WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 425: A Family of Distinction (1)
──────
- Han Ga-in
「This is a story from my childhood, so distant that even my memories of it have grown hazy.
At the time, both my grandfather and great-grandfather were still alive. My great-grandfather's name was Han Jin-seong.
Great-grandfather was incredibly wealthy. I heard he'd sold the vast farmland inherited from his ancestors before its value declined.
He'd even used that money to buy land in Seoul's Gangnam before its value rose, so he apparently had a talent for real estate investment.
Anyway, because he was that kind of person, people supposedly swarmed around him like bees in his later years, all after his inheritance.
My family was no different.」
... Who was recalling this ‘knowledge’ right now?
* * *
--- Whoosh!
A gentle breeze brushed my cheek, and bamboo leaves rustled in the nearby grove.
I only had a moment to take in the earthy scent tickling my nose before the little kid in front of me reached for a wriggling bug with a hand-
“Hey!”
“Huh? G-Ga-in, big bro...”
“Min-seok, I told you not to touch bugs.”
A cousin, no, maybe a more distant relative?
Either way, after I stopped Min-seok from trying to swallow the bug, Min-a behind me started throwing a fit.
“Waaaaah!”
“Why? Why are you crying?”
“Aaah! Aahgkiaeaargh!”
“Please make human noises!”
Min-a had fallen over on the dirt and was now making such a fuss because their knee was bleeding.
As I roughly wiped it clean with a cloth, an excited voice suddenly came from beside me.
“Fishy! Fishy!”
My heart dropped the instant I heard it.
Fishy? A fish?
Did that mean the little brat had gone into the water alone?
I spun around in alarm and found Cheol-min already in the stream without even rolling up the pant legs.
It was shallow, and the current was weak, so it wasn't particularly dangerous. Still, kids this age could get into accidents even in bed.
“Come on! Do you ever listen to your big brother? I told you to stay still!”
I barely got my younger relatives back onto dry land and caught my breath when my little sister started making a fuss.
“Big Brother... My legs hurt.”
“...”
“I wanna go home! I wanna go home!”
That alone wasn't a huge problem.
Hee-gang was still little. Playing in a shallow stream with younger relatives she barely knew could be boring.
The problem was that the adults had entrusted the kids to me and sent us outside because something ‘inappropriate for children’ was happening at the country home.
“Let's wait thirty more minutes, then we'll go.”
“... Okay.”
The adults had been fighting day and night for the last three days.
They probably didn't want the kids to see them acting like that either.
* * *
Around lunchtime, I returned to the country home with the kids.
When we opened the antique front gate, a sprawling yard appeared before us.
Well-maintained pine trees stood throughout it, surrounded by spotless white stone walls.
Luxurious windows designed for ventilation and natural light, a wooden hall with a stark black-and-white contrast, expensive folding screens made of soft hanji paper, and delicate paintings on them.
It was an elegant hanok impressive enough to appear in a drama.
Still, the other children and I couldn't focus on its refined beauty.
The adults, our parents, were still fighting loudly inside.
“Jeong-ho! You never even set foot in Grandfather's house before, and now-”
“How are you any different, Uncle? Anyone would think you were some great filial son!”
“What's with the way this bastard talks? Min-seung really did a shit job raising his kid!”
“Good grief! Worry about your own brat, Brother!”
“You little bastard-”
“No, you and I came from the same mother. If I'm a bastard, then what does that make you-”
--- Crash!
“Agh! F-Father, please calm down!”
“Why are you old men suddenly acting like this?”
The tremendous noise from the hanok made the kids and me freeze like stone.
“Ahem! K-Kids, should we go play on the mountain behind the house with your big brother this time?”
“... Okay.”
What kind of inheritance could Great-grandfather have that everyone was making such a scene over it?
「What else could it be? An absurd amount of money that an ordinary person couldn't amass even one percent of in an entire lifetime.」
“...”
“Big Brother?”
“Big Brother?”
“Hee-gang. Didn't you just hear something strange?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
It took the adults quite a while to calm down.
* * *
It felt a little strange to say this as his son, but I thought my father, Han Min-seok, was a decent and admirable man.
When Great-grandfather, supposedly a tremendous tycoon, seemed close to death, Dad had come all the way to the country with his young children just to make an impression.
That was clearly greed for the inheritance, and it showed Dad's human side.
There was one fortunate thing, though.
At least Dad was closer to a bystander than a participant in the ugly fighting at the country home.
Even so, what had happened over the last few days seemed to have worn down his patience considerably.
“Ga-in. You've had a hard time too.”
“...”
“The kids don't listen to you, do they?”
“No, they do.”
“What do you mean, they do? The adults are this greedy, so only the kids suffer...”
“...”
“Jeong-ho, he's Uncle Jeong-ho to you, right? Today was the first time I realized that bastard was this greedy.”
「That doesn't seem like the kind of thing to say to a first-year middle school boy.」
“Ha... Uncle's being too much too. How could he say something like that to us-”
“...”
“Seok-hyeon too, if you think about it-”
“...”
“Ahem!”
Dad started gossiping about our relatives in front of me, and Mom, who had been listening, gave a light cough.
At first, I thought she was warning Dad because his young son was there.
That wasn't it.
“Ahem! Let me say something too. Honestly, do you know who the real problem is?”
“...”
“Your uncle? Your older cousin? No, no. There's someone else who's the real problem.”
“...”
“That old bastard!”
“H-Honey!”
“Your grandfather is the real problem! He's over ninety and hasn't even made a proper will. And what did he say? That he'll give all his assets to whichever one of you is qualified?”
“Phew...”
“If someone who's amassed over one hundred billion won gathers everyone together and says such nonsense, how could people not fight?”
Even to me, a middle schooler, Mom's words made sense.
