Seong-ho stood with his father, Pan-seok Kim, looking out over the paddies spread wide across the plain that ran from Buin-ri to Deokpyeong-ri.

"You always said the soil here was good, that the rice grows well."

"That's right. So it does."

"This is your land now, Father."

Gazing over the broad stretch of paddy, Pan-seok turned his head to look at Seong-ho and asked, "Is it really all right to take this? A whole 20,000 pyeong?"

Pan-seok had never in his life owned a single pyeong of land. The new house built not long ago had been built with his son's money; he'd lived his whole life in the station of a poor tenant farmer. So when his in-law offered a gift of a full hundred majigi — twenty thousand pyeong of land — it wasn't gratitude that rose in Pan-seok so much as an unaccountable fear.

"You didn't do something wrong, did you?"

Seong-ho smiled and shook his head. "Where in the world does anyone give land away because you did something wrong?"

"Well, that's true, but…"

Pan-seok hesitated a moment, then glanced back at Gyeong-eun, arm linked with Myeong-ja, talking behind them. He lowered his voice. "I hear rich families offer money to make you split from their daughter or son — this isn't them giving us this so you'll leave the new girl, is it?"

He looked at Seong-ho, his face full of worry.

Seong-ho took his father's hand. "If they were going to make me leave her, they'd have done it long ago. It's nothing like that, so don't worry."

"Is that… really so?"

Even at the denial Pan-seok wasn't convinced, and Seong-ho set him at ease, then gestured out at the land. "It's a gift my father-in-law gave me because I brought his family a great profit and he was pleased with my work."

"You… can do a thing like that?"

"I told you when I came last time, didn't I? My wife's family doesn't look down on me — they handle me like a piece of fine jade, something precious."

After coming to live…