4

“Daehô?”

A hoarse voice growled when Daehô opened the apartment door.

“Did you eat?”

Daehô squatted by the entrance and untied his shoelaces as he spoke.

“What?”

The old woman came out of the bedroom and stood with one wrinkled hand braced against the corner of the wall.

“Grandma, I asked if you ate.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go wash up. Grandma made miyeokguk.”

The old woman carefully took a few steps toward the kitchen. When she took her hand off the wall, a handprint showed on the wallpaper, yellowed much more than the rest.

“I spilled some jjamppong broth while I was delivering. I’ll run the washing machine after dinner, so don’t worry about it.”

Daehô took off his clothes, tossed them roughly into the laundry basket, and spoke as he went into the bathroom.

The old woman tilted her head for a moment, then lit the burner under the pot on the stove. She picked up the laundry basket and limped with it into the laundry room behind the kitchen.

Daehô turned up the water pressure and waited for warm water to come out of the showerhead. But it wouldn’t get warm. While he waited, he pressed his palm against two bathroom tiles that had come loose from the wall. The tiles seemed to sink back toward the wall, but when he took his hand away, they slowly pushed themselves out again, perhaps because of the elasticity of the silicone that had been smeared on carelessly.

The lukewarm water from the showerhead went cold as soon as it touched Daehô’s body. As he washed his hair and tried to wash away the smell of jjamppong clinging to his body, his teeth kept chattering without a break. Even after washing his hair twice, the smell seemed not to have gone away. Daehô pressed his nose to his shoulder and sniffed.

When he came out of the shower, Daehô didn’t even sit down at the table. He drank the miyeokguk in one go. He shuddered for a moment as he chewed the seaweed and chunks of meat that had been sucked into his mouth with the broth. Then he filled his soup bowl to the brim with miyeokguk.

“Grandma, seriously, somehow we have to move into an apartment with an elevator before the end of this year. I called the landlord earlier. He said if they find a new tenant and we just pay the realtor’s fee, he’s fine with it. I told him your knees are bad and went on about how I have to carry you up and down four floors just to take you to the hospital, so he said he’d contact the real estate office in the apartment shopping arcade. He said if anyone comes to look at the place, don’t go out, just keep it clean. I stopped by the real estate office before I came upstairs, but they weren’t open today. I’ll go again tomorrow and talk to them, so don’t go anywhere. Just stay home.”

“What money do we have to suddenly move?”

“I’ll take care of everything. Don’t worry.”

“Isn’t that real estate man some kind of crook? He bragged that this place had been completely renovated, but the hot water barely works and the boiler’s no good either. And there’s already this much cold air coming in from outside in autumn……”

“Forget that. This time we’re moving somewhere with an elevator no matter what. I found a thirteen-pyeong place in Joyang-dong. It’s two pyeong smaller than this one, but it didn’t feel much different. It’s just you and me anyway, so that size is perfect. And they said the boiler there was replaced with a new one too. This time it’s really for sure.”

Daehô spoke with grains of rice spraying from his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah. All right, my puppy.”

“I told you not to call me puppy. I’ve got my resident registration card now. I’m an adult.”

“Yeah, yeah, all right. Daehô, listen, but don’t get mad.”

“When did I get mad, Grandma? What is it?”

“Your father called. He says he’s in Mokpo now.”

Daehô said nothing and ate the rice he had mixed into the soup.

“Sounds like the ship broke down and they’re repairing it in Mokpo. I told him to come home for a bit, but he said he can’t leave the ship. Says there’s a mountain of work to do while they’re fixing it.”

“Then once they’re done fixing it, he can just go back out tuna fishing. If he’s not even coming home, why’d he call?”

“That’s not it. He said if you could come to Mokpo, he wanted to see your face.”

“Why would I go there? Come on, Grandma. Do you know how far Mokpo is from here? There’s no bus from here, no train, no plane. It’s literally one end of the country to the other.”

“So don’t get mad and just listen to me. Your father’s on a three-year contract, and he’s still got more than a year before he can come home, so he said he wanted to see you once.”

“I don’t want to. And if I go there, how are you going to get to the hospital? How are you going to get to the market? What if the real estate office brings someone to see the place and we suddenly have to move? Every day matters right now. We have to move to that apartment in Joyang-dong before it gets really cold. I’ve saved up a lot of money for the move too.”

“Still……”

“No, Grandma. Absolutely not. Last time he came home, he didn’t even eat one meal with us. He just drank himself stupid and left without even seeing me. He doesn’t even send us living expenses properly, and now he wants me to come all the way to Mokpo. There’s a limit to how shameless a person can be.”

Daehô silently ate the rice mixed into his miyeokguk. His grandmother did not press him anymore. After dinner, Daehô took two dry rags and a basin from the laundry room and went into the bedroom. He soaked up the rainwater pooled in the window frame with one of the dry rags. He put the waterlogged rag into the basin and wrung it out. After removing all the water, Daehô tried lifting the bedroom window frame with both hands to level it, but it was no use. He stared at the window for a moment, sighed without a word, then picked up the basin and went into the bathroom. After pouring the rainwater down the drain, he took the empty basin and the rag out to the balcony. Then he repeated exactly what he had done in the bedroom. By the time he had cleaned up even the rainwater that had spilled across the balcony floor and finished putting everything away, it was past eight at night. Daehô went into the kitchen, filled a bowl with the miyeokguk that had gone lukewarm, and drank it down.