“…It really has been a long time.”

I’d brought Mom up to Seoul.

Mom looked at the Seoul sky and her voice shook.

Once I passed into university I needed somewhere to live.

Hotel life had gotten tiresome too.

I wanted a home that was properly mine.

I’m still a minor, so having a parent along as legal representative was essential.

I meant to buy it in Mom’s name.

Unlike me, my mother is a daughter of the group family.

She was free of other people’s eyes to a certain degree.

“You’ve had no reason to come up all this time?”

“Mm… about ten years, I think. It’s the first time since your grandfather retired and went down to the country.”

Mom and I had come to the luxury hall of the Yeondae Department Store in Apgujeong, Gangnam.

I wanted to give Mom an outfit, for all the years she’d had it hard.

Mom looked out at the Gangnam street with eyes full of old feeling.

“It’s changed a lot… ten years goes so fast.”

Before she met my father, Mom was the youngest daughter of a rich house.

You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t look back at a past like that.

Why do all the beautiful women live in Gangnam?

Unlike Mom, lost in her memories, I was feasting my eyes.

I know why the swallow went south to Gangnam, and so does the swallow. (TL Note: 강남 means both the district and “south of the river”; the swallows of the old Korean tales fly off to 강남 for the winter, and the line puns on the two.)

Around the department store, women strode past in a fashion show of winter coats.

All of them beautiful.

Astonishingly, their faces were similar.

“Did you do group dates too?”

“Maybe~.”

Mom, smiling slightly with her eyes, was still lovely.

Not one of the other women around came near Mom’s grace.

She’d borne and raised me and the twins, but the basic looks hadn’t gone anywhere.

She’d had a hard time of it in the country supporting my father, but it’s different now.

“Why did you like Dad? With Mom’s looks and Mom’s schooling, weren’t there plenty of better men to marry?”

It’s still a mystery to me.

My father wasn’t outmatched on schooling either, but next to Mom he came up short.

“It was strange… he said he’d fallen for me at first sight and came right out with wanting to go out with me. That force of his was impressive, so I met him a few times… and this man was so good-hearted that if it wasn’t me nobody anywhere would take him in. So I sacrificed myself for a good cause. Ho ho.” (TL Note: 살신성인 — “kill the self, complete the virtue”; the four-character phrase for giving yourself up for a greater good, used here as a joke about marrying him.)

Mom laughed lightly.

Her eyes shone, as though she were looking back on the time.

However hard life had been, Mom still loved my father.

There’s clearly such a thing as a match made in heaven, set apart from all the others. (TL Note: 천생연분 — “a bond made in heaven”; the four-character phrase for two people fated for each other.)

Lucky man, my father.

I’m the living witness to this couple’s tender love.

It’s a true happiness you can’t buy, however much money you have.

“Tae-san. But why have we come here?”

When I headed naturally for the department store entrance, Mom asked.

“Let’s look around. It isn’t a place we can’t come to.”

“…”

Mom’s family support was cut off the moment she married.

Twenty years of it.

In all that time she’d never once worn anything you could call a luxury.

The clothes and the bag she bought on the Hong Kong trip last summer are all of it.

What she’s wearing now is a mid-price brand bought in town.

It looked all right once it was on Mom, but it isn’t Gangnam style.

I took Mom’s hand and went inside.

“Welcome, madam.”

As we came in through the revolving glass door, two uniformed women bowed and greeted us.

My first luxury department store.

This was the first time I’d been inside a Korean luxury department store.

I’d bought a few clothes at ordinary department stores.

The atmosphere was definitely different.

The department store’s first floor was lined with overseas luxury total brands, less affected by fashion, and accessories and high-end cosmetics counters.

More than half were products I didn’t know myself.

Around lunchtime on a weekend, the store was fairly crowded.

Even at a glance there were plenty of Gangnam-style women, married and unmarried.

I could feel through her hand that Mom was trembling slightly.

“Let’s eat first, Mom.”

We took the escalator up to the fifth floor.

Between arched interior passages, old-fashioned like something medieval, luxury shops came into view.

“They say this place is good.”

Leading a Mom who had gone quiet, I headed for a Chinese restaurant called Yumyeondang in the fifth-floor dining area.

A place I’d looked up on the internet.

I’d booked, so we were given a seat by the window.

“What do we do, coming just the two of us. The twins said they wanted to see Seoul too.”

“We’re going straight back down today, so what’s the problem. And high schoolers can’t be wasting time. If the twins want to catch up with their brilliant big brother, they’d better think of themselves as dead and bury themselves in books. And Dad’s busy with work.”

My father puts no ordinary amount of care into the apple farm he bought.

