Episode 9: Nabi
Munch, munch, munch.
The cat had its nose buried in the dirt, making cute sounds as it ate.
I had tensed up thinking it might be a wild boar, and though I felt relieved, looking at the small cat, I couldn’t help but find it cute.
I jumped down from the car, and perhaps startled by the noise, the cat raised its head and looked at me.
“It’s okay, I’m not a scary person.”
Waving my hand, I approached the cat, but my appearance must have frightened it, because it turned around and dashed straight into the bushes.
I felt sorry for unnecessarily disturbing its meal, but then I remembered that my mother had liked cats.
She always said there were many stray cats around here, so on days we ate fish, she would put the leftover flesh and bones in a bowl and leave them outside.
Father told her not to because cats would gather around the house, but Mom said watching cats growl while eating fish was incredibly cute.
I had been a little scared of cats when I was young, so I hadn’t thought they were that cute, but the cat from earlier seemed cute just like Mom had said.
Still, I also felt a pang of pity.
Seeing it rummaging through food, it seemed to be a stray without an owner.
Gurgle.
Then an enormous sound rumbled from my stomach. The cat’s meal was a concern, but filling my own stomach was urgent right now.
“Let’s finish the field after eating.”
****
I had a simple lunch with the side dishes I had.
I wanted to cook something, but it seemed like it would take too long.
I quickly ate, cleared the table, then laid a blanket on the floor and lay down.
There was still a lot left to do.
Normally, I should have gone back to the vegetable garden to till the soil and mix in the compost I had spread, but perhaps because I had been moving my body a lot since morning and my stomach was full, drowsiness washed over me.
I had planned to take a brief nap, but thinking about it, I don’t think I’d taken a deliberate nap like this since afternoon rest time in the army.
Lying on the blanket with a pillow under my head, my eyes seemed to close on their own, and I enjoyed the feeling of all my muscles loosening.
My eyes were fluttering open and shut when I saw the photo of my parents placed on top of the TV stand.
It was a picture from their honeymoon trip to Gyeongju. I had found it while sorting through Father’s belongings last time and placed it there.
I felt as if the parents in the photo were looking at me, and as I closed my eyes, I quietly said,
“I’ll sleep for exactly thirty minutes.”
****
“Minwoo!”
How long had I slept?
I opened my eyes at the sudden voice calling me.
When I checked the time, it was almost two o’clock. I had intended to sleep for thirty minutes but had ended up sleeping for over an hour.
Perhaps because I had been doing physical labor since morning, I had been much more tired than I thought.
“Minwoo!”
I thought I had misheard in my sleep, but someone was really calling me from outside the door. I quickly got up and went outside.
“Oh, it’s Mandeok.”
Song Mandeok.
He was Grandma Mandeok’s grandson and my elementary school classmate.
We had lived in the same village when we were young, so we went to school together and were close, but contact grew sparse after I left for Gwangju.
After Father passed away and I returned to farming, we met a few times, talked, and decided to become close again.
“It’s not Mandeok, I told you.”
“Ah, you said you changed your name.”
“That’s right, Song Minho!”
He said to me with a slight frown.
He had changed his name from Mandeok to Song Minho. Since we had been out of touch for a while, I hadn’t known about it.
Come to think of it, he had been teased a lot because of his name when we were kids. I had heard about it before, but since we’d called him Mandeok since we were so young, I still hadn’t gotten used to it.
“Sorry, I’ll call you Minho from now on.”
“Were you sleeping?”
“Yeah, I was just going to rest my eyes for a bit but slept longer than I thought. Anyway, what’s up?”
Instead of answering, Mandeok handed me a black plastic bag. Inside were jeon, namul, and fish.
“What’s this?”
“We had a jesa at our house last night. These are the leftovers from the ritual table. Grandma told me to bring them to you.”
“Really?”
No matter how much I liked to cook, jeon was a difficult dish to make easily. The bag contained various jeon such as dongtaejeon and yukjeon, and they looked really delicious.
“Grandma said the fish is all cooked, so you just need to warm it up in the frying pan for a bit.”
I felt grateful to Grandma for looking out for me.
“Thanks. Tell Grandma I’ll enjoy it.”
“Sure, how’s farming life? Manageable?”
“I’m just trying this and that. It’s fun.”
“Really? Good to hear you’re enjoying it. Honestly, I’m just doing it to make money. It’s not that fun for me...”
Mandeok had been farming with his parents from an early age. He had far more experience as a farmer than I did, and I thought I had a lot to learn from him.
“Work is work. I’ll contact you if there’s something I don’t know, so teach me a lot.”
“Sure, actually, I had something to ask you too, so I came for that as well.”
“What is it?”
“You’re not going to plow that paddy field down there?”
Mandeok pointed to our paddy field down below. I had been planning to leave it fallow this year.
I had made that decision because it seemed too much to grow rice yet, and he seemed curious about it.
“Yeah, it seemed too much to grow rice, so I was just going to leave it this year.”
“Really? Then lend me that paddy field.”
“The paddy field?”
“Our field is right next to it. Since I’m doing it anyway, I thought it would be good to plant rice together.”
Mandeok mainly grew rice. Preparations for rice farming were in full swing in the countryside right now, and it seemed he was thinking of cultivating our field as well while he was at it.
