Heaven Will Know
Some ten years earlier, the Chairman had published an autobiography through a ghostwriter. Once it hit the bestseller lists, he suddenly took to wearing nothing but everyday hanbok and putting on the airs of a man of letters. He churned out a few more peculiar volumes, got thoroughly roasted by the public, and seemed to quiet down for a while—yet the habit of spouting random maxims out of nowhere never left him.
I bowed my head low and waited for him to pass.
“Who’s that girl over yonder?”
Bad luck. The Chairman’s attention drifted from the juniper tree straight to me in my school uniform.
“She’s Manager Lee’s daughter, Chairman.”
“Manager Lee’s eh-ttal?”
Chairman Kwon Hyung-do liked to claim there was nothing he hadn’t tried since childhood. He had followed his peddler father south as if by fate during the war, taken over a tiny factory, and built it into today’s Kwonjin Group. Perhaps for that reason, his speech was a patchwork of dialects from every corner of the peninsula. You had to piece it together like a puzzle.
“Yes. You know our Manager Lee’s mother and daughter, don’t you, Chairman? You’ve always been fond of Manager Lee’s cooking.”
Cha Mi-young smiled warmly and pointed me out.
“Na-hee, come over here and greet the Chairman properly.”
The family rarely paid the help much mind. The Chairman was no exception. I had once been introduced to him as a child, trailing after Mother when we first entered this house, but that was the last time until now.
“I’m Lee Na-hee, Chairman.”
I bowed as deeply as Assistant Choi had. The Chairman turned to Mrs. Jang.
“So Manager Lee’s girl is a Lee as well.”
“Our Manager Lee raised the children all alone, you know. Brother and sister both grew up so diligently without a father. And she studies hard, too.”
The madam picked up where Mrs. Jang left off.
“I wonder what Manager Lee ate to produce such a pretty daughter. Na-hee got into B Women’s University this year, didn’t she? What major was it again? Architecture?”
“Yes.”
At the mention of B Women’s University, Chairman Kwon fixed me with a silent stare. That scorching, midday-sun gaze made my throat go dry of its own accord.
After a long stretch of silence, he finally spoke.
“Seung-pil. Bring me my wallet.”
“Yes, Chairman.”
He took the wallet from his personal secretary and pulled out several one-hundred-thousand-won checks.
“Take them. I’m giving them because you’re a fine girl.”
“…….”
“Na-hee. Say thank you and take them quickly. The Chairman is giving you pocket money because you’re studying hard and he thinks you’re commendable.”
“……Thank you.”
“Live so hard your feet sweat. Heaven will know. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Mind your mother well. Study hard.”
“Yes. Thank you, Chairman.”
I stood there as quietly as a student being punished until, at last, Chairman Kwon walked past me. Halfway through his slow circuit of the garden he glanced back at the pond and intoned,
“They say too many carpenters bring the house down. Seung-pil.”
“I’ve written it down, Chairman.”
As the Chairman’s party receded into the distance, a sigh of pure relief escaped me. Tension had left cold sweat beading at the nape of my neck.
“Chairman, Mrs. Jang says she must be going. It’s the day she delivers side dishes to the eldest young master.”
As she spoke, the madam cast a sidelong glance my way.
“Mrs. Jang. Even in your old age you’re still catching grief.”
“Oh my, what do I ever do? It’s the madam who looks after everything. You have no idea how much the madam cares for the eldest young master. She’s the only one who treats him like her own son.”
“Did Hyun-jin eat well?”
“Of course. It’s food the Chairman himself enjoys. Shall I tell Manager Lee to prepare the spicy croaker stew again today?”
The sharp, ringing voices behind me made my chest tighten. I fled toward school as if running for my life.
I tucked the pocket money the Chairman had given me carefully into a drawer. Even though it was a substantial sum—several hundred thousand won—it left me uneasy.
