Chapter 11
“Go ahead… without me. I’ll pack the equipment and follow.”
After sending the bean sprout lady off first, Heena stepped one foot outside the main gate and checked the state of the next-door house. The nosy neighbor might have come out to look, but he was quiet when he was most needed.
Heena coughed awkwardly and fidgeted in front of the tightly closed gate of the next-door house, and eventually pressed the doorbell. There was no reply. The moment she took a deep breath and was about to press the doorbell again, Seo Yohan’s voice, drenched in sleep, drifted over.
What.
“Can you come out for a second?”
Tell me what it is first.
“I’ll tell you when you come out.”
Click.
He yells loudly, ‘You’re still sleepy after sleeping so much?’ when I need him, but when someone else calls him, he’s unbelievably cynical. Anyway, he was the same as ever.
“What is it?”
It seemed he was curious after all. Judging by how quickly he popped out. Droplets of water clung to Yohan’s bangs, as if he had come out without even drying his face after washing.
Heena forced the corners of her lips upward and smiled brightly.
“Open my grandfather’s room for me.”
Yohan tilted his head, furrowing his brows.
“You still haven’t opened the door to your own house?”
Grumbling as if annoyed, he nevertheless let Heena grab his arm and pull him along, following like a paper doll.
“I told you, I don’t have the courage to go into Grandpa’s room yet.”
“But why Grandpa’s room all of a sudden?”
“The bean sprout lady asked me to go check on the bees.”
“You can’t keep bees.”
“Still, it would be good to have a new experience.”
Yohan let out a hollow laugh and shook his head.
They say that as you get older, fear outweighs curiosity, but Jeong Heena was always full of curiosity. She couldn’t resist new experiences, and her expressions of fascination were diverse. Come to think of it, I’ve always found observing Jeong Heena’s face more interesting than new experiences. Even now….
Ah, what am I saying? What’s so interesting?
As they climbed onto the wooden porch, they saw that the door to the innermost room, her grandfather’s room, the main bedroom, was tightly closed. It seemed Jeong Heena, who had been cleaning for days, still hadn’t opened that door.
“Just bring out the beekeeping equipment?”
“Yeah. Don’t touch anything else.”
As if it were anything special.
Yohan strode nonchalantly toward the closed door. Jeong Heena, sitting with her back to the porch, stared into the air and gave him instructions.
“Absolutely don’t touch anything else. Just bring out the beekeeping equipment. Got it?”
Yohan didn’t respond to the repeated warnings. Nevertheless, Heena hummed a tune, as if accustomed to Yohan’s silence.
When he opened the door to her grandfather’s room, a musty smell wafted out. It was due to the lack of ventilation for a long time. Yohan strode into the room and threw the windows wide open. A cloud of dust rose into the air.
Cough, cough. He coughed softly.
Looking around, Yohan noticed that his grandfather’s bedding was still spread out. He quickly folded the blanket and piled it in a corner of the room.
It was a very simple room. A mother-of-pearl chest, a low table, cushions, and bedding. That was all there was to this room.
Every time he peeked into his grandfather’s room, he would insist on getting him a heated stone bed, but his grandfather stubbornly refused. He was a man who feared deviating from what was familiar.
“Haven’t you found it yet?”
Yohan was reminiscing about his grandfather when he heard Heena’s call and quickly came out with the beekeeping hat and gloves. He didn’t forget to close the door behind him.
✦⋆🍒.₊ ⊹
“Why are you following me?”
Yohan, clad in a loose long-sleeved t-shirt and baggy pants, was walking side-by-side with Heena, wearing a mesh-covered beekeeping hat and gloves.
“I used to follow Grandpa to the apiary all the time. I’m going to check on the honey jars Grandpa cherished, not because I like being around you, so don’t get any ideas.”
Since coming down to Jinhong-ri, she couldn’t count on one hand how many times she’d heard him tell her not to get any ideas. At this point, it wasn’t even a problem that his words seemed to beg her to get ideas.
“Do you like me that much?”
“What are you talking about again?”
Heena swung her arm dismissively as she spoke.
“Stay away from me. The elders will tease us again if they see us.”
“They tease us more because you react that way.”
“They tease us because you keep following me around.”
“Don’t even say that. Someone might misunderstand.”
