“Question four, the written answer — in the kids’ own word for it, the difficulty on that is hell.”

“They won’t find this one easy. Heh heh heh.”

The maths teachers’ room at Cheonghwa High School.

Teachers of the major examined subjects run a room of their own, apart from the rest.

Another subject’s exam is being sat right now.

The maths teachers sat at their own desks and put the answer sheets in order.

Lee Jangyong, who had set question four on this maths paper, let the remark out with something satisfied in it.

The three of them had set the second-year first-semester midterm between them.

Lee Jangyong had taken the hardest of the killer questions, the one that would decide the spread.

“However far ahead the little things have studied, the world of mathematics is an unknown universe.”

The tone of Lee Jangyong’s voice went as arrogant as it would go.

Lee Jangyong, out of Seoguk University’s mathematics department.

He treated his working life as a maths teacher at Cheonghwa High School as one long game.

Every single day a battle fought for the next level!

Most Cheonghwa students take private lessons from Gangnam’s star tutors.

It gets to the point where they’re the ones testing the school’s teachers.

Stumble over a question about a solution, make the smallest slip, and the next day parents’ complaints give you a headache.

Which is why plenty of the maths teachers here don’t last a year before they leave.

At a school like that, Lee Jangyong had lasted ten.

A famous Gangnam cram school had come to him with a scouting offer and a high salary attached.

He had turned it down flat.

He had earned enough money to live on as well.

The problem is that he’s addicted to the game!

He treated it as play and went on teaching for the pleasure of breaking Cheonghwa’s talent.

He built his maths problems by twisting them a few turns inside the limits of the syllabus.

He got hold of the famous cram schools’ notes, and pulled in university coursework and Mathematical Olympiad problems on top of that.

“The red’s really coming down in sheets.”

“I feel as though I can hear the kids blaming us already.”

“Hahaha. Even the top of the school has gone out on this one.”

“Really?”

“It’s an extended answer, so work out the partial credit, would you.”

Lee Jangyong, mania settled in his eyes, spoke as he checked the written answers.

Lee Jangyong, the most senior of the second-year maths teachers.

Slash, slash!

Most of the students’ extended answers got a line drawn through them.

They had dropped out at the differential coefficient and the derivative he’d set as the killer question, exactly as he expected.

Only a handful had understood the concept and made any show of solving it.

Nobody had the answer.

“Heh heh heh……”

Lee Jangyong’s laugh deepened.

Behind the gold-rimmed glasses his satisfied eyes had a mad shine on them.

He was certain of a win in this round too, exactly as planned.

“……??”

And in that moment Lee Jangyong’s hand stopped.

In the written-answer box, formulae worked out precisely and packed tight.

Surely not??

He ran his eyes over the long solution quickly and marked it.

And.

“Is it— is it right? He solved this??”

He had taken the question from a Mathematical Olympiad paper and twisted it twice.

If the boy had solved everything else, time must have been tight.

That question alone needs at least five minutes set aside for the working.

And yet.

“What is this boy? How on——!”

“Wh— who? Who solved it?”

“Ah! It’s— it’s the right answer!!”

The working was perfect and the answer was correct.

The three of them checked the name on the answer sheet.

“Ha Tae-ung?”

“Ha Tae-ung?”

“He’s that charity case in class three.”

Vroooom.

Screeeech.

The car came to a stop lined up perfectly inside the parking bay.

—Off-road skills test, one hundred. You have passed.

“Good!”

A driving licence I had taken in my twenties the first time.

Going at it again, it’s child’s play as expected.

I finished the morning’s exam, took the traffic-safety class at the Gangnam licensing centre I’d registered at in advance, and sat the written test straight after.

The written test I passed at a hundred, obviously.

I took a taxi across to the driving school in time for the slot.

A school that advertises a licence by the fast route in three days at the shortest.

Once the written test was through I signed up for the course instruction and the road training that follows it.

Late in the afternoon I passed the course test as well.

“Wow! You’re something, kid. Didn’t you tell me this was your first time driving?”

“Yes. First time today.”

“What is this, you handle it better than I do and I’m the instructor. Hahaha.”

The instructor assigned to me today comes over, laughing, unable to make sense of it.

Four hours of compulsory instruction that has to be laid down as a baseline.

Anyone watching could see I handled the car easily from the first minute.

I drove through my army service, and while I was at the company too.

I got told back then as well that I drove steadily and drove well.

A skill already in the body is remembered by the body and by the soul.

“Town driving practice starts tomorrow, doesn’t it?”

“Fill the six hours tomorrow and you can sit the test the day after.”

“Yep!”

I parked and got out.

Nearly all of the vehicles are the school’s practice cars, and they rattle.

Taking hold of a steering wheel at all gave me a jolt of something.

The first time through I never had a car of my own.

This life I am going to live differently, and that’s certain!

The moment the licence is issued, the first thing I buy is a decent car.

Carpe diem!

Top priority is enjoy my life.

