Chapter 1: An Empty Season (1)

It was a nondescript season.

I stared impassively out the bus window, watching the April scenery fly past on my way home. I hadn’t been home in a while, but there was nothing outside to fill me with wonder.

The road was far too familiar—I’d seen it in every one of the four seasons. Along this rural road of Cheongna, with its endless rolling hills of various sizes, white apple blossoms would be in full bloom starting in late April, give or take a few days. And near the end of July, all the hills would be flush with verdant greenery. From early to late fall, everyone in the neighborhood would scatter to their own orchards, busily picking the apples.

Then winter would come, and the place would fall silent as if the entire neighborhood had decided to hibernate. When March came around, bustling activity would begin anew in the wee hours of each morning, repeating the dreary pattern without reprieve. But early April was usually a boring season, with nothing going on. That made it a good time to come back home.

Most of the people who lived in these parts owned an apple orchard. Others did various farming work or went over to someone else’s orchard for short stints of work. His family owned an orchard, of course. My family had one too, but as with everything in life, being in the same line of work didn’t mean we lived the same life.

Cheongna, the rural county where we lived, was known only for the apples it produced. Anyone who owned an orchard could proudly consider themselves a part of the region’s upper class. As long as droughts, typhoons, or some infectious tree disease didn’t come visiting, their social status was rock solid. It was easy to spot farmers in baggy work pants driving around in expensive foreign cars.

His parents always drove the best cars in town, and they lived in the most expensive house. Small-scale orchard owners would build a nice house on their land, quite a distance from the town. Some of the families would then only use them as temporary lodgings for busy seasons.

He lived in a magnificent house near the town, but it was built to overlook a lake instead of the rustic, if rather shabby, sight of the sky-blue corrugated roofs gathered together. Just as a feudal lord from the Middle Ages would build his castle overlooking his estate, his parents built their house so that everyone would look up to them. I turned away from the window, not wanting to stare up at that house again, like I had when I’d been an envious thirteen-year-old.

“This stop is Baegun Town Welfare Center. The next stop is…”

I was listening blankly to the bus announcement when my brain goaded me into action, telling me it was time to get off. I’d taken an intercity bus from Seoul, which took four hours to get to Cheongna. I transferred to a city bus at Cheongna Terminal and rode for another forty minutes. I wished I could fall asleep the moment I got home, but I knew that wouldn’t be possible—there would be loads of work around the house I’d have to help my sick mom with.

I held listlessly on to the bus handle as the bus sped along the winding country road between some orchards before finally getting off. If my brother had been here, he would’ve grumbled that the driver couldn’t drive for shit.

The path sloped slightly upward, and the wheels of my suitcase got stuck in every chipped pavement tile, forcing me to pull it free with considerable effort. It was irritating. I felt so tired, like a jaded old woman nearing the end of her life. Having made it inside the welfare center building, I pulled out my phone and went over the list my father had told me to write down.

They were all the documents I needed for a new loan. Another sigh escaped my lips.

“How can I help you?”

“Oh, yes. I’d like a seal certificate, a copy of my resident registration certificate coupled with a partial copy of the original...” I was reluctantly reciting the items on the list when a bell dinged loudly right next to me. I flinched like an idiot, then sighed deeply before continuing.

I didn’t notice that the person next to me had gone oddly silent. While I waited for my papers to be prepared, I could hear the civil servant at the counter next to mine urging their customer to speak. That was when I glanced at the person beside me.

Oh.

“Well, what do you know? Chahui Yun?” a voice said.

The thin lips I remembered broke into a smile. My eyes traveled up his handsome face and managed to meet his eyes that had a ferocious glint to them. It was him.

“Who’d have thought I’d see you down here, in Cheongna?”

“Wookyeong Park...”

“I thought you’d never set foot in this backwater town again.” His mocking voice heralded our unwelcome reunion.

And what are you doing down here? I barely managed to stop myself from saying the words out loud. I had known we’d run into each other again one day, perhaps on a Seollal or Chuseok holiday, when both of us returned to our hometown. But, truth be told, I didn’t really think it was likely.

I seldom came home for the holidays, and even if I did, I only stayed a couple of days at my parents’ house, which was quite far from the town. Perhaps, by the slimmest chance, we could’ve run into each other at a tiny, decrepit supermarket—but not like this.

An awkward silence ensued. Having requested a single certificate, he turned and left the community center without another word. Or the welfare center, is it called now? I didn’t really care.

