An old, hard-to-open aluminum sash jammer was pushed against the dusty rails, making a creaking sound. The sticker of ‘Shinwoldang’ on the glass door shook raggedly, missing most of the consonants.
Pushing the door open at least two spans wide, Ji-an lay down, tired on the floor.
“Grandmother. I’m here.”
As usual, there was no response from across the half-opened sliding wooden door. It was not the time to worship the spirits, but the brightness of the red lights was lower than usual.
‘Is my grandmother sewing again?’
Ji-an poked her head out through the open door.
Just as expected, her grandmother Moran was sewing in front of a wooden table, focusing intently on the sewing, through her thick presbyopic glasses.
Ji-an smiled lightly and looked at the wrinkled hands of Moran.
“That looks really amazing. It’s so dark. How can you sew in such a dark place?”
Even though she looked much older than her age, it was amazing to see her sew every time. ‘How come you can sew so well even after stalling and spacing out for five to ten seconds?’
It’s said that sewing is done with hands, not with eyes, but for Ji-an, who had poor dexterity, it was difficult one way or another. So the way Moran sewed was truly fascinating for her.
Moran, who silently poked a needle into a red cloth, raised her gray eyes again. She looked at Jian’s face, as if capturing it in her mind and then dropped her gaze while moving the needle again.
Even at the age of ninety, she was full of charisma. In a hoarse voice, Moran said,
“You’re here.”
“Wah, look at you being all so charming.”
It was so dark, that Ji-an wondered whether she could really see anything.
“You still have such a good eyesight at this age!”
“Did you win?”
Moran asked a question that Ji-an had heard quite often, since she was young. She strangely never asked about how and what happened to her. Whenever she went back home with a wound, her grandmother would ask the same question every time.
She never asked her who hit her but would always ask her whether she won the fight or not. Ji-an languidly smiled.
“I lost. She had a lot of backers.”
“Tsk tsk. I know what happened.”
‘What load of crap are you spewing out!’
Jian, who laughed helplessly, grumbled.
“You said I’d make a fortune if I did this. Please look at my fortune again properly. When the hell am I going to succeed!”
Moran was the only one who had backed her throughout her life. She never interfered with Ji-an’s life in any way. She had said that if she stayed quiet in a situation, without doing much she would naturally rise and be blessed with a lot of wealth.
She had secretly expected that it was some divine revelation that would help her push through the art school with no money.
But it had already been eight years since she had led a terrible life in obscurity.
Now that she was fascinated by acting, sometimes her grandmother’s words gave her some hope, which really helped, especially on days as sad as today.
“How would I earn money if I stay quiet and still?”
Moran snorted through her nose, and scratched her white hair with the tip of the needle.
Looking at her scary expression, Ji-an trembled a little. She sat on the floor and
asked seriously.
“For now, please take a look at it. When will I really make money?”
Deep wrinkles habitually formed between the wrinkled white eyebrows. The hand movement of pulling a long thread and reinserting the needle was delicate, as well as careless.
“The jerk who was supposed to give me money unexpectedly withdrew from it.”
Ji-an narrowed her slender eyes, while dully reprimanding the director with a scowl.
‘What a nasty fate I have!’ Over the past eight years, she had received more than a dozen sponsorship offers.
The chairman of a large corporation, a politician, a prosecutor, a hospital director, etc. All kinds of high-ranking men had coveted her body.
‘But Grandpa types are not my taste.’
Every time, she had said this same thing like a parrot to console herself, but fate would somehow slap her square in the face. After so long nothing had been solved in her life and her problems and sorrows only kept on increasing.
“Now am I supposed to sell my body to be successful, is that what the divination means?”
Moran’s lips playfully curved when she heard Ji-an ask this question with a very sad voice.
“What’s wrong with selling your body?”
“You’re so bad, really….”
“Your face is like that, full of life.”
