The afterglow of his nap faded, and several days passed.
The air in the Lee Family Workshop was calmer and more orderly than ever. Han-gyeol cleaned the area around the workbench and finely adjusted the angles of the pin lights suspended from the ceiling. The lighting's soft, warm color temperature gently illuminated the enormous object standing at the center of the workshop.
A thick blackout cloth that allowed no light through covered the object.
After sweeping away even the last mote of dust from the workshop floor, Han-gyeol checked the clock on the wall. The appointed time was approaching. He had brewed warm buckwheat tea in advance and set it in a teapot, a small gesture intended to soothe the heart of someone stiff with anxiety and anticipation.
JINGLE—.
Soon, the wind chime by the door rang clearly as it swayed.
The door opened, and a married couple entered.
They were Mrs. Choi and her husband, Mr. Kang, who had left behind a monstrosity reeking of mold and stench several days earlier.
"Welcome. I've been expecting you."
Han-gyeol greeted them with a composed smile.
Mrs. Choi gave Han-gyeol a small bow, her expression rigid. A thread of hope and profound anxiety coexisted in her eyes. Fear that the restoration might have failed and permanently destroyed her father's only legacy made her shoulders hunch.
Mr. Kang's attitude, on the other hand, was not much different from several days ago. If anything, it had grown even more contrary. The moment he stepped inside, he swept the workshop with a fierce gaze, tugged his tie loose, and spoke.
"Well, young man. You worked hard. So how did it turn out?"
Mr. Kang's voice carried mocking certainty that Han-gyeol must have failed. Without giving him time to answer, he continued at once.
"I've thought it over these past few days, and I still think we wasted time on hopeless trash. Will watering a dead tree make it bloom? It doesn't matter if you couldn't fix it, so let's not make this unpleasant. I'll pay you generously enough to cover disposal, so get rid of that mass of mold for us. Loading it back into the car would be an ordeal."
Mr. Kang took an envelope containing a check from his wallet and toyed with it. It was the typical attitude of a businessman confident his judgment had been right and ready to settle the situation neatly with money.
Mrs. Choi clutched at her husband's sleeve and whispered resentfully.
"Honey, please don't speak that way. We haven't even seen the result yet."
"It's obvious without looking! Do you think rotten paper can turn into a gold ring overnight? You need to let go already and face reality."
At her husband's cold words, Mrs. Choi lowered her head as tears reddened her eyes.
Han-gyeol silently watched the scene. There was no reason to make excuses or grow angry at Mr. Kang's provocation. He knew that a single overwhelming visual proof would be the perfect answer, ending every dispute more effectively than a hundred ornate words.
Han-gyeol gently pushed away the envelope Mr. Kang offered and spoke.
"There is no need for a disposal fee. This was never an object meant to be thrown away."
"What?"
"As promised, I brought your wife's father's true legacy back out into the world. See for yourselves."
Han-gyeol guided them to the center of the workshop. An eight-panel folding screen covered by the enormous blackout cloth stood there in silence.
Mr. Kang folded his arms with a doubtful look, while Mrs. Choi clasped her hands and held her breath.
Han-gyeol gripped one end of the blackout cloth. Then, without hesitation, he gently drew it away.
RUSTLE—.
The heavy cloth slid down and fell to the floor. At the same time, as if on cue, the pin lights installed overhead poured soft light across the front of the folding screen.
For an instant, it seemed as though time inside the workshop had stopped.
"......!"
Mrs. Choi was the first to react. She froze with both hands clamped over her mouth. An utterly unbelievable sight was reflected whole in her wide eyes.
Mr. Kang's folded arms slowly fell apart as well. A breathless gasp leaked between his parted lips like escaping air.
The eight-panel landscape folding screen displayed its majestic form beneath the lights.
The hideous mass they had carried in several days ago, covered in a nose-stinging stench and black mold, was nowhere to be found. The yellowed, decaying paper had regained its original clear, translucent color, and the warped wooden frame had been perfectly replaced with straight, dignified red toon wood.
Above all, what stole the soul was the painting itself, spread across the xuan paper.
Where the crudely and vulgarly overpainted shell had been peeled away, the majestic natural world planted by the master Sorim Jo Seok-jin lived and breathed.
The bold lines of the strange rocks and crags thrust downward with a weighty vigor, as though they might tumble before the viewer at any moment, while distant peaks layered in pale ink created an unfathomable sense of depth. The river flowing leisurely between the rocks and the open sky that preserved the beauty of empty space made it seem as though a real wind blew within the painting.
It was simply astonishing that ink gradation alone could express such varied and vivid colors.
"Th...... this."
Mr. Kang took an entranced step forward. He reached toward the folding screen, then drew his hand back in midair as though facing a sacred object he dared not touch.
"Is this truly...... the mass of mold we brought here?"
His voice was trembling pitifully.
"You didn't buy another painting and put it in instead? My God, how could this......."
Mr. Kang tried to deny the unbelievable reality, but his eyes proved the truth. The painting's composition matched what had been faintly visible beneath the stains before. Moreover, the faint tea stain Mrs. Choi's father had accidentally left near the painting's edge remained untouched. It was plainly the same object.
