Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Even after death, the world goes on

His parents had passed away. In America.

First year of university.

Just after finishing his final exams and entering summer break, the news hit him like a bolt from the blue.

A call came first from Korea University, where his father worked and he himself attended, and then from someone at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It was also reported on the news.

[MBS News: Korean Dr. Song Su-yong and his wife, who were serving as exchange professors at Columbia University in the United States, died last night in a traffic accident while driving together on the outskirts of New York City. The truck that caused the accident···]

Song Yi-hyeon left the country half in a daze, alone. As the only son of three generations, he had few relatives he could even discuss something like this with. There were only a handful of distant relatives on his mother’s side, and since they rarely kept in touch, no one stepped forward to help, so he departed by himself. Fortunately, he had visited America once before starting university to see his father.

New York was raining when he arrived. It was a little past afternoon, but as arranged before he left Seoul, he went to the New York Consulate General and asked for Consul Heo In-sik.

“Ah, you’re Dr. Song’s son.”

Heo In-sik, smiling as he looked at Yi-hyeon, gave a good impression. Slim, wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, he first offered condolences.

“I’m truly sorry about the doctor. I met him last year at a gathering of Korean residents. The community was proud of him—he was a world authority in archaeology.”

Yi-hyeon only nodded silently.

His father, Dr. Song Su-yong, had been a professor in the Department of Archaeology and Art History at Korea University and had come to Columbia University in New York as a researcher. It was formally an exchange professorship, but he did not teach; he only researched. His mother had of course lived with Yi-hyeon in Seoul, but she had recently said she wanted to see New York and had gone to stay with his father, only to meet with disaster together.

Yi-hyeon went with Consul Heo In-sik to Saint Helen Hospital on the outskirts of the city, confirmed the temporarily enshrined bodies of his parents, and continued the additional administrative procedures. He also went to the New York Police—NYPD (New York City Police Department) headquarters. There too, only after identity was confirmed and various documents signed could the funeral process move forward.

Yi-hyeon decided to simply conclude his parents’ funeral in New York. Afterward he planned to collect only the cremated remains and return to Korea. Even amid the confusion, it was a decision he had made before leaving Seoul.

After the funeral, he stopped by the lodging where his parents had stayed and his father’s research office at the university to collect their belongings. The belongings were mostly books. While sorting through what must have been at least a truckload of books, Yi-hyeon felt something slightly off.

The enormous number of books and countless materials were not organized; they were messy. Exactly as if someone had thoroughly ransacked the place and then clumsily put things back. Given his father’s usual meticulous nature, it was impossible, so he called Consul Heo In-sik to ask.

“Consul Heo, has someone already looked through my father’s materials?”

“No, I wouldn’t know about that··· As you can see, Dr. Song locks his research office when he leaves, doesn’t he? The lodging even more so.”

Yi-hyeon nodded.

His father’s research office and the lodging where he had stayed with his mother had both been firmly locked. Given his parents’ personalities, it was hard to imagine them being careless about securing the doors. His father, always earnest about research and materials, valued his books and research materials more than any household object.

But there was no way to resolve the doubt for now. Quietly yet thoroughly, Yi-hyeon photographed the room containing his father’s books and research materials with his phone. He must have taken several hundred pictures. No particular suspicious point had been found right then, but it was because his usual temperament could not overlook something that caught his eye.

And decisively, his ‘instinct’ was saying something.

That there was a hidden secret in his parents’ deaths.

* * *

After returning to Seoul, Yi-hyeon was for a while wholly occupied with the aftermath of his parents. He had only just become an adult, but as their sole heir there was much to do. He consulted a lawyer and proceeded with the inheritance of the Apgujeong-dong apartment under his father’s name and the real estate scattered in the provinces such as Jeju Island, and he also transferred the deposits in his parents’ accounts to his own after paying the proper taxes.

Dr. Song Su-yong had not been economically strained. Rather, he had been quite wealthy. Yi-hyeon’s grandfather was a Gaeseong merchant who had fled south during the Korean War, started with empty hands after the war ended, and built considerable wealth. That property had passed through his father and was now inherited by Yi-hyeon.