She had been hearing this since she was ten years old. Whenever she lay on Moran’s lap asking to clean her ears, she would always hear Moran say this.
Ji-an sighed and stood up from the floor.
“I don’t know. I’m going up to get some rest.”
Her voice became sulky and blunt. This childish side of hers only came out in front of Moran.
Just as she had put on her sneakers, the door suddenly opened halfway.
“Wah!”
From the other side, hidden by the wooden door, a sharp sound of something metallic falling came over. Jian replied grumpily, as she peeked through the door gap.
“What happened?”
“Who did you meet today?”
“Hmm. I met a lot of people today. Starting from the director to the staff members, I met almost more than 50 people.”
There was a strange silence around the room. The grandmother didn’t say anything for a while. Then a strange voice came from beyond the door.
“Okay, now go and rest.”
Ji-an just shrugged the weird moment off and reminded Moran before going out of the doorway.
“Go to bed early. Make sure to turn on the fan timer.”
~Cleeek
The frictional sound of the sash jammer being pulled against the railing, pierced her cochlea and filled the silent place. The sound of Ji-an’s footsteps as she climbed the iron staircase to go up the rooftop, were as clear as a Kkwaenggwari.
[T/N: The kkwaenggwari is a small flat gong used primarily in folk music of Korea. It is made of brass and is played with a hard stick.]
After a while, the sound coming from the top stopped.
The strange energy around Jian’s fingers flickered the candle flame that softly lit up the room and then disappeared.
The movement of poking the needle suddenly stopped. The white-colored pupils glanced up at the full moon above the window.
A vague sentence came out of Moran’s wrinkled lips.
“Has he found you?”
* * *
An orange light from the desk lamp spread throughout the dark rooftop room. Ji-an, who was sitting at a desk chair and chewing her lower lip, sighed and pounded her forehead against the desk.
“Ah… What a waste!”
The finger, which had been floating for a long time in the air, reluctantly pressed the transfer button. At this touch, an amount of 600,000 won suddenly disappeared. It was literally wasting money.
The note handed by the Chief of the costume team was lying crumpled in her hand. As soon as she found out that the price of the dress was really 600,000 won, she really understood the meaning of the phrase ‘feeling the sky fall’.
‘Damn it.’
Ji-an slightly lifted her forehead from the desk and rubbed it, while checking her account balance with desperate eyes.
402,375 won.
She closed her eyes tightly. A hot sigh spread over the desk as she leaned on the desk again.
The difference between 100 and 90 was truly terrifying. She knew the money would be used someday, but it was 1 million won that she had been saving from her food expenses for the past few days.
“I should’ve just bought the toast.”
‘While waiting for the bus to go to work, how fiercely did I use to avoid the tempting hot food truck toast!’
Even if the minimum amount of her withdrawals was 2,000 won, she was always worried about saving money. If only she had known that one day the 1 million won she saved would be wasted like this in just a few hours, she wouldn’t have been so frugal.
Ji-an, who raised her head melancholically, opened the household account book, while holding her throbbing forehead. As she wrote the expenditures, the tip of the ballpoint pen trembled.
‘600,000 won for a ruined dress’
‘What kind of a situation is this! I barely buy T-shirts worth 5,000 won.’
Jian, who stared at the bitter and striking numbers, roughly wrote down in the remarks column the details of all the monthly expenditure that would disappear from her account in a few days.
Water tax, gas bill, telecommunication bill, insurance premium and other living expenses.
The remaining 400,000 won would not be enough to pass this month. The amount was so small that it would easily disappear like black ashes.
‘I can’t even dream of saving this month. What a hell this world is!’
Lying on the cold floor, Jian covered her eyes with her arms.
‘The amount that I’ll get for appearing in the drama coming next month is only 1 million won.’
And on top of that, the rooftop room and Shinwoldang’s monthly rent were also expected to increase from next month.
“Ah…. I’ll go crazy, really.”
As she realised she wasted money that could have paid the monthly rent, she couldn’t help but groan painfully again.
