Good Friends, or Enemies for Life

At that same hour, in the chairman's office at Hyeon-gang Group headquarters, Park Yonghak was on the phone with the director of Poland's Czartoryski Museum.

A call like that would ordinarily have gone through an interpreter. Yonghak had no patience for a conversation held at one remove, so they were speaking English.

"What Hyeon-gang needs is the crack samples from a Da Vinci."

"Because yours is judged to have been painted in the same age."

Yonghak did not answer. He had heard the preening in the man's voice, the naked shade of it: A famous company from Korea, is it? Fine. Let's hear what they mean to offer. And yet, for some reason, the corner of his mouth climbed in a wide, delighted arc, as if the whole situation amused him.

"So you want a deal."

"Justification."

A museum director, proposing terms to a businessman. The absurdity of it only widened Yonghak's smile.

"Fair enough. You ought to come away with something too. Let me see. What can I give you? Poland's most famous university is..."

"Yes. Jagiellonian."

"Couldn't ask for better."

"I'll take an honorary doctorate from that school."

Silence leaked down the line. The man was turning the words over, no doubt, testing whether he had heard them right. Yonghak did not put his smile away.

"I mean to receive an honorary doctorate in business administration. How does that strike you?"

"Or there's another way."

"I'll give Poland the chance to invest in Hyeon-gang."

"Mm. The opposite. I'm offering you the chance to come in with us."

Silence again. On the other end, the man would be racking his brains, wondering what he had missed and where a confidence like Hyeon-gang's could possibly come from. Yonghak did not give him the time.

A man chasing profit had to be ready to make an enemy of anyone. Take the risk and claim the credit, or step quietly around the noise? With an elected official, the choice was never much of a mystery.

"I'll be waiting for your call."

With that, Park Yonghak hung up. A desk-bound scholar, daring to bargain with the head of a corporation. Ambitious little dream. He would have wagered anything that in a couple of hours the phone would be on fire, the Polish embassy thrown into a panic trying to get through. All that remained was to wait.

And yet.

Brrring!

Already. He lifted the receiver on the off chance, and a familiar voice came across. The chief secretary.

"Jihun?"

He had two grandsons, but the only one who ever warranted a report was the younger.

"Held out a good long while."

"Boy's made himself a pile and gotten a taste for business. Sitting still more than a fortnight — that's a hell of a lot of sitting, for him. Well? Where's he say he's going?"

The kid wasn't about to haunt a campus just because he wanted to go to college. Cooking up another way to make money, then.

"No need. First time he's stepped out in a while. Let him wander easy."

Yonghak set the receiver down. The grandson had been quiet these past few days, and he had been bored. So the boy was finally starting to move. The chair gave a soft creak as he rose, wearing a peculiar smile.

I have a great many memories of Sinchon.

In my university days there was nothing worth doing in front of my own school. Fortunately Sinchon was only a street away, so I folded myself in among the Yonsei students and drank a great deal. Drink long enough and the owner always came over with the same question.

"You a Yonsei kid?"

"No."

The second name he guessed was always my school. Anyway, perhaps because Yonsei had grown so familiar, I went there for graduate school, and so I spent eight years of student life in Sinchon. The tie held even after I debuted as a writer. Selected by the state as a resident at the Yeonhui Writers' Village, I lived there another two years, which meant I had given the whole of my twenties to Sinchon.

Maybe that was why. Simply looking at this earlier Sinchon left me strangely unsettled.

The theater first. In my day it had been the Artreon; the sign now read Shinyoung Theater. The McDonald's where I ate lunch whenever I felt like treating myself was, of course, nowhere to be seen. So was the noisy dakgalbi place, all spicy stir-fried chicken, that I had haunted with my first girlfriend, and the bossam restaurant — boiled pork and wraps — that I had marched into full of nerve and then fled, chased out by the prices. Even the anchovy-noodle shop I sometimes ducked into when I wanted something hot, two thousand won a bowl, was gone. I clicked my tongue. Still, Hongik Books was the same as it had ever been.

Soaked in memory, I passed through Yonsei's main gate. Whether it was the vacation or the cold, the campus looked deserted.

This won't do.

The first place I headed was the Office of Academic Affairs. When I was in school everyone had done their work on computers, but the air here was all paper and handwriting. With the semester about to start, perhaps. Everyone looked busy.

"Hello."

At my greeting, a woman supervisor poked her head up over the partition.

"What do you need?"

