Chapter 8
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 8
Chapter Title: Where Did I Put It?
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This story's characters, events, and locations are fictional creations for the purpose of the novel and may differ from reality.
Scene.8 Where did I put it?
Yu-hyeon hated wasting time once he'd made a decision.
It was true when he fled from Jang Man-ho, and it was true when he gritted his teeth in the military, dreaming of revenge.
It was the same when he remembered his father's words and started studying again.
Returning to the past and punishing Jang Man-ho without hesitation was no different.
'Never put off what needs to be done. Once you decide, you charge forward!'
Yu-hyeon's personality was partly innate, but it was also shaped by watching his father, Kang Man-dong, and his unhesitating nature and actions.
Switching from a general goods truck to a food truck. Deciding to immigrate and leaving Korea without a backward glance. These were all decisions that bore the mark of Kang Man-dong's character.
"Son. Let's pack."
"Yes, Father!"
"Shouldn't you be calling me Papa? A man's word is his bond, they say. Should a man break his promise, or not?"
"..."
"No answer, huh? Should we just put down roots in France?"
"No, Papa."
"Okay. How far is Malta from here?"
"In Europe, all the countries are packed together, so they're all pretty close. It's like flying from Seoul to Jeju Island; we'll be there in no time."
"Good that it's close!"
Returning immediately to their lodgings, the father and son quickly packed the belongings they had scattered over the past few days.
"Here. Put this in your bag."
Kang Man-dong took out a black plastic bag, the kind you'd get at a market, and handed it to Yu-hyeon.
"What's this?"
"I don't know either. I just swept up whatever was in your old baby formula can."
"Ah. The formula can."
It was a sort of time capsule where he had stored mementos from his childhood.
"I found it in the wardrobe while I was cleaning out and throwing things away. I was going to toss it, but then I remembered how much you cherished it as a kid, so I brought it along."
"You didn't have to."
"It might not be much, but it's your stuff. If it's going to be thrown out, you should be the one to do it."
Yu-hyeon fiddled with the bag, a strange feeling washing over him.
Things he had once considered precious and treasured like jewels, but looking back, they were so insignificant he'd wonder why he'd kept them at all.
*'We were in such a rush to immigrate, I didn't even think to pack this. But he remembered to bring it for me.'*
Yu-hyeon opened the bag and looked inside.
A stack of pogs with robots on them and some glass marbles. Among other miscellaneous items, a palm-sized diary caught his eye.
Yu-hyeon's gaze was drawn more to the diary than to the other items.
It was something he had used for quite a long time, writing about memorable days like a journal and jotting down things he wanted to do when he grew up.
"My bucket list..."
He picked up the diary to look inside, but Kang Man-dong's nagging cut him short.
"What are you staring at? Look at it later in Malta. Are you planning to stay here all night?"
The man who had stubbornly insisted they wait for Jang Man-ho's call was now nagging him relentlessly, as if that had never happened.
"Yes. I will."
As Yu-hyeon grabbed his bag and stood up, he saw Kang Man-dong, already finished packing, standing imposingly at the entrance of their room.
"Son, at this rate, how are you going to make a living? When a man makes a decision, he should bury any lingering feelings and charge full steam ahead. Why are you dawdling?"
"Aigoo, Father. You're going to roast beans in a lightning flash at this rate. I'm coming, I'm coming."
"I told you to call me Papa! Why do you keep saying Father! It's not like you're married with grandkids. It's not like I'm some white-haired old man. Why do you keep calling me that? If Papa is too hard, just call me Dad like you used to."
*Father. You get obsessed with the strangest things.*
***
Aboard the plane to Malta.
Kang Man-dong, who had stayed up nearly all night because of Jang Man-ho, fell asleep the moment he sat down.
Yu-hyeon took the diary from his bag and opened it.
The title, 'Yu-hyeon's Record,' caught his eye. It felt a bit cringey now, but he must have been quite serious about it as a child.
By his current physical age, it was something from four or five years ago at most. But mentally, it was from more than forty years ago. It felt like flipping through faded memories.
He turned the pages one by one, reading the thoughts of his younger self.
*'I really had a lot of things I wanted to do back then.'*
One day he dreamed of being a singer, another day a writer. There was even an entry where he vowed to become a physicist and win the Nobel Prize.
Judging by the date, it seemed to be the day his father had talked about the Nobel Prize.
Flipping toward the back, he found an entry about wanting to learn Taekwondo.
