The place was really something.

In my past life I never had a place I could call my own.

The drafty outer quarters, a rented room at university, an army barracks room, and the flimsy boarding-house room in Noryangjin — that was all of it.

Two or three pyeong at the outside was all the housing I ever got.

But right now my chest felt wide open.

The top floor of a twenty-five-story apartment building raised on the bank of the Jangju River, which ran deep and steady.

Behind it Mount Jangju stood like a folding screen.

A prime site with the mountain at its back and the water at its front. (TL Note: 배산임수 — mountain behind, water in front, the classic Korean geomantic formula for a lucky place to build.)

The royal floors sat at the very front of the complex.

Beyond them the ground lay so that no building could ever go up and block the view.

Across the river, the plain and the town lay below your feet.

This is why penthouses sell.

The human urge to put other people beneath your feet gets expressed in housing too.

“What do you think? The view is a killer, isn’t it? There’s no apartment in town with a sightline like this. Ojeong Construction put a lot of care in. The finishes, the interior fittings, the standard sink units are all top grade. Built-in refrigerator, kimchi refrigerator, and the closets are all fitted. You’ll hardly need furniture.”

The realtor was spraying spit as he talked.

There was something beautiful about a man doing everything he could not to lose a one percent cut.

I was like that once.

There was a time when I charged at the world with everything I had.

Unfortunately for him, the realtor had missed the real jackpot.

In the past, an elementary school classmate of mine lived here.

His father was newly rich.

One useless low hill the man owned got absorbed into an industrial complex.

It paid out on the order of ten billion won.

I still haven’t forgotten how obnoxiously the brat showed off at the class reunion.

The fat pig of a classmate who plunked his foreign car key down on the table.

I saw the way the eyes of the girls from our class lit up.

That was when he bragged about this apartment.

He crowed that his father had bought it at twenty percent off the presale price.

Right now it’s eight million a pyeong, but in the future it goes over fifteen.

By my standards it isn’t much of an investment, but there was no apartment in town to match it in the future either.

Whenever I came down home in the past, this building caught my eye from the bus stop.

It stood tall and looked down over the town.

It was the big apartment where the city’s rich, the ones who put a little swagger in their shoulders, were said to live.

And that apartment was now our family’s second house.

“It really is lovely…”

Mom, soaking in a girlish mood, let out a sigh of wonder.

It was worlds away from a country tile-roofed house that was all but falling down.

She stood quietly and looked down at the world past the window.

She made a graceful figure.

Mom was a woman who would have suited being a poet.

My mother fit the picture of a city woman better than that of a farmer’s wife.

“What’s the matter with you. In the old days you lived somewhere this place wouldn’t compare to.”

The old days? A place like this?

Dad snorted and needled Mother with it.

There was a past I didn’t know about.

This is starting to get interesting.

“When was that? I have never done any such thing.”

Mom watched my face and played innocent.

Clumsy acting.

Something’s there?

The feeling landed hard.

Some story of Mom and Dad’s that I didn’t know about, whatever it was.

I only caught the edge of it.

“Shall we write up the contract?”

The agency owner cut in quietly.

You could see how he was burning inside.

One percent alone came to well over five million won.

The biggest payday he would see all day was in my hands.

He was quick enough not to haggle with me over price any further.

There were agencies all over the neighborhood, and he knew I was no easy mark.

The man knows how to do business.

“Yes. Let’s do it right now.”

I nodded, cool about it.

“The down payment is ten percent, though… A loan will depend on your situation, but the way the banks are with the government’s measures these days, it isn’t easy…”

“Will a hundred million as the down payment do it?”

“What?”

“And I need a loan even less than that.”

“…?”

“I’d like to pay the down payment today and get the keys. We can move in right away, can’t we? I’ll transfer the balance from the bank on Monday. The whole balance.”

“…!”

The man’s eyes went wide.

People who bought an apartment with cash in full were rare.

“I intend to have the title registered on Monday too. Please get it ready.”

“Y-yes, understood!”

Money is good, all right.

My personality has turned cool enough to give off a smell.

You only weigh this and that when you have no money.

There’s no need to give yourself a headache over jjajangmyeon or jjamppong.

