The Crowd Floods In

A few days later.

Mun-sik was splitting firewood at the entrance of the tavern when it happened.

"Is this the Life Tavern?"

"I'm sorry? Yes, that's right, but…"

Three able-bodied men were approaching the tavern. They were faces he had never once seen around these parts before.

"This is the place that gives you a free bowl of gukbap after you eat ten, yes?"

"Yes, that's correct."

"Word has it they're throwing in grilled fish for free, too…"

"Ah, that's part of our grand opening promotion—only available for one month."

"One month, huh… So we can still claim it, then?"

"Yes. About three weeks remain."

"Well, perfect. Everyone, this way."

The moment the information they'd heard matched what they were told, one of the men turned around and waved his hand behind him.

Rumble, rumble.

And then a massive crowd, appearing from who knew where, began pouring into the tavern.

"Gah!"

Mun-sik's eyes went wide as saucers. Dozens of people were swarming in all at once.

"Wh-what in the world is all this?"

Hayun was flustered by the sudden flood of customers, but she quickly collected herself.

"Welcome! Welcome to the Life Tavern!"

She swept her eyes over the guests and sized up the total headcount in an instant.

"Auntie! Customers! Twenty-two of them!"

"What? Twenty-two?"

At the number out of nowhere, Ok-bun's mouth fell open. Sure enough, nearly twenty people had already packed themselves into the tavern.

"What in the…!"

Seeing Ok-bun standing there dumbstruck, Hayun shouted out orders.

"Don't panic! Get three potato pancakes and seven pollock pancakes ready first. And grill just four portions of the fish for now."

"They haven't even ordered yet!"

The customers were still busy studying the charimpyo—the menu board. Mesmerized by a menu unlike anything they'd seen in their lives, ordering was the last thing on their minds.

But Hayun saw that window of time as an opportunity, and urged Ok-bun to get the food ready ahead of the orders.

"Based on the data so far, that much is guaranteed to sell. Which means we need it prepped starting now, or we'll fall behind."

"A-all right."

When Hayun said so, it was so. By now, Ok-bun would have believed it if Hayun told her she could make soybean paste out of red beans. She hurried off to begin preparations.

And while Ok-bun cooked, a scene broke out in the yard that could only be described as a battlefield.

"Three bowls of Life Gukbap over here!"

"Yes, right away!"

"Add five bowls of makgeolli!"

"Coming up!"

"One more potato pancake!"

"Two plates of pollock pancake!"

"Three of the two-person combo sets, if you please!"

"Y-yes, of course!"

Hayun ran herself ragged. Even as she took one order, another came in, and she ferried out trays loaded with five bowls of gukbap at a time.

But that was only the beginning…

"They say the gukbap here is incredible?"

"And the young lady working here is so kind, too."

"I heard the rumors and came all the way from the village across the mountain."

"A bowl of gukbap for us as well, please."

After that, the customers simply never stopped coming.

The flat platforms had long since filled to capacity. With no seats left, guests milled around, peering at the others as they ate. Watching them, Hayun rushed over to direct traffic.

"All right, please form a line here, one by one. We'll seat you as soon as the guests inside finish their meals."

"What? You're telling me it's already full?"

"Can't we just wait in here?"

"I'm sorry, but no— it might trouble the other guests. What if someone felt sick eating in such a crowd?"

"Goodness, what a stickler."

Grumbling at Hayun's instructions, the customers shuffled back outside.

The ripple effect of the marketing was enormous. Before long, the guests filled the tavern past bursting and stretched in a long line all the way down the wall, a sea of humanity.

It had reached the point where customers were now drawing in more customers.

"What's all this? Is there some kind of feast going on here? Why are there so many people?"

"Ah, I hear the gukbap here is unbelievably good."

"Really? Then I'd better try some myself."

Even those who hadn't heard the rumor began drifting over out of sheer curiosity. A crowd this size was a rare sight, and rare sights drew eyes.

"While you wait, please have some of this."

Hayun handed out chilled sikhye—a sweet rice punch—to the waiting guests.

"Ooh, much obliged."

"They say that young woman works like the wind."

"So I heard. No wonder she seemed so kind."

"Ahh, this sikhye hits the spot!"

Guests who would normally have grumbled and spat complaints sipped the sikhye Hayun handed them, swallowed their irritation, and waited their turn in good humor.

Phew. That takes the edge off, at least…

The all-out war that had begun in the morning showed no sign of letting up, even as the sun climbed to its peak.

"Auntie! My gukbap still hasn't come out!"

"Just a moment! Almost there!"

Ok-bun's hands flew in a frantic blur even as she answered. Ladling broth, laying on the beef, scattering scallions—she repeated the motions without a moment's rest. There was no time to think. She simply focused, machine-like, on making each dish to match each order.

