“The inheritance comes to one billion won. The tax on it has already been paid in full.”

“A— a billion?”

“By rights it should have reached you on the first of January after you turned nineteen. But as you can see, I was in a serious accident. I got myself back on my feet and came as quickly as I could.”

Even at a glance he looked badly hurt.

He limped on the right leg, and every so often his face tightened and he winced.

Inviting him inside felt wrong, too. The room is small and there’s nowhere decent to sit.

I went and fetched the red folding chair that had been lying around on the roof.

Then I brought out a glass of cold water from inside and handed it over.

“Can I ask — was Han Okja-nim my grandmother?”

“Yes. You didn’t know?”

“No. I never met her. I’d heard the name.”

“……. She was your grandmother on your father’s side.”

“…….”

I’d known I had a grandmother, of course.

The thing was, I’d never once met her.

I’d learned her name from the press.

Shff.

The lawyer takes something out of his bag. A passbook.

My eyes went to it on their own.

And then——

“Hah——!”

Why that passbook?

“This passbook. You don’t yet know what kind of money it is, do you?”

“No.”

“……I thought about this a great deal.”

Attorney Kim breaks off there. There’s real anguish in his face.

“……??”

“If you take this money, you could lose your life over it.”

What kind of terrifying thing is that to say while you’re handing money over.

His voice stayed level, and that made the warning worse.

I have a rough idea already.

Say what you like about me — I’ve done my service and I’ve been out in the world.

It won’t be criminal proceeds.

But there’ll be people who’d kill rather than see it go.

Something from this stretch of the past came back to me then, and it came back sharp.

“Don’t tell me your injuries were those animals’ doing?”

“……. Could be. Could be not. Heh heh.”

There was nothing better in the house to offer him, so he drank the cold water and laughed, and the laugh came out hollow.

But he couldn’t hide his eyes. There’s anger banked in them.

“I’ll take it.”

“You should speak with your parents first——”

“No need. You can hand it to me.”

I was firmer about it than any schoolboy has a right to be.

The granny promised me this directly.

And she’s watching over me. I can feel that much, and I feel it strongly.

This is already running differently from the life I lived up to yesterday. In that one I never met the lawyer now standing in front of me with a passbook in his hand.

The situation has changed. Something in the rules has shifted from the way that time ran.

“Can you handle it?”

“Yes.”

Attorney Kim is worried about me.

“You’re still a high school student……. You seem to take after your grandmother, as she was. It’s in the eyes.”

He’s a lawyer. He’d be good at reading people.

From my eyes alone he’d picked out exactly whether I’d been out in the world.

“I grew up…… early.”

“Have they come to you already?”

“Not…… yet.”

Dad’s death in the old life had made no sense. He’d died for reasons nobody could accept.

That those people were behind it was easy enough to guess at.

“You’re brave.”

“Better a well-fed ghost than a hungry one, wouldn’t you say?”

“Hahahaha. There’s nothing this young man won’t say. Yes, yes. Quite right. Quite right.”

Attorney Kim’s laugh comes out big and open, and it puts me in a good mood for no reason at all.

“Here. Take it. Pocket money your grandmother left for you, Tae-ung-gun.”

The passbook the granny handed me in the dream. Now the real one, delivered by a lawyer.

Even the wooden seal I saw in the dream matches it exactly.

My hand shakes a little around it.

A billion won. Pocket change to people who have money. To me, a sum I had never once put my hands on.

“Your grandmother did a great deal of good in her life. I’m standing here because I was one of the people who benefited from it.”

I could hear that he meant it.

The granny had said the same thing to me in the dream.

Do a lot of good with your life.

“If she was a good person…… then I’m glad.”

The grandmother Dad used to cry out for.

At least I know now that she was warm.

“If anything happens, call the number on the card. They caught me off guard, but I’m not an easy man either.”

His character shows, and it matches the hard face. I could see him grinding his teeth on it.

“Thank you for your concern.”

“Not at all. I’m glad to repay Madam’s kindness even this much.”

Some relationship between the two of them that I’ll never know about. The lawyer got to his feet.

“When you have no power, there’s nothing wrong with bowing your head. The world evens out in the end.”

He turned to go and said it once more. There was warmth in it, and real encouragement.

“I’ll bear it in mind.”

“Hahaha. Tae-ung-gun, you’re the most entertaining student I’ve come across.”

He’d spoken formally to me from the first word and he never once dropped into casual speech.

You can tell a good man from how he talks.

“I think a day will come when we meet again.”

“I think so too. Take care of yourself.”

Tock. Tock.

He set off, limping on the bad leg. He took the stairs down on the cane.

“Go safely.”

I bowed to his back.

I’m a healthy high schooler now. But a fair stretch of working life had already fitted me with the manners a person ought to have.

The messenger of fortune had turned up out of nowhere in broad daylight, and now he was gone.