If anyone puts a brake on me I’m not standing for it.

I’m not getting tangled up with people like Director Go Dongyeol at the company, or Gu Hyejin the ex-girlfriend.

And if the same sort of people try to sour it for me again, straight ahead regardless!

“Anyone who gets in the way, I’ll smash them.”

“S— smash?”

The instructor, on his way to move the car, heard me muttering to myself and looked startled.

“Drive safely.”

I gave him a quick bob of a bow and shot off to the lounge.

Tomorrow there’s Korean and Ethics.

Prepared for perfectly, obviously.

I felt back through my memory and replayed the questions I’d got wrong, several times over.

This morning’s exam confirmed that the questions haven’t changed from the ones I sat the first time.

Which is why I could set about the licence with time to spare.

“Are you playing hard to get?”

A rough middle-aged man’s voice burst out of the lounge without warning.

“Is it so hard to have you look at my form once?”

Form?

My feet stopped in front of the door.

My school bag is in there.

“I’m sorry……. I came to practise driving today……”

Hang on? That voice!

A woman’s voice, and I know it.

She’s flustered, she’s frightened, and she’s shaking with it.

“That’s what I’m saying, look at it for a minute before you practise. I was a fan of yours, I’m telling you. Heh heh.”

Now the man drops into casual speech with her.

“I’m grateful for that……. It’s only that I’m teaching at the——”

“I know. I know all about it. You got caught seeing a married man. Which is why you can’t run in the pro tournaments.”

“That— that isn’t true!”

“Come off it, what isn’t true. It’s spread right across the video sites. You bewitched a married man with that cute little body of yours. Heh heh heh.”

And then out came a line so leering it was hard to listen to.

And.

Crack!

A few seconds later, no more, came the clean sound of a slap landing.

“What— what’s this? You dared to hit me? Don’t you want to come back?”

“Apologise. Now!”

“Apologise? Bullshit. You’re finished now. You commit something immoral and then you assault a fan?”

Haa. That’s blown up.

Since I came back, something blows up practically every other day.

None of this happened the first time, obviously.

It’s clearly going to be a headache, but that’s all right.

Sliiide.

I opened the lounge door and stepped straight in.

And the scene I came face to face with.

A man of about forty-five, hair gone from half his head.

Short, belly out in front of him, the standard-issue middle-aged specimen.

He was standing square in front of a woman and sneering at her.

“Who’s that?”

“That face…… I’ve seen it somewhere……”

“Ah! That’s right. That’s An Hyeonju, the golfer!”

“An Hyeonju?”

“Yes, the golf player!”

“That’s the one. The beauty golfer? She really is pretty.”

“So that married-man scandal was real, then?”

The people waiting in the lounge watched the fight and whispered.

This is a driving school in Gangnam.

Plenty of people around here have golf as a hobby.

That they’d recognise her was almost inevitable.

Right in front of me, Pro An Hyeonju — my noonim — has landed in a bad spot.

Hair tied back and a cap on, but there’s no hiding who she is.

And on top of that, she’s got herself properly caught by a man whose lid has come off from being slapped.

It’s true that Pro An Hyeonju raised her hand first.

But it’s also true that the man gave her the reason.

Not one of the people watching is stepping in.

They were all watching it the way you watch a house burn, interested in nothing but the thrill of the scandal.

One of the filthy faces of the human world.

The reaction among the middle-aged women in particular is hot.

Their eyes have caught fire with envy of Pro An, whose face and whose figure are both unfairly good.

“You apologise. If I don’t get proper compensation I’m reporting you to the police!”

The middle-aged man has got himself a proper pretext, and his eyes flash white with a different intention in them.

A tattoo, half out from under his sleeve.

He looks like a punk-grade thug.

Pro An Hyeonju bites her lip and closes her fist.

She knows the ground is against her as things stand.

In the world as it is now a pro golfer has the recognition of a near-celebrity.

A woman golfer with the looks and the ability together, all the more so.

In a collision with an ordinary member of the public over a scandal, the damage falls harder on Pro An Hyeonju.

Already, right here, she was going round on the women’s tongues.

The lurid words are what their curiosity goes to first.

“Wow! This one’s a piece of work. Seduced a married man and had her fun, and where’s all this standing tall coming from? Or is it just brass? No sense of the room at all, which is exactly why you’re in this state.”

“What— what did you say?”

“Looking down on people like us, out in the open! Being pretty is everything, is it? Hiding your tail and playing the vixen!”

The man decides the ground is laid in his favour and pours out abuse.

The rims of Pro An Hyeonju’s eyes redden, and then tears gather in them.

The anger has risen to the crown of her head and she’s a step from losing it.

She’s going to crack at this rate.

One more hand raised and she hands that punk bastard his justification.

Not one ally stands anywhere around her.

Footsteps. Steady ones.

I shut the door and walked straight at the front of the room.

And.

“Noonaaaa!”

(End of Chapter 23)