"Mmhm, next is five potato pancakes and seven pollock pancakes…"

Sweat streamed down her face and her wrists ached, but thinking of the customers waiting, she couldn't afford to slow down. In over thirty years of running a tavern, she had never once seen anything like this. For Ok-bun, whose days had been nothing but flies buzzing through an empty room, she would sooner break her body than disappoint a single guest today.

"Three bowls of Life Gukbap coming out!"

That desperate earnestness kept driving her onward.

"Heave-ho!"

Mun-sik, for his part, was just as busy, chopping firewood and hauling water back and forth.

Crack! Crack!

The sound of the axe echoed from behind the tavern. It was five times his usual load, but it wasn't hard at all—if anything, he was fired up. On a day like today, he felt he could fell every tree on the mountain.

"Honey! Firewood! Throw some more wood under the cauldron!"

"Already on it!"

How long had it been since things were this busy? Even when they'd first opened the tavern, it had never been like this. There had been crowded days now and then back then too, but never an atmosphere like today's. This vitality pouring off the customers—this energy thrumming through the tavern—was something new to both Mun-sik and Ok-bun. And it made them forget their exhaustion.

Hayun, meanwhile, was every bit as swept up in the chaos.

"One Life Gukbap!"

"Yes! Right away!"

"The bill, please!"

"Coming this instant!"

Greeting guests, taking orders, carrying food, clearing tables—the cycle repeated without end. The soles of her feet swelled up and her neatly combed hair was drenched in sweat, but Hayun paid it little mind.

"Whew, if I'd known this would happen, I'd have paced the promotion a little…"

Despite the grumbling, Hayun's face was full of a contented smile. If there was one moment of supreme glory for someone in advertising, it was watching a project you planned succeed before your very eyes like this. Watching the customers eat with such satisfaction, a warm pride welled up from somewhere deep inside her.

I'd forgotten. The reason I became an ad planner in the first place.

She could hardly remember the last time she'd thrown herself into the field like this. At some point, she had stopped taking on the work she wanted and started taking only the projects that would make her career. And naturally, her love for the work had withered, until each day was just her whipping herself through one grueling twenty-four hours after another.

Now, for the first time in what felt like forever, Hayun was experiencing a feeling she'd long lost—pure and simple. It was like being a little girl again, helping her father with his antique shop. The reason Hayun had dreamed of becoming an advertising planner in the first place had sprung from that one pure wish: to help her father's store. And that old feeling was coming back to life.

"Huh? We're out of broth?"

"The wood we split yesterday's all gone too."

"What? Already?"

Thankfully, even a situation that had seemed like it might go on forever finally reached its end. They had prepared plenty—or so they thought—but the ingredients ran dry in a mere four hours.

"What about all the people still waiting out there?"

"That's true. It looked like some of them had been waiting for hours…"

"Don't worry. I have a plan."

As Mun-sik and Ok-bun fretted, Hayun stepped outside and made an announcement.

"I'm terribly sorry, but we've run out of ingredients, so today's service ends here. In return, as a token of our gratitude to everyone who waited, we'll stamp one mark on your exchange card each."

Hayun went around stamping the exchange cards, and even the customers who had waited the better part of an hour turned back without any real complaint.

"Already sold out, eh?"

"Can't be helped. I'll just have to come back tomorrow."

"I got a stamp without even eating the gukbap—so really, I came out ahead?"

"Keep this up, and we'll all just stand in line every day for free gukbap, ha!"

The waiting customers got their stamps and were happy; Hayun secured a fresh wave of returning customers and was happy. A win-win strategy where everyone smiled.

"Thank you for the meal. I'll be back again."

"Safe travels."

The moment the last customer left, Hayun, Mun-sik, and Ok-bun collapsed right where they stood, utterly spent.

"Haaah… finally over…"

"Aigoo, my aching bones! One more day like this and one of us would've dropped dead for sure."

"Hnngh… first time in my whole life I've split that much firewood."

All three of them groaned and moaned, but their faces brimmed with the satisfaction of a job done.

"Ngh!"

Pushing through the throbbing ache, Hayun forced herself back up. Mun-sik and Ok-bun watched her with worried eyes.

"Don't overdo it—rest. The cleanup can wait."

"No. There's still the most important part left. I can't rest until it's done."

"There's more work after all that?"

At the words, Mun-sik and Ok-bun's eyes went wide. Then Hayun smiled and said:

"Time to settle the accounts."

"Ah!"

With that, Hayun poured out a sack of coins. A small mountain of yeopjeon built itself up on the flat platform.

Cascade!

"Good heavens! How much is all this!"

"One, two, three…"

Mun-sik began counting the coins one by one.

"…ninety, one hundred!"

"That's one nyang."

"Quit standing there and help me count."

"Right you are."

Once the count passed a hundred coins, Ok-bun joined in. Ten pun made one jeon. Ten jeon made one nyang. And those nyang were already climbing past ten.

"Ten nyang… twelve nyang…"

As the numbers climbed, Mun-sik and Ok-bun's voices began to tremble along with them.

"H-honey…"

"Don't get carried away. Keep counting."

