Chapter 91: The Healer’s Inquiry

Who is the drama writer Oh Hee-kyung.

Born as the third of four children—one son and three daughters—her family was as ordinary and destitute as any other in Korea.

She hated her father, the poet, who was the cause of her family’s misery.

Her father, hiding behind the façade of being a “writer,” didn’t bring in a single cent; instead, he locked himself in his room all day and never came out.

Whenever he emerged for dinner, he was already drunk out of his mind.

In his drunken state, her father would flip over the dinner table, or hit her mother, her older sister, or her older brother.

Oh Hee-kyung and her younger sibling would clean up the havoc her father wreaked and, with their tiny hands, apply ointment to their injured mother, sister, and brother.

From a young age, she naturally dreamed of becoming a nurse.

Within the small world of her home, she learned that the world could be divided into three kinds of people: those who hurt others, those who get hurt, and those who heal the wounded.

She decided that if she had to be one of the three, she would become the healer.

But the greater world didn’t easily allow her to become who she wanted to be.

To become a nurse, she had to pass the college entrance exam, and even then, she needed money for tuition.

The first time she picked up a pen, it was to earn money for school.

With her small, frail body, even washing dishes or working as a server was too difficult.

Oh Hee-kyung won the New Spring Literary Contest, inheriting a talent from the very father she so despised.

Her award-winning novel was published in the newspaper, and a radio producer from a broadcasting station read it and reached out to her.

She was only twenty-one years old.

In the early 1990s, at such a young age, Oh Hee-kyung began her life at the broadcasting station.

Her words moved the hearts of tens, even hundreds of thousands, who listened to the radio.

A drama department producer who read her radio script asked her to write a scenario, and in 2000, she debuted with the drama .

Now, hundreds of thousands, even millions, would weep over her stories.

What began as writing to pay for nursing school became the means by which she began to heal others’ hearts.

She became the kind of person she had always wanted to be, someone who heals others in this world.

But Oh Hee-kyung’s heart began to rot from within.

Ever since she started writing, the deep-seated resentment toward her father that always lingered in a corner of her heart kept prodding at her.

The money she began earning at the broadcasting station all went to pay for her father’s hospital bills.

Her father, who was treated for alcoholism and anger management issues, eventually developed dementia.

Her older sister and brother, who grew up being beaten by her father, had long since cut all ties, and her aging mother was worn out from caring for her sick husband.

Her mother rejoiced that Hee-kyung had achieved the dreams her father never could.

Oh Hee-kyung hated her father, and yet she couldn’t abandon her suffocating mother either.

A father who pushed his family into a pit with irresponsible words and violence, and a mother who couldn’t protect her young children.

A brother who, after cutting ties, returned home once she became a drama writer and started making money.

Her strong resentment toward them all became yet another driving force behind her writing.

Why did her father beat his family.

Why didn’t her mother divorce her father early and save the children.

Why did her sister abandon her family.

Why did the brother who abandoned his family come looking for her because of money.

In her dramas, the father was simply a weak man. Worn down by a world that deceived and harmed people, he kept falling behind.

Alienated by the world, he wrote every day, trying to gain recognition at least at home, but nowhere would accept him.

The mother worked day and night to keep the family together, not wanting her children to grow up fatherless like herself.

The older sister met a loving husband, healed from the depression she’d suffered since childhood, and had no choice but to cut ties with her traumatizing family to survive.

The brother swallowed his pride and sought her out to pay for his sick child’s hospital bills.

Every member of her family had their own story.

A famous Russian novel begins with these words.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

The unhappy Oh Hee-kyung’s family each had their own reasons.

Realizing that, she began to see the unhappiness of the world as well.

Oh Hee-kyung set out to find the reasons behind such unhappiness.

She wrote to understand her family, and to understand the world.

That was how she wrote her dramas.

In her dramas, there is no clear-cut “good” or “bad” person.

As a result, she had no choice but to show the many sides of each individual, which deeply took root in the viewers’ hearts.

Her insight into people moved not only viewers but also countless writers and critics.

