Hyeonjilmusin - Chapter 168



Only Noblemtl

168. I, Mokhwiyeong (5)

My mother passed away when I was ten, so I don’t have many memories of her.

My mother was basically warm to me, but she also had a strict side. It was thanks to my mother that I began to read classics and become close to books. My mother took care of cleaning and other odd jobs at the local school, and instead of receiving a salary, she gave me old books and told me to read them.

Of course, at that age I preferred to go out and play, but my mother would scold me if I didn’t read books.

“Whiyoung. Do you know why your name is Whiyoung? It’s because you were given the name so that you could shine brightly in this world. Don’t you feel sorry for your mother? You should quickly become successful and be filial to your mother… … .”

Funnily enough, my mother was an illiterate person who couldn’t read a single word. To be a little blunt, I would say that my mother was a greedy person who sought her own glory from me.

But I couldn’t blame my mother for not trying hard enough. My mother’s family consisted of five siblings, and the first four were girls, and the youngest was a boy. My mother was neither the strong eldest daughter, nor the greedy second daughter, nor the quick-witted fourth daughter, nor the beloved youngest daughter, but the third daughter.

My mother said that she wanted to study but couldn’t because she was concerned about what others thought of her. In fact, my strong-willed eldest aunt and second aunt couldn’t study either. It is said that only my son, my maternal uncle, could study.

So my mother was born with the fate of not being able to study, so she took out her regret on me. My mother couldn’t choose her grandmother and grandfather, and I couldn’t choose my mother and father, so it was a common farce.

“You have to succeed. You have to raise this family.”

My mother used to say that all the time. I really hated hearing that when I was little. And there was another thing she said often.

“Whiyoung. Do you know what I want to do?”

“What is it?”

“I want to go to a beautiful garden with you in a flower palanquin, eat delicious food, and see the mountains. Or I want to take a boat and float on the lake to see the night view. Will I be able to do that someday?”

When my mother spoke of her dreams, she did so with her hands clasped together like a little girl, as if she were ecstatic just thinking about it.

At the time, that dream seemed so absurd and grand, but now that I think about it, it was a dream that was incredibly simple. Or maybe that was the greatest happiness my mother could see. We were that poor.

The reason we were poor was none other than because my father did not work.

This is also a story connected to fate. My father’s father, my grandfather, was beaten by a man and died of a bone disease. It was around the time when my father had just married my mother.

My father said that it was a few black gangsters who beat up my grandfather. The black gangsters got drunk and started a fight with my grandfather, and when my grandfather tried to fight back, he was surrounded by the black gangsters and beaten up badly.

He said that the fatal wound was caused by a thug kicking the back of the head of the old man who was crouching down with his body down. The police came and put an end to the situation, but the thugs ran away and the old man returned home and complained of dizziness from the place where he was hit, and he died after suffering from depression. That was also a common occurrence in this harsh Central Plains.

Since then, it is said that my father’s obsession with martial arts has become more intense. However, my father’s family was also made up of lowly tenant farmers, so it was impossible for such a lowly person to have martial arts skills.

Just as my mother went from village to village to get books, my father went around the village to learn martial arts. However, every time he failed to get martial arts, he despaired, and every time that happened, he would drink a bowl of takju and return home.

My father was scared. After drinking the takju, he threw and smashed the furniture in sorrow for losing his grandfather, and he threatened my mother and me, asking if they were looking down on me because I didn’t learn martial arts.

When I heard the sound of the sliding door opening roughly outside in the middle of the night, my mother, even though we were having a friendly conversation, would immediately cover me with a blanket and pretend to be asleep. Whenever my drunken father tried to wake me up, my mother would stop me.

I sometimes told my mother about my fears about my father, and every time she told me to stop talking nonsense and read one more book.

If I think about it, my mother was so strict about my education because she thought that I had to become successful in order to escape the cycle of misfortune and poverty.

There was once an incident like this. The headmaster of the school gave a hundred nyang of coins to a mother who worked hard. Considering that the headmaster was poor at the time, it was a scene where you could see that the headmaster was expressing gratitude to the mother.

