“Grandmother! We’re moving on Saturday!”

“Moving? Us??”

Lee Malnyeon blinked at the lift in her grandson’s voice.

She had wanted to move for a long time.

Guryong Village, the most run-down place in Seoul.

Nobody would want to raise a grandson anywhere like it.

But in fact it was not possible.

The money would not stretch.

Her son and his wife, who were the pillar of the house, died, and she came out of it with nothing in her hands and barely her body.

A charge she could never believe was laid over him, and everything her son had built was taken.

She had scraped up odd jobs and looked after the boy on them.

Earning by the day and eating by the day, with just enough to paste the mouth shut.

Even with the benefit coming in, once the rent was paid and the meals covered there was nothing left for the boy’s pocket.

She is old and her legs are no good, so no work worth the name would come to her.

She had held on cleaning a small building, and even that ended not long ago, when she slipped and hurt herself.

Her eyes are open and there is nothing but dark in front of them.

This talk of moving would not go into her readily.

“We went and saw it today. It’s a flat in front of Seoguk University, and the sun comes right in.”

“…… Jiung. We haven’t…… got the money.”

In front of a fact that cold there was nothing but defeat, and the breath went out of her before anything else.

Seoul house prices have gone up as though they mean to come through the ceiling, and she knows well enough that moving is not a thing she will dream of before she dies.

A jeonse alone runs to hundreds of millions.

The house they live in now took a three-million-won deposit.

It was everything they owned.

“You know my friend Tae-ung?”

His voice was still up, and he sprayed as he talked about his friend.

“Course I do. He’s my boy’s friend.”

“Tae-ung took a jeonse for us. We signed today.”

“What’s that……? Is it true??”

By her grandson’s face it was not a joke.

But it was not a thing she could believe with both ears hearing it.

In a world like the one they are living in, who takes a jeonse on a flat for a friend?

And a schoolboy at that, with what money……

“Tae-ung doesn’t say, but I think he’s from a really well-off house.”

“…… Jiung. Is it all right for us to go and live in it?”

The years behind her had been held together by a conscience and nothing else.

Half believing and half not, Lee Malnyeon asked her grandson’s dream of a story over again.

It was too particular to put down as nonsense.

“Yes! We can take it.”

There was weight in the answer, and it was clear.

From the day they first met in the canteen, Ha Tae-ung had put a strange faith into him.

Somebody looking on might point and call it a penniless boy taking what he has no right to, but he has decided to take it.

I’ll pay it back many times over. I’ll stake my life on it.

Ha Tae-ung told him to become a prosecutor.

A statement about Park Jiung’s road with no grounds under it and every certainty in it.

He has made up his mind to follow it.

Only a little while ago he had wanted to throw the school in and meet the world with malice in his hands.

At the moment when there was no hope in sight.

Ha Tae-ung appeared like a lie told, and became his benefactor.

“Be good to your friend……. Turn on a benefactor like that and heaven will punish you for it.”

Lee Malnyeon has lived as long as anybody needs to.

The one truth she believes in is heaven’s order.

People turn their backs on people, but heaven does not turn its back on the good.

So if you betray a good person, heaven will not sit still, and that is as plain as looking at fire.

Thud thud thud thud thud!

The gym on the eighty-fifth floor of the Latte Signiel hotel.

The residents’ facilities are closed on Mondays.

So today I decided to use the hotel’s.

The view is a great deal better than the community space on the forty-second.

The time is five in the morning.

Eighteen kilometres an hour, hard, for thirty minutes.

“Hoo. Hoo.”

My breath did not go as rough as I expected.

At that pace I am close to a marathon runner.

The lungs are better. The whole body…… I can feel it. Improved out of all recognition.

The physical side is certainly another of the privileges my grandmother handed me.

Casting back to this stretch of the first time through, my body was not in good order at all.

The stress that came at me daily meant I could not exercise properly.

What I ate was poor too.

Noticeably thin, and ailing every other week.

But the muscle now is genuinely tight.

Heart and lungs, stamina, strength, all of it as though it had been specially blessed.

What the body feels of it is no joke.

Tick. Sliiiiide. Tuk. Tuk. Tuk.

Sweat beading up along the forehead, and it feels good.

I stopped the treadmill.

One reason I picked the Signiel in a single stroke was an environment like this one.

Every convenience a day requires is completed perfectly in one place.

The hotel breakfast runs to about fifty thousand won.

Residents get twenty per cent off the use of every facility.

Gym, pool, sauna, the rest of it.

Put it in at the concierge desk and you can have anything from cleaning to valet parking to lessons of every kind.

As long as the money holds it up, there is no need to put your own labour into any of the work a day requires.

The hotel’s cooking comes easily through a dedicated app.

The optimal space for keeping body and mind at their best condition.

Keep the finances sufficient and there is no need to invite fatigue on yourself.

Shff.

