That deeply moved look made even less sense to Taesu.
“Why did they mention me, and what exactly was said between you?”
“As I just said, they said they were giving us the bare minimum grace period and a warning because we were Korean.”
“And that was because of me?”
“Yes. In their words, ‘It is to avoid coming into sharp conflict with the Hero of Ijambak.’”
At Gu Seungheon’s words, Taesu was even more dumbfounded.
“They don’t want to cross swords with me? It’s not as if I have the power to stand against an army.”
“I had no idea what they were talking about at all.”
“I imagine not.”
“Just in case, I contacted Master, and that was when I properly learned who Dr. Choi was. Hooo.”
Gu Seungheon suddenly let out a long breath.
Having been facing him the whole time, Taesu noticed it at once.
“First, have a cup of tea and catch your breath. Then you can continue.”
“Then please excuse me for a moment.”
Gulp!
As if his throat had been burning, Gu Seungheon drained the cold tea in one go.
In the meantime, Taesu also organized his thoughts.
‘So…….’
It seemed the two armies were about to have it out over the tea fields.
That had been about a week ago, he said.
It lined up exactly with the point when Gu Seungheon had begun losing weight rapidly.
It would not be easy to give up tea fields he had painstakingly built up.
But they could not be more important than his life.
And Taesu still had not heard exactly why he had come looking for him.
Once he sorted things out, his mind felt a little clearer.
Not missing that moment, Taesu opened the conversation first.
“So the grace period given by both sides has about a week left?”
“That is correct.”
“I’m not saying this lightly, but if it were me, I think I would abandon the tea fields.”
Taesu reached his conclusion in a somewhat cold tone.
At that moment, Gu Seungheon’s eyes grew a little sorrowful.
“I’ve thought the same thing ten times, a hundred times.”
“That sounds like there’s a reason you can’t.”
“Hoo. First of all, as the farm gradually grew, the number of people depending on it increased.”
“How many are there?”
At Taesu’s question, Gu Seungheon answered heavily.
“Six Korean adults, and about thirty-five locals. If you include the children, nearly fifty.”
“Ha, that many?”
“We’ve finally put down roots.”
“You must have gone through considerable hardship. Even so, when it’s time to let go, you have to let go.”
Taesu made that point clear.
Gu Seungheon nodded as well.
“Yes. We started with nothing but our bare hands. Even if we fall a few times, we will rise again no matter what.”
“That’s quite the resolve.”
“But not right now. Just one month. We need one month.”
As the situation suddenly changed, Taesu tilted his head.
“You just said you would rise again somehow. Why do you need a month?”
“This is our first proper harvest. We have to, we absolutely have to harvest it.”
“That doesn’t quite add up, so I’m confused.”
Taesu answered as politely as possible.
Gu Seungheon, on the other hand, was becoming quite agitated.
“For this year, we truly devoted ourselves to growing tea without even sleeping.”
“I understand the feeling of wanting compensation for that, but……”
“If we harvest this time, we can finally send even a little of the unpaid wages.”
At those words, Taesu narrowed his brow.
“Unpaid wages?”
“I used to run a small factory in Korea, but then……. Hooo.”
“It went bankrupt?”
Taesu mentioned what the atmosphere most strongly suggested.
To be honest, he hoped he was wrong.
But Gu Seungheon nodded with difficulty.
“Yes. It is shameful and embarrassing, but…… that’s right.”
“Then is that why you said you shudder at promissory notes and current-account checks?”
“When we supplied goods to the main contractor, most of the payments were made that way.”
Gu Seungheon’s voice trembled faintly.
It could not have been easy to bring up something difficult even for himself to recall.
Yet perhaps because he had come to ask for help, he was holding himself together.
Meanwhile, the image of responsibility Taesu had held of Gu Seungheon was beginning to fade slightly.
Bankruptcy was not merely an individual matter.
It caused tremendous damage to the employees who had worked day and night at the company.
A hometown friend who had entered society early had gone through something similar.
Back then, several months of unpaid wages had not been resolved, and he had suffered terribly.
Taesu, a poor medical student at the time, had shaved down his practical training expenses to hand him living costs.
Even now, the sight of that friend clinging to him all night, crying and pouring out his grievances, made his chest ache.
The company was different, but the owner who had gone bankrupt was sitting in front of him.
Taesu truly felt the urge to grab him by the collar at least once.
‘Should I really grab him and shake him?’
Twitch.
His hands felt as if they might shoot forward at any moment.
Suppressing that impulse, Taesu exuded irritation all by himself.
Then Gu Seungheon, his head lowered deeply, continued speaking.
“Normally, promissory notes are set for three months at minimum, and sometimes they clear as late as a year later.”
“You mean the money gets tied up like that?”
“That’s why people sell the notes at a discount to secure immediate cash.”
“And?”
Taesu stared at him quietly, thinking he would at least hear him out.
As it was something knotted in Gu Seungheon’s heart, he continued in a suppressed voice.
“The more we did business with the main contractor, the more money got tied up.”
“Hmm.”
“I was so busy going around borrowing money that I didn’t even have time to sit in the office.”
“I see.”
Taesu still answered in a low, sunken voice.
It was because he felt he was merely listening to the excuses of an owner who had gone bankrupt.
Gu Seungheon, regardless of that reaction, continued with his story.
“If we cut off the transaction, we couldn’t do anything right away, and the more we kept the factory running, the less we could see what lay ahead……. Hoo.”
“That must have been suffocating.”
“At dawn, I smoked a lot on the factory rooftop. While looking down below.”
His voice was so calm it was almost cold.
Taesu, instinctively grasping what he meant, felt a chill in his chest for a moment.
“Hmm.”