How someone handled their property was up to them, but...
An old tycoon with tens of billions of won gathers all his descendants and says, ‘I'll give all my assets to whichever one of you is qualified!’
Of course it would cause chaos.
I had no idea what Great-grandfather was thinking.
「Wouldn't it have been better to call a lawyer and write a will that didn't stray too far from the statutory shares of inheritance?
If he'd quietly taken care of people who had helped him while he was alive, there probably wouldn't have been any reason for conflict either.」
* * *
The next morning, chaos broke out from the start.
“G-Grandfather! What are you talking about? D-Donating out of nowhere?”
“Jun-seok... If you make such a fuss, my ears start ringing.”
“Grandfather!”
“Jeong-ho. Look at this tree here.”
“I-I am looking.”
“The trunk tapers a little, doesn't it?”
“I'll take care of it!”
Before long, Uncle Jeong-ho, a relative with a balding head, picked up a pair of garden shears and got to work.
The old man watching him suddenly laughed.
“Slow! So slow! How can you accomplish anything important when you're this sluggish? Jeong-ho, you won't do.”
“Grandfather! N-No! I'll call someone to-”
“Call someone? If that were the point, I'd call them myself. Why would I make you do it? Good grief... Good grief...”
Even to a child's eyes, it was obvious.
That old man, my great-grandfather Han Jin-seong, was using the Inheritance as a hostage to play with his descendants like toys.
One day, he'd scare everyone by saying he would donate his property. Another day, he'd suddenly make them do trivial work, then use it as an excuse to judge whether they were qualified.
His intentions were plain as day, and he didn't even bother hiding them, so quite a few adults turned red and pale by turns.
But what could they do?
He was a tycoon worth over one hundred billion won, he didn't have long to live, and he'd long ago declared that he would distribute his property however he pleased.
Everyone had no choice but to be dragged along by that old brat's tyrannical behavior.
「Great-grandfather was this kind of person? I don't remember any of this... Was it because it happened when I was young?」
“I can't stand the sight of you lazy lot! Go pick some tea leaves right now!”
“F-Father! Tea leaves all of a sudden... We're all city folk. Even if you say something like that-”
“You damn brat! What does being city folk have to do with anything? When I was young, I dried tea until my back nearly broke. Are you saying you can't do it?”
“T-That's not what I meant-”
“Could you not do it even if I paid you ten million won per kilogram?”
Ten million won per kilogram of tea leaves.
The moment everyone's eyes widened at the absurdity of it, Great-grandfather suddenly called over the lawyer who had served him for years and began writing something on paper.
In the end, less than ten minutes later, the adults set off to pick tea leaves, laughing bitterly.
--- Vroooom!
Whatever the reason, once the adults were gone, peace came to the country home.
“Heh! Hehehe! Bwahahaha!”
“...”
“Kids. Did you see? Did you?”
The old-fashioned hanok looked like a drama set.
The only people left were the butler-like staff tending the house, the children who had remained because everyone thought taking them along was too much, and one crazy old man.
“Grandfather...”
“Ga-in, you saw it too, right? Chang-sik, that brat, trying to put a hole in your father's car tire?”
Of course I had.
Han Chang-sik, Dad's younger cousin, was supposedly the director of a fairly large English academy in Seoul.
He must have lived with dignity in Seoul, hearing people call him Director this and Director that.
Yet he had secretly tried to puncture Dad's car tire with wire to keep him from leaving, and Dad had even hit him after catching him.
...
Great-grandfather's Inheritance, worth far more than one hundred billion won, had made that man so ugly.
So...
I couldn't hold it in any longer and asked.
“Grandfather. Great-grandfather.”
“Hm? Do you have a question?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Have I done something strange? I'm doing all this to give you lot my money. What's the problem?”
“...”
I got angry.
No matter how rich he was or how old an ancestor he was, this wasn't right.
Inheritance or not, I just wanted to beat him up.
“Heh... Look at those little eyes.”
“...”
“Are you upset?”
“...”
“Looks like you want to hit me.”
“...”
“Haha! Those cute eyes are fun to look at too. Child, follow me.”
Han Jin-seong cackled as he led me into the country home's storage room.
「This was strange. If Great-grandfather had been this peculiar, there was no way I would've forgotten him. I couldn't remember him at all.」
* * *
Great-grandfather's storage room at the country home.
Dad had once told me that it was filled with all kinds of expensive art pieces that Great-grandfather had collected since his youth.
Maybe that was why I stayed still, afraid to touch anything carelessly.
“What are you doing?”
“...”
“Come here. Do you know what this is?”
The object Han Jin-seong pointed to looked like a sharp Dagger, with strange patterns carved into its handle.
“I don't.”
“It costs three billion won.”
Out of nowhere? In a country home storage room? A Dagger worth three billion won?
Just as I started to stagger in surprise, I heard a snickering laugh from above.
“That's a lie.”
“...”
“Think about it. Why would I leave something worth three billion won in a place like this?”
Unable to hold it in any longer, I said, “A sane person wouldn't, but you might.”
“You're saying this old man can because he's gone mad?”
“Of course.”
Let's be clear.
Great-grandfather was a strange person.
“Heh! Hehehe! Goodness, kids really are honest.”
“...”
“Ga-in. Shall Grandpa tell you an interesting story?”
“What is it?”
“Do you know what Grandpa did when he was young?”
“I heard about it. You inherited farmland in the countryside, then-”
“That was all a lie.”
“What?”
“It was all a fabrication. Someone giving me farmland, the Gangnam land and all that... I made it all up.”
What was that supposed to mean? Was he joking again?
“Ga-in.”
“Yes?”
“Have you ever heard of the Management Bureau?”
The moment he said those words, my breath caught in my throat.
Footnotes:
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