A Crack in the Past

"It seems they really did all leave for overseas. Not just the wife—the children vanished without a trace too. Almost no relatives left, and even the few people who still had any connection say they haven't heard a word in ages."

Kang-hyun listened in silence to Jeong-woo's report. He had more or less expected this from the moment it became clear the family's whereabouts would not be easy to track down. That did not mean it left no bitter taste.

The reason he was hunting for Jung Seung-ho's family now was not some noble wish to apologize in his father's place. Had that been the case, he would have lived as if already dead rather than needlessly stirring up the past. But if the past he had taken for truth held cracks he had never noticed…

"There is something a little suspicious, though."

"Suspicious?"

"The neighbors at the time said the whole family disappeared overnight. Like they'd made a midnight run for it."

At Jeong-woo's offhand addition, Kang-hyun gave a heavy nod. Another piece of the puzzle had clicked into place. Yet even so, it was only one more of the scattered fragments—nothing decisive enough to finish the picture. In the end, the only real hope still lay with the clues at Cheongbaekwon.

Once more facing a dead end, the furrow between his brows cut deeper. The whole reason he had worked to gain free access to Cheongbaekwon in the first place had been to find those very clues. Yet for all his efforts, he felt failure looming more strongly than ever—because everything else remained the same, while the single landscape he had so desperately needed had alone changed its face.

"What should we do?"

Jeong-woo carefully asked for his intentions. Kang-hyun leaned back in the chair and tapped the armrest with his fingertips. The darkening gaze and tightly sealed lips spoke for his mood.

How long did that last? After gathering his thoughts with a deep exhale, Kang-hyun finally spoke.

"We're done with that side of things."

The reason his thoughts kept spinning their wheels was ultimately attachment. But no matter how sure he had been of a winning hand, if it would not come into his grasp he had to discard it boldly.

"There's something else I want you to look into, though."

He could always draw up a new strategy. As long as he could claim victory in this fight in the end.

"I need a list of the debtors who borrowed from Paeksan. Going back about twenty years."

"Twenty years? That won't be just one or two people…"

Jeong-woo immediately looked reluctant. Kang-hyun added conditions like a generous boss.

"You can exclude small amounts in the ten-million-won range, or individual debtors who cleared their debts cleanly within a year."

Even with the workload reduced, Jeong-woo's expression did not lighten—if anything it soured further. The days when Paeksan scraped by like a loan shark fleecing individuals for pocket change had ended long ago under Chairman Baek Soo-chul. That condition would filter out almost no one.

"Hyung, do you take me for an idiot?"

Suddenly dropping the respectful tone as if flipping a palm, Jeong-woo pouted. At the abruptly familiar address, Kang-hyun let out a short snort of laughter.

Originally Jeong-woo had been Kang-hyun's junior in college. During their study-abroad days, when Jeong-woo nearly had to abandon his studies because of family circumstances, Kang-hyun had helped him—and somehow that connection had lasted until now. He had not been part of the original plan, yet Jeong-woo was proving quite useful. Being the type who preferred resourcefulness over rigid principles, the work seemed to suit him reasonably well. The solid salary Kang-hyun had arranged, considering the risk of working at a company that could vanish at any moment, probably played its part too.

"I don't work with idiots."

Kang-hyun corrected him in a calm voice, then raised one eyebrow slightly toward Jeong-woo as if to say, You already know that, don't you?

Jeong-woo's mouth corners twitched upward. He seemed to be trying not to smile, but it was not very effective.

"Well, since you need it, I'll do my best. Just keep in mind it'll take time."

"Take all the time you need."

He had never expected it to be possible right away. Satisfied with that much, Kang-hyun rose from his seat.

"Were you out on business today, Representative?"

Watching Kang-hyun take the jacket from the hanger and even the car keys, Jeong-woo casually switched back to extreme honorifics as he asked.

"No. I'm clocking out."

Jeong-woo's eyes went round as they darted between the window and Kang-hyun, as if he could not believe the man was leaving work in broad daylight. Regardless, Kang-hyun walked straight out of the office.

The car that had raced freely down the highway after clearing the jammed Olympic Boulevard gradually slowed as it reached the coastal road where the sea stretched wide. Parking haphazardly in the public lot, Kang-hyun walked toward the pier where a white lighthouse stood tall. For all his hurry, the sun was already setting.

Passing the lighthouse, his steps stopped before the railing put up to prevent drownings. The sky burned a red-ash gray like the aftermath of a wildfire, and the waves, dyed the same crimson, charged savagely at the breakwater only to shatter into white foam again and again.

Feeling the muggy, salt-laden wind cling stickily to his skin, he pulled a cigarette pack from his pocket. He put a cigarette between his lips and flicked the Zippo lighter, but the damp sea breeze kept the flame from catching. After a couple of failed attempts and the sharp metallic scrape unique to the lighter, a thin white smoke finally rose. Kang-hyun took only a short first drag before tucking the cigarette between his fingers and leaning sideways against the railing.

"……."

The red tip, sizzling as it burned, slowly ate into the tobacco. The faint smoke rising from its end drifted weakly into the air—like incense lit before a memorial tablet.

"The columbarium is fine. We're never coming back to Korea anyway."

Deciding on a sea burial for his father had been entirely his mother's choice. She had chosen the East Sea as the place to scatter his remains. Their family had no particular ties to Gangwon Province. He later learned that sea burials were usually done out of Incheon. Yet his mother had insisted on the East Sea—the sea that touched the land they were leaving behind.

What thoughts had occupied her profile as she silently gazed out at that vast ocean no human gesture could ever cross—Kang-hyun still did not know.

"Let's go."

After leaving without a single backward glance for America, the two of them never once spoke of anything that had happened in Korea. As if they had been born and lived in America from the start. But with the thickest root that had made them who they were ripped out entirely, they could not live whole as if nothing had happened.

Whenever that gaping hole made itself felt, mother and son's conversations would stop or circle around the surface, and from some point on they began to creak and grow awkward, as if merely imitating a happy family. That was a separate matter from the love they held for each other.

"Do you really have to do that?"

Then one day, when her son announced he was changing his career path, his mother had, unlike usual, revealed her worried heart. He could not fail to see who those darkened eyes were overlapping him with—the name they had never spoken once since coming here, yet which had always hovered around them like air.

Even so, Kang-hyun never reversed his decision. He wanted to establish himself properly as soon as possible. He wanted to leave behind all the remnants of the past he had been forced to bury without ever examining them, and live respectably by his own strength.

Kang-hyun had never regretted that choice. No—regret itself was an emotion that could not exist in his world. His instincts had never once been wrong so far. What he had failed to anticipate was a future in which his mother might not wait for him until then.

"Mother!"

On the night of the party announcing the full launch of Harrington Ventures, he had come home late to find Yoon-ju collapsed on the floor. The cause of death was sudden cardiac arrest. Without so much as a proper last word, his mother left his side abruptly—as if her duty was now complete, so lightly, so freely. And so Kang-hyun was finally completely alone.

He took a short leave and personally sorted through the belongings that had become her keepsakes. It was then that he discovered the small box hidden deep inside the closet. Wanting to sort what to discard, he slowly examined the contents: a few Korean bills, a barely used notebook, the glasses his father had worn. And…

"Disposal…?"

Reading aloud the Korean writing on the flat document envelope stuck to the bottom of the box, Kang-hyun soon shook the envelope out. Expired bankbooks and documents containing personal information scattered haphazardly—things awkward to throw away carelessly, so she had gathered them to dispose of separately when the chance arose. But among them, one letter envelope strangely caught his eye.