The First Spoils of Regression
I followed my homeroom teacher to the faculty office.
In the hallway, students from other classes were also heading toward the teachers’ office one by one with their own homeroom teachers. They were probably all there for college counseling.
My homeroom teacher didn’t say a word until we reached the faculty office. Every so often, he’d glance sideways at me and mutter, “Hmph…” with a tilted head.
He doesn’t seem to believe I got a perfect score.
That would be understandable. Master, you were never a troublemaker at school, but you also weren’t exactly the type to be at the top of the class.
True enough.
If I’d been the teacher, I would’ve found it strange too. A kid who paid attention in class every day but never did his homework properly, never stayed for evening self-study, and worked part-time coming in with a CSAT perfect-score provisional answer sheet? Suspicious was putting it mildly.
And so, I entered the faculty office with the teacher.
“Sit down.”
He handed me a folding chair, then sat in front of the computer.
The moment I sat down, he asked rather carefully, “Kim Dohyun. Don’t take this the wrong way, but listen. Is this score really right?”
So he was suspicious after all.
“It’s correct.”
“You got a perfect score?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“…”
My short but firm answers only made him look more flustered.
The faculty office was full of teachers and students, but it was quiet. So our conversation carried, and I could feel everyone’s eyes and ears turning toward me.
Maybe the teacher sensed it too, because he cleared his throat and asked again.
“Ahem. Well… I know you’re not the kind of kid who would joke around with a provisional CSAT score sheet. There’d be no point in lying, and if you wrote down a fake score, it’d be exposed the moment the real results came out.”
“…”
“So let me ask just one thing. You said you got a perfect score in Arabic.”
“Yes.”
“What’s ‘hello’ in Arabic?”
“As-salamu alaykum.”
“…”
He looked deflated, then his expression changed the moment I added, “It can also be marhaban. As-salamu alaykum means ‘peace be upon you’ and is the most common formal greeting, while marhaban is used more in everyday conversation.”
“?”
My homeroom teacher had been speaking in disbelief, but after I said marhaban, his eyes shifted.
Up until then, there had been doubt and worry in them. Now there was interest, and even a little hope.
“You… really studied Arabic and took the test?”
“Yes.”
“The other subjects too?”
“Yes.”
“Your October mock exam scores were averaging a 3 or 4 grade, though. And you’re saying you raised them this much in just one month?”
“I got lucky.”
“No, it’s too much to call this luck…”
I kept speaking calmly, and eventually he tilted his head and called over the math teacher sitting behind us.
“Teacher?”
─ Yes?
“Do you happen to have an extra copy of yesterday’s math exam printed out? I think you said this morning that you were going to solve it once to teach next year’s students.”
─ Yes, I do.
“If you’re not busy, could you bring that test paper and come over here for a second?”
At that, the math teacher from the back came over. My homeroom teacher smiled awkwardly and said, “Dohyun did so well on the exam that we wanted to check whether he really solved it that well.”
“Check?”
“Yes. We just want to see whether he’s actually solving it properly.”
“Haha, how well did he do for you to go that far?”
The math teacher laughed, looked down at my provisional answer sheet, and then said, “Hmm? Dohyun got everything right? That math test was insanely hard this time.”
“Exactly. So I asked him to explain it, and I’d like you to check whether he’s doing it properly.”
“Oh, sure. Go ahead, Kim Dohyun.”
“Yes.”
Before I knew it, a few other teachers had gathered around me as well. The whole office was focused on me, silent.
I started solving the problem and explaining it at once.
Scritch. Scritch.
In the hush of the faculty office, the sharp sound of mechanical pencil lead scraping across A4 paper rang out alone. I didn’t even read the problem properly first; I immediately started sketching the graph on scrap paper. The X-axis and Y-axis. Then the complex curve crossing through them, drawn with exact precision.
“Normally, people would try to solve this by differentiating f(x), finding the extrema, and drawing a sign chart. That’s the obvious method.”
