I Became the Son of Steel

"You're submitting this trash as your thesis?"

My advisor set the draft down on the desk as he spoke.

Trash…? He knows exactly how I put this together…!

A hot knot of rage surged up in my chest. It was a two-hundred-page draft that held two full years of my life. Yet the man sitting across from me had merely skimmed the table of contents, flipped past a few pages of the introduction, and in fifteen minutes flung those two years straight into the garbage.

Fifteen minutes!!

To him, my two years amounted to no more than four seconds apiece.

"…Is my draft really that inadequate?"

"Haa… Your writing lacks novelty in its sources if you want to call it a thesis. Something this mediocre will never even set foot in the academic world."

"Lacks novelty in its sources…?"

I widened my eyes and shot him a look of pure resentment, forcing down the tremor in my voice.

"Professor, my thesis is built on primary sources that no one in the existing scholarship has ever touched. These are letters released last year from the Moscow Party Archive—never once cited in Korea or even in the Anglo-American literature! How exactly is that not novel?"

"…Kang, new sources do not automatically make a new study."

"Then what about the body of the text?"

"It wasn't bad. That's all. It lacks no·vel·ty."

"……."

I was genuinely speechless. In truth I already knew the score. This man had no intention whatsoever of letting my thesis pass. The topic overlapped with another graduate student he was pushing—his own nephew—and the sudden perfect coincidence of research subjects was, of course, pure chance. Probably.

"Political history of the late NEP period has long been abandoned by the field. There are no new sources left for you to dig up, and no new perspectives emerging. It's a dead memory. So give it up."

The professor yanked off his glasses in irritation.

"How many times have I told you? Academia is not a place for sprouts like you to come write their diaries."

"But, Professor…!"

"Kang. Do you even know what kind of research is hot in the field right now?"

I knew exactly what he was about to say. Three rounds of criticism and a sixth rejection. This advisor always invoked conference presentations whenever he recommended revisions—always for the sake of his nephew.

"Memory studies and applied history… and digital history."

"Exactly. You saw last month's colloquium, didn't you?"

I remembered it perfectly. Soviet ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠history colloquia were rare enough in Korea.

"Collective-memory research using digital archives is ideally suited to current trends—subjectivity and the everyday lives of Soviet people. You should do something along those lines…"

He recited the same speech, word for word, that he had given me last time. Then he pulled an entire stack of papers from his drawer and shoved them toward me. Every one of them was my own discarded typeset trash—research materials he had previously rejected.

"Kang. We historians must always pursue research that is logically sound, free of access problems with the sources, and capable of offering a new methodology."

He slid his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and continued.

"Don't try to swim against the current…. Academia is a conservative place. These research materials of yours… take them and use them somewhere else."

His eyes were full of contempt; I could only shake my head. I hated that look. So, without thinking, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠words slipped out.

"Professor, just one question."

"…What is it?"

"Senior Park's paper for next month's conference. The citations in it are identical to the contents of the letters I submitted to you in my interim report half a year ago."

The professor's hand froze.

"…What are you talking about?"

"I requested those sources from the archive myself and translated them. The request records, the translation drafts—everything is under my name. So how did they end up in Senior Park's paper?"

"……."

Professor Park's face twisted for a moment.

"At first I thought it was coincidence. But… a typo I deliberately left in the interim report appears in Senior Park's paper exactly as I wrote it."

"…Kang."

His voice dropped.

"So what you're trying to say is that I stole my student's thesis… is that it?"

"…?!"

He curled his lips into a triumphant smirk and pressed on.

"Well, if you feel wronged, go ahead and report me. But no one will believe a word you say. The press won't help either. I was the first person in the Republic of Korea to receive the Dan David Prize. You are merely a graduate student."

Faced with Professor Park's brazen counterattack, I shut my mouth. Plenty of words rose to my throat, but in front of an advisor's authority a graduate student had only two choices: quit or submit.

"Kang. As you know, I have already decided to retire. And I would like to remember you as my final student who did not become a laughingstock of the field."

Final…. The word drove a spike straight through my chest.

"If you are the brilliant student I think you are, you already understand what this means. Of course you do."

…Overturn the table, or swallow it?

There had only ever been one answer. I swallowed the rising fury.

"Thank you for everything until now."

I bowed at the waist. The professor merely nodded and picked up the next student's draft.

Meeting over.

My two years of research and my dreams were left sitting on that desk.

When I stepped out of the lab the sun was already setting. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The November wind bit cold. I zipped my jacket all the way to my chin and cut across campus. Spotting a couple on the bench in front of the library, I hurriedly changed direction.

Once I left the humanities building and entered the engineering complex, the smell of late-night snacks drifted out. An ordinary evening.

—Ding!

I pulled out my phone while walking toward the parking lot; the alarm went off right on cue. Thirty-two messenger notifications. Thirty of them were group chats. Scrolling up, I found a private message from a classmate I had known since undergrad.

My fingers were already freezing, so I typed a single light character and fished out my car keys.

I dropped into the seat and turned the ignition. The city nightscape slid past: convenience-store signs, chicken shops, franchise coffee, real-estate offices. Real-estate offices, franchise coffee, convenience-store signs, chicken ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shops…. Seoul looked the same no matter where you went.