"Nineteen nyang… twenty nyang!"

"Twenty nyang?"

A short while later, when the counting was done, Mun-sik and Ok-bun stood dumbfounded, staring at each other. A silence hung over them.

"Th-this is all the money we made in a single day…?"

"It's got to be twenty times what we usually make…"

"Tw-twenty times!"

Ordinarily, scraping together even one nyang in a day was a struggle. On a good day, one and a half. But today they had earned twenty nyang. In barely four hours. It was almost beyond believing.

"Hayun, thank you!"

Mun-sik and Ok-bun threw their arms around her.

"Where in the world did this blessing of a child roll in from!"

"Honey! You've worked so hard all this while!"

The three of them held one another for a long while, savoring this moment. Tears welled in the corners of Ok-bun's eyes. Hayun patted them both gently on the back.

"Don't celebrate too soon. This is only the beginning."

"Hayun…!"

"Compared to what the two of you did for me—saving my life—this is nothing. We'll have to earn many times this much from here on out."

Life Tavern—her first project in Joseon. Having made it a resounding success, Hayun was already planning her second.

The same hour.

The Sanmaru Tavern—old guard of the Mungyeong Saejae pass. A place that should have been packed with customers sat empty, with nothing but flies for company.

"Tch, damn it all!"

Dal-jae, the owner of the Sanmaru Tavern, glared at his deserted establishment with sour eyes. Before him sat a table laden with liquor.

The Sanmaru Tavern had been built several years after the Life Tavern where Hayun now stayed. Opening a rival tavern within the same stretch of trade was against the merchant's code, but Dal-jae couldn't have cared less—he scraped together every last coin he had and built the grandest tavern on all of Mungyeong Saejae. And the moment Sanmaru opened its doors, the customers came flooding in, driving the old tavern run by Mun-sik and Ok-bun to the very brink of ruin.

Now, the positions of the two taverns had flipped completely.

"Agh! This liquor tastes like dishwater!"

Flies buzzed through a tavern that should have been full of carousing customers until late into the night. In a fit of rage, Dal-jae flung his cup aside.

Crash!

Then he staggered up from his seat.

"Where the devil have all the customers gone these days? What are they all off doing, and where?"

Barely a month ago, the Sanmaru Tavern had been overflowing. Then, all of a sudden, the customers had dropped off a cliff. It wasn't that business had halved—the customers had simply ceased to exist.

"There's got to be some calamity behind it. Otherwise there's no way a tavern this busy could dry up overnight. Right."

Dal-jae suddenly bellowed toward the kitchen.

"Woman! Did you pour liquor into the gukbap? Why's it so bitter?"

"Liquor, my foot! You've been swilling the stuff morning to night—that's why even the gukbap tastes of it!"

His wife snapped back irritably.

"Maybe customers stopped coming because the owner does nothing but drink all day! If you spent half that time out there promoting the place—"

"Hmph! Then how do you explain all the good business up till now? Drunk or sober, the money rolled in, didn't it?"

"That's because this was the only big, respectable tavern in the whole area—not because you were so great!"

"Tch…"

Having no real answer to that, Dal-jae shut his mouth.

Just then—voices drifted over the wall from travelers passing nearby.

"Ahh, that gukbap I had today was the best I've ever eaten, am I right?"

"You know it! Best tavern I've been to in my whole life."

"The food was delicious, and the free grilled fish with the exchange card too. Where else in the world would you find a place like that?"

At the word tavern, Dal-jae's ears pricked up.

"And that's not even the half of it. The young lady working there—such a sweetheart. I'm going back tomorrow just for her."

"That's right! That girl with the unusual short-cropped hair. So polite, too."

"Life Gukbap! From now on, it's that place or nothing for me."

"Me too! Hahaha!"

With that, the voices faded into the distance. The light drained from Dal-jae's eyes, leaving them cold.

"The Life Tavern? There's a place by that name?"

It was a name he'd never heard. Every tavern in this area was either ruined or had been ruined by him. If a new tavern had sprung up, there was no way it would have escaped his notice. He had the power to make sure of that.

Then, suddenly, a memory flickered through his mind.

"Wait a moment. Don't tell me…"

A rumor—that the failing tavern up at the pass had suddenly changed its name and begun drawing crowds. He'd dismissed it at the time, let it slide in one ear and out the other. Rumors like that surfaced a dozen times a day.

Could that rumor have actually been true?

As the gravity of the situation sank in, Dal-jae's face hardened. The liquor sobered out of him in an instant.

"I have to see this place for myself."

Dal-jae threw on his clothes and hurried out of the tavern. His wife's scolding chased him from behind.

"Where are you off to all of a sudden? At least clear your dishes before you go!"

"Now's not the time for chores, so hold your tongue! Our tavern's fate is hanging by a thread!"

"Aigoo, that worthless fool…!"

Drunk from midday, Dal-jae set off toward the Life Tavern on unsteady, staggering legs.