What Do You Like?
Her eyes fluttered. Mercifully, Olivia did not let a single tear fall—and she did not answer the question of whether she liked design, either. Once she had her feelings well enough in hand, she turned a question back on me instead.
"What do you like?"
"What do I like?"
"Just... something you like."
A moment ago she had been the one laying her worries out. Now she was steering the talk toward me? Did that mean she had more or less found an answer to her own problem? Olivia certainly looked a good deal lighter, and that was why I answered in a pleasant mood.
"I like sports."
"I thought you might."
"...?"
"You're solidly built."
No one had ever said that to me in my previous life. It wasn't so much that the compliment pleased me as that it left me oddly shy. I changed the subject at once.
"I like reading, too."
"What sort of books?"
"English and American literature."
"Anything you'd recommend?"
"Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. A monument of Anglo-American letters—"
That was the moment.
"Boss? Are you there?"
A familiar voice carried in from the hall by the front door. Footsteps drew steadily closer.
"Boooss—hrk!"
It was Baker. Out for groceries, by the look of him. He stood with a huge bag filling both arms.
"Wh-who's the young lady?"
The instant he registered Olivia, he looked as if the sky had fallen. The shock lasted only a second before he rushed into an excuse.
"I knocked and no one answered, so I was about to turn around, and of all things... the door was open."
"Why so startled?"
"No, it's just..."
"...?"
"I had no idea you were having a nice time, and I barged in without a shred of tact..."
A nice time. That had the distinct feel of a misunderstanding.
"I-I'll get out of your way. If I've made you put something off, please, by all means, go right ahead and—"
"It's not like that."
"Ah, right, what I meant was a conversation I'd been putting off myself... I got flustered, and the words came out tangled..."
While Baker stammered, Olivia let out a small puff of laughter. Then she looked at him and asked.
"This sort of thing doesn't happen often, I take it?"
"This... if you mean..."
"Bringing home a friend of the opposite sex."
"O-of course not. Absolutely. First time ever, it is. Which is why I walked in so wide open..."
Olivia smiled again, as if the reaction amused her.
"Thank you. Useful information."
"...Pardon?"
She turned to me.
"I had a good time today."
She was speaking to me. So why was Baker's face going red?
She stood, and I walked her out to the door.
"Where'd you leave the bike?"
"I walked today."
"...?"
"My house is right around here."
Baker and I sat facing each other across the dining table. In front of him still sat the coffee cup Olivia had been drinking from.
"Didn't they say that was fifty years old?"
"Sorry?"
"The coffee cup. Worth whatever price you name, they said..."
"Ah."
The aftershock of a moment ago still seemed to be clinging to him. I didn't feel any particular need to clear up the misunderstanding. Perhaps he read that on my face, because Baker spoke at once.
"Boss, I happened to have something to report."
"...?"
"Yes. The fifth-division side in England we acquired last time is set to go up to the fourth division. Only, I'm not sure we ought to let it..."
"Why not?"
"Promotion doesn't increase the revenue. Nobody's going to start filling the stands just because we've scraped into the fourth tier. The operating costs, though, go up quite a bit..."
"I don't care."
"Sorry?"
"If you're frightened enough of operating costs to flinch at promotion, you might as well shut the business down."
"Then you're saying it's all right to run the club every year with promotion as the goal..."
"Of course."
At that, Baker's face brightened visibly. If he was going to do the thing, he had wanted to do it properly.
A short laugh escaped me. And since we were on football anyway—
"How is Manchester United these days?"
"The new manager is rebuilding the side, so the results aren't particularly good."
Manchester is a classic industrial city. Factory workers make up most of the crowd, so ticket prices are hard to raise. The club's finances have a ceiling, inevitably. In circumstances like these, even the great Ferguson would have to struggle at the start. Whichever way you looked at it, now was the moment to acquire Manchester United.
"How is the acquisition coming?"
"Ah, yes. I've been meeting the city councillors steadily and working up public opinion, but every one of them comes back with more or less the same demand."
"...?"
"The club itself is no different from a landmark of the region. They can't simply hand it over for money..."
"Well, well."
"Put simply: if you want to buy the club, invest a little in Manchester, and they'll put their weight behind persuading the citizens. Something like that."
It wasn't an unreasonable demand. Attracting investment for the good of the local community was exactly the work a city councillor ought to be doing. The problem was the scale.
"And they aren't even giving us a guideline—how much to spend, or how."
"Hm."