I wiped the sweat off with one of the towels laid out.

Central Seoul spread out in panorama, taking the colour of a sunrise opening the day.

The sun, red and full of the bright force in it, climbs the Seoul sky in long strides.

Buildings without number beginning to glitter as the light takes them.

And at the centre of them……

“Grandfather. Good morning.”

I have the bearing of a descendant of Haryun Group now.

I inclined my head a little toward the tower brightening in the light.

“Right! Eat, and off to school——”

A quick sauna, a shower, breakfast, and then school.

The moment I moved a foot.

Thud.

A dull noise went into my ear from off to one side, out of nowhere.

My head turned on the reflex.

“……!!”

And I saw a person down on the floor.

I got over to her fast.

There is no hotel staff about.

She had come in around the same time as me and had been doing weights.

A woman who had put a mask on before she started and kept it on.

The water bottle she had been holding was rolling on the floor.

Tatatat.

I checked her over quickly.

The head first.

She does not seem to have gone down head first, which is lucky.

By the way her legs are lying, the strength went out of the lower half and she folded.

“Mmm……”

I got a palm under her head, and a shallow sound came out of her.

The shut eyes trembled, and then opened a narrow way.

Her eyes, open that little, met mine.

Light brown, out of focus, and seeming to look at nothing at all.

Emptiness and powerlessness spread through both of them like fog.

No colour, and no scent.

The light coming off her body is a sky-blue so pale it is nearly impossible to tell the colour of.

Before long it looks as though it will have no colour at all.

“Are you all right?”

There are cameras running on all sides of the gym.

A man can find himself named as an assailant, so I kept the hand under the head and nowhere else.

“Would you…… get me to a chair……”

It cost her to get it out.

The mask made a voice with no strength in it smaller still.

“Excuse me.”

I took her under the shoulder and got her onto one of the rest chairs at the side.

Can a body be this light?

Around the middle of a hundred and sixty centimetres.

And almost no weight to her for the height.

The bone itself is slight.

The hair tied up in a ponytail hangs without any life in it.

“Some water……”

She looked at the bottle rolling on the floor.

“Yes.”

The morning’s plan had gone off course without being asked.

The woman does not look ordinary.

They say even brushing sleeves makes a bond, and this is not a common meeting.

No — by the feel coming off her, there is something of having seen her somewhere.

Half the face is behind the mask, and the whole of what comes off her is beautiful.

Crack.

I opened the bottle and handed it to her.

“Th…… ank you.”

She took it, and looked into my eyes for a moment.

“Dahui!”

Another woman’s voice came then.

Calling the one who had gone down, by the sound of it.

Tatatatat.

A woman running over, having seen the state of things.

Mid-thirties, and round in the build.

She stopped right in front of us, round-eyed, and looked from me to the woman and back with a what-is-this in her face.

Her eyes are manufacturing every story there is.

“I was dizzy for a moment…… He helped me.”

She lifted the mask a little, took a mouthful of water, and explained.

“Dizzy? Then today’s schedule——”

“It’s fine. I can do it. Don’t worry.”

That would be it.

As the feel of her suggested. Somebody in the entertainment business, with the public’s eye on her.

“Well, then.”

I got up, inclined my head a little, and turned away.

Monday morning, and a bond brushed past in it. Dahui.

I was on my feet as well.

And then.

“Thank you……”

Her voice came from behind me and stuck like a dart.

Along with the clean floral scent of her that had been circling the end of my nose while I was beside her……

Footsteps. Steady ones.

The first weekend went past like a storm, and spectacular with it.

And meeting a new week, the place I am heading for is——

A solid breakfast, out of the house, and walking to school.

The season with the spring ripening in it.

Cars moving busily, and the street trees keeping their places.

I walked in long strides, watching the people going past.

An easy morning.

My coin account burning in real time and never stopping.

In the wake of the moon’s fall, Bitcoin and nearly every coin with it have gone blue in the face.

A thirty-times short is past sweet and getting on for rotting my teeth.

—Somewhere inside the time~♬ a day with the rain coming down~♪

A song that has been lodged in my ear for a few days, and I rode the rhythm of it.

The best-known song of Furia, a woman solo singer.

Going through this stretch the first time, I did not listen to her.

Casting back to it, every day of it was hell.

So there was no feeling for music in me either.

But the board has turned right over now.

Stop.

I planted myself squarely in front of the Cheonghwa name.

And below it, raised in gold, the school motto — 先照高山.

I cut it into myself again.

The light strikes the high mountains first.

The first time through I bowed my head in front of that line, every time.

The me of then was a dirt spoon.

In Cheonghwa, a peach-blossom paradise that is a playground for the children of the upper class, I was the outsider.

But now——

Nobody boasts in front of me about what is in his wallet.

In proportion to the balance in the account, my own worth has amplified exactly that much.

“Kneel! Fuck!!”

(End of Chapter 49)