Chapter 3.1

Chapter 3.1

“Mom, look at the fish over there. It’s making a coin sound.”

“Where?”

“Right there! See it?”

“Oh. That’s a wind chime. That’s what it’s called…”

Yeonsu was born in a mountain temple and lived there for six years. Her mother, young and beautiful, wasn’t much older than Yeonsu.

One day, a woman came to the mountain temple, adorned with a long, trailing pearl necklace. She looked much older than Yeonsu’s mother.

She was an old woman, and the pristine, glittering pearl necklace looked completely out of place on her.

Each time the woman slapped her mother’s cheek, the necklace swayed from side to side.

“I told you not to have it! And yet! Yet, you went and did it!”

“…”

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out if you hid here and had a child? Who doesn’t know you’re determined to ruin my family! I told you not to let me see you again, before I kill you.”

One slap, two slaps, another slap. Her mother cried silently under the fierce blows that made her stumble.

It was the first violence six-year-old Yeonsu had ever witnessed. It was a scene so shocking and horrifying it stole her breath.

Yeonsu rushed to her side, telling the woman not to hit her mother.

The woman raised her eyes, filled with venom, and looked at Yeonsu.

“So it’s you? The child born to ruin your mother’s life…”

At the time, she was too young to properly understand what the woman was saying. She just thought of her as a strange, bad person who was tormenting her mother.

Yeonsu grew up to be beautiful, taking after her mother, and around that time, they left the mountains and began traveling all over the world.

They went to France, Italy, Germany, England, Australia, and even spent about three years in New Zealand.

Life wasn’t luxurious, but it was fun. Experiencing new worlds every day, just the two of them, and meeting people with different eye colors was amazing.

It was only when she was a little older that Yeonsu realized. Her mother’s travels were a long, distant escape, initiated by that woman’s threat to stay out of sight.

Yeonsu returned to Korea when she was seventeen. Her mother said that the woman who cursed them was no longer chasing them.

Her mother was happy, saying they no longer had to hide, and could live in Korea again.

Their bank account was dry from all the traveling, but she said they could work hard and earn money from now on.

But after the woman’s financial support ceased, her mother remained poor. That period was painful, so much so that they had to huddle together to sleep in a cold, unheated room during the harsh winter.

Finally, winter ended and spring arrived. Her mother started working. She’d buy fish-shaped pastries for Yeonsu, who studied alone all day in their tiny room, and sometimes, on good days, she’d order Jajangmyeon.

Yeonsu, at an age when she ate a lot, wanted to ask if they could order sweet and sour pork too, but she held back and didn’t show it.

Summer passed, and then came the season of falling leaves.

The woman’s children took turns visiting their house. They tormented her mother again, demanding she sign a pledge to not receive a single penny of her father’s inheritance.

Her mother stamped every one of those documents, on the condition that they never seek them out again.

The following year, in that same winter, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. This was why Yeonsu couldn’t afford to be distracted by trivial romances during her college years.

They held each other and cried every day. Her mother stubbornly refused Yeonsu’s declaration that she would drop out of school immediately to devote herself to nursing.

They loved each other more than anyone in the world, but they fought fiercely during that time.

Her mother, despite her ailing body, diligently went to work. Yeonsu grew angry day by day, unable to understand her mother.

They’d fight, reconcile, and the next day, they’d say the same thorny words again.

When those days grew tiresome, she’d stay up all night playing with her classmates. Alone, she’d lock herself in the bathroom and cry a lot, watching her friends succumb to drunkenness in the early hours of the morning.

Fortunately, after five years of fighting the illness, her mother was declared fully recovered. The memory of her mother’s radiant face is vivid, as she massaged her calves and knees, which had hurt daily, saying, “See, Yeonsu? Mom’s all cured of cancer now!”

Then, last summer, in that scorching season, Yeonsu went down to Jeju-do with her mother.

To an island just for the two of them. To a place where they could see the sea everywhere.

“Yeonsu, Mom wants to see the sea. Should we go to Jeju-do? Now that I think about it, we’ve been everywhere else, but we haven’t been to Jeju-do. Mom wants to go to Jeju-do.”

Around that time, Yeonsu had quit her job and started working as a freelancer. This was advantageous because she could adjust her schedule relatively easily and wasn’t restricted by location.

Despite her busy life, Yeonsu occasionally walked unfamiliar streets all day long.