Han-gyeol stepped beside Mr. Kang and explained in a calm voice.
"It isn't another painting. I peeled away the clumsily overpainted ink and paper from a later period layer by layer, down to the microscopic scale, and chemically decomposed only the mold spores that had penetrated deep into the paper fibers. Once the shell was removed, its original vitality could finally burst forth."
Han-gyeol pointed to the lower corner of the last panel on the screen's far right.
"Most importantly, the clearest proof that this painting is genuine is right here."
Mr. Kang and Mrs. Choi followed Han-gyeol's fingertip with their eyes.
A seal mark stamped clearly in red seal paste appeared in the clean empty space. It was the original artist's signature, once hidden beneath black ink and mold and sealed deep inside the backing paper during the mounting process.
"Sorim (Little Gem). And Jo Seok-jin (Jo Seok-jin). This is the personally inscribed seal of the last court painter of the Royal Bureau of Painting during the Korean Empire, a man who stood at the summit of modern painting."
Han-gyeol's confident declaration reverberated heavily through the workshop.
"......My God."
Wiping the cold sweat from his brow, Mr. Kang collapsed into a chair. It was the moment his arrogant worldview shattered. An object the finest appraisers in Insadong had mocked as trash had been resurrected by a young repairman's hands into an indisputable national-treasure-class masterpiece. The words with which he had belittled his father-in-law's profound eye, armed only with his own paltry knowledge and prejudice, began piercing his chest like sharp arrows.
Mr. Kang moistened his dry lips and asked cautiously. His former arrogance was nowhere to be found; his voice had shrunk to almost nothing.
"Sir...... no, Master. Then the value of this folding screen......."
"Yes. It is as I told you before."
Han-gyeol pushed the warm buckwheat tea he had prepared toward the couple and answered evenly.
"Considering current demand and prices in the antique-art market, a work by Master Sorim in this preservation condition and with such a clear seal could comfortably fetch at least fifty million won if put on the market. At auction, it could rise even higher."
Fifty million won.
When that clear figure struck his ears once again, Mr. Kang fell into deep silence.
As the head of a mid-sized construction company with annual sales in the tens of billions of won, fifty million was not enough to determine his company's survival or transform his life. If he chose, he could raise it within a day.
Yet at that moment, the figure of fifty million won came to Mr. Kang as a heavy punishment that went beyond mere monetary value.
If the folding screen had been worth five billion or ten billion won, greed and madness would have overwhelmed him more than emotion. His first thought would have been to sell the painting immediately and use the money as business capital.
But fifty million was a strange figure. Not a windfall large enough to transform a life completely, yet far from negligible: a weighty lifeline capable of letting a person breathe at a truly desperate moment in life.
That realistic yet weighty number pierced Mr. Kang's conscience even more sharply.
Whenever he visited his wife's family, he had thought of his father-in-law as a stubborn, inflexible old man. Even when the old man gave them this folding screen as a precious inheritance, Mr. Kang had laughed behind his back and dismissed it as a symptom of dementia in an old man who had been swindled.
He was a successful son-in-law who discussed business deals worth billions, and he had even found his father-in-law pathetic for offering nothing more than a moldy scrap of paper.
Yet his father-in-law had not been a fool deceived by swindlers.
He had been a giant who saw clearly what was most precious and valuable for his daughter and son-in-law's future and silently protected it.
Shame swept over Mr. Kang like a towering wave. Unable to raise his head, he stared at his knees. His desire for money had long since evaporated. Only devastating self-reflection over his shallowness and rudeness remained.
Then Han-gyeol, who had remained silent, took something carefully sealed in antioxidant film from a workbench drawer.
"But this folding screen's true value does not lie in a market price of fifty million won."
At Han-gyeol's gentle voice, Mrs. Choi and Mr. Kang raised their heads.
Han-gyeol placed a sheet of old paper wrapped in film in Mrs. Choi's hands.
"While removing the backing paper to repair the screen, I discovered a hidden compartment sealed with thick beeswax. When your father mounted the screen, he hid this true legacy together with the seal in the painting's deepest layer."
Mrs. Choi accepted the paper inside the film with trembling hands.
A sheet of xuan paper yellowed by long years. It was covered with her father's neat, upright handwriting, pressed firmly into the page with a fountain pen—the script she had seen throughout her life and could have drawn with her eyes closed.
Mrs. Choi's lips quivered. Barely able to breathe, she began reading the final letter her father had left before his death.
[My beloved daughter. By the time you read this, I will already be gone from this world.]
The moment she read the first sentence, the tears Mrs. Choi had held back burst free. DRIP, DRIP. Hot tears fell without pause onto the film.
[This folding screen is a truly precious object I received from a lifelong friend. It is an authentic work (genuine work) by Master Sorim. People may look only at the shell and laugh that it is fake, but true mountains and water flow within it.]
Mrs. Choi struggled to wipe her tear-blurred vision and read the next passage.
[If your husband's business ever becomes truly difficult, if your life is badly shaken and you need somewhere to lean, if things grow too hard to bear, bring this painting out into the world. It will become the final shield this father can leave you.