He does his utmost to grow organic apples that anyone can eat without worrying.

Even though he’d noticed there was enough money to live on, he wouldn’t put down the work.

That’s why I like Dad.

The twins never spend extravagantly either, even with the house rich.

Their monthly allowance doesn’t go over two hundred thousand won.

Not lavish, and not much.

“Tae-san. Isn’t this a little steep?”

Mom looked at the menu and shook her head.

Comparing it with a Chinese place in town wasn’t even possible.

I pressed the call bell.

A neatly dressed woman came over at once.

“Are you ready to order, madam?”

“The Plum Blossom course for two, please.”

“Thank you. I’ll have it prepared right away.”

A hundred and fifty thousand won a head for a lunch course.

“Think of it as your son’s first paycheck and eat plenty.”

Work had gotten so busy that seeing my parents’ faces was hard now.

Once I’m attending school properly and running a business, Seoul is bound to become my base.

Mom and I both knew there wouldn’t be many times like this ahead.

Grown children leaving the nest is the same for animals and for people.

“…”

Mom looked straight into my eyes.

And then she broke into a small smile.

“Let’s treat our mouths for once, thanks to my son.”

And so Mom and I enjoyed the course.

Everything came out in mouth-sized pieces, and even eating a little of each filled you up.

“Son, your table manners are very smooth. Have you been here before?”

From the crab soup onward, I served the dishes to Mom perfectly.

To this day the best items in a Chinese place are jjajangmyeon and sweet-and-sour pork.

“I saw it on the internet.”

“Did you? The internet teaches you everything.”

That’s my mom.

Mom enjoyed the meal even more comfortably than I did.

Her grace was of a different order.

Habits worn into the body don’t go anywhere with the years.

It’s thanks to her family, who are nothing but distant to me.

Until I found out for myself, she never spoke of her family.

When I was small and knew nothing, I asked about them once.

Mom turned her face away with infinitely sad eyes, and one tear fell.

Mom’s pride must have taken a beating because of me…

Before I got to live again, Mom certainly went and begged a favor for my sake.

The social mood back then made it far too hard for a provincial law student to get hired.

For a son like that, Mom would have gone to her half-brother and said the words that shamed her.

“Delicious~.”

Mom emptied even the last ice cream dessert cleanly and wore a happy smile.

“Let’s go buy Dad some clothes. He’s looked tired lately, so this son will send his spirits right up.”

“Shall we? Dad’s clothes are worn out.”

An inescapable thrift is worn into her.

We came down to the fourth floor, menswear and golf and outdoor.

“Son, I think you’ve gotten bigger again lately.”

When we came down standing side by side, Mom asked in surprise.

I’m still growing.

A few days ago I hit 187 centimeters.

“My appetite’s been up lately, and when I sleep I shoot up.”

“That’s because you take after Dad~.”

My mother lies well too.

My father’s height is around 175 centimeters.

Mom’s limitless love for Dad showed itself here too.

“This place looks good.”

We stopped at a DAKS store, which suited my father’s age about right.

“Mm~ the clothes look comfortable.”

Mom must have been enjoying the shopping; the smile didn’t leave her mouth.

It’s the classic picture of a woman buying clothes for the husband she loves.

“Welcome.”

A middle-aged male assistant, courteous and neatly suited, greeted us.

“How about this style? It would suit Dad, wouldn’t it?”

This isn’t the usual Mom.

She picked out shirts and sweaters skillfully, matching Dad’s style as she went.

“Pick out a suit for Dad too. He’s the village head, so he has to think about appearances.”

“All right~.”

And so we bought two suits for Dad and a few dress shirts along with them.

Mom made an effort not to let her eyes go to the price tags.

It’s trust in me, and consideration.

And then Mom and I came down naturally to the third floor, where the designers and imported boutiques are.

The things we’d bought were sent to the goods storage on the first floor.

Shopping with Mom properly for the first time was good.

“The clothes here look like they match your coloring, Mom.”

I led Mom to a luxury store whose name anyone would know.

“Do you think? The colors are nice.”

Mom liked it too.

“Oh my~ who’s this? Aren’t you Seol-ran?”

Until, suddenly, we met a woman in the store with no manners whatsoever…

“S-Sun-ja?”

Sun-ja? That Sun-ja?

At the name Sun-ja I took a good look at the woman myself.

Ju Sun-ja, the woman of the century who turned Korea upside down in 2016.

Fortunately the face was different.

She must have had the whole thing redone—the eyelid folds were heavy and the Botoxed face was taut.

The figure was fleshy and the cheeks looked spiteful.

An artificial-human auntie, created in Gangnam by surgery on a grand scale.

