The Gray Badge
The engine note, uncannily like the beat of hooves, stopped dead—of all places—right in front of the house.
Where the bike had halted, a woman in a leather jacket called down from the seat.
"Never seen that car before?"
Where she pointed, a 1938 Bugatti sat parked as if it owned the drive.
And why wouldn't it. The car Chairman Dazai had signed over to me in Japan. Perhaps it had seemed a waste, shut away in the garage at Hannam-dong. I hadn't even asked, yet Jo Sudeok had paid out of his own pocket to have it sent all the way to London.
Trust him to have impeccable taste.
It was only last night that I had taken delivery and stood there alone, admiring the thing.
"Is it yours?"
I nodded.
"Mind if I have a look, if that's all right?"
I nodded again.
She must have wanted a proper look, because she went so far as to take off the helmet. Blonde hair spilled down like a waterfall. It was, without question, the woman I had seen outside the tailor's shop.
Hm. The sort whose blood boiled at the mere sight of a wheel?
With the gravest face in the world, she peered into the car. Flowing lines that had shoved aerodynamics clean out of consideration. Tires that called an aviator's goggles to mind, and the elegant design of the wheels. For a long while she was lost in it, as if she were taking in a work of art.
"A Bugatti?"
"Yeah."
"It's in far too good shape for an old vintage."
"We've barely taken it for a test drive."
"A model from before the fifties, right?"
"1938, to be exact."
"Whoa—!"
She had breathed it out in perfectly genuine awe.
"Could you pass a word to your father for me?"
I only looked at her.
"I really need to know where a person goes to find a treasure like this."
She had assumed, of course, that the car belonged to my parents. Fair enough. I wasn't old enough for a license. The assumption was probably the reasonable one.
Even so. Hadn't the upperclassmen called her an idiot? She had looked plenty tough back then, and yet the moment the talk turned to cars she was no different from any perfectly ordinary girl her age.
Soon she picked up the helmet.
"You're a Royal School freshman too, aren't you?"
"How do you know that?"
"I saw you once. Outside the tailor's."
Ah. Maybe I had stood out, being the only East Asian there.
"Want to ride on the back?"
"What?"
"You're heading to the preliminary assembly, aren't you?"
"I am, but..."
There was only one helmet. She seemed to read as much in my face.
"If you're worried, you wear it."
Ha.
She really did hold the helmet out. Naturally, all I could do was shake my head.
"It's right around the corner. I can walk."
"All right, then."
She swept her hair back and put the helmet on. A moment later the engine poured out that same tremendous roar, rose into a howl, and she slid out of the alley as if the street were ice.
On foot it would take a good five minutes. On the bike, thirty seconds flat.
If only there had been a helmet. Ahem. I swallowed the regret and set off at a brisk walk.
The grounds were so vast that simply finding the auditorium was no easy matter.
Lucky. I made it right on time.
The students had gathered in separate little knots, but look as I might, Jack was nowhere among them. From what I had heard, nobles were placed straight into the Honors class without so much as sitting an exam, and so they didn't bother showing their faces on assembly day. I wondered whether Jack was one of those cases. There was no way to be sure.
I clicked my tongue. Standing around alone is dull.
Reading a person's character from the sum of their ordinary habits of speech and every small gesture was a minor hobby of mine. Do it long enough and now and then you could salvage a character or two. More than that, it let me endure a stretch of boredom like this one well enough.
Let's have a look.
More than a hundred of us. The one who stood out most was a boy in a green suit. What did people call the type—the social one? He worked the room like a politician who had already decided to run, meeting every classmate's eyes and shaking every hand. His voice carried so well that the conversations arrived whether you wanted them or not.
His name was Julian Burnett. He introduced himself as the second son of the chairman of Standard Bank, and the person opposite would hand back an answer of much the same kind: a several-times-removed descendant of some famous founder, or else born into a house with a long pedigree. In the end, what these people meant by an introduction was announcing who their father was.
Doesn't it get tiresome?
They applied themselves doggedly to confirming one another's backgrounds, and at last Julian made his way to me.
"Hello, I'm with Standard—"
"Julian Burnett, the second son?"
"You know me?"
"I've heard it until my ears hurt."
"But I don't know who you are."
For an instant every eye nearby settled on me. The rumor that I had been admitted on the Queen's recommendation must have spread long since. Their faces said they were dying to know what kind of backing I had.
"Park Jihoon."
"And?"
"That's all."
Julian slid a look at me, as if he spoke for the rest of them.
"This doesn't seem entirely fair."
I only looked at him.
"I told you I'm the second son of the Standard Bank chairman."
"Did I ask?"
"What?"
"The way I remember it, you were the one walking around announcing it like a boast."
I had only said what was true. He seemed to take it as an insult. This was why a life soaked in a sense of injury grew exhausting—
That was when he spoke.
"Why are you being so contrary?"
Julian cocked his head.
