Chapter 1
Summer is not a season with many colors.
Pale green, olive, teal – at most, green is everywhere. Yet that monotonous summer was better than the seasons embroidered with every shade.
Summer, which at first glance looks like a single color but, if you look long enough, reveals its own distinct hues – a summer worth savoring.
Using the old classroom window as a frame, I was looking out at the scenery when a sharp, clear voice snapped me back to my senses.
“Teacher, I’m done!”
Startled, Saem dropped her chin from her hand and picked up a red pencil. The word the child had painstakingly scrawled in his tiny, unsteady hand was wrong again. In the end, she drew a red line through it and wrote “dog” next to it.
“Hyeyul, it’s dog. Not ‘frog,’ dear.”
The child giggled, finding something funny.
“Yes, dog! Dear.”
Even that clear, bright laughter grated on her – proof that her affection for humanity had completely worn thin. The child wasn’t at fault. This was the revulsion she felt toward her grueling exam life and the teacher certification tests she’d failed every time in the second round.
It was self-loathing for not being able to endure Noryangjin anymore, for having been pushed back to this island village – no, her hometown – a few months ago.
Saem forced her lips into a smile and patted the child’s plump cheeks for no reason.
“Shall we stop here today?”
“Yay!”
The classroom emptied quickly after the after-school lesson. Finishing the daily log and standing up, she saw that even the older kids who had been playing soccer on the field were gone.
Finally off work from her part-time job, but she wasn’t particularly happy. Having to spend the summer solstice in a rural village was rather cruel. The days were long, but there was nothing to do.
Saem swung her neatly zipped backpack onto her back. There wasn’t much inside: one classic literature book and, out of habit, a textbook on Korean language education.
Pushing open the glass door, the summer air immediately touched her skin – hot and humid. The tireless cicadas were, as always, droning on.
Saem walked past the flagpole where the Mangul Elementary School flag fluttered, circling around the assembly platform. Then suddenly, she recalled the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education’s policy that the platform would be demolished soon.
It was, without a doubt, a terrible attachment.
The ground beneath her feet, the playground, felt soft.
She’d heard that Hoemok Group had laid this artificial turf. They’d also newly built the cafeteria in the back, hadn’t they? Chairman Cha Cheol-mok’s alma mater, and because this Mangul Island was his hometown, the pretext of sponsorship sounded plausible.
But there was another reason for currying favor over such a long time.
She had heard some news recently. That Hoemok, which had been quietly buying up land, had finally received permission to build a resort.
A “Hoemok Resort Plan” had been delivered to every household on Mangul Island. The sight of the village elders sitting in the pavilion, each holding a copy and chuckling – that was what she saw on her way to work this morning.
She didn’t really understand. Job creation, tourism promotion – those flashy words were just a facade.
After all, they were destroyers. Plunderers who had turned this poor Mangul Island, which had nothing but nature, into their own mine.
Saem, who had been staring down at the grass for a while, lifted her eyes. Then she stopped dead in her tracks – when her gaze unexpectedly crossed with another’s.
“……”
A corner of her heart sank.
Was it an illusion?
A man standing at the front of a group of suited figures, walking leisurely toward her – that was not a sight one usually saw on an elementary school playground.
But even after blinking, nothing changed.
The size of the body under the suit was above average, and beneath his neatly swept-back hair were unusually sharp, chiseled features.
His appearance alone made it hard to mistake him for anyone else.
A heart she had buried in oblivion began to pound. A feeling she had thought was over started beating again, simply because she had seen him.
The man striding across the playground was indeed him.
Cha Tae-mok.
His face bore the years that had passed, deeply ingrained. The mature man no longer had any trace of youthful innocence from back then.
Saem deliberately turned her head away, averting their locked eyes. Even if his fixed gaze drilled into her more fiercely, she could just ignore it.
She intended to pass by as if she didn’t know him.
But because he turned his path to walk toward her, she couldn’t even avoid him.
In the end, she had to stand toe-to-toe with him. She didn’t meet his eyes. As she reluctantly lifted her lashes, a low chuckle fell from close by.
“A teacher who teaches manners – at school, no less – thinks it’s okay to blatantly ignore someone? What will the children learn from that?”