She must have an appetite, because there was nothing to be done about the figure.

“Sun-ja, honestly~ I’ve changed my name to Ju Seo-won. Nice name, isn’t it?”

Of all the names this auntie could have changed it to, it’s that one?

Fate is cruelly playful: after Auntie Ju Sun-ja’s renaming, the name was the same one.

“It’s been a long time.”

Mom’s expression wasn’t bright.

They don’t seem to have been close.

“It really has been. Do you know how shocked I was twenty years ago when I heard you’d been thrown out of your house?”

It isn’t shock in her eyes, it’s relish.

Her way of speaking was severely vulgar.

“You were the school queen in college—how did you end up like that? Tsk tsk.”

Queen? Mom?

A past of Mom’s I didn’t know was about to come to light.

“Would you stop talking about that.”

Mom’s expression turned cold.

“…All right. It isn’t a happy subject.”

Auntie Sun-ja knows exactly how to rub salt in.

An unidentifiable sneer hovered at the corner of her mouth.

“But what brings you here? I’d heard you were living in the provinces…”

Auntie Sun-ja’s eyes ran quickly up and down Mom.

She was sizing Mom and me up.

Anger climbed slowly out of my belly.

From the look in her eyes alone, the woman’s intention was perfectly clear.

“That’s right.”

Mom wasn’t ashamed in the least.

“Oh dear. How do you manage? Is the country livable? Isn’t farm work hard? Aren’t there cockroaches?”

An auntie who despises the countryside openly.

The tone was concerned, but the intention was thoroughly distasteful.

“Are you going to keep saying pointless things?”

Ooh~ my mom’s tough?

Mom did something I hadn’t expected.

She wasn’t ashamed or cowed in the slightest.

A Mom who is recovering her past thanks to her son has no reason to shrink.

In our city she’s a lady of standing.

“Ho ho~ sorry. It’s been so long that I forgot how prickly you are. Well, that’s all in the past anyway.”

An old inferiority toward Mom came wafting off her.

What Auntie Sun-ja’s behavior and language mean is one single thing.

Jealousy.

Auntie Sun-ja was decked out in luxury goods and showy accessories. But she couldn’t come near the pure white skin and the high-grade air of a Mom who’d come out wearing nothing but lotion.

Mom is the one who looks like Gangnam’s dignified forty-something, not her.

Mom. Don’t hold back anymore.

Inside, I shouted encouragement.

“Mother. Who is this?”

I stepped forward, calling her Mother.

The word Mom would have lowered the tone in this place.

“Say hello… she’s Mom’s university classmate.”

“How do you do. I’m Jang Tae-san.”

I threw out a courteous greeting, the way I used to in my securities sales days.

“Your son? Oh my~ he’s nice and tall, isn’t he? Good-looking face too… doesn’t look like he studies well, though. He’d suit modeling, that’s about it.”

A dig came attached right behind the compliment.

Where exactly do I look like I don’t study well!

“I was lucky enough to pass into a university in Seoul this time.”

Getting angry in front of a woman with no manners like this would only turn into a dog fight.

I answered with a smile, without losing my dignity.

“Did you? That’s a relief. IN Seoul is something. A dragon out of a ditch. My son passed into Gyeongguk University law this time, just like that.” (TL Note: 개천에서 용 난다 — “a dragon rises from a ditch”; the Korean phrase for a child from a poor or rural family who makes good, and a live argument in a country where that has got harder.)

The woman’s posturing, insulting Mom and me at the same time, is disgusting.

The auntie wanted to go one-on-one with me.

At times like this you have to stamp on them properly.

“Gyeongguk University law? He passed into a good university.”

“Didn’t he? Ho ho ho. And what university and department are you at?”

She seems proud of a son who passed into a school with a certain reputation.

“Hanguk University law.”

I answered brightly.

The woman’s face rotted in an instant.

“D-don’t lie! Where does a young thing like you get off lying! What would the likes of you be doing at Hanguk University law!”

“Check it on the internet. Hanguk University law, Jang Tae-san. Shall I confirm it for you here?”

Very kindly, I rubbed the woman’s nose flat.

Auntie Sun-ja glared at me.

I blinked and took up the posture of an innocent young man.

Glare all you like. It only makes your face worse~.

The blazing look in her eyes even carried a killing intent, as though she’d eat me.

“But what brings you here? Did somebody give you a gift voucher? You haven’t come to buy clothes with a voucher, have you—how embarrassing.”

Since the son didn’t work, Auntie Sun-ja switched her attack to money.

A professional in bad manners who looks right down on people.

“Excuse me~.”

And in that moment I called the sales assistant over.

(End of Chapter 77)