It had been needless spite.
Marriage was the sort of dream maids and factory girls her age commonly cherished. The dream of meeting a kind, hardworking man and becoming an ordinary married woman, even if their circumstances were modest and she had to roll up her sleeves to help support the household.
He could feel her gaze burning into the back of his head. She probably resented him for pouring cold water on such a sweet dream.
Whatever she thought, Eunhyung tilted his head back, feeling a small measure of satisfaction.
And through the haze of his fever, he wondered.
What if the monk had made a different prediction that day?
What if he'd merely given me some trivial warning, like beware of the northwest or don't ride motorcycles?
Would my life have been any different?
Choi Eunhyung would still have been sent into every gang war. He would still have gone around with his lackeys, smashing up other people's property to collect overdue daily loans.
The only difference was that he would have made a habit of sitting with his back to the northwest and never paid motorcycles the slightest attention.
He had been destined to live like human garbage anyway, but he didn't want to die.
He wanted to stake everything on the possibility the shaman had revealed to him as though divulging a secret of heaven. He wanted to wait for the woman who would supposedly take his doomed fate upon herself.
He wasn't even curious about the woman he was supposed to meet afterward.
Eunhyung stared blankly at the towel in his hands.
It had been thoroughly dried in the sunlight and was soft and fluffy.
He draped it over his head.
“You'll catch a cold if you leave your hair wet.”
Me, acting like a spoiled child because I'm sick. Someone scolding me for being careless enough to leave my hair wet, then drying it for me.
An ordinary life like that.
Eunhyung gave a hollow laugh beneath the towel.
Such a hope seemed even more absurd than the maid's dream of becoming a respectable married woman.
***
Not long after Eunhyung visited the shaman, misfortune struck Park Shineok.
The amount of money involved in an embezzlement case was so large that imprisonment had become unavoidable.
For Choi Eunhyung, however, that misfortune was a stroke of luck, and he volunteered to perform his filial duty.
In approximately ten days, detectives would arrive at the office and arrest Choi Eunhyung.
He would take the blame for embezzling Chairman Park's business funds. The prosecution would seek three years and six months in prison, and he would receive a two-year sentence.
The entire scenario had already been prepared.
But there were always unforeseen complications.
It wasn't the organization involved in the incident at Taereung that had informed the police. Instead, the tip had come from an entirely unexpected source: the Pride Hotel.
The people at Pride had reported the expeditionary attack to the police, claiming that numerous people had been injured and killed at Taereung and that the men who had descended on the place under the guise of hired security were none other than Chairman Park's people from Pyeongchangdong.
A prosecutor desperate for results had been investigating the embezzlement case and, while he was at it, decided to investigate the hotel housing the casino as well.
Pride, which had unexpectedly found itself caught in the investigation, had retaliated.
It amounted to a declaration that the hotel was severing its ties with Park Shineok.
These days, with the authorities cracking down so fiercely, the tendency was to make an example of anyone caught doing anything wrong by going straight for the people at the top.
Fortunately, Park Shineok managed to reach an agreement with a chief prosecutor he knew well, at the cost of a foreign luxury car.
For the time being, however, he decided to get himself out of harm's way.
The money would ensure that allegations of ordering assaults and making threats, among other things, were dismissed for lack of evidence.
Because he had fled in such a hurry, he departed for Japan leaving behind his house, money, and car almost as though they were gifts.
Of course, he had left something besides material possessions.
“What should I make you for dinner?”
A girl who seemed frightened of him, yet somehow always ended up saying whatever was on her mind.
The maid could never have imagined that Park Shineok had left her there specifically so Eunhyung could have his fill of her before going to prison.
He'd had more than enough experience with women before he was even twenty.
That was simply what happened when a man grew up in his line of work.
In Eunhyung's case, especially, he had projected all his rage at the men who had once lusted after him onto women.
He had regarded every woman as nothing more than a hole, without the slightest emotional attachment.
But even rice became tiresome when eaten every day.
Perhaps he had grown numb. Perhaps he had become disillusioned.
At some point, he had simply lost interest in everything, and almost nothing aroused him anymore.
Chairman Park, who was forever clicking his tongue at Eunhyung's austere existence, had left him an adorable little gift.
Still, that bastard Park Shineok really is something, throwing an underage girl at me and telling me to have her.
If he was going to leave me a present, he could at least have bought me the top girl from the red-light district. What's this supposed to be? Am I meant to sit around playing children's clapping games with a little kid?
He had exchanged a few words with her because she reminded him of a younger sister.
She had looked dejected for a little while, then started offering him surprisingly earnest advice.
“People need to eat properly after they've been sick. Whatever they feel like eating.”
The pale gray eyes sparkled in the afternoon sunlight that had settled over the quiet house.
For a long while, Eunhyung simply rested his chin on his hand and gazed at those eyes, almost entranced.
Come to think of it, hadn't this girl also been going on about how he would catch a cold the last time?
Yes. The maid had actually dared to nag him.
A little brat like her.