This reunion was anticlimactic. It made the years she’d spent returning here seem almost meaningless.
His first words, delivered casually as if there had been no past between them, made the reunion feel bitterly hollow.
Swallowing a sigh, Saem flicked her gaze to the side. Just by glancing at the group behind him, she could gauge his position.
It was just like Cha Tae-mok to leave Hoemok Group’s personnel standing dumbfounded and speak to her first. Reluctantly, she answered – in the same polite speech.
“All the children have gone home. And I’m not a teacher.”
“Then someone coming out of a school is either a teacher or a student. Ah, so you’re a student?”
What grade are you in? – the following words were close to a sneer. Flaring up with anger, Saem found herself glaring at him. There was no way her expression was pleasant, but Cha Tae-mok gave a short laugh.
“Right, even if you hate my face, at least we’re looking at each other.”
It seemed she had fallen into his trap. Drawing a deep, long breath, Saem glared even harder.
In truth, this meeting had been expected ever since the resort project was confirmed. Still, she had wanted to avoid it if possible. If she couldn’t, and if the day came when they had to face each other, she had hoped she wouldn’t be wearing this shabby backpack…
Is the problem you, who showed up determined to tear up this island?
Or is it still my pathetic twenty-eight-year-old self?
Unable to bear the growing feeling of humiliation under the stares pouring from behind him, Saem gripped both backpack straps pointlessly and gave a disconnected farewell.
“Then I’ll be going.”
She immediately stepped forward, quickly brushing past him. Only after she had passed the entire procession following behind him could she let out the breath she’d been holding.
There was no reason to feel so uncomfortable about Cha Tae-mok’s appearance.
Their history, after all, was just that brief time when they were in school uniforms, hanging out together. The hands they first held in the summer of the year they turned twenty – she had simply buried it as if it never happened.
He should have been just a piece of old memory, like the luxurious ship that, every summer, would invariably dock at that run-down pier.
The journey home was quite grueling. Walking down the hill-like upward slope, you barely reached the middle; then you had to climb another steep set of stairs to get to the house.
On the highest point of Mangul Island, only two houses stood alone. More precisely, two worlds existed. It was the same high ground, but amusingly, one was a shanty in a hillside slum, and the other was the Hoemok family’s villa.
As if to mock that vast gap, the only boundary between them was a single wall.
She had once gone inside that mansion as a child, following her father who did maintenance work there. The panoramic view of Mangul Island framed in the living room’s large window like a single painting was a bit shocking at her young age. To her, Mangul Island was her whole world, but to them, it seemed to be nothing more than a view.
She didn’t know why that memory suddenly came back to her.
Looking at the villa’s wide-open gate – unusual – her aunt, wearing an apron, came out wiping her hands dry.
“You’re back?”
“Yeah.”
As Saem approached, her aunt waved her hands as if to say don’t come closer. Saem knew it was because she didn’t want Saem’s dusty clothes to rub off on her.
“I just finished cleaning and was on my way out. Suddenly today, from Seoul, Taemok…”
Her aunt’s gaze trailed off and glanced at Saem.
“Well… the division head has arrived. He seems to be inspecting various places ahead of the big project.”
“I saw him, actually.”
Saem deliberately bit her tongue.
“Earlier, at school.”
It had been a long time since he had come up in conversation, and it was uncomfortable.
“Oh, really? So he stopped by there too.”
A moment passed where they only exchanged glances. As if to fill the silence, her aunt smiled awkwardly.
“I heard he’ll be staying for about three months.”
Three months.
Quietly pondering that length of time, Saem swallowed a sigh.
“I’ll stay at the lower house during that time. Your old place, Aunt.”
“No, it’s been empty for so long. The whole area around there is deserted. It’s dangerous.”
Just then.
Several luxury sedans turned off the well-paved back road onto the dirt path. Dust kicked up loudly, forcing Saem to step back several paces.
Watching the red taillights of the sedans as they entered the gate one by one, Saem muttered to herself.
“Still, it’s better than here.”
The swarming red lights looked like a warning signal: beware of the impending accident.
As if she needed telling. Never again would she be fooled by this season, just because the days were especially long