My hand moved without hesitation as I wrote down a few formulas.
“But if you approach it that way, the calculations alone take more than ten minutes. The arithmetic is complicated, so the chance of making a mistake is high. Of course, it can be solved if you calculate it correctly, but that isn’t what the question setter intended.”
“The intended approach?”
“Yes. This function has symmetry around x = 0. Even if you don’t differentiate it, once you picture the shape of the graph in your head, you can immediately see that the inflection point is here.”
Thunk.
I tapped one point on the graph with the tip of my pencil and looked up at the teacher.
“So when t is 2, it has no choice but to reach the maximum value. If you calculate it, the answer is 17. You can even do it mentally.”
“…”
When I finished explaining, I set down my pencil. Only thirty seconds had passed. Thirty seconds to parse, solve, and derive the answer to the infamous killer question at number 30.
Zero, you were right. It was smart of me not to just have you give me the answer, and instead to download the actual mathematical knowledge myself and solve it.
Indeed. And that explanation was perfect.
While I was talking with Zero for a moment, the teachers stared blankly down at the graph and formulas I’d drawn.
─ Wow… that’s how you solve it?
─ That’s way easier than the official solution.
─ If you solve it like that, it becomes ridiculously simple. It’s practically a three-point question.
─ But you’d never think to do it that way…
─ Seriously… Dohyun was that good at math?
─ …Wait, it’s not just math, is it? Korean, English, and the electives too… and Arabic? He got a perfect score in all of them?
Then the math teacher who had been called over muttered dazedly, “Dohyun. That solution… did you learn it at an academy? It doesn’t even look like university math. Where did you learn it?”
“I picked it up while studying on my own.”
“You got this kind of intuition by yourself? Hah, unbelievable.”
Letting out a dry laugh, the math teacher turned to my homeroom teacher. “It’s a method I never even considered, but after looking at it, this really does seem to be the right way. Dohyun is seriously good at math.”
“Ah… is that so?”
Even before the math teacher said that, Teacher Hwang Seongjae’s eyes had already curved into crescents. The way he looked at me was… as if he were staring at a gold ingot.
And then, all of a sudden, he put me in a headlock.
“Hey, Kim Dohyun! You little punk, you really pulled it off! Hahahahaha!”
“Ugh…”
“I’m the homeroom teacher of a CSAT perfect scorer! Hey, doesn’t this mean I’m getting interviewed or something?! They were saying this year’s test was so hard there might not even be a single perfect scorer, and here you are!!”
My homeroom teacher was so overjoyed it looked as though he were the one who’d gotten the perfect score.
─ Kim Dohyun got a perfect score?
─ Him?
─ That’s insane…
─ Wow…
The other students who had come for counseling, having had their own teachers stolen away by the spectacle, looked at me with envy. A few of them even seemed jealous—really jealous.
Being looked at like this… is a first.
Neither in school nor after I entered society had I ever been looked at like that. If people didn’t ignore me, that was already a blessing.
And somehow…
Not bad.
It was a new flavor, but one I found very much to my liking.
After that storm of commotion passed, the other teachers and students returned to their seats and began their own counseling sessions. I did the same.
My homeroom teacher asked with a broad grin, “You’re going to Hankuk University, right? Unless you’re specifically aiming for Yeonhui University or Goseong University.”
“Yes. I’m planning to apply to Hankuk University.”
“Right, then it’ll probably be Hankuk University Medical School.”
Without hesitation, he wrote “Hankuk University Medical School” next to my name in the attendance ledger.
Medical school, huh…
Truthfully, it would’ve been natural for me to go to medical school.
Doctors were respected and admired by everyone, and in South Korea, they were one of the safest, highest-paying professions.
But I had already decided on something else after talking it over with Zero the day before.
“No, sir. I’m not going to medical school.”
“…”
He froze with the pen in midair.
“W-What? You’re not going to med school?”
“No.”
“W-Why?”
He asked like he truly couldn’t understand.