We were both twenty-three now. I’d expected him to have finished his military service already and resumed school this semester. Perhaps he was just here for a few days. Not that I cared. It seemed I’d left a far more unpleasant memory in his mind than I’d thought. That was a good thing.

But when I stepped outside the building, he was there waiting for me at the entrance.

“Huh?” I asked.

“Hey, we went to the same school from elementary up to high school. Is that all the hello I get?”

“Nice to see you again. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Can’t you put in more effort?”

I sighed, and Wookyeong heaved a deep sigh as if to mimic mine. He was as sarcastic as I remembered.

“Looks like you’ve been well. Good to know. If you’ll excuse me, I’m kind of in a hurry…” I said and made to dash off.

“I know. You’re in a hurry to catch a bus that comes once every fifty minutes.”

“Well... I can’t be sure when the next one will be here.”

“Of course you do. You just got off the last one,” he said.

I noted a sudden country drawl in his words. He’d talked until that moment like an outsider, a person from Seoul—but suddenly it was like he was a child again, with that accent in his voice. It made him sound more irritable.

Wookyeong’s mother was from Seoul, and his accent had never been that thick when we were young. Some of the other kids thought he was haughty for that reason. He did speak the southeastern dialect, but his accent wasn’t very pronounced. The people of Cheongna had a particularly thick vernacular accent, and the low, level tone in which he spoke the dialect had made him stand out like a sore thumb.

Although it could’ve been the content of what he said that annoyed everyone.

“I didn’t realize. I’ll take a town bus and walk the rest of the way, then,” I said, although the town bus didn’t take me all the way to my family’s orchard.

Wookyeong scrunched up his nose and scoffed. “Is that a fucking euphemism for I don’t want to talk to you?”

“No, I really am busy. These documents are urgently needed back home.”

“If they’re that urgent, you should get a ride in someone’s car.”

“...”

“Aren’t I right?” His low, slightly accented tone asked in a decisive tone. His indifferent, monotonic dialect seemed to be trying to evoke a sense of kinship.

I nodded reluctantly. Wookyeong relaxed instantly and put my suitcase in his trunk. I’d dragged that heavy luggage all the way from Seoul with many a grunt and groan, but it looked as light as a feather in his hands. I stared as he shut the trunk like he’d just stolen my life savings. I got in the car when he shot me a pointed look.

His car was a neat German SUV. His family was so rich, the townspeople probably hadn’t even clicked their tongues to hear that a twenty-three-year-old already had his own car. His parents had probably chosen a model that was on the cheaper side of the spectrum for them. “It won’t do to spoil him with an expensive car,” I could imagine them saying.

Everywhere you went in Cheongna, you would find some tract of land that Wookyeong’s family had sold off; some were now home to fancy new apartment complexes, the biggest hospital in Cheongna, a satellite campus of a national university from a nearby region, and so on. And yet they hadn’t even sold half the land they’d owned—or so my dad would grumble in jealousy of Wookyeong’s father, as though it were the greatest injustice in the world.

Wookyeong’s grandfather, who’d operated orchards in this region from an early age, was the biggest landowner in all of Cheongna. Come election season, candidates running for county mayor or township council would seek him out first thing to curry favor with the most influential man in the region. His uncle, his father’s older brother, was the president of a private school foundation that owned the only middle and high schools in Baegun.

As for Wookyeong’s father, he’d inherited a gigantic orchard, which had made the family’s fortune. He was the chairman of some society comprising a bunch of orchard owners, and well known for not looking much like a farmer at all, so genteel were his ways. Despite all the money he had, he would claim with a smile, “A person should always work and lead a productive life,” which earned him respect in the community.

Sometimes he mobilized the entire family to work at the orchard. As a matter of fact, all the orchards in Cheongna were managed by family labor, as it was the easiest way to cut down on costs. People took it to be a sign of how frugal Wookyeong’s father was. Even Wookyeong’s mother, who was pretty enough to be an actress, and Wookyeong himself, the precious youngest son of the family who’d been told not to worry about anything apart from his studies, would sometimes help sort out the apples in their refrigerated warehouse and package shipments.

Even though he made the rest of his family work for him, Wookyeong’s father usually strutted about in a stiff white shirt and suit pants. Actually, my dad and Wookyeong’s father were similar in a lot of ways.

The only difference was that Wookyeong’s father had inherited enough wealth to do as he pleased, while mine was so poor that he sometimes needed me to take out small loans for him in my name to cover his expenses. I clenched the documents on my knee as the expensive car began smoothly traveling down the country road.

We were twenty-three now, but nothing had changed for us. Nothing at all.