Chapter 14

Chapter 5. Return (3)

For a moment, I was stunned by the appearance of the old woman I had never seen before.

Could I have come to the wrong address?

I checked the note the team leader had given me once again.

“21 Iun-ro…… This is the right place.”

There was no mistake.

I had definitely come to the right place.

If so—

“Are you perhaps the grandmother of the children?”

“The children?”

“Jinhye, Seonhye, and Mihye.”

As soon as I said their names, the old woman seemed to recognize them.

“They’re my granddaughters. Who are you?”

“Hello. My name is Lee Gichan. I’m the young firefighter who rescued your granddaughters when the fire happened last time.”

The grandmother probably hadn’t seen what happened at the time.

But she must have heard about it.

Just as I expected, the grandmother seemed to realize who I was immediately.

“Thank you. Thank you so much for saving my granddaughters…… Cough, cough!”

The grandmother suddenly started coughing.

There were piles of medicine bags inside the room.

It was obvious at a glance that she wasn’t in good health.

“Where is their mother?”

Or was she their daughter?

Either way, I was looking for the children’s mother.

But the answer I received was completely unexpected.

“Their mother? That woman ran away and left the children behind.”

“What?”

For a moment, I wondered if I had heard correctly.

She had run away?

“What do you mean……? Could you tell me a little more about it?”

I sat down on the wooden floor and decided to listen to the grandmother.

Perhaps her coughing had calmed down a little.

Or maybe she simply wanted someone to talk to.

The grandmother began telling me, one by one, about things that I had never known about this family.

“It had been about six months after my youngest granddaughter was born. She suddenly fell for another man and left the house. I haven’t heard from her since that day.”

“……”

So that’s what she meant when she said their mother had run away and left them behind.

I had only seen family situations like this a few times on TV.

Hearing about something like this happening so close to me was honestly a little shocking.

Then something suddenly came to mind.

‘The children’s father must have died in the fire.’

If that was the case—

It meant that Jinhye, Seonhye, and Mihye had neither a mother nor a father now.

Just as my thoughts were becoming complicated, the grandmother continued.

“He was my son, but that bastard also did many terrible things to the children. He was a truly horrible man.”

Before I could even recover from the first shock, a second one came immediately.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Young man, I guess you haven’t heard anything from my granddaughters.”

Of course I hadn’t.

Because as soon as I rescued the children, I lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital.

I hadn’t had any chance to hear their story.

“Their father. That bastard would keep hitting the children whenever he drank. I kept telling him to stop. I scolded him again and again because of it.”

Child abuse.

It was a crime that could never be forgiven.

Especially when the victims were his own children.

“……”

Without realizing it, I clenched my fists.

It felt as if my blood were boiling.

At first, I had even felt sorry for the man who had died in the fire while leaving three children behind.

But unfortunately, that feeling had completely disappeared now.

I couldn’t feel even the slightest bit of sympathy for him.

When I first went to rescue the children, I suddenly remembered that the door had been locked.

‘So that’s why…….’

It wasn’t because they were afraid of the fire.

They had been afraid of their drunk father.

Of course, I could only guess what had happened at the time.

I didn’t know the exact details.

The children would know.

Even so, I had no intention of asking them.

I didn’t want to make them bring back those painful memories again.

“Where…… are the children?”

Suddenly, I wanted to see the children.

But I had to put that chance off until later.

“They went to school this morning. They won’t be back for a while.”

It was only eleven in the morning.

It was far too early for school to be over.

I couldn’t keep waiting here until then, so I had no choice but to force myself to leave.

“I’ll come back later when the children are here. Until then, Grandma, please make sure you take your medicine. Ah, and also……”

I tore a page from my notebook and wrote down my phone number.

Then I handed the note to the grandmother.

“This is my number. If anything happens, please call me anytime.”

“Okay. Thank you, young man.”

Even after leaving the house, my heart felt unbearably heavy.

I would have felt a little better if I had at least seen the children’s safe and healthy faces.

Perhaps because I couldn’t let go of that thought, I unconsciously kept wandering around near the front gate.

Then—

A woman who looked to be in her early fifties came looking for this place while breathing heavily.

“Young man. Are you acquainted with the old woman here?”

“Me?”

The woman nodded several times confidently.

Her expression was filled with even more emotion.

“Did something happen?”

“No, but this old woman hasn’t paid her rent! Her rent! It’s already been three months!”

The old house was falling apart.

The grandmother’s medicine bags were piled up inside.

In one corner, there was a huge pile of waste paper that seemed to have been collected by the grandmother.

And besides that—

‘She suddenly had to take care of the children too. She must have been completely overwhelmed.’

There was also the issue of money.

“Ma’am. How much is the rent?”

“How much?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see. I said it’s been three months, right? It’s 150,000 won a month, so she’s behind by about 450,000 won.”

450,000 won.

That amount was fine.

I could easily afford it.

“I’ll pay it.”

“……What?”

“I’ll pay the rent for her, so please let the grandmother rest. There’s a bank nearby, right? Or even an ATM. I’ll withdraw the money there and give you the cash. Let’s go together.”

“W-Wait! Young man, who exactly are you to do this?”

