Chapter 26
Early on the clinic's day off, Kim Misuk arrived at the agreed time with a property notebook tucked under one arm.
"Director, I'm here for my medicine. And I brought the first-floor property documents too."
She placed the notebook and a contract form on Gain's desk.
Then hesitated before speaking again.
"The landlord wants to meet you personally before signing this time. When are you free next week?"
"Our clinic closes on Wednesdays. That's the only daytime I have. At night, I'm usually available whenever."
"..."
Kim Misuk took a short breath.
"Actually, the landlord is my mother-in-law."
Her mother-in-law was famous in her hometown for being extremely stingy.
She owned several buildings around the market and had entrusted Misuk with managing them.
No one in the market knew.
But Misuk felt she could tell Im Gain.
For some reason, she believed this doctor would never use the information against her.
She trusted Gain to keep the secret.
"I see."
"When you first rented the clinic, my mother-in-law simply sent authorization papers and didn't come herself. I'm sorry I didn't mention it. She lives in another region, and normally I handle everything with power of attorney."
Misuk continued.
"But renting the entire first floor is a bigger deal, so she wants to meet you in person."
"That's fine. Bring her."
Misuk finally relaxed slightly.
"Next Wednesday afternoon should work."
"Good. Now come over here. I'll examine you."
Gain naturally guided her toward the examination area.
When this doctor looks after me, my heart feels calmer.
Back when Misuk's own mother was still alive, she'd always gone to her whenever her stomach hurt.
Her mother would rub her belly while singing,
Mommy's hand is a healing hand.
This doctor was much younger than Misuk, yet she somehow carried that same feeling.
Gain placed the stethoscope against her chest.
Normally it should have felt cold and unpleasant.
It didn't.
Gain had warmed it first.
"I'll give you a one-week prescription."
"You're busy. Wouldn't it be better if I just took a month's supply?"
"Next week we'll check how you're responding. Then we'll decide whether to keep the same medication or change it."
"Okay."
"It looks like you managed to sleep better last night."
Misuk smiled.
"Yes. For the first time in almost a month. I didn't wake up during the night."
"I'm glad."
"Maybe it's because you listened to me. I decided I'd come get medicine, but I still hesitated for a long time."
"You did well by coming. Next time, don't endure it alone."
Gain personally printed the prescription.
Then placed the freshly printed paper directly into Misuk's hands.
She didn't want the woman's private situation becoming gossip among employees.
Misuk smiled gratefully at the consideration.
She tucked the property notebook under one arm and placed the prescription in her bag.
"Director, thank you very much."
As Misuk turned to leave, Choi Yuri came inside.
"Director! You saw another patient on your day off while we weren't here again?!"
"Oh, she came regarding the real-estate matter."
"Ah, I knew there had to be a reason. Please work less."
Misuk smiled slightly.
Dr. Im really is someone I can trust.
After seeing Misuk off, Gain went downstairs.
Misuk had left her the key so she could inspect the unit before signing.
This is it.
The empty shop, formerly a café, had its shutter half lowered.
Gain ducked underneath and switched on the fluorescent lights.
Circular marks from old table legs remained on the dusty floor.
Let's see.
Gain measured the room by walking from the entrance to the back wall.
Eighteen steps.
Nine steps across.
Reception desk here.
Waiting chairs along the windows.
Gain began drawing the layout in her head.
A chart storage area behind reception.
Twenty chairs by the windows.
A breastfeeding room and diaper-changing area farther inside.
The bathroom plumbing already existed.
She could keep it there but enlarge one stall into an accessible restroom comfortable for pregnant women.
Good.
Gain smiled.
The clinic was growing in a good direction.
The next afternoon, an unfamiliar visitor came to Misuk's real-estate office.
A man in a perfectly pressed suit and gold-rimmed glasses handed over his business card first.
Seo Pilju.
Director of Seohwa Women's Hospital.
"I heard the first-floor property hasn't been contracted yet."
"Ah, yes. There is currently one interested party..."
"The OB-GYN upstairs, correct?"
Misuk's eyes widened.
"Heh."
Seo Pilju smiled.
His eyes didn't.
Only the corners of his lips rose.
"That isn't difficult to guess. The clinic upstairs is about to burst from all the patients. There's an empty unit directly below it. Why would they look elsewhere?"
He studied her expression.
"Looks like I'm right."
Misuk's hand stopped over the property notebook.
"I'll add fifty million won to whatever deposit they're offering."
He continued calmly.
"And fifty thousand more in monthly... no, five hundred thousand more in monthly rent. The landlord loses nothing by taking my offer."
"Excuse me, but what would you use it for?"
"A branch clinic. I hear the Somang City commercial district is doing very well lately."
He gestured through the window toward the market alley.
Pregnant women were standing in line.
"How long do you think that line will last?"
His smile remained thin.
"One accident at that upstairs clinic and it's over. If I were the landlord, I'd choose a tenant likely to last."
After Seo Pilju left, Misuk stared at his business card for a long time.
