Who taught you?

Obviously……

I don’t know myself.

There’s something out of the ordinary about my reflexes now, and I can feel it.

The way the muscle fires is no joke.

I’m thin, no question about that, and still I can feel the strength packed hard and dense inside it.

When I swung the club, the power went in with a snap.

This isn’t the boy who came to this school the first time.

Back then exercise never came into it — I’d kept my head down and clung to my books and nothing else.

Right up to the day I enlisted my condition had been a wreck.

“Going by the driver alone, you’re semi-pro.”

“Me?”

“Don’t joke about it, tell me honestly. You’ve had lessons from a pro, haven’t you?”

“……Yes.”

I only nodded, quietly.

“Who? Anyone who could set your fundamentals this solidly…… I’d probably know them myself.”

“Yes. Someone you know very well yourself, Miss.”

“I do?”

Pro An Hyeonju is badly startled.

Do beautiful people all come with eyes this big?

“Pro An Hyeonju, that’s who. A remarkable woman.”

“What? Me? When did I ever give you a——?”

“You fixed my stance a minute ago.”

“Haa……. Are you joking with me right now?”

She lets out a sigh, as though the whole thing is beyond her.

It’s the truth.

Even told the truth, Pro An Hyeonju doesn’t look able to take it in.

I can hardly believe it myself.

A voice asked me out of nowhere whether I wanted to acquire another person’s talent, and all I did was answer.

The unbelievable part happened in that moment.

Something occurred that looks very much like a golf talent actually being acquired.

My body remembered positions it had never been in.

The instant I took hold of the driver, every position and every movement came out on its own, automatically.

“Maybe I’m…… an actual golfing prodigy?”

I turned the awkward air aside with a laugh.

This absolutely cheating buff Grandmother must have left me.

“……Granted. The long game is pro standard, at least. I’d have to measure the carry to be sure, but……”

Pro An Hyeonju kept nodding, as though talking herself into it.

“Can I come whenever I’ve got the time?”

I want to learn golf properly.

The upper class play as a matter of course, and so does nearly everyone else with any standing in society.

Abroad is no different.

For business in the future, golf is essential!

And Pro An Hyeonju is about to be the best in the country.

Having someone like that in the same building and not taking lessons from her would be a serious loss.

“All right. Come when you’ve got time.”

Pro An Hyeonju gave her consent.

For the moment she’s a golfer of genius who has taken a hit from the crookedness of the world and is keeping her head down.

She’s young, but her character is admirable as well.

Talent like this, left buried out of public view, is a loss to the whole country.

“You’ll need to be getting ready for next year’s LPGA tour.”

“The tour?”

“Yes.”

“……I’d like that. But the world isn’t as easy as all that.”

Her voice went heavy at once.

A shadow of dark pain crosses that beautiful face.

I know about it too.

The filthy side of this world.

Ordinary people with no power go on living under the high-handedness of those who have it, taking loss after loss, and they will still be doing it far into the future.

“I’ll sponsor you.”

“What— sponsor? You will?”

“Yes.”

“……You don’t know who’s marked me down, do you?”

“Sinyang Financial Group. Am I right?”

I mentioned what I knew as though it were nothing much.

“Ah— you knew?”

“When you came to Cheonghwa the rumour went right round.”

The first time through, at exactly this point, a version had gone round as well, dressed up until it was close to scandal, with a handful of students at the centre of it.

Some of them had torn into her openly.

That she’d banked on a decent face, got haughty with the chairman of Sinyang Group, and finished herself.

At the time none of it had anything to do with me.

The kids had cackled and thrown around lines of the order of: a bitch with nothing ought to at least sell her body.

“And you’d still sponsor me? What do your parents…… do?”

Pro An Hyeonju’s look is a mix of concern and expectation.

“My grandfather’s in trade.”

“Ah……. Trade.”

A little disappointment shows in her eyes.

“And…… I’m a charity case.”

“Ah!”

At that one word, charity case, Pro An Hyeonju’s eyes widen.

She makes a short sound and shuts her mouth firmly.

As you know, a charity case at Cheonghwa High School is an untouchable.

Pro An Hyeonju will know that much.

“Are charity cases not qualified to sponsor?”

“……Tae-ung. To get onto the LPGA you have to go at the Symetra Tour, the second tier, or Q-School. Once you add living costs abroad and a caddie on top, it’s enormous.”

“Would a billion won a year do it?”

“A— a billion?”

“Yes.”

“……You said your grandfather was in trade……”

“Yes. My grandfather sells this and that.”

“This and that?”

“Oh, oil and apartments, and then all sorts of goods in the shopping malls.”

“……??”

She doesn’t look able to take my meaning readily.

She’s in her early twenties and has concentrated on nothing but golf, and she hasn’t much grasp of how the world runs.