"I had something I wanted to ask. I'd like to make a poster and put it up..."

"A poster?"

She stared straight at my face. At a generous guess, I looked like a sixth grader. So of course.

"You mean a forest-fire poster? 'Make sure the fire you thought was out is really out' — that sort of thing?"

"No. I want to hold a literary contest."

"A contest? Who's holding it?"

"I am."

"So you're holding a literary contest, and you want to put the poster up at our school?"

"Yes. If it doesn't have the Academic Affairs stamp, I figured the security guard would tear it down."

"Where did you hear that?"

"Am I wrong?"

"No. I'm asking because you know it a little too exactly. How do you know all of that?"

Even if I looked like an elementary-school kid, the truth was that I had been through Yonsei graduate school and—

"I just asked around."

The answer must not have satisfied her. She tipped her head for a moment, then rose halfway from her chair, and her eyes traveled me from head to foot. Maybe it was the carefully pressed clothes, or the shoes that announced themselves as expensive at a glance. When she spoke again, her tone had softened.

"Do you have the contest poster?"

"No. If I get permission, I was going to ask the Yonsei press to make it."

"You know about the press, too?"

"Yes, well."

"Hey, by any chance."

"...?"

"You haven't been over to Seoul National lately, have you?"

Rumors traveled fast. Then again, I had been in and out of Seoul National so often that it would have been stranger if word hadn't spread. A little talk going around cost me nothing. Far from a loss, it was convenient: I could skip the explanations. That was exactly what happened now.

The moment it came out that I was the third generation of Hyeon-gang, people started moving. The supervisor had barely run off to fetch her team leader when the man declared, of his own accord, that he would bring the director of academic affairs.

"A guest of this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rank, and you think I'm enough?"

The director arrived at a rush and bowed before he had even caught his breath.

"It would have been better if the president could greet you himself, but he's taken sick leave these past few days, of all times. May I show you around?"

"You don't need to show me around. I only need a poster made and put up."

"So I heard. You're holding a literary contest. Truly worthy of a son of Hyeon-gang, a house that loves the arts."

He seemed to search a moment for some further praise, found none, and hurried his expression into a question.

"I was told you'll be commissioning our press for the poster. Is that right?"

"Yes, if possible."

"'If possible'? Of course it's possible. When do you need it by?"

"The sooner the better, actually."

The words were hardly out of my mouth.

"Come with me. We'll make it right now."

The director of academic affairs set off in the lead. Like most people who walked beside me, he was plainly working to match my stride, step for careful step. About five minutes of that, and he stopped.

"Here we are."

The Yonsei University Press. I had come often enough on errands for professors. The place was the same in the eighties as it would ever be. The moment the director stepped in, a staffer shot to his feet and bowed. The director answered with a professional smile and lowered his voice.

"We have a distinguished guest on campus. He'd like a poster made — you know the kind. The kind that jumps straight out at you. The kind that catches the eye from fifty meters off. I'd like you to make him one of those."

"I'll do my best."

"Best won't do it. You'll have to do it well."

"Yes, yes."

The staffer asked me for the information that absolutely had to go on it. The answer was simple.

"The category is literature. The deadline is one month. Entries should be sent to Academic Affairs... Oh, Director, is that all right?"

"Of course. If the Office of Academic Affairs can contribute even in a small way, that in itself would be the greatest pride we could ask for."

He produced that line without so much as a change of color in his face.

"Please set the prize at ten million won."

"T— ten million won?"

Of course he was shocked. Sweeping four papers in the New Spring Literary Contest had gotten me fifteen million, and here I was hanging ten million won on college students. I knew it was a lot. Even so.

It has to be this much, or that man won't move.

Besides, a prize of that size would come back quickly enough in the price of the book.

"You aren't mistaken, I hope?"

"Not at all. Ten million won. Make it exactly that."

The mock-up was slapped together in no time. All that remained was to print it and post it around campus. But then—

"You ought to be going."

At the director's words, I tipped my head.

"From the printing to the posting, we'll take care of all of it."

"It's my work. Of course I should—"

"I'll be hurt if you put it that way."

"...?"

"You've gone so far as to put up an enormous prize to help our students. The least we can do is show a little sincerity. Wouldn't you agree?"

There was something faintly murky in his eyes. He wanted a line into Hyeon-gang, by the look of him. The bigger the hope, the harder the fall.

"Just leave it to us."

What else was I going to do?

"Thank you."

I bowed, pretending I had been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠talked into it.