Chapter 139
Chapter 139
"Anyway, so."
Nam Da-un moistened his throat with the can he was holding and spoke.
"What did you want to talk about that you called me out here?"
"That's..."
Only once we'd come this far did I hesitate.
Was asking her about that really the right thing to do?
She'd know better than anyone, since she was the one involved, but considering I was the reason it happened, it felt like I shouldn't.
...Still, it was also true that if not her, there was nobody else who could tell me exactly what happened.
Besides, 'that person' had already heard the story once.
"Um, I wanted to ask you about something that happened when we were kids."
"Ah, that."
But unlike what I'd feared, Nam Da-un took my words very lightly.
"I told you last time. It's a false rumor. You don't need to worry about it."
Right, I'd read her memories, so I knew.
But the Nam Da-un I knew was the kind of person who would say this even if it had really happened. He was the one who, back when everyone else was afraid of me and kept their distance, had come up to talk to me and said he felt something similar to himself in me.
"...Really? You're saying nothing at all happened, and you just disappeared?"
In my childhood memories, this person had suddenly vanished.
She hadn't said goodbye, and I hadn't heard anything before that about her moving away either. One moment, she just stopped coming to school.
And after that, I became truly alone.
At first I resented her, but later, once I learned that her disappearance had been because of me, I couldn't think anything at all.
The awful rumors I'd overheard, whispered deliberately loud enough for me to catch whenever I passed by, about what this person might have gone through.
Back then, it had probably just been talk aimed at me, the kid who was close to one of the popular girls in school. But I couldn't just let those rumors go in one ear and out the other.
"This is also something I said last time,"
Nam Da-un let out a big sigh with an exaggerated gesture and said,
"If I'd really gone through something like that, do you think I'd have chosen to attend this school?"
"..."
"Even I'd be scared if I got on the wrong side of the chairwoman of the richest group in the world. Wouldn't you?"
"..."
Speaking as a human being, yeah. You'd be terrified.
You wouldn't even think about coming anywhere near me.
"Even so."
But I said it anyway.
"Even so, I want to hear it."
"Hm."
When I spoke like I was pleading, Nam Da-un looked at me for a moment as if taking my measure. Then—
"...That woman's made another move, I take it?"
She asked me that.
"...I think so."
I was fairly certain, but I didn't know how or to what extent she would move. If something happened that even remotely resembled the rumors about what this person had gone through—
—this time, I probably wouldn't be able to bear it.
The people I care about most, the ones I hold dear.
If I thought all of that was being destroyed because of me, I couldn't bear it.
"Well... truth is, it isn't exactly a story I'm keen to tell."
Maybe he'd read the expression that surfaced on my face perfectly; Nam Da-un rested his chin in his hand and spoke.
His mannerisms might have grown a touch more casual than the Nam Da-un I remembered from childhood, but those eyes that seemed to see right through a person hadn't changed.
"Fine, if you really want to know."
At last, Nam Da-un opened his mouth.
*
"...Seriously?"
"Yeah, seriously."
Nam Da-un crushed the empty can in his hand as he spoke.
"The company went under because of a mistake by the prime contractor. I still don't know all the details, but it's probably true that it was because of that chairwoman."
"..."
"It's true the patent was stolen, and it's true they countersued using that patent so our company had to pay massive damages. But none of that was because of 'you' or 'me.' It was just an extremely unlucky coincidence."
"How can you..."
"How do I know?"
Nam Da-un pointed at his own eyes.
"My eyes are pretty accurate. They weren't much different when I was a kid, and they aren't now. My memories from back then are clear, too. Stuff like that is something Yujin Group does all the time, anyway. When a subcontractor comes up with something that looks trivial to them but useful, they insist they made it first."
"..."
I had nothing to say to that.
"But back then, I guess it backfired. My father's company was a pretty successful mid-sized firm at the time. Even if they couldn't win outright in court, they were dragging it out as long as possible and holding on. Mind you, I'm no expert, and what I heard wasn't the full story—just bits and pieces from my father."
