“The thing is, I actually came from the future. Senior, you’re going to die of alcoholism in less than ten years. Cut back on the drinking.”
“I'm going to die anyway in ten years? Damn, then I might as well drink myself silly.”
That was the reaction I could predict with roughly ninety-nine percent certainty if I told him the truth. I needed a different approach. I wondered if I could tempt Senior Noh away from alcohol with something he liked, but no matter how hard I thought about what Senior Noh liked, the only thing he loved most was drinking.
“I’ve been reading this lately. It’s pretty good.”
Jung-sam pulled a book of poetry from a bookshelf that could only be called the bastard child of furniture and scrap materials. As expected, the old-looking book was underlined all over, and next to the difficult Chinese characters, their meanings and pronunciations had been carefully written in.
Jung-sam was that kind of person. A neat and gentle scholar. An artist who loved music and literature. Yet he was also a weary middle-aged family man who couldn’t find his place anywhere he ought to have fit and had spent his days taking whatever manual labor he could get.
Senior Noh seemed to feel sorry for Jung-sam, too. But Joo-young and Senior Noh were both barely hanging on, and it was only a matter of time before they ended up in the same situation. So the emotion that warmly embraced the three men in that back room that night was probably the sympathy of people suffering from the same illness.
“...A country like the white flowers of an onion that may wither at any moment, Loulan...”
Jung-sam read them a line from a poem he liked.
“Loulan? The place on the Silk Road?”
“Yeah, you know it too, Joo-young. It’s a poem called ‘Loulan’ by the poet Kim Chun-su...”
“Hey, who doesn’t know Loulan? I know Loulan too.”
Senior Noh cut in. I thought he was about to make some old-man joke about “Loulan,” but—
“Do you guys know about the Beauty of Loulan? Huh? At least heard of her?”
Nope. He came right out of left field. Neither Jung-sam nor Joo-young could answer immediately.
“You don’t knooow? The Beauty of Loulan? Oh my God, I’m going crazy! I’m drinking with kids who don’t even know about the Beauty of Loulan. Ohhh~!”
“What is it?”
He was laying it on so thick that he really seemed to know something, so Joo-young pressed him for an answer. Senior Noh immediately wiped the exaggeration from his face, calmly took a drink of makgeolli, and began.
“There was a beautiful woman who lived in Loulan 3,800 years ago. She was discovered as a mummy. Her long eyebrows and sharp nose were still perfectly intact.”
It sounded vaguely familiar. Senior Noh continued, his eyes fixed as though he were gazing at Loulan 3,800 years ago, beyond the limits of time and space.
“The clothes wrapped around her had survived intact too, and four Chinese characters were still written on them. Unchanged for a thousand ages.”
“Unchanged for a thousand ages? Does that mean she didn’t change for a thousand years?”
“That’s right. She was found unchanged after more than three times a thousand years had passed.”
“Unchanged for a thousand ages... Maybe the man who loved her carved it there. To mean that his love for his dead lover would never change for a thousand years.”
Senior Noh responded to Jung-sam with silent agreement.
“Exactly. That’s how you have to see it. But hey, can a person’s love for another person really stay unchanged for a thousand years?”
All three men answered with silent disagreement. And then they grew a little sad.
“This part is really, truly true... I really, really want to see her at least once. They say she’s in a museum somewhere in Xinjiang or someplace like that, even now.”
Senior Noh put extra emphasis on every “really” as he spoke, then slowly let his head and shoulders droop beneath the weight of his melancholy.
“Unchanged for a thousand ages... She stayed unchanged for 3,800 years, believing in some ridiculous promise of love... I really want to see her at least once...”
A brief silence passed.
“Well, then let’s go, for crying out loud~”
Joo-young’s booming voice broke the silence.
“Let’s go see that woman in the museum somewhere in Xinjiang or wherever it is. I’ll take you there myself, Senior!”
Senior Noh looked at Joo-young as if asking what kind of nonsense he was spouting, so Joo-young finished his thought.
“Exactly ten years from today, if you’re still alive, Senior, I’ll take you to see the Beauty of Loulan. And I’ll cover every single expense, of course!”
Senior Noh liked wagers almost as much as he liked alcohol. And now Joo-young knew that he desperately wanted to see the Beauty of Loulan. So, looking at his ranking of preferences, alcohol was number one, while wagers and the Beauty of Loulan occupied numbers two and three. Joo-young’s masterstroke was the idea that if numbers two and three joined forces, they might be able to go head-to-head with number one, at least to some degree.
“But why ten years? Couldn’t it just be five?”
He was biting. Joo-young could practically see the float sink straight under.
“As you know, I’m flat broke too, so I need a long-term plan like that to come up with the money for the trip. Anyway, Senior, all you have to do is stay alive until ten years from now, and you’ll hit the jackpot! What do you say? You in?”
“In? In what? Is this a wager?”
“Sort of.”
Joo-young had initially considered setting the condition at “twenty years from now,” but he figured that if the period was too long, Senior Noh wouldn’t even bite. That was why he had used “ten years from now” as bait. As long as he could keep Senior Noh alive for ten years, there was still hope that he might change enough.
“Fine, I’m in! Get a notarized agreement!”
Senior Noh flapped excitedly and was hauled up on the hook.