My mother came home drunk the night before and called me by the hand as she came into the house on tiptoe, afraid that she would wake my father, who was still sleeping.

“Whiyoung, Whiyoung. Come out and do your work.”

Seeing my mother’s anxious appearance, I unconsciously lifted my truncheon and went out. My mother went out through the sash window and spoke to me with a very happy face.

“Be quiet and listen. Don’t wake up your father.”

“yes?”

My mother opened the old purse and showed me the copper coins. I was astonished to see the shiny coins. I was good at counting since I was young, so I asked right away.

“how much is this?”

“A hundred nyang, a hundred nyang. The master gave it to me.”

“why?”

“I wanted to give it to you because I’ve been working so hard. Thank you so much.”

“But why don’t you tell your father? It’s a good thing.”

“If he had money, he would drink anything but alcohol. You know we can’t afford to spend money on things like that.”

My mother handed me a hundred nyang coins. As I had expected, she wanted to buy books with that money.

“Go to the bookstore with this and buy the Analects of Confucius.”

I nodded and took the money and left the house. I was so nervous because it was the first time in my life that I had ever held that much money.

But I didn’t buy the book as my mother expected.

Instead of the Analects, I bought medicinal food, half a pound of pork, a handful of mackerel, and rice cakes made with rice wine, because that day was my mother’s birthday.

At the time, I didn’t know that my mother’s dreams and aspirations were so great, and I just wanted to make her happy.

To be honest, it was unclear and too far in the future that I would be able to show my filial piety to my mother by passing the state exam. So, I thought that my mother would be happier if I spent this money on celebrating her birthday.

A little boy, barely four feet tall, was wandering around the market buying birthday food, so the market merchants were impressed and took extra care of him.

“Your mother will be very happy.”

“You raised your son well, man.”

The merchants would say something to me, and I felt really good about it.

I spent all my 100 nyang and bought two hands full of food. My mother was standing outside the gate anxiously, and her expression hardened as soon as she saw what I was holding in my hands.

“… … What is this?”

My mother asked. I had no doubt that she would be delighted, because even as a child I thought it was such a wonderful thing.

“It’s your mother’s birthday!”

I said that and handed my mother the bag I had filled with both hands. She looked inside the bag and then slapped me in the face.

“Who told you to buy this stuff?”

Of course, the food in the bag I was holding rolled on the floor, and I couldn’t get up because I was more dumbfounded than in pain.

My mother was pounding her chest and shedding tears as she watched me lying on the ground. She was always warm, unless it was about books, and I had never been beaten by her before.

I didn’t even think about picking up the food that had fallen, and just started crying. I think it was the first time I’d cried like that. I cried until the village was gone.

Not only did my father, who was sleeping inside, come out, but the neighbors also came to watch.

When my father woke up, he listened to the whole story from me and lowered his head. He also knew that my mother was putting all her effort into my education.

“This is what happened because my father was incompetent.”

My father was a decent man, as long as he didn’t drink. He comforted my mother and me.

We ended up eating dinner with the food I bought. My father, who usually drinks out for dinner, was home that day. That evening was quieter than usual.

I wonder if it was because I couldn’t properly clean off the dirt that fell on the ground, but every time I ate food, there was a crunching sound of sand in my mouth. Even now, when I think about that time when I heard the crunching sound of sand coming out of the mouths of the three people, I get goosebumps.

My mother, who had wanted to live a wealthy life because of me, passed away when I was ten, still poor. She went to school and worked, and didn’t eat properly, so it was only natural that she would become weak. To the poor, this kind of death was no different from natural death, and there was no one to vent their resentment about it.

Just before she died, my mother showed a clear reflection of her light, and then she suddenly opened her mouth.

“Thank you for remembering my birthday. I’m sorry, Mom.”

I guess that incident must have left a scar on my mother’s weak-hearted mind.