If you want both, you just order two.

At the brokerage in my past life I watched rich people.

They put money into stocks and funds exactly as they intended.

They did not take long to decide.

The rich had already caught every piece of information, and then they judged fast and acted.

The customers who came to the brokerage with no money — on a loan, or by breaking open a savings account — asked about this and that, fished clumsily for tips, and nearly all of them went under.

I finished deciding to buy an apartment in the frame of mind of a man choosing a shampoo.

And then we got into the elevator.

Ding!

It stopped at the eleventh floor.

“Dammit! Why does it take so long to come down! I’m busy here!”

Two people got on then, along with a middle-aged man’s irritable voice.

A middle-aged couple.

“Mr. Yu! Can’t you see the residents waiting? Even running a two-bit agency, you have to have basic manners!”

“S-sorry. Mr. Choi.”

Oho, it’s been a while.

They say you run into the ones you can’t stand in an elevator, and here it was.

The parents of the classmate who used to throw money around.

He had thrown his weight around so freely that even I knew his face.

The ill-mannered pair looked me and my parents up and down.

Then they scowled and laid into the agency owner.

They don’t have two coins to rub together and they are a truly ugly sight.

“Mr. Yu! An apartment has standards. You can’t just show the place to anybody! This is not an apartment for every dog and cow that wanders past!”

Haa… I’d found the source of that son’s no-manners genes.

The friend’s father, mid-forties, grease running off him and his belly out front.

No — not a friend’s father. The pig’s father.

“Oh my~ that’s just it. Do you know what kind of apartment this is! Showing it to anybody? I’m going to have to talk to the ladies on the residents’ committee.”

And the fat lady who went with him.

Loudly made up, gold stuck all over her.

Her figure, her face and her nature were all foul.

Spite bulged out over her cheeks.

Her designer pieces were thrown together at random.

She was on a completely different level from the classy Gangnam ladies I’d seen in Seoul.

The final boss of nouveau-riche fashion.

“That’s right. Say something to them. This isn’t a house for beggars to come and gawk at…”

The two of them gave a top-grade class in no manners to a realtor who was a good deal older than they were.

My face tightened.

Something hot came up out of my heart.

“Ma’am. Sir. Are you finished talking?”

“Who are you!”

“You’re Dae-sik’s father, aren’t you?”

“You know Dae-sik?”

“Yes. We were classmates.”

The word classmate didn’t move either of them.

Most people take some care with their son’s friends; that much character had never developed in these two.

“So what?”

“I’m moving in on Monday, so let’s get along from here on.”

“What?”

“Mr. Yu.”

“Yes?”

“There’s one more unit left on the twenty-fifth floor, next door to the one I’m signing for, isn’t there?”

“Yes…”

“I’ll buy that one too. The price is cheap enough. And, well, seeing the level of manners on the people who live here, there’s no chance of the value dropping.”

“…”

One line from me and everybody froze.

Ding!

The elevator doors opened.

“By the way, how much is the thirteenth floor? Low floor, lousy view, so the price must be lousy too?”

“About a hundred million less than the top floor.”

“Ah~ is that so. Practically free, then? Did you presell it to beggars?”

The realtor answered helpfully, with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.

The classmate’s ill-mannered parents, by contrast, went rotten in the face.

Exactly the same expression as their son’s.

“Father, I’ll buy one more and use it as a guest house. The price is cheap and the view is beautiful, so it’ll be just the thing when guests come. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Huh? R-right.”

“While we’re out today, let’s buy a car in Mom’s name. A Mercedes S-Class looked plain enough, just the thing for driving to the market.”

“…”

The ill-mannered couple shut their mouths.

There was not one lady in this town yet who drove a Mercedes to the market.

Whrrr.

The doors started to close.

The couple pushed the closing doors open again with their hands and ran off without a backward glance, as if they were fleeing.

Tsk, tsk.

You picked the wrong man.

Throwing your clumsy weight around in front of me!

My chest was wide open.

I don’t care if it’s the money games of a man who came into it late.

This taste is what living is for!

I came back from the dead, and if I couldn’t shop like this I think the unfairness would kill me all over again.

(End of Chapter 25)