Goblin Library - Chapter 140

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Chapter 140.

“They’re the children of wealthy elderly people… or the children of their acquaintances.”
Choi Tae-sik shook his head slightly at Lee Hye-eun’s words. Then he sighed and spoke.
“But if it’s a Nursing Home, the elderly would have difficulty moving around. How could you hear such stories?”
“What are you talking about?”
Lee Hye-eun spoke with an exasperated expression.
“Those elderly people love talking so much.”
“Really?”
“Their limbs may be weak, but their mouths aren’t. Go there and listen to them talk—your ears will practically bleed from it.”
Lee Hye-eun chuckled and continued.
“Lonely elderly people will tell you everything—real and imagined—if someone sits beside them, listens, and responds well.”
Choi Tae-sik stared at her in silence for a moment, then sighed.
“Isn’t that a terrible thing to do?”
“Terrible?”
“You’re hurting lonely elderly people. And you’re extracting information to extort their children—not just anyone, but their own children.”
Choi Tae-sik squinted his eyes as he spoke.
“Now that I think about it, that’s really awful. Hey, you… you can’t live like that.”
Lee Hye-eun sighed and shook her head.
“You really don’t understand me—or people in general.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me pose a problem. Think carefully about it.”
At Lee Hye-eun’s words, Choi Tae-sik glanced at her. She held up her fingers one by one toward him.
“First, I’m a con artist. Second, as you know from my track record, I don’t extort good people. I only target rich men with no conscience—the bad ones. Third, so tell me: were the children I extorted based on what the elderly told me good people or bad people?”
“You’re saying you extorted bad children?”
At Choi Tae-sik’s question, Lee Hye-eun, who had been looking out the window in silence, finally spoke.
“What do you think about Nursing Homes?”
“Well, they’re places where people with mobility issues stay.”
“Right. Many elderly people end up in Nursing Homes because their children struggle to make ends meet or are too busy working to care for them alone. Some children would like to support their parents, but they have to work—they can’t care for an adult all day long.”
Lee Hye-eun laughed as she spoke.
“When you volunteer there, you see all kinds of people.”
“I imagine so.”
“Some can barely speak and have lost control of their bodily functions. Others can still move reasonably well but find it hard to live alone.”
As Lee Hye-eun continued, she sighed as if remembering something uncomfortable.
“Then there are those who can move fine and could live alone, but their families find it inconvenient to care for them, so they put them in a Nursing Home. In a way, they’ve been abandoned by their families.”
“They abandoned their parents?”
Choi Tae-sik asked, squinting his eyes, and Lee Hye-eun nodded.
“Even children who at least pay the medical bills regularly are better off. I’ve seen cases where children stopped paying and cut off all contact.”
“What kind of people exist like that?”
“All kinds—this sort, that sort, every sort.”
Lee Hye-eun let out a soft laugh and gazed out the window.
“If they can abandon their own children, why couldn’t they abandon their parents?”
As Lee Hye-eun spoke, recalling the parents who had abandoned her, she suddenly glanced at Choi Tae-sik.
“But you know what’s funny?”
“What is?”
“The adults who came to the Nursing Home against their will because of their children—they never curse their children.”
“Really?”
“They say their kids are busy making money, or they’re abroad. They ask them to come live with them overseas, but how could they manage there when they don’t even speak the language? That’s how they talk. I’ve volunteered at the Nursing Home for a long time, and I’ve never once heard an adult curse their children.”
“Then how did you find out about their circumstances?”
“They don’t say it themselves, but the other elderly residents know everything. The Nursing Home is technically a hospital, but the people there are like one big family living under the same roof. They eat together, share rooms, watch TV together… The people in the next bed know that household’s situation better than anyone.”
“But you said they don’t curse them?”
“They might not curse them to others’ faces… but loneliness can’t be hidden.”
Lee Hye-eun shook her head and clapped her hands.
Clap!