“Just wait a few months.”

“A few months?”

“Before the summer comes, the road in front of you is going to open up and be all flowers, noonim.”

I declared it with the certainty of a shaman.

Pro An looks at me steadily, as if I’m absurd.

“You’re not a player, are you?”

“A player? What do you——”

“‘Noonim!’ How does that come out of you so naturally?”

Pro An Hyeonju was teasing me, making a joke of it.

Sssshhh.

A spring wind came through, and it felt good.

Mixed into the small wind was the scent of a grown woman.

A clear sky-blue aura is wrapped around her.

Good!

I put my hand out toward her in one smooth motion.

And.

“Noonim! How about trusting your dongsaeng this once?”

“……”

Those jet-black eyes widen.

And then they look straight into mine.

“All right……. Then, dongsaeng, do you want to give this noonim a push?”

She laughs through her nose, still taking my offer for a joke.

Pro An Hyeonju has unusually long, slender fingers.

I closed my hand around them gently, with a steady pressure.

Whether the sincerity carried, I don’t know.

She coloured a little, as though embarrassed.

Noonim, you know what?

You’ve hit the jackpot today!!

“At this rate a man could get rich just off taking slaps. Heh heh.”

The golf lesson finished and I came home.

The first time through, this was the hour I’d have been shut in my room clinging to online lectures.

Thunk!

I sat down on the shabby plastic chair and crossed my legs.

The evening of 6 May.

The Seoul sky is more beautiful than usual today.

A rooftop room, with a mottled sunset catching in it on and off.

Tap-ta-tap.

“Thank you for the smartphone!”

On the way home I bought the newest Galuxy with cash.

Money can be spent, but it has to be spent properly if it isn’t going to cause trouble.

“That’s some speed.”

For the plan I chose unlimited data.

The newest phone and the service met each other and the synergy was tremendous.

On the smartphone I converted today’s takings into the stablecoin Tether.

And.

“Eat your fill, Bitnance. Hyung’s put your pocket money in.”

I sent it through Appbit to Bitnance.

Four hundred and ninety million won, clean.

The other ten million I left myself as modest spending money.

“Let’s see that belly burst!”

Luna hasn’t dropped yet.

It has managed a slight climb, if anything.

“And buy my friend a house as well.”

Jiung’s share bought Tether too.

And went straight into a short.

“Feed properly, then out.”

I mean to grow Jiung’s account only so far.

A reasonable amount of wealth, enough that he can live as an upright prosecutor, is all it needs to be.

“You’re running a shakeout on me, when I already know you? Hah.”

Luna riding a slight upward curve.

I don’t know which operators it is, but this is a shakeout.

From tomorrow it starts sliding, quietly at first, and then it fucking craters.

The graph from this stretch came up clear in my head.

“You’re my dinner. Heh heh heh.”

There aren’t many days left before the collapse begins.

I’m not a villain, but the same sort of laugh keeps breaking out of me.

Today was a day worth something.

It was nothing like the anxious, gloomy stretch of the first time through.

Back then every day was hard and every day hurt.

But I’ve come back, and inside a single day I’ve started the work of cleaning out the school.

“If worrying made worry go away, there’d be no worry left……. I didn’t know what that meant back then.”

A time when every day was pain.

Young as I was, school and the state of the house kept me carrying worry.

Days when nothing changed however hard I thrashed.

They say pain grows the soul, but back then I simply wanted to die.

It wasn’t until I’d come through a few brushes with death after enlisting that I found any courage for living.

The one thing I worked out, faintly……

Only what I’ve been through myself is true for me!

After that, whatever I ran into, I thought it out for myself, decided, and moved.

With courage, and boldly!

It was the force behind handing in my resignation and making a clean break from the vixen.

Do everything I can, and once I judge it’s no good, never look back.

And at the end of it, luck I can’t believe……

“Every hour of it worth something. First thing, I need to get my driving licence.”

There’s a lot to do.

Time is running slowly, but the things to prepare are scattered everywhere.

“Regression…… fascinating.”

I’m living through it and it still gives me a jolt however I think about it.

A second life as a high school student.

What lies ahead of me is filled to overflowing.

“School’s not going to be a problem…… for a while.”

After today, barring something unusual, nobody at the school is going to touch me.

Not until my own family situation comes to light.

I’ve got the cover in place well enough to keep it quiet for a while.

Covering it perfectly is impossible, but I’ve done everything that can be done.

Da-roo dee-dee-dee~♬

The smartphone rang.

A name I couldn’t have been gladder to see came up on the screen.

“Dad……”

The name of the man I’d spent my life working to forget was connected to me again, like this.

I can’t put all of this feeling into words.

(End of Chapter 21)