Her grandmother’s financial condition was also poor. She couldn’t even afford to pay her grandmother her pocket money. She wanted to at least pay back the monthly rent for her kindness. She couldn’t give up after promising all these things.
“Ha…”
After sighing at her misfortune, Ji-an suddenly stood up and picked up her cellphone. She was desperate to enter any aspiring actor’s cafe and search for an audition notice.
[T/N: In korea, cafe also mean internet forums]
Promotions, CFs, music videos, dramas and minor movie roles.
The results came out relatively quick. She found an audition for a role that could provide a daily wage, and then carefully planned her schedule by date and time.
Looking at the remaining balance in her bank account, she was too discouraged and couldn’t help but sigh. The situation was bad and the night was short.
She didn’t have the courage to jump into the Han River, so she had to prepare herself to fight again from tomorrow.
* * *
A soft moonlight shone into the large glass window on one side of the study. Seung-won, who was looking into the newspaper, with his back against the moonlight, glanced up.
“Dead? Suddenly?”
Byung-cheon, who was delivering the news, furrowed his eyebrows with great regret.
“Yes. She died in a car accident..”
Seung-won shook his head while clicking his tongue.
“What a mess….”
Shin Yuri, who gave a water slap to the female protagonist in the previous episode, died suddenly. Now, the female protagonist was about to wake up and take her revenge properly, what kind of absurd development was this?
“I guess that day she faced a problem. After all, she created trouble with the main actor, so I’m sure they must have pushed all the damages to the powerless supporting actor. Well, even if it’s true, how could someone be so cold?”
Byung-cheon sighed heavily with mixed emotions. Seung-won, who was not at all interested in the drama’s progression,
asked hastily.
“So, have you contacted her?”
Byung-cheon, who was sniffling at the news of Shin Yuri’s death, raised his head.
“Oh, that’s… I think she must be a little doubtful now, so I’m working behind the scenes. We need to create an environment where we can trap the prey before throwing the bait.”
Byung-cheon, who had been sobbing over the news of Shin Yuri’s death just a second ago, was now sneering coldly.
“Well, it’s a pity that the character died, but I think it will make our work a little easier. If you give me a month’s time, I will definitely bring her to you.”
“A month?”
Seung-won’s eyes narrowed as he faced the desk calendar at the corner of the desk. His gaze stayed fixed on it for about two seconds. Suddenly the calendar was pushed by an invisible force, and it flew straight towards Byung-cheon.
D-148
The time left for the thousand year fate was marked on the D-Day calendar.
“Are you sure about ‘a month’?”
Listening to the low, modulated voice, Byung-cheon gulped down his saliva and quickly corrected himself.
“It was a slip of tongue. 15 days, I only need 15 days.”
“I don’t have time to wait leisurely. Move as fast as you can.”
“Yes! Yes, sir.”
After Byung-cheon left the study, Seung-won threw the newspaper over his desk and brushed his hand down his face. A sigh leaked out habitually.
“Ha…”
His eyelids were heavy, as he couldn’t sleep in the last few days. This was because the day when the crescent moon rises was just around the corner.
[T/N: There are two types of crescent moon in korean language; one that forms at the beginning and at the end of the lunar month. Here, it is the latter. 그믐달 is the crescent moon that forms at the end of a lunar month.]
As the time of his fate approached, he could clearly feel his energy gradually weakening. ‘I have to be with her as soon as possible.’ He couldn’t wait for a month, let alone a week.
‘Should I just grab her and tie her up?’
Leaning his head against the back of the chair, with an annoyed expression, he looked at the newspaper he had thrown away.
< Missing crew member found dead! Suspect Choi Dae-chun >
The headlines on the front page and the killer’s hideous pictures came into his sight.
“It’s Choi Dae-chun….”
He tilted his head crookedly, and slowly touched his chin. His dark blue eyes quickly faded into red.