The Drawing Worth Twenty Billion
I dug through my pants pocket.
In my last life, this would have been the moment I yanked out a smartphone and searched until something snapped.
Tch.
I had haunted art museums, honestly. Even with no money to spare I bought exhibition catalogs by the stack and hoarded them, and when that still wasn't enough I went hunting through art-history books, artists' biographies, even the magazines that came out every month with the new shows. All that labor—and now, when I actually needed the knowledge, I couldn't call up one ordinary memory?
I had seen it. I was sure of that.
Some flea market, wasn't it?
A drawing bought for a mere thirty thousand won had turned out to be a work from the Renaissance... and then how much had it made?
Damn it.
It wasn't even a book I'd read ages ago. I thought I had been paying attention.
And I can't remember?
Fine. People forget. I wasn't a computer. Who remembers every book they've ever opened? My head could accept that. So why did my chest feel tight, as if the money lost had been my own?
Is it even your painting? Why are you throwing a fit?
I tried to comfort myself. It did no good. The blockage in my chest showed no sign of easing. If I had never read the thing, that would be one matter. But I had read it, and if I was about to miss it over nothing but a failed memory—
That's just throwing money away!
God. Had I always been this greedy? In my previous life I was a man who could get by well enough so long as I was allowed to write. How had that man ended up like this?
The thought didn't last.
And what if I am greedy? Am I not allowed?
The spike of temper came out of nowhere. I carried on like that for about five minutes, a whole performance, and still the passage I had read in my last life refused to surface.
Damn it.
I wasn't about to give up here.
If the memory's faint, I'll force it into the light.
What I had was thin: a work from the Renaissance, or just after it. If the artist had been Italian I would have remembered well enough. The fact that it stayed hazy meant the painter was probably from the margins.
All right. Let's do this.
Once I had decided, I strode up to the register.
"I'm sorry—could you wrap every book from here to there?"
All the way home I never let go of the books. I had bought about thirty of them today, every one tied to the Renaissance. Whatever they were, I would read. I would keep reading blindly until the memory came back.
If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that.
No need to read them closely. Artists' names, titles of works—anything that might be a clue, taken fast. And if something caught me...
Hmm. This one's interesting.
Wait. Wait!
Was this the moment to be reading for pleasure? I told myself it wasn't, and still—
Books that went out of print in my last life, books I couldn't get my hands on... and here they're lying everywhere.
Maybe it was the blood of a hopeless reader. Give me print and my mind wandered off at once. I had already finished two volumes in the car when the chauffeur spoke.
"Young master, we've arrived."
"Already?"
"Ah—I'm sorry."
"Not at all."
Between the word processor and dozens of books, there was simply too much to carry. Besides the chauffeur, several of the staff had to come out and help. Perhaps that was why the racket reached the door.
"What is all this?"
Song Suhee had come all the way to the entryway. She watched the books file in, eyes round.
"You bought every one of these?"
"Yes. Something started nagging at me. I had the money I was given this time, so I made up my mind and bought them."
"What could you possibly be that curious about?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She looked at the titles first.
"All of them Renaissance?"
"Yes."
"Now you're trying to master art, too?"
Less the art than the money... ahem.
"You went to the College of Fine Arts at Seoul National today, didn't you?"
"How did you know?"
"The department chair called me himself. Said a boy with bright, sharp eyes came, looked at the paintings, and left."
"Ah..."
"I heard you didn't buy the painting?"
"No. We couldn't get in touch with the artist's older brother."
"The chair said he'd keep trying to reach him, as it happens."
The sort of special treatment only Hyeon-gang ever received.
Convenient, sure.
Get used to this, and a sense of privilege would soak me to the bone.
Careful.
I had barely made that small vow when she went on.
"It was a painting Mom saw too, wasn't it?"
"Yes. You would have seen it."
"I walked right past it, and you picked it out. Is that it?"
"It just... spoke to me a little."
"You can't tell your grandfather that."
"What?"
"He was the first to ask to see it, and he even pressed money into your hand. You have to be able to explain, in your own way, why that work caught you. Can you?"
She wasn't saying it because she was afraid of Chairman Park. For her children, Song Suhee was a woman who would raise her own voice even in front of her father-in-law. So why say this?
"That in itself would be a lesson."
At my answer she broke into a wide, bright smile.
"Exactly. Wondering why a painting pulled you in, and then explaining it—that's the best kind of study there is."
"Then you're studying too, Mom?"
"...?"
"Grandfather told you to go to Insadong every day."
"Mm. Yes. Something like that."
The talk had drifted, but that was just as well. There was something I had wanted to ask.
