Baek Kyung-su had been nudging grains of rice around his bowl for a while before he finally sighed and set his chopsticks down. He hesitated—just long enough to feel it—then looked at his wife.
“About… last week,” he began quietly.“When I put about four hundred dollars on the card without telling you.I’m… sorry.”
The words four hundred dollars cracked across the dinner table like a dropped plate.The clink of metal chopsticks striking the surface cut through the air.
His wife didn’t speak.She simply stared at him—cool, steady, unblinking.Her gaze spread over the table like frost.
“You can spend money when you need to,” she said at last, her voice calm but edged.“But how does anyone burn that much in a used-book store? Even rare books aren’t that expensive.So what exactly did you buy?Don’t tell me you emptied the whole shop.”
Her words moved through the room like a cold draft.
Across the table, their daughter Dahye lifted her head slowly, sensing the tension.
“Oho… so that’s why the house felt like a walk-in freezer all week.Makes sense now.” She blinked at her father.“But Dad—four hundred bucks? And you didn’t even tell Mom?Yeah, that one’s totally on you.
Honestly, you’d better apologize properly while you can.You’re going full legend tonight.”
Dahye had studied psychology at a small local university. After graduating, she spent six months at a counseling center before quitting one day with a tired sigh—“What am I even doing here?”
She had plenty she wanted to try, but none of it felt right.For the past two years she’d drifted between part-time jobs, living lightly, almost breezily.On the surface she looked carefree, but beneath that she was thoughtful, sensitive—the bright only daughter who kept their home from sinking into gloom.
But for someone like her, her mother’s sharp gaze was always heavy.So when she learned a week earlier that her father had secretly charged four hundred dollars to his card,the entire house fell into an uneasy silence.
And now, at last, Baek Kyung-su exhaled.He glanced between his wife and daughter, then forced a thin, weary smile.
“Don’t be so upset,” he said softly.“I do understand what you’re saying.But I’m not the fool you think I am.
Before I bought that notebook,I read through it carefully.It wasn’t an impulse.
I don’t smoke.I don’t drink all night with friends.Books—reading, thinking—that’s the one pleasure I have.If I can’t even do that…what am I supposed to live for?”
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He lowered his gaze.
“I should’ve told you first.That was wrong, and I admit it.But that notebook was rare—truly rare.I thought I needed to buy it before someone else grabbed it.
And… I really did mean to tell you.I just… forgot.I’m sorry.”
When he finished, he bowed his head like a dog caught in a sudden downpour.His shoulders sagged.His eyes fixed on the floor.Even his breathing turned small and careful.
A week earlier, in a used-book store in Dongmyo, Seoul.
Books spilled out onto the sidewalk in front of the shop.Stacks piled on crates and pallets blurred the linebetween store and street.People squeezed their way through,pausing now and then to skim a title.
Inside, the air changed.Dust, paper, and old inksettled heavily, like a presence.The aisle was barely wide enough for one person,books rising on both sides,stacked nearly to the ceiling like walls.
Faded notes. Bent corners.These books had already passedthrough someone’s life once before.
The used bookstore in Dongmyowas not a place that sold knowledge,but a place where time—unwilling to be discarded—quietly accumulated.
Baek Kyung-su’s hobby had never changed.Whenever he found free time, he wandered through the city hunting for old texts on Four Pillars and classical metaphysics.To others it seemed trivial, maybe even odd,but to him it was one of the few ways he understood the world.
That day was no different—until a single notebook made him stop cold.
On its cover, faint brushstroke calligraphy read:
“Abridged Notes on the Su-Gyeongshin Method — The Jade Pivot Scripture (玉樞寶經).”
It was thick—hand-copied, every page written with careful strokes.Someone had transcribed passages from the Taoist scripture Okchubo-gyeong by hand.
Inside were detailed notes on the Su-Gyeongshin Method (修庚申法):a secret ritual said to guide a human toward transcendence—the so-called Formula for Becoming Immortal.
But what truly stunned him was the section on Myeongrihak.The core theories he had spent years chasing—scattered, obscure, fragmented everywhere else—were here laid out clearly, logically, as if a genuine master had organized them.
In that moment he knew:this wasn’t just a notebook.It was a treasure—one that could finally quench a thirst he’d carried for years.
“Is this notebook for sale?” he asked.
The elderly shop owner looked up from his stacks.Peering over his glasses, he said,
“That one’s on consignment.The owner said it can’t be sold for less than eight hundred thousand won.If it doesn’t sell by the end of the week, he’s coming back for it.”
Eight hundred thousand won—far more than Baek Kyung-su earned in a month.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said gently.“I don’t have that kind of money.Could you bring it down just a bit?If it’s a hundred thousand, I can pay right now.”
After several minutes of pleading,the owner hesitated, then made a phone call.
A long moment passed before he set the phone down with a reluctant sigh.
“If you pay around four hundred dollars right now, you can take it.Not a cent less.That’s the lowest he’ll go.”
Baek Kyung-su’s fingers trembled.If he let this chance slip away,he felt he might never see the notebook again.
So—forgetting entirely that he should discuss it with his wife—he slid his card into the reader.
Payment approved.
At that exact moment,in her crowded district-office workspace,his wife’s phone buzzed.
— “$400 payment approved.”
