Chapter 37
Eom Seok-hwan and I decided to stay at the house with the stable for a few days.
In the mornings, we followed Mr. Oh Gi-deok around and helped with farm work.
After lunch, we walked around the village and helped with whatever needed doing.
Fitting into the village wasn't difficult.
Grandfather had stayed here for a long time, so most of the older villagers still remembered him.
"Hey. Be honest. I'm the one helping with the work. You aren't."
Eom Seok-hwan grumbled and dropped down beside me.
"I'm working too."
"...It feels unfair, but I can't exactly tell an artist that making art isn't work."
There was a reason someone as easygoing as Eom Seok-hwan was complaining.
Maybe because he looked like someone who was good with his body, every request directed at him involved physical labor.
Most of the younger people had moved up to the metropolitan area.
That meant all the hard jobs the village had been putting off were suddenly dumped on Eom Seok-hwan.
To be fair, it suited him.
Farmhand....
Meanwhile, because I was the grandson of the painter, I was given the kinds of tasks Grandfather used to handle in the village.
Mostly things related to improving the village scenery.
Like the mural I was working on now.
Of course, I'm not a painter, so I'm carving instead.
Bringing my itemized tools had been the best decision I could've made.
Especially the passive skill attached to my stoneworking tools.
One Doe, One Mal, One Seom.
As long as the material was lower than the item's rank, I could remove as much as I wanted.
Naturally, the wall I'd been asked to work on was just an ordinary brick wall with no rank at all.
Eom Seok-hwan lightly flicked a finger toward it.
"You can carve a wall like this?"
"Normally? No. This isn't a single block of stone prepared for carving. It's brick, cement, different materials mixed together. The hardness isn't even consistent."
"Then how'd you do this?"
Eom Seok-hwan kept staring at the unfinished work with admiration.
The wall was filled with the village scenery I'd seen over the past few days.
I'd used Grandfather's painting as a reference.
His version had looked down from above like a map.
Mine was different.
I carved the village in layered ridges, almost as though viewing it from the side of a mountain.
Changing the viewer's position changed the entire atmosphere.
Grandfather's painting had felt contemplative.
There was distance between the village and the observer.
It certainly contained affection.
Warmth.
A sense of the village's charming little details.
But it was still the way someone might admire a field of wildflowers from afar.
You could look at the field and think, That's beautiful.
But you weren't yet looking closely at every single flower inside it.
The mural I'd been asked to make would be seen every day by villagers walking through the alley.
So I deliberately tried to show the village the way its residents experienced it.
Not from high above.
But from right beside them.
The scenery they'd taken into their hearts one piece at a time.
Still... after carving this wall, I'm even more certain.
Grandfather lived here for a long time, but he always thought of this village as somewhere he would eventually leave.
I hadn't understood that feeling from the painting on my first night here.
Now I could.
Maybe that was why Grandfather had left behind the map painting when he finally departed.
Perhaps all the paintings scattered throughout the village were the same.
Pieces of the heart he'd left behind in different ways.
"Wow. You've made something incredible."
A villager walking through the alley interrupted my thoughts.
"I heard you were making a mural, but you carved it instead?"
"I'm a sculptor, not a painter."
"My goodness, that's fascinating. Whenever the painter wanted to make a mural, he'd spend days plastering the wall first. But his grandson just goes tap, tap, and there it is."
Curious, the villager reached toward the sculpture.
Eom Seok-hwan flinched beside me.
I grabbed him and stopped him from interfering.
Something this solid wasn't going to break because someone carefully touched it.
"Does our village look this beautiful even to a visitor?"
The villager kept tracing the sculpture with their hand, murmuring in admiration.
They followed roads like wrinkled silk.
Or gentle waves.
Fields.
Roofs.
Stray cats.
Dried fruit.
Sparrows hopping around nearby.
A persimmon tree.
Things that might normally be dismissed as small and ordinary were suddenly filled with affection.
After tracing the sculpture for a while, the hand slowly withdrew.
"Still, I'm happy the visitors this time seem to like our village."
Something in me instinctively said this was the right moment to ask.
"Were the previous visitors different?"
"They were. Such a pretty village, too.... But they only came and made a racket."
"I noticed footprints on the floor of Grandfather's house. Do you happen to know anything about that?"
The villager answered slowly, clearly searching through their memory.
"There were maybe one or two times when things got noisy around the painter's old house. I never went to see what was happening, so I don't know the details. The man at the house where you boys are staying probably knows. I heard he got into an argument with the people causing trouble back then."
Time passed quickly.
That evening, after finishing another day's work on the wall sculpture, I met Eom Seok-hwan and we walked together down the dark road.
The sun set quickly in the countryside, so there was only so much work I could do each day.
At first, that had been frustrating.
Now, though, the sculpture was nearly finished.
Should I sand it or not...?
I wouldn't even hesitate with an ordinary sculpture.
But more villagers than expected had been touching this one as they passed.
There was something appealing about the thought of the work slowly becoming smoother beneath dozens, then hundreds, of hands.
While I was thinking about it, Eom Seok-hwan walked beside me, stretching his body this way and that.
Then he glanced over.
"There's something I've been wondering."
"Yeah?"
"That question you asked the person looking at the wall sculpture the other day."
"Mm."
"Why haven't you asked Mr. Oh Gi-deok about it yet?"
My hands stopped while I was putting away my tools.
I turned toward him.
His expression was unnecessarily serious.
A laugh escaped me.
Apparently he'd been debating whether to ask me this for days.
"I think those people know what happened between Grandfather and Father."
I'd given Eom Seok-hwan a rough explanation of my family situation on the way here.
He already knew my independence hadn't exactly happened smoothly, so the explanation hadn't taken long.
"So I needed time to show them that unlike Father, I had a good relationship with Grandfather. From their perspective, it's someone else's family problem. It'd be hard for them to interfere."
Eom Seok-hwan remained silent for a moment, then gave a low whistle.
"...So when are you planning to ask?"
"When the wall sculpture is almost done."
"Hmm. Not much longer, then."
He muttered to himself.
Then suddenly looked over as though something had occurred to him.
But he never got the chance to speak.
WEEEEEEOOOOOO-!
Alarm sirens erupted from speakers installed throughout the village.
Similar alarms sounded from beyond the mountain.
"A Gate has appeared. A Gate has appeared. Everyone evacuate immediately."
The previously empty alleys filled with people.
Eom Seok-hwan and I exchanged a glance and immediately ran toward the house with the stable.
"Mr. Oh Gi-deok!"
"Oh! Boys! Don't come this way! The evacuation site is the village hall!"
"What about you? Come with us."
"I have to let this fellow loose."
It was hard to see clearly in the darkness, but the corners of his eyes looked red.
"Just in case. He needs to run. ...Go! Go on! Let's meet again alive, you rascal!"
Neigh! Prrr....
The horse snorted loudly as if answering him, then ran toward the mountain.
It didn't wander.
It immediately chose a direction as though it had done this more than once.
I watched Mr. Oh Gi-deok stare after it wistfully.
Then I subtly gestured to Chaeri.
