Bzzzz—

Hee-jung’s phone, resting on the living room table, vibrated loudly.

* * *

In front of the portrait of an elderly woman with her hair neatly combed and adorned with a traditional hairpin, incense burned steadily. Though she had been visibly ill until her last moments, in the photo, she appeared serene and gentle, smiling warmly.

“She was eating porridge and speaking well until just the day before…”

Mr. Kim’s elderly mother had passed away peacefully, seeming to be merely asleep. No one was present at her final moment; she departed quietly. Hee-jung, who had cared for the deceased until the day before her death, was tearful and unable to speak. Her tears were not necessarily out of affection but perhaps the remnants of complex emotions accumulated over time.

“Still, it was a peaceful passing.”

Im So-young, who dabbed her eyes with her mourning clothes, didn’t shed a single tear. Watching this absurd scene, Chae-on sighed and turned her head away. She wanted to fulfill her duties and leave quickly, but why were they being kept there so persistently?

Even in identical black suits, the people gathered around exuded an air of affluence, and snippets of their conversations could be heard: something about benefiting from interest rate cuts, leveraging, prime real estate… At the funeral of the deceased, who had left behind worldly desires, the living were still fiercely and shamelessly materialistic.

Those must have been the kind of people her father tried to emulate and shadow so closely. With a small sigh, she sat hugging her knees, watching the visitors come and go from the funeral hall.

After paying their respects, signing the guest book, and solemnly greeting the bereaved family, they invariably sat down to exchange conversations that reeked of money, like a bizarre black-and-white film replaying without meaning.

Her expression, bored to death, changed slightly when her indifferent gaze landed on the corridor outside the funeral hall. Chae-on slowly lifted her chin from her knees and looked up.

For a moment, it felt as if time was moving slowly, like a tape that had been playing at a steady pace suddenly stretched out. The visitor, who commanded attention with his mere presence from afar, seemed to draw all the air’s flow toward him.

With languid eyes and a walk that was neither hurried nor slow, the man, with a sharp and cold appearance as if carved with a chisel, was approaching from the other end of the corridor, followed by a dark entourage. His confident approach seemed more like someone coming to settle something rather than to pay respects to the deceased.

His suit, draping from his broad shoulders to his feet, resembled a carelessly worn veil. If it wasn’t just her imagination, the surrounding noise seemed to subtly quiet down as he got closer.

Even from a distance, he appeared tall and slender, but as he approached, he seemed even larger. As he looked around for a pen to sign the guest book, someone obsequiously handed him one, and a man who appeared to be his aide pulled out a white envelope from inside his jacket and placed it in the offering box.

“Oh my, I didn’t expect you to come… I heard you’ve been busy lately, how did you…”

Without even looking at the person speaking to him, the man gave a slight nod. Even while scribbling his name in the guest book, he looked elegant. Chae-on suddenly wondered what name he had written.

‘Oh my, it’s the young master from the Jun Gwang family…’ Hearing someone murmur, Chae-on turned her head to see Im So-young, who had been adjusting her white ribbon hairpin and checking her outfit, now hurrying toward the man.

For someone who rarely even lifted herself off the floor, Im So-young was now spurred into action by this man. Even Mr. Kim was nodding repeatedly in a servile manner toward him. It was quite a curious sight. A person so high up that even those who seemed to live in a distant world from Hee-jung and herself were fawning over him.

“Young master, you’ve come.”

“Madam.”

Even though it was just a single word, the deep, resonant voice sent a tingle down Chae-on’s spine. Everything about him seemed to represent the ideal image of a mature man. There was a distinct quality that set him apart from the young men her age, who, despite their attempts to appear grown-up, often revealed their immaturity through their incomplete personas.

After a brief exchange of greetings and completing the incense offering, he stepped back from the altar and bowed to Mr. Kim, the chief mourner. Although they both bowed, it somehow appeared as if Mr. Kim was humbling himself before him.

Chae-on had encountered many who claimed to handle money while accompanying Hee-jung to gatherings hosted by the boastful Mr. Kim or Im So-young. However, this man seemed innately accustomed to having everyone beneath him. Among the many pretentious impostors present, he alone appeared genuinely elegant.

“People with means.” It was a moment when her values, which had always aligned with such a crude expression, were completely overturned.

So, there are people like him…

At that moment, as he rose with composure, the man’s gaze met Chae-on’s, who was standing like a still life in the corner.