Nam Da-un stared at the crumpled can in his hand as he talked.
"Then reporters got wind of it and started swarming. Public opinion began to turn, so Yujin Group took what they considered special measures."
"Special measures?"
"As it happened, my father's company and your group used the same bank."
"..."
"Well, a company the size of Yujin Group probably doesn't keep all its corporate funds just in a bank. They've got an insurance company underneath, a securities firm, they generate cash assets, buy back treasury stock... but still, it seems that 'money they'd parked in the bank' was definitely bigger than our company's."
"So..."
"Back then and now, Yujin Group was an awfully big company, wasn't it? Big enough that its corporate assets wouldn't lose out even compared to the total assets of a typical domestic bank. I'm saying they were capable of pressuring a bank, where 'capital' matters most."
"But that's..."
I swallowed the words that's illegal. The things I'd done at this school were overflowing with illegal acts. And it wasn't just me, if you started counting the illegal things that happened inside this school, you'd run out of fingers and toes.
"Anyway, what I'm saying is the pressure came from all sides. All over one patent."
"What kind of patent could possibly..."
"Who knows—I think it had something to do with phone screens."
Nam Da-un shrugged.
"Anyway, it was a misstep. From the bank's perspective, they'd basically driven off an important customer for the sake of another customer, and their remaining customers stopped trusting them. Our company went bankrupt, so the patent lawsuit couldn't continue, and Yujin Group ended up with the patent, but the story leaked out, and it did serious damage to their image."
"...And tangled up in all that, the rumors about you started spreading?"
"The rumors about you spread too."
"..."
"What, doesn't that add up for you?"
Seeing my expression after taking it all in, Nam Da-un asked.
"Then, the story about your parents..."
"Both my parents are alive. Perfectly fine."
"Really?"
"I'm telling you. No, think about it. Would someone, even with that much money, actually do something like that? When their image was already wrecked over the patent lawsuit, if an incident like that blew up, whether they did it or not, their company could be finished. Don't you think?"
"..."
That... could be true.
But it might not be.
The way that bank employee in my memories had said: this country was too small to handle Yujin Group.
"At the very least, an investigation would've been unavoidable. Look, it's true my father collapsed. His blood pressure spiked and he collapsed. He struggled with hwa-byung for a while, and went to a psychiatrist. But nobody beat him up. My mother was never targeted by anything strange, and our house never caught fire. We just had to sell it when things got hard and move somewhere cheaper. If it caught fire after that, that's not a story I know."
"Then those rumors..."
"Somebody must've made them up. Elementary school kids come up with all sorts of meaningless nonsense. You know how it goes. That if you look at a certain picture online a few times you'll die, or that there's a body buried somewhere on school grounds. Once I suddenly vanished, all kinds of weird rumors started going around about me—isn't that probably why?"
But who had believed them so earnestly?
It wasn't just children who'd believed those false rumors that destroyed my life. If the adults hadn't believed them, I would've had no reason to endure that kind of past.
"Sometimes,"
Nam Da-un said, breathing the words out with a sigh in his voice,
"it seems like adults will just believe whatever kids say without thinking. Especially if they think it could hurt them personally. As for 'who' carried the children's rumors over to the adults... I don't really know that either."
Putting peculiar emphasis on the word 'who,' Nam Da-un wrapped up his story.
"Does that satisfy you?"
"..."
"Looks like you still don't fully believe it."
"Let me ask just one more thing."
I asked Nam Da-un.
"What?"
"Why did you come back to this school?"
"..."
At my question, Nam Da-un closed his mouth for a moment and looked into the distance.
His gaze was fixed on the kids way off, earnestly practicing soccer with a ball.
...Well, right up until just now they seemed to have been looking this way, but I decided to let that slide.
"I've got a rough idea what kind of place this school is. I saw it with these eyes back then too."
Nam Da-un watched them quietly as he spoke.
"But when I think back on the happiest moments of my life, every single one happened at this school. So I came back."