‘What am I supposed to do now?’

Yi-hyeon fell into psychological panic. The sudden death of his parents was only now slowly becoming real. Looking around the house, books were piled everywhere. Most of them were books and materials his father had looked through while alive. Yi-hyeon had brought all of his father’s books and research materials to the house in Seoul.

These books were the only things left by which he could remember his father.

“Come to think of it, it’s strange. Why did they examine everything so meticulously when I was only bringing books and materials.”

As Yi-hyeon muttered to himself, bringing these books and materials to Seoul had been quite troublesome. People claiming to be affiliated with Columbia University had come and searched through all the materials for several days as if looking for lice, saying their university’s materials must not go to Yi-hyeon.

Brrr-

Yi-hyeon’s phone vibrated. Glancing at it, the display showed Lee Seong-man. A friend since middle school. Currently attending Donggang University in Sinchon.

“It’s been a while.”

Even at Yi-hyeon’s dry words, Seong-man shouted loudly.

“Yi-hyeon-ah! Why haven’t you been answering the phone like that? Let’s meet a bit today.”

“Okay.”

Lee Seong-man was the only friend Yi-hyeon had contacted when he went to New York for his parents’ funeral. After returning to Seoul he had met him only once. Even though they had been that close. These days everything had grown dull. Or rather, there had been no mental space left because of his parents’ incomprehensible deaths.

Looking in the mirror, Yi-hyeon let out a short laugh. His hair was shabby, he couldn’t remember when he had last cut it, and his cheeks were sunken. He had not been able to eat meals on time.

Before meeting the guy, he should get a haircut and tidy up a bit.

Yi-hyeon went to the hair salon he used to go to in front of the house, got his hair cut, and in the evening met Lee Seong-man at the Chinese restaurant in front of the house.

“Hey! Now you look like a person. Though you’ve lost weight.”

Entering the restaurant, Lee Seong-man said loudly as he looked at Yi-hyeon.

Yi-hyeon smiled at Seong-man, who was deliberately being noisy. The guy was putting in effort to lift his mood.

Using the ordered sweet-and-sour pork as a side dish, they shared soju, and while eating jajangmyeon as the meal, Yi-hyeon suddenly said.

“I’m thinking of going to the army.”

“What?”

Lee Seong-man opened his eyes wide and asked. He was startled by Yi-hyeon’s sudden words.

“So that’s why you didn’t do course registration? This guy always does things out of nowhere.”

“It’s not something I thought of suddenly. I need to clear my head.”

It was something he had been thinking about since returning from New York. Yi-hyeon, who felt some special measure was needed to escape the shock of his parents’ deaths, had settled on enlisting in the army.

But even if one wanted to join the army these days, it was difficult to finish the semester like this and enlist right on schedule. University students all tried to finish their service without wasting time and return to school. Even if Yi-hyeon checked the enlistment schedule now, he would have to take at least one semester off.

Yi-hyeon thought it didn’t matter. He did not plan to go as regular army; he intended to apply for special forces.

‘Come to think of it, I should visit Monk Muae before enlisting.’

Yi-hyeon thought to himself.

After enshrining his parents’ remains in a columbarium near Seongnam, Yi-hyeon had visited the monk. He had wanted to be comforted by someone. Also, to entrust his parents’ memorial rites to the temple while he was at it.

He recalled something that Monk Muae had said a few years earlier, when Yi-hyeon was a first-year high school student.

“You have karma. From now on you’ll bring a lot of turmoil with you. So you need to make your body and mind properly. If you want to overcome that turmoil and survive. Hehe.”

“Monk, what power do I have to cause turmoil? I just want to live quietly. Don’t you know I was getting beaten at school until recently?”

At Yi-hyeon’s words the monk opened his mouth and laughed.

“You rascal. Who’s beating you now? Even Sundol over there would laugh.”

“Sundol?”

When Yi-hyeon turned, the dog that had been dozing with its tongue out in the cool shade of a tree opened its eyes and looked at him. Sundol was a mixed-breed Jindo dog raised at the hermitage. Seeing various people at the temple was an everyday thing, so it was a gentle dog that didn’t know how to bark.

