Thud! Thud!

My heart is pitching about in my chest.

My father, whom I had buried away under grief and pain.

I only felt the size of it after he vanished from in front of me.

The empty place where Dad had been……

Dad, who played catch with me on ordinary days and kicked a ball about with me.

The man who clapped along with Mom to cheer me on the first time I managed to stay up on a bicycle.

Every school exam, whatever the result, he’d stroke my hair fondly and tell me to keep going.

There’s no call to live life the hard way.

Put the greed down, live happily, and that’s the whole of it.

I was young, so I didn’t know what he meant by it.

But living in a world with no Dad in it, I worked it out.

However hard you try at the reality in front of you, a great deal of the time there’s no answer in it.

And when that happens, that’s enough.

Having done your best is all of it.

Dad’s advice showed its strength every one of those times.

A man who threw away a place as a great group’s son and chose love instead, and did it boldly.

It was a bold decision, and not many people could have made it.

I take after that father of mine.

Tick.

I pressed the answer button.

And.

—Son~.

The bright voice I heard all the time when he was alive.

Hearing Dad’s voice for the first time in years, the feeling came up and over.

“Ah— Father……”

—Father? Hahaha. Son, are you practising for the army? Where’s Father come from all of a sudden? It makes me feel like I’ve aged twenty years.

The change in what I called him got me a good-humoured laugh.

A smile spread over my own mouth.

I’ve been reunited with the father I turned away from, the way you cut a memory out.

“Does it sound odd?”

—It does. Quite a lot.

“With you like this I’m never going to grow up early.”

—It’ll come naturally enough once you’ve done your service. You’re a high school student now. Do what suits your age. Everyone turns into an adult in the end anyway. And then you change whether you want to or not.

Good advice.

I’m a man who has been out in working life.

I know the full weight of what Dad is handing me now.

“Are you still away on the road?”

—Yes. Busan.

“Mom must be lonely.”

—You’re not wrong. Making a living isn’t easy.

Small exchanges I couldn’t feel the value of at the time.

I’m hearing Dad’s truth dressed up as a joke again.

We had traded conversations like this often enough back then too.

The relation was parent and child, but the talk between us was everyday talk.

That doesn’t mean I ever crossed a line.

Dad had been strict about the basic attitude of respect owed to adults.

What he gave me instead was a great deal of freedom in ordinary conversation.

Sometimes people who didn’t know us took me for disrespectful with him, but that wasn’t what it was.

I…… loved my parents very much.

Even now I respect the father who chose the woman he loved and kicked his place as a group’s youngest son out from under himself.

“Keep at it. It’s thanks to you and Mom that this son of yours is growing up all right.”

—Haha. That’s right, hurry up and grow. Then your dad can get some pocket money out of you.

Hard as things were, Dad’s big open laugh worked like a vitamin.

“How are things at the moment?”

—You wait and see. Your dad’s got something big in preparation.

Dad’s voice, swollen up with hope.

Yes. It was like this then too.

I’m sorry to be the one to say it……but that’s a scam!

I only learned it after Dad died.

Dad’s friend and the crew around him, who had used a decent family man for everything he was worth.

And behind them…… stand those men!

“Don’t you worry about a single thing! This son of yours is going to sort all of it out!”

—What? Who is this?

“Sorry?”

—You’re not my son, are you? My actual son’s soul has been dark lately, what with school……. What’s this? This voice! Where’s all this confidence come from?

That’s my dad, all right.

“……You knew?”

—Cheonghwa High School is famous, isn’t it. I think it’s admirable, you holding out with the charity-case label on you. And I know all about the power-tripping that comes out of houses with money.

“Then why didn’t you try harder to stop me?”

—Because you wanted it.

“……”

—You grow by however much it hurts. Experience is the real asset. An asset you own outright.

My dad, who could turn out a high-grade piece of life advice like that whenever he felt like it.

“I love you.”

—I love you too. Hahahaha.

Dad laughs and goes on laughing, as though he had never once been absent from my life.

“Dad! You trust me, don’t you?”

—Of course I do.

“I’m going to ask you for something soon.”

—Do you need money?

“No.”

—What, then?

“If I come first in the whole school, you have to say yes. No conditions.”

—First in the school? At Cheonghwa High School?

“Yes.”

—Okay! It’s a promise!

In this life I cannot lose Dad.

And I’ll protect Mom too, obviously.

Mom, who after seeing Dad off had lived with nothing in front of her but the East Sea.

Both of them. I am going to keep hold of both of them!

“Dad.”

—What?