"This must be the day I got beat up by the neighborhood kids for being annoying when I asked to play with them."
He remembered how one of his eyes had turned black like a panda's, forcing him to wear an eyepatch for a while.
-I like being with Dad, but I want to have friends too.
Beneath the entry about wanting to learn Taekwondo, a line expressing his longing had been added.
Traveling from place to place in the truck, he never had a chance to make friends.
So he spent most of his time alone or reading books, but sometimes he envied the other kids running around in groups.
At the time he wrote it, he seemed quite heartbroken, but now, it didn't stir any particular emotion in him.
-Why don't we have a house? Why don't I have a mom?
Yu-hyeon glanced at his father, who was fast asleep in the seat next to him.
"Father. You should meet someone nice and get married before it's too late. I want to try calling someone Mom at least once."
"Mmm... mumble... Jang Man-ho... that son of a bitch."
Yu-hyeon let out a small chuckle at his father's sleep-talking.
"He tells me to bury my lingering feelings and just charge ahead. Looks like he's chasing Jang Man-ho in his dreams."
Yu-hyeon gently shifted his father's head, which had slumped to one side.
"I hope you catch him, at least in your dreams. It's not a bad way to let off some steam."
Yu-hyeon turned his attention back to the diary.
He was reminiscing about the past, reading page by page, when he found an incomprehensible string of characters written in the back of the diary.
-1E99423A4ED27608A15A2616A2B0E9E52CED330AC530EDCC32C8FFC6A526AEDD
"What is this?"
Tilting his head in confusion, Yu-hyeon found out what the string of characters meant from a diary entry on the next page.
"Ah!"
He had cried out louder than he intended and quickly covered his mouth.
Yu-hyeon checked the diary entry again.
-Lost, hungry foreign beggars in the countryside... As payment for the meal... Said they bought pizza with this in America. Three servings of bulgogi rice bowls... 40,000 coins...
Around this time last year.
While he was watching the truck for his father, he had given a meal to three foreigners who were drooling from across the street.
They said they had come down to see the Korean countryside, lost their wallets, and were now stranded. He'd fed them a meal, telling them to experience some Korean hospitality.
"I even gave them some bus fare. Wait a minute. This year is 2011, so... in at least four years..."
His grip on the diary tightened.
"A USB. I received Bitcoin on it."
Yu-hyeon frantically searched his memory, trying to recall where he had put the USB drive containing 40,000 Bitcoin.
"Where did I put it? Dammit. I can't remember."
His past self might have known, but for his current self, it was an event from too long ago to remember clearly. Right after he'd regressed, he could even recall the flight attendants' conversation, but after a few days, that memory had faded as if it had never been so sharp.
"40,000 coins... Even at just $100 per coin, that's four million dollars."
When the Bitcoin craze swept the globe, the price would later skyrocket to nearly one hundred thousand dollars per coin.
The phenomenon was so intense it was dubbed the 'coin frenzy'.
A virtual currency with no impact on the real economy, it would sometimes plummet like crazy, only to soar again as if nothing had happened, fueling a speculative craze. And he had 40,000 of those very Bitcoin!
But no matter how much a coin was worth, without the USB drive, it was all just a pie in the sky.
"Please, remember. Where did I put it?"
On the off chance, Yu-hyeon started rummaging through his bag.
"It's not here. Not here."
The USB was nowhere to be found in his bag.
"This is driving me crazy. If I'd never known, it would be one thing, but..."
Yu-hyeon tore at his hair as he wracked his brain again. Then, a memory flashed through his mind.
"Ah! The formula can. I put it in there with the diary!"
Yu-hyeon pulled out the plastic bag he had put in his backpack. And there, among the miscellaneous junk inside, he found the USB drive in question.
"It's... It's here. It's here!"
A common, ordinary-looking USB drive. Inside it lay 40,000 sleeping Bitcoin.
Yu-hyeon was about to wake his father but quickly stopped himself.
*'No. Even if I told him, it's about the future, so it would be hard to explain. And it's not like it's money we can use right now. I'll keep this as our family's emergency fund.'*
Yu-hyeon put the USB away somewhere safe so he wouldn't lose it.
He was only sixteen now, so economic activity was difficult, but in a few years, when Bitcoin became mainstream, Yu-hyeon would be an adult.
*'I can use this as seed money to invest.'*
Yu-hyeon stroked his old diary.
*'In this life, let's achieve the things I've dreamed of, one by one. And I'll make sure to get Father married so he won't be lonely.'*
And.
Eleven years passed.