“Really?”
“Yeah, if you’re not going to do anything and just leave it, lend it to me. In exchange, when I harvest, I’ll give you one bale per majigi.”
The paddy field down there was about ten majigi. Since Mandeok said he would give me rice, I would receive about ten bales in winter.
‘One bale of rice is 80 kilograms. Usually 20 kilograms costs about 50,000 won… so one bale is 200,000 won…’
When I calculated it, ten bales meant about 2,000,000 won for me.
“Honestly, I’d like to give you more, but rice prices have dropped a lot these days… Still, I’ll pay you market price. If you lend it to me, I’ll manage the land properly.”
“Sure, I’ll lend it to you.”
“Really?”
Mandeok was happy at my words. I had planned to leave it as idle land anyway, so being offered 2,000,000 won didn’t sound bad.
“But in exchange, teach me how to grow rice too.”
I planned to lease it to him this year, but next year I wanted to try growing rice myself.
I could learn from the internet, but seeing it firsthand was different, so I planned to learn from Mandeok how rice farming was done.
“Of course I’ll teach you that much. I’ll contact you when there’s work to be done for the rice farming, so come watch.”
“Okay.”
“Normally you should write a contract for a farmland lease, but how about we go with trust between us?”
I nodded at Mandeok’s words.
Mandeok was very happy about me lending him the paddy field. For someone who mainly grew rice, more land meant more money earned.
“I saw you spreading compost in the vegetable garden?”
“I was trying to grow lettuce and green onions, but it’s more work than I thought.”
“If you’ve spread compost, don’t you need to till the field?”
Since I had spread compost, the remaining work was tilling the field.
“I was planning to till the field this afternoon anyway.”
“But don’t you not have a working tractor? I think your father said that before…”
“I have my own body. I’ll slowly till it with a shovel and hoe.”
I said I would do it myself, but it would probably take more work than spreading the compost.
Then Mandeok said to me with a smile,
“Since you’re lending me the land, I’ll help you out specially.”
“Help me?”
“Yeah, I’ll bring our tractor and do the work.”
He said he would till the land himself, and with a tractor, it probably wouldn’t take long and would be finished quickly.
“Really? Thanks, Mandeok.”
“Minho!”
“Sorry, sorry. Thanks, Minho.”
“It’s not that wide so it should be done quickly. I’ll hurry down and bring the tractor.”
Mandeok got in his truck and headed down to the village. Watching his retreating figure, I thought things were working out well.
If I had worked alone, I probably would have had to shovel and hoe all afternoon. With the tractor, it would be done quickly. Thanks to Mandeok, I had reduced one difficult task.
****
Sssss.
I drizzled some cooking oil in the frying pan and started frying the fish as if deep-frying it. It was already cooked fish, so I didn’t need to leave it long, but I liked the crispy texture of the fish skin.
“If Mandeok hadn’t helped, I would have been in big trouble.”
As I fried the fish, I thought that the vegetable garden work had taken longer than expected. If I had worked alone, I likely wouldn’t have been able to finish until sunset.
Fortunately, thanks to Mandeok working with the tractor, spreading compost in the vegetable garden was finished well, and now I just needed to plant various vegetables after some time had passed.
After finishing the work, Mandeok went home, and I came back home, showered, and prepared to eat dinner.
I planned to eat the jesa food Mandeok had brought for dinner, but decided to eat the fish first.
I set a table with the golden-fried fish, along with the bean sprouts, bracken, and bellflower root namul that Mandeok had given me. It was excellent enough to be called a fish course meal from a hanjeongsik restaurant.
I heaped white rice into a bowl, sat down, and prepared to eat, when I suddenly heard a sound.
Meow.
At first I thought I had misheard, but listening carefully, it was a cat.
Hearing the cat outside the door, I remembered the yellow cat I had seen during the day.
I opened the door and went out to the wooden porch, where I saw a cat sitting at the end of the porch.
Meow.
It looked at me and cried out again. It seemed to have caught the scent of the fried fish.
Indeed, our house was already filled with the smell of fish, and the scent had spread outside as well.
“Are you hungry too?”
I knew it couldn’t answer, but I asked anyway, and the cat reacted.
Meow.
I didn’t know if it was answering me or just crying on its own, but the timing was amazing.
I went back inside and quickly scraped together fish bones and heads, put them in a bowl with a few lumps of rice, and brought it out.
As I approached, it got down from the porch and ran far away, so I placed the bowl at the end of the porch where it had been sitting and stepped far back.
The cat watched me and took small steps before climbing onto the porch and starting to eat the fish I had prepared.
Munch, munch.
It started eating while making sounds just like during the day. Seeing it eat the fish without looking up, it seemed to taste incredibly good.
Looking closely, only its back and head were yellow, and its body was covered in white fur. It was cute how it squirmed with every bite.
“Yeah, eat a lot.”
The cat that had been burying its face in the bowl and growling had already finished eating before I knew it, and raised its head to look at me.
I met its eyes, and suddenly had a thought.
“Do you want to live here?”
It sat with its bottom on the ground and stared blankly at me, and looking into its eyes, I said,
“Your name is… Nabi! How about that?”