Homecoming Event
Through the taxi window, the front gate of Harvard came into view.
The radio was blaring.
[...There are rumors that Gorbachev will resign before Christmas. The end of the Soviet Union is right around the corner, folks...]
The driver chewed his gum as though he had no interest in the world beyond the windshield and jabbed a thumb toward the meter.
I handed over the change and stepped out. The November wind slapped me across the cheek.
Whoooooosh-
On the street stood a homeless man holding a sign that read HELP, and a discarded newspaper had a bold headline screaming, "Prolonged Recession."
The cheers over victory in the Gulf War had already gone cold. All that remained was the shadow of the recession.
Still, the atmosphere inside the campus was very different.
Students walked between the red-brick buildings laughing, and the smell of fallen leaves mixed with coffee drifted lightly at my nose.
I had left Garden Queens and returned to Harvard.
Honestly, there wasn’t much at Harvard that would teach me how to make money, but there were still a few reasons I couldn’t afford to leave school.
The first was connections.
Building direct relationships and trust with the geniuses and top students at Harvard.
And, by extension, gaining natural access to the networks of their families, relatives, and friends.
Beyond that, my primary goal was to receive investment from the Harvard alumni association and obtain information through it.
The second was... a little out of left field, but it was humanistic cultivation.
A lot of the things I had missed while chasing only money and success in my previous life still remained right here on this campus.
Rather than piling up credentials and studying for ways to make money, I mostly took the other liberal arts courses I had missed before my regression.
For instance, English literature, and beyond that novels, poetry, composition, sculpture, swimming, tennis, and more were the classes I liked taking most. Because of that, some of my classmates considered me something of an oddball.
My roommate Victor, for one.
These liberal arts classes are starting to wind down toward finals. Should I just take a leave next semester? As long as my name stays on the roster, getting investment from the alumni association shouldn’t be that hard...
Lost in thought, I was walking toward the dorm door when...
“Victor!”
A shout leaked through the crack in the dorm room door.
“Is this a room for human beings? Or a pigsty? No cleaning, no studying! You should learn from the student next to you, Sanha!”
When I opened the door and stepped inside, I realized the shouting had been a perfectly fair criticism.
The room really was closer to a pigsty.
Eight empty pizza boxes were stacked on top of each other, and cola cans had never even made it to the trash can, rolling around on the carpet instead.
An economics workbook, half-finished, lay face-down on the floor, and a mountain of crumpled tissues had piled up on top of it.
Victor was slumped at the edge of his bed.
Standing in front of him was a middle-aged man in an expensive cashmere coat.
It was Victor’s father, Wolfman Hamilton.
Without taking off the coat dampened by the wet mist, he was scanning Victor’s room.
“Look over here, Victor. Your friend Sanha Lee’s desk, for example.”
Wolfman sighed as his gaze moved back and forth between Victor’s side and mine.
“The books are on the shelf. Alphabetized, neatly lined up. On the desk there’s only a notebook and a pen, nothing unnecessary at all. Not a wrinkle on the bedsheet. Do you know what that means? That’s the room of a student who studies. No, the room of someone with a goal. The room of a person who’s going places.”
His eyes shifted to Victor’s side.
“And this?”
He nudged the pizza boxes scattered on the floor with the tip of his shoe.
“Eight pizza boxes. Eight. You didn’t eat all eight at once, so why leave them lying around after you’re done? Why is the cola can beside the trash instead of inside it? You just have to reach out your hand. Why can’t you do something that simple?”
Victor tried to speak, but Wolfman raised a hand and stopped him.
“Son. Your father spent twenty years on Wall Street, twenty years. You know what I learned there? That a trader with a dirty desk has a dirty portfolio. A man who can’t organize his thoughts can’t manage money either. That’s the truth. How’s anyone supposed to trust you with real responsibility if you’re like this?”
He looked down at the mound of tissues piled beside Victor’s bed as though it was pathetic beyond words.
“This isn’t the room of a guy who’s just fooling around... no, even a fool would be better than this. This is the room of someone who’s given up. The space of a failure.”
“...”
Victor’s shoulders slumped.
But Wolfman’s voice dropped a notch.
“...I know you’re smart. I know you’ve worked hard. You got into Harvard like your old man did. That isn’t easy. But listen to me, Victor.”
He put a hand on his son’s shoulder.
“Talent rots if you don’t maintain it. Even a diamond is just a stone if you don’t polish it. And you’ve got a good example right next to you, don’t you? Learn something. Hm? Finding a good friend is harder than making hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Wolfman tipped his chin toward me, standing at the door.
“Hello, Sanha. This is the first time I’ve seen you in person. Most of our conversations have been by phone and letter. I even got the signatures by mail.”
“Thank you for helping me open my accounts and handle my stock trades, Mr. Wolfman.”
