Chapter 1.1

Chapter 1.1

Screech. The rear door of the old village bus closed with a loud noise. The bus, having dropped off just one passenger, departed mercilessly without a backward glance.

Ara stared blankly at the receding bus, then lifted her head to look at the rusted sign.

Wolcheon Village.

The familiarity of the name made her already cluttered mind even more dizzy. This was the place she’d been running from, after all.

“Sigh…”

Ara let out a big sigh, her shoulders drooping. She felt ashamed to face her grandmother. Regret, or something like it, came belatedly.

Wolcheon Village was where Ara had spent her school days. It was also the hometown of her grandmother, Jeong Mal-soon, who had raised her.

Born in Seoul, Ara had moved to this village around the age of ten, following Mal-soon. The move had not been for a positive reason. If her father, Hyun-sik, had not abandoned her and disappeared, she would never have ended up in such a remote mountain village.

But after her mother, Yeon-hee, died of acute leukemia when Ara was eight, Hyun-sik changed completely. He started drinking more, his work faltered, and he even got into gambling.

Ara picked up on the things her drunken father mumbled and the gossip of the neighbors. She also secretly opened the letters from the court and financial institutions that piled up in the mailbox, along with overdue bills. She asked her teachers about the difficult words in the letters or looked them up in books at the library.

Thanks to this, Ara learned the fear of debt at just eight years old.

Ara quickly realized that her father had borrowed money using the security deposit of their home as collateral. She also had to understand the harsh reality that the red stickers placed all over the house were seizure notices.

If her father couldn’t repay the borrowed money, they would lose all the household items that bore her mother’s touch.

However, up until that point, Ara didn’t hate her father. She actually felt a bit sorry for him.

“Dad must miss Mom as much as I do. That’s why he keeps drinking, right? Mr. Ki-tae next door said you can forget your troubles when you drink.”

‘Dad, are you having a hard time? I’ll be good. I’ll eat well by myself, go to school, and listen to you. So, please drink a little less. And sleep at home with me. Okay? It’s a bit scary to sleep alone at night…’

Ara could no longer clearly remember what expression Hyun-sik had on his face or what response he gave to his young daughter’s earnest plea.

She just remembered that even after that, her father still didn’t come home often. The number of scary notices piling up in the mailbox increased. Sometimes when she ran into her father after school, he was so drunk that he didn’t even recognize her.

These were the things that stayed vividly in her memory.

Two years passed like that.

Ara learned how to do everything by herself.

While her friends had their parents’ help, Ara had to manage everything on her own.

She had to cook ramen by herself, wash her hair by herself, do her homework by herself, and clean by herself…

The one who saved Ara, who was neglected, was her grandmother Mal-soon.

“I totally failed at raising my son. That guy, who never contacted me, his mother, stole all the money I had hidden away and disappeared. How could he leave his child alone like this and go off somewhere?”

One day, Mal-soon suddenly visited Ara’s house. As soon as she saw her skinny granddaughter, she hugged her tightly. She asked if Ara had eaten, where her father was, and how she had been managing all this time. Then, with an incredulous look on her face, she started cursing furiously.

“If he were human, he couldn’t do this. I didn’t give birth to a human, but to a beast. That damn bastard. That wretched scum. I’m the fool, me. I even celebrated his birth with seaweed soup, and yet he turned out worse than a dog…”

Mal-soon hit her chest with her hands, darkened from farming, and cried. She wailed as if the sky was falling, lamenting that an innocent child had to bear the brunt of her mistakes.

Ara cried alongside her. It might seem strange, but that was the first time she felt such a thought.

That she hated her father.

The truth was, it wasn’t her father who was truly pitiful, but herself.

“Let’s go, Ara. My poor child. Forget your worthless father, and live with your grandmother. No matter how hard life gets, how could I ever leave you behind?”

That very day, Ara took Mal-soon’s hand and moved to Geochang.

Even though they lived in a leaky, drafty shack, Ara’s heart was much happier. To Ara, Mal-soon was both mother and father, both friend and teacher.

Ara grew up attached to this land until around the time she was twenty when Mal-soon passed away from cancer. For Ara, Wolcheon Village was as good as her hometown.

Even after returning to Seoul following Mal-soon’s funeral, whenever someone asked where her hometown was, Ara always thought of this place.

The mountain village where, in summer, the fresh smell of grass filled the air, and in winter, snow piled high on the faded brick walls.

“Even though it’s been a while, everything is still the same.”

Walking along the narrow dirt path, Ara looked around once more.

The quiet village landscape hadn’t changed much. The waterway leading to the nearby reservoir, the colorful strings fluttering on the sacred tree—every year when she visited Mal-soon’s grave, they always greeted Ara from the same spot.

Before, the fact that everything remained the same in this village strangely gave Ara a sense of peace. Although Mal-soon, who always waited for her at home, was no longer there, it felt like the land Mal-soon had cultivated and loved was still there to embrace her.

But today was different.