The Building Owner Dream Come True
Ah, damn.
Why is this kind of premonition never wrong?
I blinked.
They say the great thing that stands above the creator is the landlord.
Was I really becoming one?
Just like that?
I took a deep breath.
One of my dreams in my past life was to become an ordinary building owner!
Honestly, wasn’t that the dream of half the people in the Republic of Korea?
I couldn’t hide the tremor in my eyes.
“Gongja, do you like it?”
Excuse me, Mother.
I let out a shaky breath and looked up at my dear mother. My loving mom had handed me a building like it was a snack.
I knew she had money, but...
Was this much?
Maybe I’d grown too quickly. My legs had no strength in them. I wanted to drop to my knees right there.
“Oh my. Gongja, what’s wrong?”
Dear mother.
“It’s so amazing.”
You’ve fulfilled this little one’s dream in one blow. I have nothing to say.
Building owner at my age...
I wasn’t sure, but had the taxes all been handled perfectly too?
I tried not to laugh.
Kids this age knowing about being a building owner is weird.
No, maybe it was about the age to start knowing. Children were more precocious than people thought.
I took another deep breath. I was so moved I could barely get the words out.
“Oh my. That’s all?”
Excuse me, Mother, “that’s all”?
It’s passive income!
Money coming in without working for it. What kind of cheat code was this?
“If I gave you a building in Gangnam, our Gongja would faint.”
I swallowed hard.
“This place isn’t that expensive.”
“E-even so. Mom came by car, so I’m not sure, but... this is close to the subway, right?”
“Hmm? It is, isn’t it?”
Wow.
I clenched my knees with desperate force.
A building is all about infrastructure.
I didn’t know what was around it, but a cafe on the first floor, a clinic on the second. A cram school would be nice on the third.
That’s the ideal building, isn’t it?
Mom patted my head.
“It’s not even a new building.”
“But it shines.”
“I bought it after remodeling.”
For a moment, I felt like crying.
Perfect, Mother.
I took a deep breath. I’d almost forgotten because of the blazing building-owner buzz.
“But there are so many pictures of Gongja.”
“The hallways are still wide, Gongja.”
I looked down the long, straight space. There were indeed still a lot of white walls.
“That’s true, but...”
“From now on, we can just hang up every production Gongja appears in.”
So that’s how it is.
But still.
“Why are there pictures of Gongja? Is this a photo studio?”
Was this place a museum or something?
If you’re going to do something like this, do it in a room at home. It’d look strange if other people saw it.
Mom laughed brightly.
“Ahahaha! Of course not.”
Ah, thank goodness. It wasn’t that.
“I just decorated it because it’s Gongja’s company.”
Huh?
“You said you wanted to found it. A charity foundation.”
Oh, Mother.
In that instant, my legs finally gave out. I sank to the white hallway floor.
“Oh my, Gongja?”
A foundation wouldn’t be so easy to set up!
It takes ages if you have to go through all those procedures.
And yet this, this quickly!
I bowed my head deeply. Tears burst out at once.
“Mama!”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
Honestly, that was one of my dreams in my past life too.
On TV overseas, famous actors always had charity foundations.
I wanted to have something like that someday too, and help others. Truly.
The tears wouldn’t stop. They dripped onto the white hallway one by one.
“W-what? Gongja, why are you crying?”
“Because I’m happy.”
To think it could happen this easily.
I sniffled. Was this a dream or reality? I couldn’t believe it.
“Oh my?”
I got to my feet. Then I walked along the wall where my photos were hung. At the end of the row, a signboard was mounted.
In-ui-ye-ji Charity Foundation
I blinked. The tears still left in my eyes spilled down again.
“The foundation name is a little unfamiliar, isn’t it?”
“No...
It’s one of Gongja’s four virtues, isn’t it? I only know that much, though.”
“It’s cool.”
“Really? I thought it might be a little off because it was the boss’s naming sense.”
Since it was for me, she must have made it something related to me. Honestly, it was a little random, but from a marketing standpoint it wasn’t bad.
It does have a bit of a countryside Confucian-academy vibe. But so what? What does it matter?
What mattered was that the foundation existed.
“Gongja, what do you want to do? Mom can do anything you want.”
“I want to help a lot of people. Both in Korea and overseas are good. But first, I want to help the older brothers and sisters who can’t even eat.”
The world was better than before, but there were still plenty of people like that around us.
“Oh my?”
“I also want to help them go to school.”
Elementary and middle school were compulsory education in our country, but there were still plenty of people having a hard time.
“Well, eating and surviving are important too. But once they have some kind of center of gravity, I want to show them better things too.”
I once heard a story.
Some businessman asked a tribe deep in Africa what they needed. They answered, ‘A movie theater.’
It wasn’t just a matter of food, clothing, and shelter.
“G-Gongja. Mom’s surprised. You’re even more serious about helping others than I thought.”
“Yes. Of course.”
I spread both arms wide and spun in a circle.
“Mama gave me all this. Gongja received more than enough even though he did nothing.”
Well, children born with silver spoons might think all of this was perfectly normal.
But I knew.
This wasn’t all free.
I knew because I’d died once.
