Chapter 26

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 26
Chapter Title: A Terrible Deed
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“Fuck, I said I'd get my paycheck and put it back on Monday!”

While they argued, the two elderly people got off the bus. An Yunho shoved An Yuna with all his might, but she held on to his clothes, refusing to let go.

“Give it back!”

“You fucking bitch!”

“Give it back! Give me the money!”

The bus doors closed, leaving the elderly passengers behind. An Yunho’s eyes burned with fury as he watched the bus pull away.

He raised his hand high and slapped An Yuna across the cheek. With a sharp crack, Yuna's head snapped to the side, but her grip on his clothes didn't weaken.

“Give me the money.”

“You wanna die?”

One of the elderly men who had gotten off the bus was walking toward the convenience store, but he stopped short upon seeing the murderous tension between the two.

“I just came to buy some batteries…”

Yuna’s hand finally lost its grip on the fabric.

“I'll ring you up.”

Yuna went into the convenience store with the old man.

The situation ended anticlimactically. Taeseo shifted his gaze from An Yuna to An Yunho.

After spewing curses at the departing bus, An Yunho straightened his disheveled clothes and began to trudge down the road.

Taeseo immediately got into his car. The inside of the Porsche, parked on the asphalt, felt like a furnace. Cursing, Taeseo sat on the scorching seat and started the engine.

He rolled down both windows, blasted the air conditioning, and pulled onto the main road. Up ahead, he could see An Yunho walking.

Taeseo drove slowly until he was alongside An Yunho. He stopped the car, put on the hazard lights, and spoke to him through the passenger-side window.

“Want a ride?”

An Yunho, his face flushed red from walking in the blazing sun, looked at Taeseo inside the car.

“How far are you going?”

“What does it matter where I’m going?”

“On a date, are we?”

“Ah, jeez. Do you always have to talk like that?”

“I'm heading to town. Get in if you want.”

After glaring at Taeseo as if he wanted to kill him, An Yunho resignedly got into the passenger seat. Taeseo turned off the hazard lights and pressed the accelerator. The car slowly picked up speed.

“Where's your scooter? Why are you walking?”

“I only ride it around the neighborhood. There's nowhere to park it if I take it out.”

Having caught a ride, An Yunho was a little more polite than usual.

“So you were going to walk all the way to town in this scorching sun?”

“If I walk two kilometers, I can catch another bus.”

Yunho’s somewhat more courteous tone made Taeseo soften as well.

“You idiot. You should've just taken the money secretly. Why'd you have to tell her and start a fight?”

Taeseo was offering a tip, in his own way. If he had taken the money without saying anything, he would have caught the bus without any trouble.

He wouldn't have had to bicker with An Yuna and miss the bus, and she wouldn't have been slapped across the face.

He had meant it as a way of saying that some conflicts could be avoided, but as soon as An Yuna’s name came up, An Yunho, his anger still simmering, began to visibly fume.

“That bitch An Yuna is more vicious than she looks. If she catches you taking money, she docks double the amount from your paycheck. And she pays me peanuts as it is.”

“Then why work for her? You could move out and be independent. Oh, are you still a student? On break?”

“I graduated from a junior college.”

“I heard An Yuna didn't even go to college. At least you did, huh?”

“Are you comparing me to that orphan?”

“Why an orphan? If she lives in your house, isn't she your sister?”

He knew why she was an orphan, but he deliberately feigned ignorance. If he seemed to be taking Yuna's side, Yunho would surely find another reason to pick on her.

“She's just living off us.”

“From where I'm standing, it looks like you're the one living off her.”

“Don't give me that bullshit. Once I get a decent job, I'll earn my own living and move out. You think I want to live in a town like this? I'm only sticking around because there's no one else to watch the store.”

“Grow up.”

Hearing Taeseo's words, An Yunho whipped his head around and muttered a curse under his breath.

“Hah, fuck.”

“Take it to heart. I'm saying this as your elder.”

“I don't think I need to hear that from some 'car poor' guy who drives a Porsche while living in a studio. Don't you lecture me when you're probably breaking your back to make car payments.”

Taeseo smirked. He felt the urge to take out the newspaper with his picture in it and shove it in An Yunho's face.

Even though his face was covered by his hand in the photo, he wanted to say, *Isn’t it obviously me? Do you think the second son of Namgyeong Group would be stuck making payments on a damn Porsche?* But he decided to save that satisfying moment for after the land sale negotiations were complete.

“Drop me off at that bus stop up ahead.”

When Taeseo stopped the car, An Yunho shot out like a spring. Before closing the door, he turned and gave Taeseo the middle finger.

“Call me if you miss the last bus.”

At Taeseo's words, An Yunho's face contorted unpleasantly, and the car door slammed shut with a bang.

Taeseo laughed off An Yunho's behavior and started driving again.