“Goodness! I’m driving. Don’t startle me like that.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
Lee Hye-eun waved her hand and continued.
“The way I’m talking about it, it sounds like the Nursing Home is a bad place, but it’s actually a good one.”
“It is?”
“Sometimes you see on TV places where elderly people are beaten and neglected, but those places are run by trash. Most Nursing Homes are good. That’s why even the adults who cried and wailed at first, saying their families abandoned them, eventually find their smiles again. They’d been confined at home before, but at the Nursing Home there are friends to talk to, and nurses who come right away to help when asked. It’s different from being alone.”
After a moment of silence, Choi Tae-sik spoke.
“That’s the same as the Orphanage.”
“Exactly.”
Lee Hye-eun nodded and continued.
“Whether it’s an Orphanage or a Nursing Home, only a tiny handful of places are problematic. Most are run by kind and good people.”
At Lee Hye-eun’s words, Choi Tae-sik looked at her and asked.
“You seem to have good memories of such places.”
“I didn’t realize it when I was at the Orphanage, but thinking about it now… there was no better place than that. At least there were adults who cared about me. And volunteering at the Nursing Home has changed my perspective. There are so many people who genuinely care for the elderly.”
Lee Hye-eun spoke softly and then asked Choi Tae-sik.
“Do you know which elderly residents are most envied at the Nursing Home?”
“Who?”
“The ones whose children visit them often. Whether their children are wealthy or not, if they visit frequently and bring even one dish their parents loved… the other residents envy them so much.”
“Do they not visit often?”
“Children have their own lives too.”
Lee Hye-eun looked at Choi Tae-sik as she spoke.
“That doesn’t make children who don’t visit bad people. Anyone wants to rest after work, and on days off, everyone wants to recover from the fatigue built up during the week. And even if a child doesn’t have their parents at a Nursing Home, if they live far away, they only go home on holidays. How often is that—five times a year? Two holidays, their parents’ birthdays, and special occasions?”
“That’s right.”
“Still, if they make time to visit even once on a non-holiday, that alone makes the other residents envious. And on those days, everyone calls their own children.”
Choi Tae-sik glanced at Lee Hye-eun as she murmured to herself, then spoke.
“So you turned your back on children who abandoned their parents?”
“Not everyone who abandons their parents gets their back turned on them. There has to be money involved for that to happen. Ah, but for those kinds of adults, I prepaid their hospital bills for several years in advance.”
“That was the right thing to do.”
Choi Tae-sik nodded at Lee Hye-eun’s words, then suddenly asked a question.
“But volunteering at a Nursing Home doesn’t seem to suit you.”
“Why? Do I seem like someone who wouldn’t like a Nursing Home?”
“You don’t like adults.”
A pause.
Lee Hye-eun fell silent for a moment at Choi Tae-sik’s words, then let out a soft laugh.
“You’re pretty sharp. How did you know?”
“Just a feeling.”
Lee Hye-eun nodded.
“Except for the adults at the Orphanage when I was young, there were hardly any adults who treated me well. And after I left the Orphanage… it was even worse.”
Detecting a hint of childhood bitterness in her voice, Choi Tae-sik looked at her and asked.
“Then why did you end up going to the Nursing Home?”
“Someone said there was money in it.”
“Money?”
“There was this kid I knew back then who used to run scams on elderly people at Nursing Homes.”
Lee Hye-eun met Choi Tae-sik’s gaze as she spoke.
“You know how criminals like us each have our own specialized fields, right?”
“Yeah.”
You might think criminals would engage in all sorts of wrongdoing indiscriminately, but usually they only dig deeper into what they’ve already been doing.
The more experience you have, the easier it is to return to that path.
Just as people prefer to walk a familiar road they’ve traveled before rather than venture down an unknown one.
“That’s what he was like. He said there were plenty of wealthy elderly people at Nursing Homes, and if you treated them well, you could make money.”
“What a bastard.”
“A real bastard.”
“What’s his name?”