“If you’re Victor’s friend, then you’re my son too. Just call me Father. I’ll call you son in return. Hahaha—”
Wolfman let out a hearty laugh.
I knew he was the sort of man who looked rough on the outside but had a warm heart.
He slipped an arm around my shoulders and lowered his voice.
“Come to think of it, didn’t that kid Victor used to have a girl’s picture stuck on his desk? Becky, or something like that. But I don’t see it anymore.”
“He got turkey-dropped.”
From behind me, Victor shouted, “No, she didn’t! Becky’s going to wait for me! We were supposed to see each other at Thanksgiving!”
“I see. So that happened. No wonder this room looks like Nagasaki after Fat Man...”
Maybe Wolfman thought he had gone too far with his heartbroken son, because he reached out with a big hand and hauled Victor back up.
Then he turned to me again.
“Thanks for keeping Victor company in the middle of this mess, Sanha. Have you eaten breakfast?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh? Then why don’t you come with us?”
Wolfman was a successful stock trader on Wall Street, so there was no harm in staying on good terms with him.
And before my regression, the three of us had already been close, so I had no reason to refuse.
He always treated me so well back then.
If he hadn’t died suddenly of a myocardial infarction, we would have stayed close for much longer.
In this life, I decided I would keep a close eye on him so he wouldn’t suffer a tragic accident.
Just then, someone poked their head out from the hallway.
“I think your friend is a hundred times better than you are, oppa.”
I knew that face too.
Green-tinged blond hair, orange eyes, and a cute face sprinkled with a few freckles across the bridge of her nose.
Victor’s younger sister, Vivian.
She would later grow up to become a fairly famous singer thanks to her dancing and singing, but that was still far in the future.
She’s four years younger, so she’d be fourteen now.
Mischievous Vivian wrinkled her nose at my bed.
“Sanha oppa’s desk and bed are neat, and they smell nice. What are you? A pizza-box collector?”
“Get lost, Vivian.”
The moment Victor and Vivian saw each other, they started growling at one another.
Wolfman laughed and grabbed both siblings by the scruff of the neck.
“All right, enough pointless bickering. Let’s go eat. In Harvard Square there’s a restaurant called Harvest that your father used to go to all the time when he was a student. I saw it on the way here, and it’s still open. Their steak is incredible.”
Even as he said that, he winked at me.
“How about we go hear a little about this investment story from my son who came all the way from the East?”
His voice was brimming with interest.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
A misty rain was drifting like fog.
A yellow taxi cut through a puddle and came to a stop.
Wolfman, Victor, Vivian, and I entered a street lined with upscale restaurants.
Wolfman stopped in front of a restaurant with a dark green awning.
“This is it. Harvest. My favorite place.”
The doorman bowed politely and opened the large oak door for us.
Inside, jazz piano flowed through the restaurant.
Old leather chairs, a fireplace, and the clink of wine glasses over mahogany tables.
A neatly ordered world for successful people.
We followed the waiter to a table deeper inside.
On the table sat a white paper menu, a crystal glass filled with water, and a small candle swaying softly.
Wolfman opened the menu and looked at me.
“Sanha, you hungry? The brunch here is excellent. Their Eggs Benedict are especially good. The steak is very good too.”
“Thank you, Uncle.”
I decided to call Wolfman Uncle, the same as I had in my previous life.
He seemed pleased by that and grinned.
Vivian studied the menu with shining eyes.
“I want pancakes. With blueberries on top.”
“Hmm. I’ll have the steak and eggs...”
Victor muttered as he flipped through the menu too.
After the orders were placed, Wolfman took a sip of water and looked at me.
“Sanha, I noticed your desk earlier, and it was spotless. Have you always been the organized type? Our Victor, meanwhile, had stacked up what looked like a tower of pizza boxes beside his bed.”
“...Father.”
Victor raised his voice in grievance.
“I told you I’d lost contact with Becky. So I was a little...”
“Yes, I know. Heartbreak hurts.”
Wolfman gave his son’s shoulder a light tap.
Then he turned back to me.
“Sanha, Victor talked about you a lot right after he enrolled. He said you memorized pi to one thousand digits in three minutes? And that mock investment bet you had with a professor turned out to be completely real. I know exactly how real that was, too, because I’m the one handling your accounts now. I was just happy to see that our boy had made a smart friend. Thank you.”
His tone carried real sincerity.
Wolfman took a sip of coffee and went on.
“Victor, how are classes these days? Are the professors riding you hard?”
“Intro to Economics is manageable, but statistics is killing me. There’s a problem set every week, and the workload is insane.”
“Heh. Still have to do it. A solid foundation keeps you from shaking later on.”
Soon after, the food arrived.
As Wolfman cut into his steak, he changed the subject as though it had come naturally.
“By the way, Sanha, I looked over your account activity... to be honest, I’ve been going crazy the past few days because I wanted to ask you about it. If it doesn’t offend you, could we talk a little about your returns?”