“It’s not a misunderstanding, it’s the truth.”
As they approached the farmhouse where the villagers’ apiaries were gathered, the elders’ expressions weren’t very welcoming. It was enough to make them, who had been bickering cluelessly, feel embarrassed.
“We should open Jeong’s grandpa’s beehive too. Granddaughter! Come here quickly.”
“What’s going on?”
The bean sprout lady’s expression was also serious. The wrinkles on her face seemed even deeper.
“Half of the bees have disappeared.”
“Why?”
“The weather’s been strange, and they’ve cleared out all the honey plants.”
Honey plants referred to trees rich in nectar and pollen. The direction the bean sprout lady pointed to revealed a bare hillside.
“They cleared them out to build apartments or something, they cleared them out to plant timber trees, they cleared them out to plant only ornamental flowers. The bees have lost all their food sources, tsk tsk….”
“Jeong Heena, here.”
Yohan stood in front of Jeong’s grandfather’s beehive and gestured for her to open it. Heena, visiting an apiary for the first time, was afraid the bees would fly at her face if she opened the door, but she worked up her courage.
Pointing a finger at the blanket that had been tightly wrapped around the hive for wintering, she looked back at Yohan.
“Should I unfold this?”
As soon as Yohan nodded, Heena took a deep breath, unfolded the blanket, and opened the beehive. Contrary to her worries, the bees clinging densely to the honeycomb seemed to lack the strength to even fly.
“It’s not much different here either.”
“Oh dear, that’s right. A lot of them are gone.”
“I wonder if our queen is alright.”
The village elders gathered and examined the inside of Jeong’s grandfather’s beehive. They clicked their tongues, seeing that it wasn’t much different from the others.
Heena, unable to even locate the queen bee, tilted her head in bewilderment. Only Yohan noticed.
“It’s her, her. The queen.”
Yohan pointed to a wriggling bee and whispered softly through the mesh of his beekeeping hat.
“Aha.”
The queen bee was shinier and slightly larger than the other bees, and she was the most active one among them.
The village elders poked around Jeong’s grandfather’s beehive, as if all hope was lost, and then left one by one.
Heena was pondering how to resolve this situation where the bees were dying, when Yohan, who should have been picking a fight with her, was unusually quiet.
Glancing sideways, she saw Yohan carefully picking out the dead bees one by one, looking distressed. She even had the illusion that his eyes were moist.
“Are you crying? You’re not crying because the bees died, are you?”
Yohan scoffed.
“Why would I cry over something like that?”
But his heart was wailing. Heena, who had known him for a long time, could see things others couldn’t.
“You’re getting needlessly emotionally invested again.”
“Needlessly? Aren’t you sad that the bee farms are in danger of disappearing?”
Yohan’s expression was serious.
Heena shrugged. He always made her feel guilty like this. He would make her feel responsible for trivial things, and look at her as if she were a mutant for not empathizing.
It was one of the reasons she broke up with Seo Yohan. Though it might seem trivial to others.
Just when they seemed to be getting along, they would clash over things like this, their opinions would differ, and they would fight like they were going to kill each other.
“So what should we do?”
Heena racked her brain for a way to quickly remove the dead bees.
“Couldn’t we just take this out and shake it?”
Despite Heena’s suggestion, Yohan continued to meticulously remove the dead bees one by one.
“What if we brush them off with the gloves?”
“…….”
He didn’t even acknowledge her. He seemed determined to hold a funeral for the bees. Heena, finding it frustrating to watch, sighed deeply.
“When are you going to finish picking them off one by one…?”
“I’ll finish eventually.”
“Are you really going to be like this?”
“Don’t bother me and go ahead without me.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.”
Finally, Heena, unable to stand it any longer, bit her lower lip and put her hands on her hips.
“Fine, you do that. You’ll probably be finished by the time the apartments are built in Jinhong-ri. I’ll do something else first.”
She looked around but had no idea where to start.
“What should I do first?”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
Yohan, carefully tending to the bees, spoke without even looking at Heena.
“You’re not interested in this anyway. You wouldn’t bat an eye if the bees died, so what are you going to do?”
“…….”
“I’ll take care of it from now on, so you don’t have to worry about it.”
“…….”
After tidying up the beehive and closing the lid, Yohan brushed past Heena without even acknowledging her.
