Baek Sun-ja puts the water on the small burner. She takes two cups from the shelf. She puts one of them back, because her brother drinks only cold. She takes the bottle of barley tea out of the refrigerator. She sets it on the table, on the right, where he has been sitting for forty years.

Then she ties her apron. In the right pocket of the apron there is a sheet of paper folded in four. The corner of the paper sticks out by a centimetre.

The ruling came six days ago. The sum is eighty million won. The names on the ruling are five.

Baek Yong-ho arrives at eleven. He sits on the right. He sets a clear plastic folder on the table. Out of the folder he takes the bank form. The form has a box for each account holder. The boxes are five. He lays the pen across the form.

Sun-ja pours the barley tea. Then she sits down.

First she repeats the dates, the way she has repeated them to everyone for seven years. The suit filed in two thousand nineteen. The first instance. The appeal. Then the supreme court, last Wednesday. She also says the date of two thousand eighteen, which is the ruling all the rest comes from, and she always says it first when she is talking to the lawyers and last when she is talking at home.

Yong-ho says he knows the dates.

Sun-ja says their father's months. Five months at Kamaishi, in nineteen forty-two. Their father was eighteen when he left and nineteen when he came back, and he died in nineteen eighty-eight, in October.

Yong-ho drinks his barley tea. Then he says his own numbers. Dialysis is three times a week. The trip to the hospital is forty minutes one way. The co-payment is what it is. He says that sixteen million won is sixteen million won.

Sun-ja does not answer. She stands up. She moves the kettle onto the burner that is off. She sits back down.

Now the sheet in the pocket. The sheet is the estimate from the stonecutter in Munsan. Sun-ja went to him on the fourth of August, before the ruling, and asked him two things. The first: how much it costs to add two lines under a name, on a stone that is already there. The second: how much it costs per character.

The stonecutter measured the photograph of the stone with a ruler. He said that under the name there is room for two lines of eleven characters. He said the price per character. Then he worked out the total and wrote it at the foot of the sheet, and under the total he wrote the date and stamped it.

The total comes almost exactly to the share of one of the five.

The two lines Sun-ja wants are these: the five months, and the name of the steelworks.

Yong-ho turns the form towards her and points to the box with the pen. He says the name and the account number are enough. He says the other three have already sent theirs.

Sun-ja puts her hand in the apron pocket. She takes out the sheet. She opens it. She opens it in four moves, the way it is folded. At each move she flattens it on the table with her palm, from the centre towards the edge. The four creases stay white and raised.

Then she turns it towards her brother and pushes it ten centimetres, until the corner is under the hand that is holding the pen.

She says nothing for the length of one breath. Then she says: this one is mine.

It is five words. In seven years of the case she has always asked for their father, with the papers in front of her. The papers belonged to a dead man.

Yong-ho sets the pen down on the table. He takes the sheet with two fingers and pulls it towards himself. He reads it from the top. He reads the measurements. He reads the price per character. He reads the total. Then he reads the line with the date, and the stamp.

While he reads he does not talk about the dialysis.

He reads it a second time from the top, and the second time takes him longer than the first. At a certain point he touches his eyebrow with his thumb, stops, and starts again from the total.

Then he sets the sheet in front of him, on the left. He takes the pen. He fills in the bank box with his own name and his account number. He signs. He dries the signature with his fingertip. He puts the form back in the plastic folder and closes the stud of the folder.

He says nothing about the estimate. He does not hand it back.

He drinks the last of the barley tea. He stands up. He says he will come by on Thursday for their mother's things. He tells Sun-ja not to come to the hospital on Saturday, that he will go.

At the door he puts on his shoes. He asks Sun-ja whether the stonecutter in Munsan is the one near the bridge. Sun-ja says that is the one.

Yong-ho goes out.

On the table there remain the closed folder, the empty cup, the bottle of barley tea with two fingers left in it. The estimate is on the side where he sat, under the place where his hand had been, its right corner marked by a ring of damp from the cup. The four creases are lifting by themselves, one after another, and the sheet closes halfway, and stays like that, half open, on the table, on his side.