“The bastard probably doesn't even have the money to fix it if he breaks it. All show…”

The village chief had said the young people in this town were turning into unemployed bums because there were no jobs, but looking at An Yunho, Taeseo thought that wasn't the only reason.

What could a person learn from watching their father drink all day and beat his own niece?

Seeing him slap An Yuna, it was clear that An Yunho was cut from the same cloth as his father.

Speaking of which, was An Yuna okay? She had been hit hard enough to make her head snap back. Had the wound on her forehead reopened?

If it weren't for the risk of An Yunho tattling to his grandmother, he would have checked on her.

What century was this, that men and women were still kept so separate they couldn't even speak to each other?

And yet, that cow-thief-looking guy, Jaeseop or whatever his name was, had no problem striking up a conversation with An Yuna. Nothing about that household made any sense.

* * *

After leaving the public bath, Taeseo got into his car, sipping a banana milk through a straw.

He needed to soak in a tub a couple of times a week to relieve his fatigue, but his studio apartment didn't have one, so he had been unintentionally letting the stress build up.

After getting a full-body scrub at a relatively clean bathhouse, he was starting to get hungry.

He considered going to the beef rib restaurant from last time, but he felt too weary to drive that far and headed toward the village instead.

As the Seongwu Diner came into view in the distance, his stomach rumbled like one of Pavlov's dogs.

“Maybe it's because I always come here for lunch.”

Taeseo stopped in front of the diner and opened the old door to go inside.

The husband and wife who owned the place, who were trimming bean sprouts, greeted him warmly.

“Well, look who's here on a weekend!”

“Perfect timing. We were just making some noodle soup for ourselves. Have a bowl.”

He hadn't been coming to this restaurant for long, but the owners treated him like a regular, scooping out a generous portion of the noodle soup they had been making for themselves.

As he was satisfying his hunger with the noodles, even adding rice to the broth, the owners sitting across from him started to bicker.

“All you do is run your mouth. You never lift a finger to help.”

The argument had started when the wife mentioned that blight had ruined the chili peppers this year and they would have to buy some. Her husband had started grumbling that planting them had been a waste of effort.

“And you, woman, you're always complaining your knees hurt, your back hurts, so why do you start things you can't even finish by yourself? I told you it's better to just buy them from the start!”

“But if we buy them, they don't taste as good. The taste isn't the same.”

“Oh, listen to the master chef. Anyone would think you're some celebrity on TV.”

The couple raised their voices as if they were about to split up, though they stopped short of pulling each other's hair. The husband, thoroughly annoyed, put down his spoon and stormed off to the counter.

“You think I like working in the fields? No matter how good store-bought is, it's never as tasty as what you grow yourself. I grow peppers and other things to make the restaurant better.”

The owner huffed and then looked at Taeseo, who was sitting opposite her.

“Young man, you tell me. Is our food good or not?”

“It goes without saying.”

“Right?”

“Yes.”

As Taeseo sided with the owner, her husband, sitting at the counter, glared at him.

The wife then snorted like a bison and yelled.

“How dare you glare at a regular customer like that! Ugh, that man. I wouldn't say a word if he'd ever helped in the fields once in his life. Buying the seeds, raising the seedlings, transplanting, and weeding—I do it all myself, and he knows nothing about it.”

Taeseo tried to change the subject to lighten the tense atmosphere.

“Speaking of which, I saw Ms. An Yuna coming back from the fields today. I guess she works at the factory, minds the store, and does housework, too.”

His attempt to diffuse the tension worked unexpectedly well. The owner, who had been fuming like a bison, brightened up.

“Why? Are you interested in Yuna, young man?”

“Me?”

“Well, Yuna is kind and pretty. Her mother was just as beautiful when she was alive.”

The husband, as if he'd forgotten their fight, chimed in.

“Damn right. That's why that bastard did that terrible thing to her.”

The wife shot her husband a look, her eyes narrowing. This was an opportunity Taeseo couldn't miss.

“A terrible thing? What happened?”

Perhaps thinking the cat was already out of the bag, the owner glanced around the empty restaurant before leaning toward Taeseo.

“Don't you go repeating this anywhere. I'm only telling you because you're a tenant in that house and you'll probably find out eventually anyway…”

Nothing prefaced with "don't repeat this" ever remained a secret. This meant the story she was about to tell was likely an open secret in the village.

When Taeseo nodded in understanding, she lowered her voice and continued.

“Yuna's mother got pregnant with her when she was twenty, all by herself. Her parents were so proud of their only daughter, said she was so smart in business high school, but then some scoundrel got her pregnant and ran off. Yuna's mom was shunned for having a child out of wedlock, and when Yuna was two or three, she killed herself by drinking pesticide.”

The husband, listening quietly, added his part.

“At least when her grandfather was still alive, Yuna had someone to lean on. I mean, she still got beaten often by her uncle for being an extra mouth to feed, but there's a big difference between having someone on your side and having no one at all.”