Half a Song for Trust
The method Yoo Jae-won had prepared through the goblin computer to prevent singers from eating and running was simple: he included only half the song on each tape. The lyrics were the same. The note tucked into the envelope alongside the cassette tape listed a bank account number and contact information, instructing the recipient to deposit payment if they liked the song. It promised that full payment would bring the complete track on another tape. The account was, surprisingly, in Yoo Jae-won’s own name.
Fortunately, the school he attended had a partnership with the nearby post office. To instill the habit of saving, every new student received a post office account and was encouraged to deposit money into it. The note also included a phone number in case anyone had questions. Thanks to his mother’s unusual job as a door-to-door saleswoman, their house had a telephone—an item even the village chief’s home lacked. A single call cost only thirty won, whether it lasted three minutes or thirty. The pricing was absurdly straightforward.
“Two million won feels a bit steep. But one million won seems too cheap.”
He still hadn’t settled on the price. In 1988, the value of money was roughly eight times higher than in the 2010s and sixteen times higher than in the 2040s, just before his death. Whether two million or one million, both were significant sums. The more he thought about it, the harder it was to understand why his parents had bought him a 286 computer worth over three million won without hesitation.
“Then let’s split the difference at one and a half million.”
Having settled on the compromise, Yoo Jae-won began sealing the envelopes containing the tapes and notes. The front of each envelope already bore the names of singers who were either already stars or destined to become ones. The envelope for Lee Seong-hee contained the tape with “A Burst of Laughter.” Another held “Wishes” for Byeon Jin-seok. He had also recorded “It’s Just Friendship,” “Like a Barbie Doll,” “The Man I Miss,” and “The Woman Who Doesn’t Wear Makeup.”
“They won’t all rip me off, right? Well, even if they do, it doesn’t matter.”
He muttered the worry aloud, but in truth it wouldn’t have bothered him. He had several other ways to raise seed money besides selling hit songs. Besides, any singer or agency that tried to cheat him on this deal would never receive another hit from him. It was simply a way to separate the trustworthy from the unreliable.
Yoo Jae-won resumed the work he had paused. He licked stamps, affixed them neatly, and sealed the envelopes with care. After double-checking the singers’ addresses, he placed the envelopes into a bag and left the church. His destination was the post office, which fortunately wasn’t far. Deokjin-ri was far more populated than Naeo Village, with over three hundred households and plenty of amenities. Besides Deokjin Church, the road led to Deokjin Elementary School, which Yoo Jae-won attended, and right beside it stood Deokjin Post Office.
After dropping all six envelopes into the mailbox in front of the post office, he turned toward home.
“Now I just wait for their reactions?”
His steps felt light as feathers; he believed he had cleared his first task successfully. In reality, there was no time left to enjoy that leisurely feeling. He had forgotten that school started tomorrow. The memory only returned when his parents asked after work whether he had packed his supplies. Only after gathering everything and preparing his bag did he feel at ease. Still, it was better than before. Until now, the start of school had always meant staying up all night to finish vacation homework at the last minute.
“Did you finish your homework?”
“Ah, shit. Who actually does all of it?”
“Heh heh. I finished my diary. Our homeroom teacher said we had to write in our diaries no matter what.”
“Huh? Really? I didn’t think you’d betray me like that.”
Physically it had been only a month, but mentally it had been over fifty years since Yoo Jae-won last set foot in school. The classroom was just as noisy and chaotic as he remembered. Boys who had gathered after summer vacation chatted without pause, half their words laced with profanity. Looking back, the period from the upper grades of elementary school through the second year of middle school had been the time he cursed the most in his entire life. Conversations with friends during those years felt incomplete without swearing. After that, the habit naturally faded; unless he was fighting, there was rarely any need for it.
“Hey, let me see your diary. I need to copy something.”
“Are you crazy? I’ll show you anything else, but not my diary!”
“You probably wrote it half-assed anyway. Just give it here!”
One hour of morning self-study was more than enough time to dash off thirty days’ worth of diary entries. At least that way he would get hit less.
“Jae-won, why are you just sitting there laughing like it’s none of your business? Didn’t you do your homework?”
