What the Speed Couldn't Outrun
The bike howled.
Olivia loved a motorcycle for exactly one reason: the speed that seeped all the way into her joints and bones. In the moment that massive engine roared, she could forget every trivial thing and pour her whole mind into the road unspooling ahead of her.
The speed never lasted.
The light went yellow. Tires shrieked, and she had to grab the brake at once.
Waiting out the signal, she sank quietly into her thoughts. Should she call and say she had been placed in the honors class? Her father's face rose up, and she shook her head. Hardly worth a phone call.
She had settled that firmly enough. Even so, the thoughts kept crowding in until they filled her head.
If I do call... what would I even say?
A horn blared behind her. Without it, she might have sat there blank forever. Olivia raised a hand in apology and opened the throttle again.
The engine screamed.
Maybe it was because she had thought of her father. All at once the tired ride home soured, as if someone had thrown muddy water over her. On a day like this she wanted to ride as if she meant it.
Damn it.
The lights would not leave her alone. Stand still like this, and the useless thoughts came crashing in...
She gunned it anyway, and could not remember how she had reached the house. What she did remember was dropping onto the sofa, face wrung out with exhaustion.
It was always like this. All she had done was think of her father, and a perfectly ordinary day grew heavy as wet cotton.
It was not that she had disliked him from the start. There had been a time when she loved her father more than anyone in the world. Back then she was so proud to be his daughter that she watched every gesture she made. Through all her school years she never once let a common curse cross her lips, afraid of laying a stain on his name.
And that was not all. Everyone she met set father and daughter on a scale and weighed them against each other. She only smiled, bright and easy, as if none of it touched her. She was Ralph Warren's daughter, wasn't she. Born to a brilliant father, she ought to be able to bear this much. Olivia was certain she could endure anything.
Looking back, it had been a truly naive thought. A girl's bravado, from someone who did not yet know the world.
The world, of course, was nowhere near as obliging as she had imagined. She entered a national design competition. She prepared for a full half year, but adults could enter, and professionals too, so a fifteen-year-old girl placing was close to impossible. Even so, the happy daydreams never stopped. You know how it is. Buy a lottery ticket, and the whole week stays sweet. If she won a prize, how happy her father would be.
And then, of all things, the dreamlike thing actually came true. Third place. Fifty thousand dollars in prize money alone, and a ranking that could even open the door to a special hire at a company.
Sadly, the seed of misfortune germinated with that blessing for soil.
Ralph Warren's Daughter Places in Major Competition.
A Fifteen-Year-Old Genius Designer Appears.
The press reacted first. Starved for the birth of a star, the papers poured out friendly articles day after day. Perhaps that was what stirred the gossips. The whispers followed, as if they had been waiting.
She was long past flinching at comparisons with her father. Even if people wrote her effort off as fine DNA, she had thought she could bear it. The suspicion that her father had used his influence was a shock, plain and simple.
"Dad didn't even know I had entered!"
No explanation she offered made a single person believe her. In that moment Olivia understood it, bone-deep.
The world does not want me to succeed. If things stay like this, stepping out of my father's shadow will be impossible for the rest of my life.
That must have been when it hit her. The extreme emptiness. The knowledge that there was a wall she could never clear settled her in a way that felt almost strange. A sense of self that had failed to grow through all those years was making trouble late. She saw that a great hollow had opened in her, one that love and respect for her father could not fill.
An endless sinking. Sinking. Sinking.
What pulled her back up was the bike. In an engine that throbbed like a heartbeat, she could feel, completely, that she was alive. For as long as she was on it, she could set aside the past that clung so stubbornly and give herself wholly to the present spread out in front of her.
Today, absurdly, someone else came to mind more than the bike.
They said he passed on the Queen's recommendation. So of course the headmaster came in person to look after him. Who knows. Maybe they even slipped him the practice questions ahead of time.
Someone hounded by a groundless accusation, just as she had been. She had only wandered into that idle backbiting because Park Jihoon's situation resembled her own so closely.
Now that she thought of it, she had talked with him quite a lot today. She could not bring herself to tell him everything about her father, so she had come at her own situation sideways.
"The clothes my dad makes are hopelessly old-fashioned. Total middle-aged taste. And he wants me to join a company like that? As a designer, no less?"
To someone who did not know the story, it might have sounded like nothing but a child's whining. Even so, Park Jihoon had listened seriously. Unlike the people who were always ready to misunderstand, he sympathized deeply, then offered a way forward with calm eyes.