“It’s not as though a ghost had me under a spell.”

The passbook, a clean billion won printed in it. I held it and looked it over, and looked it over again.

Even with the real thing in my hand I couldn’t believe it.

A sum I’d never laid eyes on in my life.

Across my whole working life the most I’d ever had in an account was somewhere around ten million won.

More than a hundred times that was printed in this one.

My birthday’s already passed, so I’m of age. I don’t need my parents’ permission for anything. My main bank, the one linked to my student card, is Daehan Bank.

The digital certificate is already set up.

Shff.

I opened the passbook again after closing it. Looking a second time, it’s the same one the granny handed me in the dream.

As vivid as if I’d touched it and seen it with my own eyes.

“Keep my head down, he says……”

That was the advice the lawyer left me as he handed it over.

I have to live quietly.

I could guess well enough at what was hidden behind the one line.

Ring ring. Ring ring.

The plain ringtone of a phone that had already gone out of date.

Someone I’d missed and kept locked away. How long has it been since I saw this name.

A smile spread across my mouth on its own. I pressed answer.

—Son?

That one word sounds like magic. Something in my chest swelled up.

For a second nothing comes out. My throat closes.

—Son?

She calls for me again.

“M— Mother.”

—Mother? What’s this? Where did that come from?

I called Mom “Mom” right up until I enlisted.

After discharge, job-hunting and working life changed what I was like.

Adapting to a hard world as an adult, “Mother” had settled into my mouth on its own.

And the distance in my heart had grown to match the word.

“M— Mom.”

My face went hot all at once. Embarrassed, for no good reason.

—Hoho. That’s right. It’s Mom.

Mom’s own particular laugh came back down the line.

After the string of failed applications I’d drifted a long time.

She’d never once let it show, and she’d cheered me on through all of it. Like a big tree.

My eyes stung.

“Thank you.”

—Thank you? Son, you’re strange today. Saying things you never say.

Mom’s radar had started scanning. She’d picked up the anomaly.

“Thank you for bringing such a fine son into the world! Loyalty for life! Loyalty!”

I brushed it off fast with a joke, the way I used to in high school.

Thinking back on it, Mom and I had been close right up until Dad’s accident.

We’d joked like friends. She’d always kept something girlish about her.

—Oh! Ha Tae-ung! Thank you, thank you.

Mom’s voice bounces the way it always did. The smile spreads across my mouth again.

“Where’s Dad?”

—Out of town on sales. He’ll be back tomorrow, probably.

So Dad is alive. Thank God.

My fist tightens.

The regression landed at exactly the right point. Thank you again, Grandmother.

“I miss you.”

My voice shakes on its own. I mean it.

After I graduated high school I never once saw the two of them together again.

Now I can.

—You saw me the day before yesterday. Already?

“Yes! I miss you a lot!”

—Come out to Sokcho when you’ve got time. I’ll have sashimi and soju waiting.

“Yes ma’am!”

My mouth waters.

Drinking had come naturally as soon as I came of age.

In my old memories I’d let things go distant with Mom. Or rather, I’d barely had the capacity to make the time.

After Dad went the way he did, I had a hard time of it myself.

I shifted into a kind of passive, negligent-son mode.

Creditors of Dad’s I’d never seen before turning up played its part.

A complaint for breach of trust landed on Dad’s company as well.

The house the three of us lived in went to auction overnight.

That’s why I stayed on in the rooftop room. I came of age somewhere in there.

I was busy covering university and living costs.

It isn’t a lie. Turn it over again and I really did have no time.

I was carrying four online tutoring jobs a week.

Seeing Mom once or twice a year was the whole of it.

I was a university student, but I holed up in the club room absorbed in coin trading.

On leave during my service I killed the time with friends.

The truth is I avoided Mom on purpose.

She spent her days looking at the sea and missing Dad. Every time I saw it I could hardly stand it.

After discharge I ground my soul down on job prep and part-time work.

Studying took money too. Once I was back at school I covered living costs with student loans and shifts.

Around then Mom was running a small flower shop.

Her finances were stretched keeping herself, let alone anyone else.

I turned myself into a survival-mode soldier.

And living like that, with no hope in it, I regressed.

A chance heaven handed me. I bit down hard on my lip.

Just then a large electronic news board across the road came into view from the rooftop.

An old man appeared on the screen. Age spots, a benevolent face.

Big letters underneath, sized to catch the eye.

—HARYUN GROUP GIVES 300 BILLION WON TO LOW-INCOME SELF-SUFFICIENCY PROGRAMS.

Haryun Group. One of the ten great chaebol houses of Korea.

Its current chairman, Ha Cheolgon.

“Our grandpa……. Money coming out of his ears. Heh.”

That old man up on the board is my grandfather on my father’s side.

And I am Ha Tae-ung, the youngest grandson of a chaebol house.

(End of Chapter 4)