"Didn't we enroll so the children of distinguished houses could stick together? That's why you came in on the Queen's own recommendation. And now you're going to stand there and act above it all?"
On the surface it sounded like a remark meant for me. In truth he was keenly aware of the eyes around us, and perhaps that was why he seemed like an actor overplaying his part—an actor packed tight with self-love, who had already cast himself as the protagonist of this stage.
A short laugh escaped me.
"You're laughing?"
Ordinarily, by this point, they couldn't govern their temper and tried to put me down by main force if nothing else. Julian only raked me with a look, from head to foot. He didn't actually do anything.
Muscle fit, was that the term? In a suit his shoulders looked especially broad, and he had a good four inches of height on me, which may have been part of it. He seemed ready to seethe, then forced the anger down and stepped off to my side. Tireless, he opened his mouth again.
"Hello, I'm Standard Bank—"
"Don't talk to me."
"What?"
"You're loud. Get lost."
Well, well. Fiery, aren't we.
Instead of a greeting, the girl from the bike only shot him a look thick with contempt. Julian, however, had quite a thick face.
"You're from America, right? Olivia, third daughter of the designer Ralph Warren—"
"Did you not hear me say get lost?"
He jerked as if struck.
"What? Can't understand it because it isn't a noble's accent?"
A moment ago, in front of the Bugatti, she had been perfectly sane. Now there wasn't a heroine to match her.
In any case, Julian's face was flushing red and then going pale when the closed door opened with a clack and a group of men came into the auditorium. Thanks to that, the standoff between Julian and the girl on the bike—if it could be called a standoff—sealed itself on its own.
The tallest of them, a middle-aged man, walked slowly to the podium. He took in the whole of the auditorium and spoke.
"Welcome. My name is Sam. I oversee the administrative work."
A member of the school staff, which perhaps explained it. He went on as if opening a prerecorded file, and the content was obvious: a welcome to the school, and the news that today had been arranged so the rules could be explained. Some ten minutes passed that way.
"You all look as if you're bored."
To change the air, he brought out something rather important.
"As previously announced, today there will be a debate for the purpose of assigning classes. You will be grouped five to a team..."
Only then did the room show an interest. I, of course, had every reason not to care.
Olivia, was that what she had been called? The girl from the bike wore the same face: class assignments could fall out however they liked.
I nearly laughed. This is fun.
"Your opponents will be seniors currently enrolled at Oxford, so rather than thinking of beating them, you would do better to put the weight on conveying your own views without holding anything back..."
He had only just finished explaining the debate.
"A debate... with the seniors?"
"And they're at Oxford?"
"Does that even make sense?"
Whether it did or it didn't, once again only Olivia and I stared blankly into the middle distance.
A little later the staff began sorting us into groups of five and hung a different-colored name tag on each group. Red, blue, yellow, green, purple. The tag I was given was gray. I was first. Behind me came a white boy named Peter. And behind him—hm?
Olivia?
Two people who looked to have not a shred of enthusiasm for any debate, landed in the same group. I was starting to wonder whether the only ones to be pitied were the rest of our team.
And then, of all things, someone I had never expected received the same tag. A boy wearing an awkward smile inside a green suit. Julian.
American films are full of lecture halls built like amphitheaters, and the room we were sent to was exactly that. Well over a hundred of us sat in a ring around the platform. Then the group taking part in the debate went up and took the microphones, with the feeling of standing on a stage. Across from them sat the alumni who were there to debate them, and beside those, professors had been seated to do the scoring.
"First group, please prepare for the debate."
If efficiency had been the aim, they ought to have run the debates at the same time in something like three lecture halls. Instead they insisted on packing the whole crowd into one room and making us watch someone else's debate. They probably counted the watching itself as part of the lesson.
"The first topic is history."
Just as the moderator announced the start, Julian, who loved the sound of his own voice, turned to look over our group.
"See the one at the far end? The senior in the white shirt. People have called him a genius since the day he enrolled. Scottish nobility... and of course he entered Oxford at the head of his class..."
His chatter did not stop there. The instant the first group made a mistake, Julian's mouth opened.
"Debate is momentum. Your logic can be torn apart, but the moment you tuck your tail, you're finished. What you do then is—"
He launched at once into a full-blown speech, as if he himself were some master of debate. Perhaps he felt the looks of disbelief come flying.
"You may not know this, but I have long attended a social club open only to the gifted... and as for IQ, mine is at least 138..."
His high spirits did not last. Half the group—which is to say, Olivia and I—gave his words no response whatsoever. So what was he to do?
"If you haven't got the ability, of course your interest drops. Fine. I'll handle all of it, so the rest of you keep your mouths shut, just as you are now..."
"You there, in the green suit!"
Julian started.
"Yes, you. Do you really think you can chatter away like that while your own classmate is debating?"
Only after the moderator's rebuke did Julian finally shut his mouth.