God gave me luck, so I should give back.
You can’t take it all with you when you die, after all.
Did they really grant my wish on such a massive scale for nothing?
I smiled brightly.
All of this is probably so I can do good things, right?
This life has given me more than enough. So now I have to share it.
In a capitalist society, money makes more money.
I looked down at my hands. They were still small. But I had a chaebol-family mother, and this body with its genius looks.
If I make use of this, everything will be easy.
One by one, the wishes from my previous life were coming true. I was standing inside that kind of dream right now.
I’m going to earn like crazy.
Wealth was a good thing. In this life, I could flex just by standing still.
I grinned, but at the same time I knew exactly what the price of that was.
I’ll shoot like crazy and give until everyone’s sick of it.
I couldn’t help every struggling person in the world, but maybe I could manage a tiny little decimal point of it.
“Oh my...”
Mom patted my head.
“Now I’m the one who feels embarrassed. Gongja is so sincere.”
She muttered softly.
“Is he really an angel?”
No. I’m just an ordinary little citizen who understands capitalism well.
I just know that nothing is free.
I tugged on Mom’s hand.
“Are there people working at this company too?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Gongja will work hard!”
“Ah, yes. Well. Gongja. Mom already set up the foundation and budgeted for it. I promoted it in the newspapers, but we haven’t held an event yet.”
Ah.
So they haven’t held the launch ceremony yet.
Mom kept thinking aloud.
“I was wondering whether to just rent a hall and hand out some food, but somehow that didn’t feel right.”
I nodded.
“Mama. Gongja has a good idea.”
“Oh? What is it?”
“Can you book a theater too?”
Mom blinked.
“Gongja wants to try theater.”
Mom tilted her head, but I smiled brightly.
This is a good chance to prove my acting skills.
Mom ran a hand back through her hair and asked, “Uh, um. Gongja, theater needs a lot of people. I can handle that, but who are you going to cast?”
I tapped my chest.
“Gongja will do it alone.”
“Huh?”
“I watched a video. A one-person play. Gongja really wants to try this.”
Monodrama.
Honestly, it demands a ridiculous amount of acting skill.
I’d probably have to dig through foreign scripts too.
But I want to try it. And it fits, doesn’t it?
I looked at the In-ui-ye-ji Charity Foundation.
It’s the beginning of something good.
I spread my arms wide.
“I want to do it in front of the actors and the reporters.”
As a rule, the beginning is best when it draws attention.
“Huh?”
“If Gongja stands alone onstage, everyone will pay attention, right?”
They’ll come to see how badly I do.
I’m going to aim for that.
I straightened my shoulders.
Chungmuro, I’m going to show you that Ma Gongja can act.
These people still hadn’t admitted it, had they?
If they’d recognized my acting skills in the first place, no one would have thrown a plastic bottle at me.
Because there was a stamp burned into everyone’s head that my roles came through Mom’s power, those things flew at me.
In Korea, if you’ve got the skill, they’ll cut you a lot of slack.
It was a country where even if you didn’t like an actor, you’d still go to the theater if the work was good.
Of course, there are limits.
If it were truly disastrous, then I wouldn’t even get cast in the first place.
Laughter slipped out of me before I could stop it.
“Oh my. Our Gongja is brave.”
“Gongja can do it!”
“Oh? Then should Mom believe in our son?”
Mom lifted me up and opened the office door. I clapped as I took in the view of the office.
The office was quite neat. Seeing the employee stand, I bowed deeply. It all felt like a dream.
* * *
Ma Jeok sat on the floor and glared at the newspaper. Reading something was not something he usually did.
Ah, so this was the article.
But if his close friend’s face was staring back at him in bold print, there was no way he could ignore it. Ma Jeok rolled his eyes over the page hard.
Ma Jeok tilted his head.
An angel, him?
Honestly, his face was very pretty. His eyes were round and bright, like some doll had started walking around on its own.
Still, not an angel.
Angels are the kids who eat dew instead of meals and never even poop.
That kid may be kind, but...
Ma Jeok thought of Ma Gongja. Honestly, he wasn’t that unreal a being.
He eats well and goes to the bathroom too.
Ma Jeok tilted his head again.
Ma Jeok muttered immediately, “That’s over the top.”
This isn’t it, Aunt.
Well, he is kind, but he’s still basically normal, isn’t he?
He wasn’t perfect. That kid, surprisingly, wasn’t very good at sports.
He’s bad at anything that uses the body.
No matter how much soccer Ma Jeok taught him, he flailed around.
Maybe I should say he doesn’t know how to handle his own body.
He was like someone who wasn’t used to his own limbs.
Still, he does try.
For all that, he moved around diligently. While they were exercising together, Ma Jeok had asked him why he worked so hard.
The kid had said,
I, I want to do action acting someday.
Like shooting guns?
Yeah. Guns, and kicking too, right?
Ma Jeok had asked innocently,
With that body?
For an instant, the boy had wobbled.
I-I can do it if I work hard!
Fine. Go ahead and try. But how did you manage your whale family with that body? That must’ve been hard...
The boy had wiped his face dry and muttered,
I practiced like I was going to die.