“The excuses and lies kept increasing, and the wages I had to pay kept piling up……. In the end, it burst.”
“And yet you somehow came to Kashmir.”
“I knelt before the employees and begged. I told the factory manager and the site foreman that I would repay them somehow, that I just needed some time.”
At those words, Taesu’s eyebrow twitched slightly.
The factory manager and site foreman?
“Did those people come with you?”
“Yes. The factory manager said he served in the military in Afghanistan. Back then, he heard that resource development hadn’t been properly carried out around here.”
“And you believed that and came here blindly?”
“Because there was no other path. Though we ended up growing tea instead of developing resources.”
When he said that, there was a faint sense of emptiness in his voice.
Fortune and misfortune turn like the wheel.
The future that had unfolded so differently from what he had imagined seemed absurd even to him.
After that, Gu Seungheon’s story continued a little longer.
In summary, it connected to what had already been said and repeated much of it.
The added detail was that while roaming the mountains for the purpose of resource development, he had discovered tea.
‘Coincidence? Or fate?’
For a moment, Taesu had that thought.
Either way, it was hard to consider Gu Seungheon’s meeting with tea an ordinary one.
Taesu listened to him as much as possible without responding.
Yet Taesu’s once-sharp expression had, at some point, softened a little.
‘He does seem to be a man with some integrity.’
There was a clear reason for that judgment.
Even though the company had gone bankrupt, the factory manager and site foreman had come with him to Kashmir.
If the employees at the time had let him go without resistance, there was no need to explain what kind of image he must have had within the company.
And he had not forgotten the unpaid wages from years ago and was trying to pay them back.
It could not simply be empty words.
Gu Seungheon’s health was the evidence.
He was severely overworked, to the point where immediate hospitalization would not be excessive, and his weight had changed drastically.
It was not the kind of change that came from ordinary stress.
Seeing that clearly with his own eyes, Taesu’s once-cold heart was shaken considerably.
Before long, Gu Seungheon’s words ended, and silence flowed between them.
Taesu condensed what he had organized on his own and asked.
“So this year, seven years after coming to Kashmir, you’re finally seeing proper results.”
“Yes. Of course, we can’t pay back all the unpaid wages. Prices have changed, too, and even if we get a good price, I don’t know if it will amount to a month’s wages.”
“And now the soldiers are saying they’ll drive you out.”
“I heard about you, Dr. Choi, and though it is truly shameless of me to ask when this is our first meeting, that is why I came here.”
Gu Seungheon spoke with difficulty.
But that was the part Taesu understood least.
“Even if I were to help, what exactly could I do?”
“Well, that is……”
“Please speak with an open mind. That way, it will be easier for me to think as well.”
Taesu urged him in a tone that was not too heavy.
Gu Seungheon, stiff and tense, covered his face with both hands and forced his mouth open.
“I would like you to meet the soldiers on both sides and persuade them.”
“If I persuade them, will they change the battlefield to somewhere else?”
“They don’t have to change it. Just one month. I’m asking them to postpone it for exactly one month.”
Gu Seungheon pleaded in a desolate voice.
Taesu felt sorry for him, too.
But from Taesu’s position, that was not easy.
A doctor intervening in a war?
Indirect matters were one thing, but direct intervention was difficult.
No, it was absurd.
The Hero of Ijambak.
That nickname was only possible because he had maintained an appropriate distance in his relationship with them.
Taesu had no choice but to emphasize that point.
“As you can see, I’m just a doctor.”
“I know. I know that.”
“My work is to help people who are sick. Honestly, I can’t think of mediating a war as something simple.”
At Taesu’s words, Gu Seungheon abruptly raised his head.
Then, his lower lip trembling, he said,
“Doctor, I’m sick. My insides hurt so much.”
“Hoo.”
“Can’t you think of it as saving a person’s life just once? Or do I have to become injured here?”
Gu Seungheon’s eyes changed suddenly.
Thud!
He sprang up from his seat and looked around, searching for a place to throw himself.
Seeing that, Taesu shouted loudly for the first time.
“What are you doing right now!”
“Doctor.”
“Sit down first. How can you do this in front of a doctor……? Sit down, now!”
Bang!
Taesu even struck the table as he snapped harshly.
Only then did Gu Seungheon’s eyes return to their gentle look, and he sat back down with an awkward movement.
“I’m sorry. My heart was too desperate, and I……”
“If you show me that side of you one more time, I will pretend this meeting never happened.”
“No. I absolutely won’t do that.”
“No matter what, doing that in front of a doctor…… Ah, seriously!”
Thump.
Taesu turned his head and struck the table once more.
The very heart that made Gu Seungheon try to go that far was too pitiful.
Conversely, because of his mistake in letting his emotions get ahead of him, Gu Seungheon could not keep his gaze still.
Taesu and Gu Seungheon.
The two consciously avoided each other’s eyes.
Because of that, silence lingered over the table.
“……”
“……”
It was a heavy silence that neither of them could easily break.
A little more time passed.
Silence still hung over the table.
Then Taesu called Gu Seungheon with a weighty expression.
“Mr. Gu.”
“Yes, Doctor. Please speak.”
“Let’s get up for now.”
“What? Ah, no……. I can’t. I can’t get up. I won’t get up!”
Flat!
Gu Seungheon quickly sprawled over the table.
It felt strongly like a “cut me open if you dare” gesture—no, since he was face-down, more like “cut my back open.”
Taesu spoke to him politely.
“Nothing has been decided yet.”
“Even so, I can’t. Do you know what kind of feelings I came here with? I can’t get up like this.”
“Then are you planning to receive an IV while lying there like that?”
Taesu asked in a sullen voice.