I wondered what kind of answer I should give to comfort my mother on her final journey, but the thoughts coming from a ten-year-old’s head were unlikely to be outstanding.

“no.”

At the end of the story, I answered in such a plain language. Fortunately or unfortunately, my mother passed away without hearing my answer.

My father changed completely after that day. He abandoned his obsession with martial arts and did whatever he could to make money. With no skills or proper career, all he could do was become a tenant farmer.

My father was not a naturally evil person, so he seemed to feel a strong sense of responsibility for my mother’s death.

There must have been one less mouth to feed, my father must have started working, and our lives had improved. We were able to eat meat once a month.

However, my relationship with my father was not good. My father was a quiet person unless he drank alcohol, and I thought he was responsible for my mother’s death.

So we lived under the same roof for several years, ignoring each other.

And when I became a geographer, my father immediately called me.

“What’s going on?”

“You will become a non-partisan disciple.”

“yes?”

I was taken aback by that out-of-context remark, because at the time I was studying accounting at a small hole-in-the-wall shop in the village.

At the time, I thought that the only way to escape this shackle of poverty was to become a merchant. Merchantship suited me too well. It also played a part in my dislike of studying, which was my mother’s dream, and of becoming an uninhabited island, which was my father’s dream.

“Not right now, but I have decided to include you as a disciple of the non-partisan clan when the terms are met. Since it is the word of a renowned sage, I am sure he will not break his promise.”

It was only then that I realized that my father had continued to donate to the non-partisan group. I think that was probably the angriest time in my life.

My father didn’t give up his obsession with martial arts. He just passed that obsession on to me. He killed my mother because of his obsession with martial arts!

My father continued speaking softly, unaware of my burning emotions.

“No matter what you do in the future, a man should know how to protect himself. Besides, as a disciple of the shamanist faction, you have connections… … .”

Thinking back now, it was a reasonable statement and a miraculous opportunity created from nothing.

But at the time, I didn’t want to understand what my father said. I just thought that I was wasting money on something useless. I would have rather used that money to buy land for our family.

That day, I was acting like a crazy horse, throwing and breaking things, just like when my father used to drink and cause trouble.

When I got so angry that my hair turned white, I swear I don’t remember a single thing about that moment. When I finally came to my senses, the house was a mess.

I later heard that my father’s family had a history of fits of anger. That was something that I inherited and that was when it first appeared. I was born with the fate of being able to do the things that my mother hated so much and hated to see.

At the time, I was quite shocked by my actions, because I never dreamed that I would end up just like my father.

I suffered from a great sense of guilt and gave up the vague dream of having a good family, because I felt that if I had a family, there would be tragic victims like my mother. It was an obsession.

The good thing was that women felt comfortable with me. They said that women instinctively sense when a man has feelings for them.

Maybe it was because my sexual desires were psychologically castrated, but many women felt comfortable with me. Some of them confessed to me, but I politely declined them all.

Anyway, the rest can be summarized simply.

So I was kicked out from the shamanistic discipleship that my father had put so much effort into. Of course, my relationship with my father got worse.

At that time, I was of age, so I left home without looking back and began to pursue a career as a merchant in earnest.

* * *

Of course, I didn’t tell Pang Chae-hyang all of this. It was too personal, like how I gave up my dream of having a family and women treated me comfortably, or how my family had a crazy bloodline. I also didn’t tell her about being kicked out of the secular discipleship. That was a story from my last life, not this one.

My past story ended as soon as I arrived at Cheorwon Pavilion.

“… … I see.”

After I finished telling my story, Peng Chae-hyang was silent for a while and then spoke in a choked voice.

Paeng Chae-hyang seemed to want to say something more, but a maid jumped out of the Cheorwon-gak building and cut her off.

“Miss! We’re in trouble!”

“Uh, yeah? Why?”

“My lord, my lord has arrived!”

At the servant’s words, Peng Chae-hyang’s face turned pale.

In this building right before my eyes, there was Peng Jingseung, one of the three greatest travellers in the world and the head of the Habuk Peng family.