“Have a bit of ambition, would you!”

—At my age…… ambition.

“What do you mean, your age! This son of yours is going to make you a chairman!”

—All right, all right. It’s good of you to say it, at least. If my son makes me a chairman I’ll work hard at it.

Dad, half listening, treating it as a joke.

Chairman. I am going to make him one!

The group my grandfather has hold of — in the future I’m going to live through again, it belongs to my dad.

Once I set my mind to it, the plan drew itself out huge and clean.

“I’ll come down when the exams are finished. Kimchi jjigae, and plenty of meat in it, please.”

—Right. Stew and a glass of soju.

Dad had always dealt with me openly, without standing on any formality.

“I love you~”

—Yes. I love you too, son.

We talked for the first time in years, and it left me wondering whether we had ever been parted at all.

Both fists had gone tight.

All that time the first way through, full of unfairness.

Wait for it……. The counterattack is coming!

“Why’s he walking around perfectly fine?”

“Isn’t he being disciplined??”

“After the scene he made in the canteen……”

The kids at school whisper every time they pass me.

On the second run, school time has gone fast.

Today is the first day of midterms.

The subjects are maths and chemistry.

Working through the practice books I had at home was enough.

The maths problems I solved back then are still clear in my head.

For someone who studied university maths it’s child’s play.

It’s an exam at a top-flight school with a reputation to keep, but it doesn’t go beyond high school level.

A few killer questions are mixed into each subject, but they’re only twisted two or three turns.

The memorising subjects hardly need saying.

I remember the set passages as well, literary and non-literary both.

I’ve mentioned it before, but the school meals are the main reason I come here.

And if I’m adding one thing to that, it’s golf.

“Mr Park Donggeun got six months’ suspension!”

“Six whole months?”

“But…… what’s the story with Ha Tae-ung?”

“That’s the thing. There’s something going on with him, isn’t there?”

The kids whispered about me, imagining all sorts.

The disciplinary committee met formally and Park Donggeun’s punishment was settled.

It came out exactly the way I wanted it.

Oh Gwangjun flashed his eyes white at me every time we crossed paths.

Given the chance, I think he could do with a proper education in life at some point.

I mean to teach him that school is not a stage for swaggering about on the strength of a division-chief prosecutor for a father.

“Unfair treatment of charity cases will be dealt with under school regulations! Wow, the principal’s put a warning notice up.”

“Well, then! What are we supposed to get any fun out of??”

Fun?

Seeing them a second time, they’re still thoroughly bad people.

This is what the kids who have kept charity cases as slaves in their heads actually are.

This time, before I graduate, I’m remaking the way these people think, and no mistake.

“Will you all be quiet? Or aren’t you sitting the exam?”

A prickly, cold voice rang across the classroom just then.

It was a warning with an edge on it from Lee Hyoju, the boss of the year.

“……”

In an instant the classroom went as quiet as the grave.

This is exactly what a difference in power looks like.

A classroom that might have been lifted straight out as a scale model of living things running on the same thorough weak-as-meat, strong-as-eaters structure the whole country runs on.

“Leave them. It’s hardly one day or two of people chewing me over.”

I laughed lightly and ran my eyes over the whispering kids, level about it.

The moment they met mine they turned their heads away fast and got their eyes somewhere else.

Their nerve is broken already.

Every one of them looks to me like a cringing son of a bitch.

To think I spent all that time cowed by kids like these……

Looking at them coldly now, they’re more wretched than I ever was.

Whichever way I look at them, they don’t amount to much.

The only thing behind them is the strength of parents with money, propping them up.

“Have you got your exam prep done?”

Eh? Lee Hyoju……?

Lee Hyoju, two seats along and one row in front, is asking.

Read it slightly wrong and it looks like an expression of interest.

“……??”

The puzzled faces on the other kids prove that my misreading isn’t wrong.

The great Lee Hyoju does not throw lines like that at male students.

She has never shown so much as a small interest in one.

Lee Hyoju, haughty at all hours and none.

She has almost no friends at this school.

“Don’t worry. I’ve finished the lot.”

I was drinking the iced coffee I’d bought on the way in and enjoying the spring morning.

Unlike the other students, I had the leisure to enjoy it fully.

“Heh.”

Lee Hyoju let a small laugh escape and turned her head away.

The smooth, soft line of her profile……

Even a glance at it is a pleasant thing.

First period, the maths exam, began soon after.

Brrrrrring!

The bell went, and at the same moment I received the exam paper like an honoured guest.

And.

Perfect!!

(End of Chapter 22)