Nobody dared criticize Choi Eunhyung.
Partly because he never allowed himself to appear inadequate or weak, and partly because his immense pride made it obvious that anyone who tried would receive an icy glare instead of an answer.
That was why every word from this girl, who cautiously watched his reactions but invariably went ahead and said what she wanted to say, felt so strangely unfamiliar.
It was as though some dried-up, crumpled corner of his heart were absorbing water and slowly unfolding.
For no particular reason, Eunhyung scratched at the pit of his stomach.
Is this how everyone else lives?
Throwing together a pot of hand-torn dumpling soup for a late lunch, then worrying about what to have for dinner while they're still eating lunch?
Asking how someone's feeling after being sick the other day. Having conversations about trivial things.
Living without giving much thought to life and death.
But he mustn't think about ordinary life.
That was one of the things he had never been permitted to have.
Solid, respectable words like ordinary life, work, and wages.
Even embarrassingly tender words like affection, care, and being spoiled.
What's the point of thinking about it any further?
Eunhyung picked up his spoon and concentrated on eating.
The foolish thoughts that had almost begun to take shape collapsed and faded away.
He had nearly caught himself longing for a hopeless dream.
***
Taking the maid out that evening had been an entirely impulsive decision.
He had simply wanted to experience, even briefly, the ordinary feeling of taking a young member of the household out to dinner.
I'm going to prison any day now, and here I am pulling this kind of ridiculous stunt.
Even so, the sight of the maid growing increasingly flustered had been thoroughly entertaining.
And now, as payment for his amusement, Choi Eunhyung was laboriously climbing the stone steps.
He had hoisted the girl onto his back after she collapsed, and as he carried her, he recalled the astonishing spectacle that had unfolded earlier.
One glass of distilled liquor, and she'd asked, “Are you expensive, Manager Choi?”
Two glasses, and she'd pleaded, “Give me a discount.”
Three glasses, and she'd demanded, “How could you do that to me, Manager Choi?”
It was unfair.
She had been happily crunching her way through the grilled sparrows, starting with their heads. All he'd done was joke that she looked like a little snake swallowing its prey.
“A-a-are these real sparrows?! Sparrows that go chirp, chirp?!”
The dish is called grilled sparrows. What the hell did she think they'd served her, roasted pigeons?
The moment he nodded, the girl had furiously pulled napkins from the dispenser and spat out whatever was in her mouth.
After that, she had glared at him accusingly without letting up, rinsed her mouth with another glass of distilled liquor, and collapsed with her head against the table.
“You think that's going to break the table?”
“…”
“…Hey.”
She really was a ridiculous girl.
Instead of worrying about someone else going to prison, she ought to learn how to look after herself.
She couldn't even hold her liquor, yet here she was, drinking alone with a man who wasn't part of her family.
Who's supposed to be worrying about whom?
Darkness had settled over the neatly tended lawn.
Eunhyung strode across the garden, his dress shoes landing firmly on the stepping stones.
He unlocked the front door and entered.
A vast, chilly darkness greeted them.
Where the hell is this girl's room?
He was considering simply dumping her on the living room sofa when his gaze suddenly shifted toward the kitchen.
Beside the hallway leading to it, a small side door stood slightly ajar.
The room beyond had such a low ceiling that Eunhyung would have to bend at the waist to keep his head from hitting it.
He kicked the door open, felt along the wall, and pressed the light switch.
“Huh.”
A bare light bulb suspended from the ceiling by an electrical cord like a spider hanging from its thread clicked on.
What the hell? It's not the seventies anymore, and this isn't a basement. What's with the bare light bulb?
Frowning, he looked around the room.
Apart from a decrepit wardrobe and a makeshift bed cobbled together from apple crates, the room could hardly have measured more than six or seven square meters.
The furnishings consisted of a low writing desk, though there wasn't a single book in sight, a desk lamp, and a radio.
And on the bed lay neatly folded bedding.
The maid's room was as poor and plain as the hand-torn dumpling soup she had cooked.
Eunhyung stood lost in thought for a moment, then deposited the sleeping maid on the bed with something closer to a toss.
Despite the thickly spread bedding, her head struck the surface beneath her with an audible thump.
“Mmm.”
The girl frowned without opening her eyes.
What had become of the spirited little thing who had argued back so insistently, demanding how he could possibly do such a thing to her?
All that remained was a limp, sleepy child.
“Hey, you little brat.”
Will she even remember tomorrow that I carried her home?
Fresh irritation rose in him.
Eunhyung sat down near her feet and pressed his index finger firmly against the space between the maid's eyebrows, smoothing away her frown.
Her short, plump hand waved feebly through the air in her sleep, as though she were trying to swat away a mosquito.
His attention fell on her frayed ribbed cuffs, which covered nearly half the backs of her hands.
The maid was still wearing her jacket.
He could have simply ignored it and left.
But the buttons fastened all the way up to her throat looked strangely suffocating.
Without holding back, Eunhyung reached out.
Pop.
He applied force and ripped off a button.