Waiting blankly at a light, I suddenly laughed—more of a snort than a real laugh. Whether the sound carried outside the car or not, I felt eyes from the vehicle beside me.

"Fuck…."

It was so unfair. My life's masterpiece had been stolen, and I had not even been able to raise a voice of protest. Reality was not a drama. You suffered injustice and still had to submit.

No matter how many sources I dug up, how much Russian I learned, how carefully I analyzed documents and reconstructed context, I remained nothing more than a powerless graduate student. I was sick to death of this third-rate life that merely circled the outside of dead memories.

Then a foolish thought floated up.

In novels and comics, this is exactly when someone gets isekai'd or reincarnated and starts a new life….

Possess Senior Park and sail smoothly through a doctorate, or become a Soviet citizen of the 1920s and rewrite history myself. If that happened, the materials inside that thesis would no longer be sources of dead memory but the most extreme form of participant observation—experience itself.

First-person historical research… wouldn't that be splendid? Even that bastard professor would have to call it novel. A new perspective had always been the definition of a fresh research topic.

"Pff…."

It was funny. Genuinely funny. I sat alone in the car snickering.

Comrade, I Am the General Secretary's Purge Target—A Participant-Observation Study of the Life of Nikolai Bukharin.

I even invented the title on the spot. Present it at a conference and they would treat me like a lunatic, of course….

I reached my destination, parked in the outdoor lot, and waited at the crosswalk for the light. It was red. Before it turned green I pulled earphones from my pocket. A moment later the signal changed and I stepped forward.

[ What… are you… listening… to…. ]

And then, abruptly, a deep male voice reached me. Asking what music I had been listening to…? The track coming through the earphones—I could not remember the title. What I did remember was the light swallowing my vision. And the headlight filling the entire left side of my world. And then……

—CRASH!

"What the devil were you listening to, Yakov…!"

The deep male voice shattered my lingering thoughts of the past; I whipped my head around. A man with a brown pipe clenched in his teeth was glaring at me with a terrifying face.

Yakov….

The name rang hard inside my ears. Twice. On the third time it finally drove itself into my skull.

I was Yakov!

More precisely, I might have possessed Yakov. Or perhaps I had been Yakov all along. Ugh, my head…!

I looked again at the man standing before me. A middle-aged man with pockmarked skin and hair slicked straight back. A short mustache and a left arm that looked unusually long. He seemed shorter than me.

Wait… what is this?

The moment the alien words entered my ears, a chill ran down the back of my neck. Astonishingly, my memories were double-layered. One set belonged to this body: the dry winds of Tbilisi, the warm affection of the Svanidze family, the days spent following Father to Moscow and attending technical school—all of it vivid.

The other set… was Seoul, Republic of Korea, 2022. The ninth-floor lab in the humanities building, Russian original texts packed tight on the monitor, the two-hundred-page draft the professor had set on the desk….

I could still hear my advisor declaring that it lacked novelty. But the voice in front of me now was not his.

"If you are not deaf, you can hear me, Yakov."

The man's brown eyes fixed on me. The face I had seen thousands of times in the portraits of history books was alive and moving.

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili….

He was famous. But the world knew him not as Dzhugashvili but by another name entirely. That name was…

"I was listening carefully, Father."

He—no, my father—was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the most enduring dictator in human history.

"…Sit down at once."

The dictator's brow furrowed. At Stalin's command I took the chair opposite him. At the same time I glanced around. Stacks of documents covered the desk; two cold teacups sat abandoned. My eyes met those of the portrait of Lenin hanging on the wall.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Founder of the Soviet Union, leader of the Bolsheviks, the greatest thinker since Karl Marx. I offered him a silent greeting. No reply came.

"Yakov…! Where has your mind wandered off to!"

Stalin's roar snapped my gaze back. He jabbed a finger at me, still holding a papirosa.

"Haa…. This is my final warning as your father, Yakov."

He was thoroughly enraged; his chest heaved as he took a long drag, closed his eyes, and continued.

"Break it off with that girl Zoya."

A voice stripped of every rise and fall of emotion filled the office.

—Crack-crackle.

The firelight from the hearth painted the side of Stalin's face red. Neither his expression nor his tone carried the slightest feeling.

"Zoya… you say?"

Could he mean Zoya Gunina, Yakov's first wife?

Stalin slowly set the pipe down and answered.

"That child is a priest's daughter. Our family can never accept her. Especially not for me, General Secretary of the Union—it is utterly impossible."

So it was true!

The original owner of this body, Yakov Dzhugashvili, and Zoya Gunina would insist on marriage despite Stalin's opposition… and that marriage would leave deep scars on both of them and on Stalin himself.

—Thump!

My heart suddenly raced. The scenario I had once only imagined had become reality and was now offering me a choice to rewrite history.

"I know this will be hard on you."

Stalin continued in the same flat tone. The words were meant as comfort, yet not a shred of warmth clung to the voice. Even persuasion, for Stalin, seemed nothing more than bureaucratic procedure.

"Therefore, if you break it off with that girl, I will grant you one wish of your choosing."

Grant me a wish?

"Understood, Father."

"……?"

"I will break up with Zoya."