Most students attending academies to become drama writers would say that it was Oh Hee-kyung’s dramas that inspired their dreams.

, where old men and women in their sixties and seventies, gathered in a nursing home, fight and laugh and cry together as they await death.

, where people suffering from alcoholism, anger management issues, paranoia, epilepsy, and other conditions live together with a psychiatrist in one house.

, where, though officially there are no mental patients, the broadcasting station is no different from a psychiatric ward—directors, camera crew, art team, lighting team, actors, writers—all displaying their own wild joys and sorrows as they make dramas.

Any aspiring drama writer, if asked to pick their life’s work, would struggle to choose just one from among these.

There would hardly be a culture critic who hasn’t written a review of Oh Hee-kyung’s works.

A drama writer whose influence goes beyond entertainment and emotion, penetrating into people’s lives and even changing them.

That, perhaps, is the single line that sums up Oh Hee-kyung.

“Ahem.”

Lee Jung-hyuk was sitting across from Oh Hee-kyung, finally having the tea time he had so long wished for.

To think that the one who had teased him so thoroughly was none other than Oh Hee-kyung herself.

Somehow, Lee Jung-hyuk felt as if all his inner thoughts had been laid bare, making him self-conscious.

“Writer Lee Jung-hyuk, why did you come looking for me?”

Oh Hee-kyung neatly folded the gray beanie that had made Lee Jung-hyuk think she was a Buddhist nun and asked.

He had never intended to deceive Oh Hee-kyung, but now that they’d met like this, he decided it would be best to be completely honest.

“I’m going through a slump.”

“A slump, huh. Every writer goes through that at least once.”

“But I think it’s because of you, Writer Oh.”

“Because of me?”

“Yes. I started writing dramas because I loved dramas. Then, after many things happened, I thought—I need to earn a lot of money and become someone no one can criticize, so I can get back the child that was taken from me. That’s what I thought.”

“Yes, and?”

“But after seeing your works, I realized I can never reach your level.”

“Hmm. Is that so?”

“I feel lost. I used to be so sure about what kind of story I should write, but now I don’t know anything anymore.”

Oh Hee-kyung gazed quietly at Lee Jung-hyuk, as if he were confessing in a church.

To others, he might seem like a big, flashy young man, but to Oh Hee-kyung’s eyes, she saw a small, hungry child.

“Writer Lee Jung-hyuk, what kind of life have you lived?”

Lee Jung-hyuk was caught by Oh Hee-kyung’s brown eyes looking at him.

He slowly opened his mouth.

---

Our family was poor.

We were poor, but it was warm, and we were happy.

My mother worked as an insurance planner, and my father worked as a laborer.

Because of his job, my father often had to go out of town for long periods, but he chose jobs closer to home so he could see my mother and me more.

To earn a little extra, my mother found work folding pizza boxes.

So the three of us would have dinner in our one-room home, and to help digestion, we’d fold pizza boxes together like it was a game.

I really liked those memories.

We were poor, but it was warm and happy.

But poverty, in one way or another, always managed to hold someone back.

Even when I was in high school, our family’s situation didn’t improve much.

My parents were diligent, but they didn’t know how to make money.

There have always been evil hands reaching out to such kind and naive people, no matter the era or the world.

After my parents’ traffic accident, we held their funeral.

Relatives I’d never even seen before came to the funeral.

They offered me words of comfort, embracing me as I was still a minor.

Not yet able to accept my parents’ sudden death, I wanted to lean on their embrace, if only for a moment.

But before long, their true intentions came out.

Because my mother was an insurance planner, they assumed the insurance payout would be hefty.

They asked about my parents’ life insurance, went to the insurance company, went to the bank.

They spoke of how much my parents had borrowed from them, what they had done for us, and so on.

But honestly, I didn’t care about the money.

What I needed was someone to fill the void left by my parents, who had always been my shelter.

But after picking apart every detail of our family’s finances, they found out about my father’s debt and immediately cast me aside.

My parents’ life insurance payout went straight to clearing my father’s debts.

