HMN C14

Chapter 14

 

“Daeyoung! Come over here for a second.”

“Okay.”

It was a weekend afternoon, with the sunlight pouring down on the restaurant. Daeyoung tugged at his sleeve and patted his waist a couple of times. As always, the restaurant, crowded with people, left him little time even to sit and rest.

The previous Friday, Daeyoung had taken the bus down to his hometown as usual, helping his parents at the restaurant over the weekend. He poked his head toward the kitchen, where his mother was neatly packing side dishes into a large lunchbox container.

“Take this over to the flower shop grandma.”

“Right now? It’s the busiest time.”

“She might skip her meal. Hurry along.”

“Fine, okay.”

There were still plenty of customers calling for service everywhere. Tsk. Glancing around, Daeyoung took off the mask he wore for serving, quickly tied up the lunch container with practiced ease, and lifted it with a firm swing. Excuse me, just passing through. He barely managed to dodge the crowd waiting in front of the store before starting up the motorbike parked outside.

Daeyoung had known how to ride a scooter since high school. Although the restaurant had grown popular enough to build a new building on the outskirts of the village, his parents’ original home and shop were much deeper inside, and navigating the narrow country roads made such driving skills essential. Vroom— the familiar sound of the engine started up, and with his helmet strapped securely on, Daeyoung took off on the bike.

Before the restaurant became famous, Daeyoung’s parents used to provide free meals to elderly people living alone in the rural village. At first, it began with one grandmother estranged from her children, who always lived in isolation. Over time, however, it had grown into a routine of closing the restaurant once a week and visiting every solitary elder in the neighborhood. The flower shop grandma, the one Daeyoung was now personally delivering to, behind a blue gate, was also one of them.

Parking the bike in front of the gate, Daeyoung tucked his helmet and the lunchbox under his arm and stepped into the house.

Creak.

“Grandma, it’s me, Daeyoung.”

As was common in rural communities, most of the people living here were locals who had either settled after marriage decades ago or were born and raised in the village itself. But the flower shop grandma appeared suddenly when Daeyoung was in middle school. Unlike the other elders, who passed their lonely time together at the senior center, she stayed holed up in her house, rarely visited by family. That was why Daeyoung’s parents frequently checked in and maintained contact with her.

Her reputation in the village was not very good. People said she gave a different name every time she was asked and sometimes vanished for days before reappearing. The peculiar thing was—

“Don’t you dare come near this place!”

The grandma was especially cold toward women. After the restaurant gained popularity, tourists often wandered into the village on strolls. She would ignore families or groups of men, but if younger women came alone or with friends, she’d shout at them to keep away from her house.

It wasn’t just tourists. Sometimes when villagers’ families came to visit, she would raise her voice, ordering granddaughters to stay far from the area, even throwing salt at the gate. Naturally, the villagers could not help but dismiss her as senile and distanced themselves. While she had never behaved that way toward married or middle-aged women, the resentment stuck firmly enough that she was excluded from village feasts and gatherings.

“Grandma!”

Daeyoung raised his voice as he stepped further into the small yard. Even though she always paid her share when the village pooled money for repairs, her own house was barely maintained, with everything old and deteriorating.

The only beautiful part was the garden at the side of the yard. While leaving her shabby house as it was, she always grew colorful flowers in the little vegetable patch. When asked why she planted flowers instead of food, she once replied, “The fullest meal is to feed the eyes.” But as a child, Daeyoung could not understand such an answer. It was only after that day that he started calling her the flower shop grandma, and eventually everyone in the village followed suit.

Thud.

“So you’re the one who came today.”

“Yes.”

A rough voice, far removed from the delicacy of tending flowers, came from the inner room. Daeyoung set the lunchbox down on the porch and unpacked it, spreading everything out. Warm steam still rose from the dishes. He kicked off his slippers and climbed onto the porch, moving quickly to retrieve the crooked folding table, setting it up with the food. At that moment, a creak at the hinges announced the presence of the elder, stepping out from the inner room.

As gossip in the village claimed, the old woman was rather elegant. Without any dye, her short hair—ending just above the chin—was a mix of gray and white, not permed like most grandmothers but softly curled inward as if styled regularly. Her eyebrows, already graying, were neatly trimmed. With rimless glasses perched on her nose and a pearl necklace at her throat and ears, she gave off an unmistakably refined air. Especially with her pale yellow blouse embroidered with blue designs, topped with a soft brown scarf, she gave a familiar yet strangely sophisticated impression. Daeyoung flashed her a thumbs-up.