I'm sorry I cannot always be by your side. Please rely on your husband and live happily together.]
"Ah...... Father...... Hngh......."
Clutching the letter to her chest, Mrs. Choi began wailing like an animal. Immeasurable longing and remorse filled the cries that echoed through the workshop.
Her father had worried constantly even after giving his daughter away in marriage. On the surface, she lacked nothing with a successful businessman for a husband, but experience had taught her father that a business was like a sandcastle that could collapse at any moment.
So he had thoroughly concealed the true worth of this painting, which amounted to nearly his entire fortune. To protect the inheritance from hyenas drawn by the scent of money, he had left the clumsy overpainting in place and sealed even the seal deep inside. Fearing that his daughter and her husband might squander the property foolishly, he had wanted the painting to remain an ordinary keepsake until a moment so desperate that their lives truly hung in the balance.
The sum of fifty million won no longer mattered. Only the fierce love with which he had carved, polished, and hidden the strongest possible shield, hoping that his daughter and son-in-law would not fall in the violent storms after his death, pierced their hearts.
"Hngh, Dad...... I was wrong...... without knowing any of this, I truly thought you'd been foolishly deceived......!"
Mrs. Choi's wailing would not stop. She knelt on the floor and bowed toward the folding screen as though her father lived and breathed within it.
Mr. Kang's eyes had turned bloodshot as well.
Only after reading the letter in his wife's hands did he fully understand why his father-in-law had gripped his hand just before dying and repeatedly implored him, "Please take good care of our daughter."
His father-in-law had not distrusted him as a son-in-law. He had simply known how heavy the weight of the world was on the man his daughter loved and had sacrificed everything to prepare a life jacket that might lighten that burden, if only a little.
"Father-in-law......."
Mr. Kang's lips moved, but his throat tightened and no proper voice emerged.
He rose from his chair, then dropped to his knees. He pulled his sobbing wife into a tight embrace.
"I...... I was truly narrow-minded and foolish. Without understanding the depth of your intentions, I spoke so recklessly...... I really am irredeemable trash. Father, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry......."
Tears of profound remorse flowed from Mr. Kang's eyes. The strong businessman who had never shown weakness before anyone in his life wept aloud like a child before the mold-scented folding screen.
Han-gyeol silently watched the couple from behind.
Beneath the workshop's warm lights, the couple washed away old misunderstandings and conflicts with their tears.
The heart of the wife wounded by her husband's rudeness melted, and the arrogance of the husband who had looked down on her family crumbled. A single letter and an old painting left by her father had bonded their fragile relationship more strongly than any adhesive in the world.
Patching torn paper and restoring erased ink belong to the realm of technique. But using that technique to bring the human heart dwelling in an object back into the world and heal the wounded relationships of those who survived—that was the true role of the 'craftsman' Han-gyeol's grandfather had described.
"Mrs. Choi. Your father would not want you to look at this painting and grieve."
Han-gyeol's calm, warm voice settled over the couple's ears.
"This folding screen will be the sturdy mountain that protects your future and a river that never runs dry. Don't leave it in a dark storeroom any longer. Unfold it in the center of the living room, where it gets the most sunlight. Your father will always be watching over you both."
Mrs. Choi raised her swollen eyes and looked at Han-gyeol. A faint but clear smile spread across her lips.
"Yes...... I will. I'll keep it beside me for life and look at it whenever I think of my father. Truly...... you are our family's benefactor. Without you, Master, I would have spent my life misunderstanding my father and hating my husband."
Mr. Kang also rose, wiping his tears with his sleeve. He approached Han-gyeol and bent ninety degrees at the waist in a deep bow.
"I will never forget this kindness. You shattered my paltry pride, young man. I will transfer the promised ten-million-won fee immediately. And......."
Mr. Kang took his business card from his wallet and respectfully offered it to Han-gyeol with both hands.
"I know this isn't a debt money can repay. If you ever need my help while running the workshop, contact me without hesitation. I will put everything else aside and come at once."
It was the highest courtesy and promise a man like Mr. Kang could offer another person.
Han-gyeol accepted the card with a smile.
"Thank you. But fair payment for my skill is enough. Seeing the two of you reconciled is the greatest reward I could receive."
Before leaving, Mrs. Choi stroked the folding screen once more. Its majestic mountains shone softly as though responding to her touch. The couple left the workshop holding hands side by side. The cold, sharp atmosphere they had brought inside was gone, and an unprecedented warmth of spring surrounded their retreating figures.
JINGLE—.
The door closed, leaving Han-gyeol alone in the workshop again.
He stood in the empty space and stretched wide. His body was still tired, but a swelling sense of fulfillment rose from deep inside and wrapped around him.
He took a sip of the buckwheat tea on the workbench. It had already gone cold, but tasted more fragrant and sweet than the finest tea.
"Grandpa."
Han-gyeol smiled at his grandfather's memorial portrait.
"I'm doing fairly well, aren't I?"
He could almost feel his grandfather in the photograph patting his head and saying, 'That's right, my boy.' With light steps, Han-gyeol returned to the workbench and retied the knot of his apron firmly.
Far too many objects still needed repair, and far too many human hearts still needed joining back together.