"Mom, you've been going to a lot of antique shops lately. Do people ever find treasures in places like that?"
"Treasures?"
"Masterpieces no one has discovered yet, for instance."
Perhaps she took it for a child's curiosity. A strange smile rose on her face.
"Why did you start wondering about that?"
"I was reading, and it seemed like that sort of thing happens now and then."
"It does. Once in a while. But Jihoon, people all think the same way."
"..."
"Everyone who wants to find a hidden treasure crowds into Insadong."
"So anything worthwhile would already be gone?"
"That's right."
"Then why do you still go?"
At that she seemed to hesitate. I was a young son. She was probably gauging how far she ought to explain.
"Overseas, when grown-ups pass away, they hold something like a flea market. You can't just throw their belongings away, so you let the people who need them have them cheap."
"Yes."
"Korea barely has that kind of culture. So there are plenty of cases where no one knows what to do with what the dead left behind..."
"And that's when they come to Insadong."
"Right. They bring the things along, partly to have them appraised."
"So sometimes what just came in is better than old stock that's been sitting around unsold?"
"Exactly. That's why I clock in there every day."
Belongings of the dead.
A culture Korea doesn't have.
A flea market.
Some songs set you down in another time as if you had stepped into a machine. Song Suhee's words did that to me now. A cold winter day. The afternoon after my shift in the school cafeteria. Buried under a blanket on an electric heating mat, peeling tangerines. Yes. That was when I had been reading that book.
The Architect's Death.
A flea market selling a dead man's things.
An old drawing.
The picture bought at the flea market was genuine?
Now that was a windfall. I could still remember the warmth of the blanket and the sweet smell of tangerines filling the room. That evening I had eaten a bowl of instant noodles. Probably.
"Jihoon, did something good happen?"
"What?"
"You suddenly smiled so brightly."
"...?"
"Right in the middle of talking, you looked like the happiest person in the world."
"I... smiled?"
"Yes. You're smiling now."
I brought a hand to my face. She wasn't wrong. A grin. The corners of my mouth hauled all the way up.
"Ah, that... something just came back to me."
"Oh?"
"Homework I'd been putting off. It popped into my head, that's all."
"If you have homework, why are you smiling?"
Because it came out of a dead man's belongings.
And of all things, it was real.
"Thanks, Mom."
"For what?"
No way she could see what was going on inside me. Only a question mark rose in Song Suhee's eyes.
"Mom, I'm a little busy... I'm going to head up."
"What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"
"The homework's urgent."
"Jihoon, wash your hands first."
"I'll wash upstairs!"
I took the stairs at a run.
Park Jihoon's room.
I switched on the word processor and typed in everything that had surfaced.
It had happened in Boston, in the United States, in the 2010s. An architect died, and a flea market was held to sell what he left behind. Among the goods was a single drawing that looked old at a glance. Had it been an oil painting, someone might have taken it to a professional appraiser. But it was only a drawing.
How impressive could it be?
With that thought, they had sold the picture for a mere thirty thousand won. And then—of all things. That drawing was a last work by Albrecht Dürer, the artist counted among the most important in the whole of German art history. Not merely an unpublished piece. A final work. The great Dürer specialists descended on it, and in the end the verdict came down: authentic beyond any doubt. The appraisal, by present standards, was roughly twenty billion won.
A picture bought for thirty thousand won, worth twenty billion? It might be the greatest investment on record...
What matters is this.
I was the only one who knew any of it. The information wasn't enough, of course.
America. Boston. An architect. Dürer.
For now it was about as precise as hunting for one Mr. Wang in all of China.
But this Mr. Wang is offering twenty billion! How could I not look?
I needed a method. Hmm. An eleven-year-old could hardly fly to America and search in person.
I'll have to send people.
To comb every corner of Boston I would need dozens, at the least. Let's see. Round-trip tickets, the cost of staying, a fee for their trouble...
Close to a hundred million won?
The sum made my head swim. The shock didn't last.
Is a hundred million the problem now? The return would be two hundred times that!
I talked myself around at once.
"Hooo."
This was a kind of business, wasn't it? Maybe I could raise an investment.
If I asked Song Suhee...
I shook my head hard. What parent would be glad to hear an eleven-year-old son announce he was going to make money? And he wouldn't be asking for pocket change. He would be asking them to hand over something like a hundred million won.
If she said yes, that would be the strange part.
Tsk. The memory had only just come back, and I was supposed to be hobbled by nothing but my age? A sigh was already rising when—
...Wait!
A face surfaced at just the right moment. The one person who would listen even to an eleven-year-old, so long as there was money in it.
Grandfather?
There was a chance. Only—
How do I bring it up?
I bit my lower lip and held still.