How brilliant that answer was could wait. What mattered was something else.
He quietly bent his ear to what I was saying.
Not even her father had given her that. How could he have? Her father had told her to ignore the world's suspicions. The truth was bound to come out eventually, he said, so she should enter his company and prove her ability first.
That wasn't what I wanted.
If he had only stayed beside her in silence, that would have been enough. And then, today, she had met Park Jihoon. That long exchange, carried out in writing. The moment she remembered it, the tangle in her head went still, as peaceful as a lie.
"..."
She had been so sure she would never need anything like a friend in this life. Under the languid sunlight her eyes slid shut. Four in the afternoon. It might have been a long time since she had fallen asleep at this hour. Olivia sank quietly into a deep sleep.
After school I ran exactly ten kilometers and came back, then went straight to the shower with my body soaked through in sweat. I stood still under the cool water. A cold beer would have made it perfect. I toweled off with a thick shower towel and, settling for second best, took a cold coffee from the fridge and drank it down in long gulps. Ah.
Maybe I'll watch a movie?
I was heading for the sofa in a fine mood when the phone rang in the living room. Who, at this hour? I strode over and lifted the receiver.
"It's me."
A voice far too familiar.
"Wh— Grandfather?"
"Why so rattled? Did I call someplace I shouldn't have?"
"No. It isn't that."
I had never even given him this number... It was too soon to stop being surprised. Grandfather spoke at once.
"You planning to ignore your grandfather's words altogether?"
"I... ignore you?"
"What did I tell you when you left for England!"
"...?"
"Don't go losing your head in study. Go and enjoy yourself. Didn't I say that!"
Ah.
"And this boy heard me with the back of his ear. What's this? Honors class from the very first day?"
In Korea, Hyeon-gang's influence was enormous. But the intelligence to grasp, in half a day, something happening in England... I was standing there struck dumb when he went on.
"What, you hate taking over the company so badly you're fixing to become a scholar?"
At a glance it sounded like a scolding. The voice, though, was thick with pride. One vote that this news had already reached Chairman Jeong of Daebo... Anyway.
"I got lucky."
"That isn't something luck does by itself."
In the hope of lowering Grandfather's expectations—if that was even the point—I decided to tell him about today.
"I'm still a long way short. Once they set their minds to rolling their tongues, I could hardly follow a word."
"So what did you do?"
"Let come what may. I told them to speak more slowly."
A great burst of applause came through the receiver. He must have thought that, put in the same spot, he would have answered just the same. Sure enough, Grandfather asked, excitement mixed into his voice.
"So you beat every one of those English lads and got yourself into the honors class alone in the first round. That the size of it?"
"It just sort of happened..."
"Then those boys will be lying in wait, good and ready."
"..."
"Want your grandfather to send you a private tutor?"
"You told me to go and play, so why a teacher..."
"Who said a word about studying?"
"...?"
"Want the fight or not, once it starts you've got to win first, haven't you?"
Was that the Park family's particular refusal to lose, rearing its head? The mood did not last. Talking fight-stories to a grandson who had gone abroad to study must have felt a little off, even to him.
"You eating properly over there?"
"Of course."
"Scraps of bread won't see you through."
"I eat meat whenever I get the chance."
"Steak?"
"Yes."
A brief silence followed.
"If you need anything, call the Chief Secretary and tell him to send it."
"Thank you."
Grandfather seemed reluctant to hang up. He picked over a few more words, then set the receiver down.
I'm just as reluctant, you know?
How could I not be. Worried his grandson might be treated differently, he had offered to attach a private tutor. Attention and love I had never known in my previous life. If only he would stop telling me to inherit the company... I would have played the adorable grandson to the hilt!
Tch. I clicked my tongue at the regret and walked over to the sofa.
Anyway. Speaking of school.
I wonder how Olivia did.
She had not seemed to care much for the debate, but when it came to reading Julian she had been outstanding.
Ralph Warren's daughter...
Getting close to her could hardly be a loss.
If it can be managed, I hope she made the honors class.
Not only Olivia. Peter, was it? Once he enrolled, I ought to share a meal and hear the full story.
That said.
It's a real shame I didn't see Jack.
Why hadn't he come? Had he been placed in the honors class automatically, the way the nobles were? Did that mean the test was simply waived?
Wouldn't that be nice.
While those thoughts came and went, the last shade of afternoon stretched long outside the window.