A small hermitage near Gyeongju. Seong-an Hermitage.

Truly in a nameless mountain, with just one hermitage sitting alone, one wondered whether there were even believers to make donations, yet somehow the monk who lived there seemed not to go hungry.

But there was something Yi-hyeon did not know: Dr. Song Su-yong had been making considerable donations every year to Monk Muae, whom he had come to know through acquaintance.

From a young age Yi-hyeon had been tall but skinny and weak; at his father’s recommendation, starting three years earlier when he was a first-year middle school student, he had come down to this hermitage during vacations and learned ‘exercise’ from the monk.

This monk, who had given himself the dharma name Muae, had a somewhat eccentric personality and did not choose his words. He treated Yi-hyeon casually as well, bluntly calling him this guy and that guy.

Although Yi-hyeon had learned ‘exercise’ from the monk since first-year middle school, the period was only during summer and winter vacations. And that was maybe three weeks at most. The monk taught only the basic postures and breathing method, and told him to figure out the rest in Seoul.

But Yi-hyeon had taken an interest in the exercise and practiced it diligently in Seoul whenever he had time.

First, like a gymnast loosening the body before training, he relaxed and warmed up with near-extreme stretching. Then, once he had broken a moderate sweat, he ran lightly for about four or five kilometers and practiced the main movements. And he always finished with breathing.

At the time Monk Muae had nagged until Yi-hyeon’s ears developed calluses.

“If you don’t have time for other things, at least do this breathing. This is the foundation. Fortunately your constitution seems to match the breathing a bit, so work hard at it.”

“Yes, yes.”

He had wondered what connection there could be between breathing and constitution, but Yi-hyeon did not slack off and practiced diligently. At first he felt no change at all, but after a few months he began to feel changes slowly appearing in his body.

After about a year like that, he came to think that he was no longer a weakling. Strength had settled into his body and his once-skinny build had changed little by little. What Yi-hyeon found most amazing was that, perhaps thanks to the breathing, his mind had grown considerably sharper and his grades had risen sharply.

Coming out of his thoughts, Yi-hyeon finished the meeting with Seong-man and entered the house. Going alone into an apartment with as many as five rooms to sleep, today it felt especially empty.

After a simple wash, blankly looking outside the veranda, Yi-hyeon suddenly went to his room and turned on the computer. He intended to check the emails he had not looked at for a while.

First, the mail of the domestic portal Na-iut. As expected, ads and spam had piled up.

Yi-hyeon did as usual, glancing only at the subjects and deleting them one after another. After checking the Na-iut mail that way, he organized the other site Da-eun the same way. This was not an account he used often, so there were not many accumulated emails.

After that, about to turn the computer off, Yi-hyeon suddenly thought of Gogol. The mail he had created there was an account made when he opened his phone and had not been used at all for several years. There were probably not many people who even knew the address.

Since he was at it, he should check here too.

“Huh?”

Yi-hyeon discovered something odd. There were several emails that had arrived when he signed up while opening the phone, and after that only occasional advertisement mails.

But what is this?

- We’ll change your life!! Sign up right now.

Up to here it was almost the same as ordinary advertisement mails. But the sender was peculiar.

- moo-ae

Muae?

No way!

Around Yi-hyeon, the proper noun Muae was absolutely only Monk Muae of Seong-an Hermitage in Gyeongju. That monk had sent him a mail? And that too, a man who, if the topic was America, would first curse them as white guys before looking, using the American portal Gogol?

Impossible.

Of course he knew that Monk Muae spoke English quite well. He had said that when he was young he had a wandering habit and had traveled around the world.

But an old man who usually did not even carry a cellphone properly because it was bothersome, finding out Yi-hyeon’s Gogol mail address and writing and sending the mail himself—there was no way.

Yi-hyeon felt sweat forming on his hands. Carefully he clicked and opened the mail.

And the moment he opened it,

“Father···.”

Yi-hyeon murmured quietly.

The mail was one his deceased father had sent to Yi-hyeon. And that too, as a scheduled mail before he died.

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