“Why? You going to catch him?”
“We all get older, you and me both. Think about what would happen to me if I ended up at the mercy of guys like that when I’m old. We need to catch them early and nip it in the bud.”
Lee Hye-eun let out a soft laugh and shook her head at Choi Tae-sik’s words.
“He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“He embezzled an elderly man’s inheritance… and that old man’s grandson killed him.”
“Killed him?”
“That grandson was in a Gang. He had marked that money for himself, so when it went somewhere else, he got angry and did it. A bad guy got killed by another bad guy.”
Lee Hye-eun shook her head with a smile and continued.
“And what’s the point of nipping it in the bud? When we get older and become elderly, there will be even stranger crimes than there are now.”
“Even stranger than now?”
“As long as the desire to earn money without working disappears, crime will exist alongside humanity.”
Lee Hye-eun looked at Choi Tae-sik.
“Haven’t you heard that saying?”
“Heard what?”
“That the oldest professions in human civilization are prostitution and violence.”
Lee Hye-eun spoke while gazing out the window.
“Crime has existed for thousands of years, so it will continue to exist for thousands of years to come.”
“You think about things like that?”
It was a profound statement, as if she were discussing the very essence of crime itself.
“It’s not something I’ve been thinking about—it just occurred to me.”
Then Lee Hye-eun started to clap her hands but stopped short, gently bringing them together instead. She had remembered Choi Tae-sik’s warning not to make loud noises while he was driving, as it could startle him.
“Anyway, I went to the Nursing Home because I thought I could make some easy money since it was profitable.”
“So you made some money?”
“I did make money. But… the method didn’t sit right with me.”
“Really?”
“Targeting the elderly wasn’t particularly…”
“So you switched your target to their children instead?”
“There were plenty of bad ones too. Some of them would come to the Nursing Home and ask what the elderly even needed money for, demanding their inheritance early. So I told them absolutely not.”
“Why?”
“The elderly residents are paying their hospital bills with their own money. If their children take the inheritance first, do you think they’d come looking? The hospital bills would just pile up unpaid.”
“That was the right call.”
Choi Tae-sik asked, watching Lee Hye-eun smile slightly.
“So that volunteer person—they’re the one targeting the elderly?”
“No. That person genuinely volunteers and helps the elderly with clean hands.”
“What’s their record?”
“Pickpocketing.”
As they continued their conversation and drove, the car soon began entering the Nursing Home located on the City Outskirts.
“The transportation here isn’t great, but since it’s near the Mountain, the air is good.”
Lee Hye-eun spoke as she got out of the car in the Parking Lot.
“Let’s get ready.”
Then Lee Hye-eun opened the rear door and got in.
“Huh? What are you doing?”
Choi Tae-sik turned his head, wondering why she suddenly got in the back seat, and Lee Hye-eun turned his face forward.
“Look ahead.”
Then Lee Hye-eun took out her hand bag and began removing her makeup.
“Are you redoing your makeup?”
“There’s a certain face that fits a Nursing Home. And the people here don’t know I’m an ex-convict.”
“They don’t?”
“Does it make sense to walk into a Nursing Home looking like an ex-convict?”
As she spoke, Lee Hye-eun finished removing her makeup and began applying it again. After a while, once she finished her makeup, Lee Hye-eun carefully began to remove her clothes.
Suddenly sensing a gaze, I looked ahead.
Flinch!
Choi Tae-sik quickly averted his eyes.
“From now on, it’s 100,000 won if you look.”
“I won’t look.”
“If you do, I’ll definitely make you pay.”
Lee Hye-eun, mid-sentence, suddenly noticed the dashcam.
“Hey, little one—you’re not watching right now, are you?”
[I’m not watching anything.]
“The fact that you’re saying that means you’re watching, doesn’t it?”
[Ah… I won’t watch.]
At Jang Ma-ru’s words, Lee Hye-eun laughed, removed her clothes, and changed into the outfit she’d brought.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————