The way the madam and Mrs. Jang had brightened the moment they saw me felt odd. Why go out of their way to introduce me to the Chairman? The madam didn’t even particularly like Mother……
Chairman Kwon had once gone so far as to renounce Kwon Young-moo after one too many scandals. Then the eldest son and his wife died in a traffic accident, and the second son, Kwon Young-moo, was reinstated in the group. Cha Mi-young had moved into the Hannam-dong house around that time and made no secret of her dislike for the servants who had worked there before her arrival—Manager Lee, for instance, or the driver Park and his wife who had already left. Only the crafty Mrs. Jang had been the exception.
“Puppy, you’re back?”
When I stepped into the kitchen of Building A to collect the side dishes, Mother acknowledged me.
Everyone was gathered around making dumplings. Because Chairman Kwon loved northern-style dumpling soup, dumpling-making had become a monthly ritual.
“Keep an eye on the pot for a moment. If the lid starts rattling, just skim off a little foam.”
“Yes, Manager.”
Carrying the bundle of side dishes Mrs. Jang had packed, I set off with Mother toward the annex wing. The path wound all the way around the main building, so even at a brisk clip it took a fair amount of time.
“I wonder if the eldest young master is eating properly. Home cooking probably doesn’t suit him.”
“He ate the soybean-noodle soup.”
“He actually ate that?”
“He ate it just fine.”
“I thought he used to say soy milk tasted fishy and hated it……”
Mother had been responsible for the Kwon family’s meals in Hannam-dong for more than fifteen years. She knew Kwon Hyun-jin’s palate well.
“You have no idea how picky the eldest young master used to be about side dishes.”
“Was he a fussy eater from the start?”
“Not so much fussy as……”
Kwon Hyun-jin, she said, would only eat if someone sat beside him, spooned food into his mouth, and piled side dishes onto his spoon. In other words, he was a child who threw tantrums because he desperately wanted human hands to care for him.
“……Something like affection starvation.”
Someone should have looked after that boy. But everyone was too busy watching Cha Mi-young’s moods to dare.
To make matters worse, Kwon Hyun-jin was painfully shy with strangers. He never took to the endless parade of nannies; he only clung to Mrs. Jang. Even she, after a certain point, only made a show of caring for him when the Chairman was watching.
Once he started elementary school, the school called to say he refused both food and water. School refusal was so severe that Mrs. Jang waiting in the classroom hallway until dismissal became routine.
I still remember the day Kwon Hyun-jin left Korea.
It had been an unusually hot summer. Declaring that a lion must raise its cubs to be strong, Chairman Kwon packed off a grandson who hadn’t even adapted to elementary school and sent him abroad. Cha Mi-young had encouraged it, but in truth the Chairman simply could no longer endure his eldest grandson—not after the diagnosis of reactive attachment disorder.
“Na-hee, even if you go in and out of that house, don’t get too friendly with the eldest young master, all right? Mother worries. Why does Mrs. Jang keep dumping these errands only on you……”
In front of Mrs. Jang, Mother had shoved me out the door to run the errand. Alone with me, she let her true feelings surface.
“I don’t even run into him. He’s supposed to be living at the gym.”
“That’s what they say, but……”
From the refrigerator in Building B used by the staff, Mother took out a separate container of side dishes she had set aside. Cubed radish kimchi.
“Take this too. I made it with summer radish—it’s delicious. The Chairman likes it so much I prepared a fresh batch without fish sauce, just a little fermented shrimp.”
“Mom, why bother? You think a kid who’s lived abroad all this time is going to like cubed radish kimchi?”
The fact that she had gone to the trouble of making kimchi specially for Kwon Hyun-jin made me peevish. It would end up thrown away anyway. She had to know that……
“Both the Chairman and the vice chairman have excellent palates. That bloodline doesn’t just disappear.”
Mother cooked the food, but it was Mrs. Jang who packed the side dishes to send to Kwon Hyun-jin. Cheonggukjang, steamed croaker—Mrs. Jang was clearly putting on a performance of reform.
Had she forgotten which foods that boy hated? If so, then my suspicion was unfounded…… but Mrs. Jang was not someone who ever stopped calculating.