“Grandma, you should really turn on the boiler. It’s not even spring yet.”

Crunch. While snatching a piece of dried seaweed from the side dish, he asked. Shaking her head, the grandma bent down, and Daeyoung hurried to help her sit.

“If I can’t endure this little chill, I might as well quit living and kick the bucket.”

“I read this online. Grandmas who always say things like, ‘I should just die, I should just die,’ end up living the longest.”

“So what, are you telling me to go drop dead right now?”

“Nooo. I’m saying you’ll live a very long life.”

Though he was the quieter type among his friends—especially between Haegyeom, who talked a lot, and Woonjung, who always had plans—he became unexpectedly chatty and cheeky whenever he came here. It was partly because this was his hometown, and partly because the villagers, loving his parents for their service and even fond of Daeyoung who only occasionally helped, surrounded him with warmth. Even the flower shop grandma, despite her reputation for bluntness, had welcomed him ever since he was a student.

“Grandma, you look beautiful today too.”

“Heh, what beauty? I’m old and wrinkled.”

“I mean it.”

There were two sets of utensils in the lunchbox. Sometimes, while working part-time jobs, Daeyoung missed proper mealtimes, and he occasionally ate with her, but today he wasn’t particularly hungry. He picked at the side dishes, keeping her company while she ate at her slow but meticulous pace. Through the rim of her glasses, the elder glanced up at him.

“Why does a young man’s face look so rough and dull? Is college giving you a hard time?”

“I’m doing great, actually! I’m one of the few who still look fresh even after serving in the army.”

Words he would never dare say in front of others came easily here, thrown out shamelessly as part of their banter. Taking a bite of the omelet, he watched as the old woman set her chopsticks down and pressed her knees to stand.

“You’re stopping already? Where are you going?”

Even as he scolded her with his mouth still stuffed with egg, Daeyoung sprang up to assist her. But shooing his hand away as if it were bothersome, she muttered, “Ah, stop fussing so much.” She brushed him off and stepped into the inner room.

“You have to finish everything before I leave! If you don’t, Mom will give me an earful!”

Instead of following her inside, Daeyoung jokingly called after her in a nagging tone, then went back to nibbling some stir-fried anchovies. He wasn’t hungry, but his parents’ food always went down easily after being away for a while.

Chewing slowly, he kept glancing toward the closed door of the inner room, until finally he stood and stepped into the kitchen opposite.

Past the now unused, smoke-stained stove hearth and in front of the old yellowed refrigerator, he pulled the door open. Inside were some pieces of rice cake, probably given from the neighbors’ spare rice, and a small portion of side dishes—likely his parents’ doing.

Stretching his arm, he took down a glass bottle from the door shelf. The flower shop grandma, though not eating much herself, always diligently brewed barley tea. Every time Daeyoung visited, it was the drink he had without fail. Nowadays, many households drank bottled water, but it was the flower shop grandma who had given him that lingering “memory of barley tea.”

Pourrr.

He filled up two mugs with the cold tea and returned to the porch. Although most homes were now sealed up with windows to keep out the winter winds, she always refused and left things as they were, stubbornly enduring the seasons. Once again, she greeted spring in the same way.

“You should at least boil some hot water to drink. Didn’t you catch a month-long cold last winter?”

“Goodness, here comes the nagging again. You fall sick when it’s time, and that’s just how life is.”

Rumors abounded as well— that she had once been wealthy, that she was a big name in Seoul, that everyone in Gangnam knew who she was, or that she had been cast out early as a daughter-in-law of a rich household. Compared to other longtime locals, she seemed younger, her face carrying fewer wrinkles. Most villagers had worked endlessly under the scorching sun, their hands and backs bent from tending fields and supporting useless drunk husbands and children. But the flower shop grandma’s skin still appeared smooth, suggesting she had once lived protected from the sun, with the comfort of leisure. Her hands, where calluses should have grown, bore rings instead, and unlike elders who could barely read, whom Daeyoung once taught the alphabet, her house had stacks of newspapers piled up.