Then she picked up the phone.
"Mother, it's Misuk. About the first floor... I think you should come up here once."
Somewhere in a mountain village in Gyeongsang Province.
This was where Misuk's mother-in-law, Choi Yeonok, lived.
When Misuk called, Yeonok was at the only senior center in the township.
"All right."
The slate roof had probably once been gray.
Years of sunlight had turned it dark and faded.
The wooden platform in the yard was warped and cracked.
Behind the building, a long green mountain ridge stretched across the horizon.
Garlic scapes and chive seedlings planted sparsely in the dirt yard moved in the wind.
After ending the call, Choi Yeonok heard bad news from another grandmother.
"Why'd she have to leave before us? Tsk."
Mrs. Im, who had fallen uselessly last month and been taken to a city hospital, had died.
"Now that Mrs. Im's gone too... how many of us are left? Six?"
There had once been more than a hundred people here.
Now only six remained.
The group photograph from when the senior center first opened had faded so badly that some faces were barely visible.
Go Mija, who had been closest to Mrs. Im, sighed while looking at it.
Go Mija had lost the senior-center president election by one vote and remained vice president.
She was always aggressive.
"Now that Mrs. Im's gone too, only the mean old hag and the miser are left."
"You calling me a miser?"
Choi Yeonok, the powerful treasurer of the senior center, glared at her.
"Who else? You own several buildings and still don't even give your daughter-in-law spending money."
"Why're you poking your nose into someone else's family?"
Yeonok snapped back.
As usual, Elder Kim played mediator.
"Didn't Mrs. Im say she'd seen blood several times? They say if she'd gone to the hospital quickly, they might've caught it. She thought it was nothing, but apparently cancer had spread all through her uterus."
Choi Yeonok frowned.
She remembered Mrs. Im mentioning blood from down below a couple of times.
Yeonok herself had occasionally seen blood on her underwear despite being far beyond the age for such things.
She'd assumed it was nothing.
Could that happen to me too?
That was a sign of cancer?
No one had told her that.
Her heart dropped.
"They say your daughter-in-law Misuk manages the properties very well."
Elder Kim added while placing thick soybean paste onto pumpkin leaves.
"What's the use of being capable when she's unlucky?"
Yeonok snorted.
She was harsh toward her daughter-in-law.
She'd sold land and purchased several properties in Gyeonggi Province intending to leave them to her only precious son.
They were near her son's workplace.
Then he died in a traffic accident.
Yeonok became numb.
Misuk earned a real-estate license, managed those buildings, and raised her daughter alone.
Other people envied Yeonok's daughter-in-law.
Everyone else's children were so busy working in Seoul that they only came home during holidays.
The only one who visited every month with a granddaughter and brought good fruit or fashionable foods was Misuk from Somang City.
Grandmother Kang across the platform rested one hand on her knee.
"Yeonok, could you lend me three million won?"
Yeonok put on her glasses and stared at her for a long time.
"You aren't asking me to lend it. You're asking me to give it away. Go to a temple if you want charity."
Grandmother Kang laughed.
"Knew you'd say that."
She didn't push further.
Everyone at the senior center knew everyone else too well.
Yeonok removed her glasses and rolled one shoulder.
One side of her lower back felt heavy.
It had been like that for days.
"Yeonok, why's your face looking like that...?"
"I'm perfectly fine."
Yeonok waved her hand.
A text message arrived.
[Mother, I'll come pick you up.]
Yeonok looked around at the people on the wooden platform.
"Misuk asked me, so I suppose I have to go."
Grandmother Kang nodded.
When Yeonok stood, she unusually supported her back with one hand.
"Lucky you. Someone calls for you. Somewhere to go."
"Your son is still alive, isn't he?"
"Enough, enough."
Elder Kim intervened again.
Yeonok left.
Back home, she checked her underwear.
Blood again.
She felt worried.
Then angry.
And whenever she felt angry, she thought about Misuk.
What scheme is Misuk up to now, telling me to come all the way up there?
Surely her son had died young because he'd married an unlucky woman.
Even a fortune-teller once said the wife was a dried tree root and the husband had poured so much water into her that he'd dried up the source itself.
Yeonok hesitated over whether to put the bloodstained cotton underwear into the washing machine.
Then she walked outside instead.
No one could see over the wall anyway.
She placed a rubber basin in the yard and ran cold water from the faucet over the bloodstained fabric.
Cold water removed blood best.
But when the cold touched her fingertips, her whole body felt chilled.
"This really feels unpleasant."
Yeonok clicked her tongue and continued washing.
Even if her dead husband came back to life, she wouldn't let him wash her underwear.
This was something she had to do alone.
Then the yard gate suddenly flew open.
Grandmother Kang from next door walked straight in after leaving the senior center.
Yeonok instinctively clenched the underwear in her fist to hide it.
But she couldn't hide the basin full of reddish water.
"Oh my, Sister Yeonok! Why are you washing your daughter-in-law's panties for her?"