The sudden attack landed on Yoo Jae-won, who had been observing the scene like a spectator watching memories unfold in virtual reality.
“Of course. This body finished all the vacation homework long ago.”
Back in reality, Yoo Jae-won answered with easy confidence. It felt strange for a grown man to mingle with children whose foreheads were still damp with childhood. Outwardly he was a fifth-grader, but his soul belonged to an adult who had rolled through a harsh world. Even so, it didn’t feel too awkward; Jumin reacted exactly as usual.
“What? What did you say?”
Jumin, the very picture of an elementary school boy who loved playing and hated studying, was his desk partner and most trusted friend. He stared at Yoo Jae-won with his mouth hanging open, as if he had suffered an unthinkable betrayal.
“Whoa, I’ve seen everything now. Tomorrow the sun might rise in the west.”
Yoo Jae-won found Jumin’s grumbling oddly endearing.
“Here. Copy from this. Just don’t make it too identical.”
“Of course! Obviously.”
Yoo Jae-won handed over his notebook containing the diary entries. Since he had made them up anyway, it didn’t matter if someone else saw them. Jumin’s expression transformed in an instant the moment he grasped the lifeline. He showered Yoo Jae-won with praise about how friends were the only ones you could trust, then immediately began copying.
Watching him, Yoo Jae-won fell into thought. Looking back on his previous life, none of his friends had achieved great success. Whether he expanded the scope to high school or even included everyone from the village, not a single person had risen from nothing to become a dragon. Yeong-jun, the pastor’s son, had made it to Seoul and attended Hanyang University, but after that they had lost touch. As for Jumin’s family, they had raised cattle—over fifty head, which was a respectable scale. They also owned a fair amount of farmland. Objectively speaking, they were among the wealthiest households in the neighborhood. Yet even they had been hit hard by the IMF crisis, Korea’s first foreign exchange crisis. Beef was far more expensive than pork, and the feed had to be imported grain. Sales dried up while feed prices soared. Then foot-and-mouth disease struck and the cattle began dying.
Without intervention, events would unfold exactly as before. But this time things would be different. It was better for friends to succeed together than for one person to succeed alone. Besides, when he eventually undertook something big, it would be too much for one person to handle. Having reliable friends to work with—especially on matters involving money—was something he needed to cultivate starting now. Until now he had lacked social skills and had no close friends besides Jumin, but from here on he would have to seek them out actively.
Yoo Jae-won’s gaze grew intense as he watched his classmates chatting or frantically finishing their remaining summer homework. The sound of pages turning filled the air.
“Quiet! Do you think this is a marketplace? Why is it so noisy?”
Kim Kyeong-pil, the middle-aged homeroom teacher of Class 5-5 with his distinctive M-shaped hair loss, shouted as he entered the classroom. He should have been present from the self-study period onward, but on the first day of school he had stepped out and only returned during first period. In the past he would have scolded them for failing to maintain a proper study atmosphere, but today, being the first day, he let it pass without incident.
“Class president, greet the teacher.”
After sweeping the students with a fierce glare to enforce silence, Kim Kyeong-pil rapped the desk and spoke. At his command, the class president sitting at the back of the first row snapped to attention and called out the greeting. It felt as though the second semester of fifth grade had finally begun.
“Hmm. Is anyone missing from our class? No? You all had a good summer vacation. I’m especially pleased that everyone returned without any accidents or incidents.”
Kim Kyeong-pil nodded, apparently satisfied that there were no empty seats. Deokjin Elementary was large enough to have eight classes per grade. With over forty students per class, it was an unusually big school for a rural area. All the children from the twelve surrounding villages converged here, so the numbers were naturally high. With so many students, incidents and accidents occurred regularly. Today was no exception. The reason the homeroom teachers had held a faculty meeting even during morning self-study was an accident involving a sixth-grader that had happened the day before school started. Although the incident had occurred with a sixth-grade student, the principal had summoned every homeroom teacher and scolded them for over an hour. With his anger gauge clearly maxed out, the students facing the upcoming homework inspection could practically see the yellow warning lights flashing.