At the time, that was all I could answer.

“I’m just someone passing by.”

While I was sitting at the drinking table, bringing up old memories one by one—

Bzzzz—

The smartphone I had placed on the table vibrated.

“Looks like you’re getting a call.”

Just as Jiwoon hyung said, someone was calling me.

And the person calling was—

“It’s my eldest daughter.”

“Jinhye?”

“Yes. Is it okay if I take it for a moment?”

“Of course! It’s your daughter calling. You should answer.”

“Thank you, hyung.”

As soon as I touched the answer button, I heard Jinhye’s voice.

—Dad. I’m sorry. I should have called you sooner, but the meeting took longer than I expected.

“It’s okay. It’s nothing urgent.”

—You said in your text earlier that there was something you wanted to tell me, right?

“Ah, that?”

It was about the rent Jinhye had paid in advance.

“The landlady told me yesterday. She said you paid all the rent in advance until the day I move out.”

—Yes. I thought if I told Dad I was going to pay it, you’d tell me not to, so I paid it secretly before I left.

How did she know her father so well?

Well, she was my daughter, after all.

“Thank you, Jinhye.”

Actually, there had been a time in the past when I had paid the rent for Jinhye’s family.

450,000 won.

It wasn’t much compared to what Jinhye had paid.

‘Jinhye probably doesn’t know about that.’

She had been young at the time.

And the children hadn’t even been there then.

But—

My guess was completely wrong.

—Compared to the rent Dad paid for Grandma back then, this is nothing.

“You…… knew about that?”

I had been certain she didn’t know.

But my eldest daughter knew everything.

—Grandma told me about it once. Seeing Dad again after such a long time reminded me of it. That’s why I paid the rent in advance too.

She seemed to want to say that she was simply returning the love she had received from her father.

After I finished my short conversation with Jinhye—

Jiwoon hyung looked at me and chuckled.

“I think you made the right decision about moving to Seoul.”

“What? Why all of a sudden?”

“Yeah. All of a sudden.”

There was a reason Jiwoon hyung suddenly said that.

“You should have seen your face while you were talking to your daughter. You looked so happy.”

Jiwoon hyung summed up my decision to move to Seoul like this.

“You’re going to find your happiness.”

Maybe he was right.

Perhaps I was going to find the happiness I had been unable to enjoy all this time.

Perhaps I was going to a new home where my daughters were waiting for me.

Along with Jiwoon hyung, I decided to meet the people I had gotten to know in Cheongju one by one and say my final goodbyes before leaving for Seoul.

‘Next week, I just need to meet Yeonseok and Jinsu.’

Because I was deliberately going around meeting people, there had even been a time when someone asked me this:

“Are you getting married?”

Or—

“Is your daughter getting married?”

You know how it is.

Usually, before getting married, people go around personally handing out wedding invitations and telling their friends the news.

The people around me had said that was what they initially thought when they received my calls.

Since I was still relatively young, I was getting misunderstandings like that.

Whenever I told them it wasn’t that, they always gave me the same answer.

—Get married already, Gichan.

It was something my friend Yongjun, whom I had known since middle school, told me.

“A friend calls me first after such a long time, and that’s all you have to say?”

—What else can I say! You said your daughters have all grown up, right? Then you should live your own life now. My wife’s friend apparently has a few friends who are still single. Want me to introduce you to one?

“No thanks. My second daughter even offered to introduce me to an actress, and I told her we’d talk about it later.”

There was no way Yongjun’s words would get through to me.

—You…… Anyway, how about we all get together at the end of this month?

“Yeah. Sounds good.”

—I am going to go. But I need to watch my wife’s mood before I leave.

“Why? Did you do something wrong?”

—Wrong…… Well, yeah.

Yongjun trailed off before suddenly confessing something to me.

—I lost quite a bit of money in stocks.

“You definitely did something wrong. A very big one.”

It was understandable that he would get scolded.

“How much did you lose?”

—Five million won. But that’s not all. I’m currently stuck with another seven million won, and I don’t know when I’ll have to cut my losses there either. I’m down eighteen percent right now. Haah……

Taking profits and cutting losses.

In the world of stocks, they were truly separated by nothing more than a thin line.

“What stock are you stuck in?”

—A stock called EFNG. I’m wondering whether I should just sell it or not.

EFNG?

The name sounded familiar.

—I think it might be better to cut my losses before I lose even more. Or should I just hold on? What do you think? You used to trade stocks too, remember?

“That…… isn’t that a wind power-related stock?”

—Yeah, it is. But how did you know when I didn’t even tell you? Did you start trading stocks again?

“No. It’s not me who’s doing it.”

When I had gone up to Seoul, my youngest daughter had recommended several stocks to me.

One of them was EFNG.

She had said that it was currently undervalued, but that it would rise sharply sometime between the end of this month and the beginning of next month.

“Yongjun. Just hold on to it until next month.”

—Hold on…… Should I?

“Yeah. You’ve already lost money anyway. It wouldn’t hurt to wait, thinking that the worst that can happen is that you end up back where you started.”

I wondered whether what I had just told Yongjun would count as revealing a secret from the future.

I wanted to wait and see.