The lease on the two-room apartment where we’d lived was also used to pay off the debt.

I learned why my father was in debt from the creditors.

It was an obvious reason—he’d guaranteed a loan for a friend.

When I found out, I wasn’t surprised.

That was just the kind of man my father was.

If he saw an old man selling vegetables on a cold day, he couldn’t just pass by—he’d spend all his spare change to buy as much as he could. If he met one of my friends in the neighborhood, he’d always buy them at least an ice cream before letting them go. He’d even take the landlord’s disabled son out for walks as if it were his duty.

That’s how my father’s poverty caught up to me.

There was no time to grieve my parents’ deaths—I started working part-time jobs just to survive.

Romance was, of course, a luxury.

Even the dream of writing dramas was already a luxury for someone like me.

I went to college later than others, did my military service late, and my first real job—when I was already in my mid-twenties—was as an assistant writer.

I lived in a tiny gosiwon on 1.2 million won a month, but when drama schedules were tight, it actually felt more comfortable to eat and sleep at the studio.

During my second stint as an assistant writer, I met Jeon Min-jung at a company dinner.

At the time, she had just returned from overseas training and started working at CL.

Only the higher-ups knew her true identity, so no one really paid attention to her at gatherings.

I offered her some grilled meat, as she sat in the farthest corner.

Even though assistant writers like me usually get sidelined at these events, I still had to keep the mood light with small talk so I wouldn’t bring shame to my senior writer.

So I made all sorts of pointless conversation—Do you like pork belly? How should you grill it to make it taste best? Do you know the difference between frozen and fresh pork belly? What’s the best combination for wrapping it? Stuff like that. And then, out of the blue, Jeon Min-jung asked for my number.

I’d never really dated anyone properly in my life, so I just thought she wanted to learn how to be a good assistant writer, curious about my beginner’s tricks for livening up a gathering.

But three days after we met, we started dating.

And three months after that, we stood at the altar.

It was about a month into our relationship when I found out about her true background,

But that wasn’t why we rushed into marriage.

I truly loved her.

I loved the way she clung tightly to my hand in crowded subway stations, afraid.

I loved how she’d sip hot fish cake soup at a street stall, blowing on it gently.

I loved how we’d buy vending machine coffee, talk all night about what we liked in each other, and laugh together.

So when she teared up, apologizing for hiding her family background, I held both her hands and told her,

“I’m sorry for not being from a family that suits you.”

“And if anything happens from now on, it’s all my fault, so don’t ever feel sorry.”

“I won’t give up until the end, but if your parents force us apart and we have to break up, that’s my fault too.”

Why was our marriage so easy?

I only realized when it came time for divorce.

From the start, she’d needed a man she could hide her pregnancy from.

Jeon Min-jung and Jeon Young-jun thoroughly deceived me.

But, timing-wise, she got pregnant with her half-brother’s child after she met me,

So I think, at least, not every moment we spent together was a lie.

Of course, that’s just a kind of mantra to keep myself sane.

It’s the conclusion I reached after agonizing over the identity of my daughter, Ah-reum, whom I loved even more than Jeon Min-jung.

Not all those moments were lies.

At least the moments when I felt sincerity weren’t fake.

The father who passed poverty onto me, the relatives who swarmed like leeches, Jeon Min-jung who approached me with ulterior motives, Jeon Young-jun consumed with malice—

Looking back, I wonder why it all feels like nothing now.

Maybe I’ve been worn down by storms blowing in at every turn, weathered to the core.

But so what.

I’m living a pretty good life now.

---

After listening to Lee Jung-hyuk’s story in its entirety, Oh Hee-kyung picked up her now-cold tea and flung it into the yard.

She wiped the cup with a handkerchief, then looked back at Lee Jung-hyuk.

“You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?”

“Have I?”

“Writer Lee, have you ever bowed at a temple?”

“Bowed?”

“I believe if you do, you’ll find your answer.”

“My answer...?”

“The answer to what kind of story you should write.”

Faced with this entirely unexpected solution, Lee Jung-hyuk furrowed his brows for a moment.