"It doesn't look like anything that will be finished within their terms, so they may be covering themselves. Or they can't gauge the size of our capital, and that's why they won't commit."
Right. So that's how it is.
"Then shall we move first?"
"We move first?"
"A light investment. Nothing that costs serious money."
"You've already got something in mind."
Sharp, as always.
"If any abandoned factory buildings come up, buy them."
"A-a factory?"
I nodded.
"We're going to open a shop in a dead factory."
Baker only blinked. Of course it sounded absurd. A shop, on the site of a failed factory?
"There'll be almost no foot traffic."
"Then we make people come from outside."
"...?"
"If the content is solid, people come. However run-down a place is, they come."
No amount of explaining was going to convince him. Of course not. I could sound this sure only because I had seen Seongsu-dong succeed with my own eyes. In this day and age, it was bound to sound like grabbing at clouds.
Hm. Was the Seongsu-dong case something special?
Not a chance.
Long before Seongsu-dong caught fire, shops had opened in dead factories on the outskirts of New York. Poor artists gathered, a new commercial district took shape, and as word spread it became a street for the young. After that, similar successes broke out all over the world.
And the Korean version of that is Seongsu.
Once I had the thought in order, I looked at Baker.
"You follow? Look into a dead factory for me. It has to be large enough for a new shop to move in every month."
"Then we'll need someone to run the shops..."
"The owner is already chosen."
"...?"
Instead of answering, I lifted one corner of my mouth.
Click. Click.
Down the quiet alley, the sound of Olivia's heels rang clear. How long had it been since her heart felt this light? Nothing around her had changed. And yet the mere fact that she could hold a dream again made the world look different.
Maybe she had liked design far more than she had thought.
Park Jihoon's face came to her then.
How does he know a heart I don't even know myself?
Click. Click.
She was walking along, turning this and that over, when an old sign came into view down a narrow lane beside a café. A bookshop. Near the entrance, a single orange bulb hung from a wire and swayed in the wind.
It's waving me in.
She changed direction and stepped into the shop, then looked at the old man seated behind the counter. Olivia started to speak and swallowed it. Unluckily, the old man had seen.
"Looking for something?"
At the shopkeeper's question, she answered with a prim face.
"The Great Gatsby, please."
Olivia set the book she had brought from the shop down on the dining table. Come to think of it, her father used to quote that book from time to time. She slipped off her coat, hung it over a chair, and slowly made her way into the living room.
She came to stand before the telephone. Her feelings were a tangle, but fine—whatever. She picked up the receiver. She would rather he hadn't answered. The tone had barely rung a few times before her father's voice came across.
"It's me."
Perhaps because they had grown distant, the line held nothing but a strange silence.
"I sat the exam."
"(The exam?)"
"Class placement."
He did not ask the result. He had never paid much attention to grades.
"Somehow I ended up in the honors class."
She hadn't called to say this. The words kept coming before she knew it.
"That doesn't mean I intend to throw myself into schoolwork. As you know, I'm not particularly fond of studying."
"(......)"
"Instead, once I graduate, I'm thinking of applying to design school."
"(...What?)"
His voice trembled, thin.
"I'm not saying it because I want your approval. I just... came to like it."
"(It isn't that you've realized, late, something you've loved all along?)"
He couldn't see her. Even so, she nodded without a word. Silence fell again.
"(Shall I come?)"
Instead of shaking her head, she quietly opened her mouth.
"Just send a few outfits."
"(What's this? You, asking me to send clothes.)"
"They're not for me to wear."
"(......?)"
"I made a friend."
"(And?)"
"They helped me a great deal..."
"(You want to repay them?)"
She nodded.
"(So they helped bring my girl back.)"
She nodded again.
"(Then will a few outfits be enough? I'll fly over at once and—)"
"Don't."
"(Why?)"
"It's not the sort of relationship you're thinking of."
"(And what sort of relationship do I think it is?)"
She was about to set the receiver down.
"(Hanging up already?)"
"What, are we going to talk all night?"
"(All-night calls are for a boyfriend, not your father, after all...)"
"I told you it's not like that. Stop."
And with that, she hung up.
She let out a groan. She had snapped a little at the end. Even so, how long had it been since she had traded jokes with her father over the phone?
In a better mood, she picked up the book she had left on the table.
He likes books?
The Great Gatsby. The cover design was nothing much. A little more saturation would have done it good.
She sat on the sofa and opened it. One page, two—the pages she turned so boldly lasted only a moment.
Thud.
The book fell where it was.
"..."
And, breathing soft and even, she was fast asleep.