My answer must have shocked him, because the teachers seated at the other desks all started looking my way again.
“N-No. Why wouldn’t you go to medical school? With those scores, it has to be Hankuk University Medical School! You don’t want to be a doctor?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to be a doctor. I just want to study something else.”
“What do you want to study?”
“I’m thinking about technology.”
“Technology? What kind?”
“Computer engineering.”
“…”
Computer engineering?
The reason I wanted to major in computer engineering was closely tied to the future I wanted to live in.
It would be a waste of my hand to get rich through something as simple as stocks or crypto.
I had Zero, the pinnacle of future technology.
For someone like me to make money only through stocks or crypto would be to use less than ten percent of Zero’s capabilities.
I was going to start a business. One that made smartphone apps, the kind that would rise explosively after 2008.
And for that, computer engineering is the better choice. Of course, Zero could tell me how to code and make apps—or even do it all for me—but a degree from Hankuk University’s computer engineering department would become my calling card.
Of course, there were ways to run a business while being a medical student. That would have its own kind of style, too.
But the brutal course load and clinical schedule of medical school would only be a hindrance for me.
More than anything, Zero’s judgment was that the network I needed wasn’t “future doctors,” but “genius developers” who would build an IT empire alongside me.
Though I don’t know if Hankuk University’s computer engineering department will have a genius good enough to satisfy Zero.
As I was thinking that, the teacher asked in disbelief, “Hey, computer engineering? You’re going there to fix computers instead of people? …Well, I mean, being a computer repair technician is a good job too. It’s honorable work. There’s no such thing as a lowly job. But come on, kid, if you can become a doctor, that’s not the path to take!”
“…”
“People keep saying game companies are doing well these days, but it’s still nowhere near medical school! Of all the elite professions, doctor is the best!”
So that’s what he thought. That computer engineering majors just went on to repair computers. Maybe game developers, at best.
There’s nothing I can do about it. In 2008, that’s the kind of perception people had.
Seems that way.
I shook my head.
“Graduating from computer engineering doesn’t mean you automatically become a computer repair technician.”
“Then what do you do with it? Computer engineering is in the lower middle tier of engineering fields! …No, I’m not saying it’s bad—computer engineering is good too! But kid, it’s just not better than med school!”
Not yet, I thought. Not yet.
“You can make computer programs, games, things like that.”
“Programs, games… No, Dohyun. If you hate medical school that much, what about one of the so-called engineering ‘phone, copper, and chemical’ majors instead? You know them, right? Electrical engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering. Those fields get you hired like crazy. Samsung, L.J., all the big companies scoop people right up!”
The teacher was speaking for my own good, genuinely. He was even sorry to see such incredible scores being “thrown away.”
But still.
“Sir, I think computer technology will become the most highly sought-after field in the world from here on out. Starting next year, even.”
“…”
“Becoming a doctor is certainly great. It’s an amazing profession, one that deserves respect. But doctors save people. Technology saves nations. In that sense, I think computer technology—programming—will be the field that feeds our country in the years ahead.”
The teacher looked me straight in the eye.
…Is this really Dohyun?
Kim Dohyun’s homeroom teacher, Hwang Seongjae, had gone from wondering whether the boy in front of him was really the same student he knew, to hearing him calmly and firmly state his own opinion like this.
What happened while I wasn’t looking…? He’s become more manly. More impressive.
As a teacher, that made him happy. Truly, it did.
But a CSAT perfect scorer choosing computer engineering over medical school? And not even one of the “phone, copper, and chemical” majors, but computer engineering?
I just can’t understand it.
Still, Hwang Seongjae already knew it from looking into Kim Dohyun’s eyes.
That he couldn’t change this boy’s choice.
And… doctors save people, but technology saves nations.
It was right. Completely right. He’d always felt sorry that so many gifted science-and-engineering students went to medical school instead of engineering.
Of course, I did recommend med school myself, so I don’t really have room to talk.
“Fine, Kim Dohyun. If that’s what you want, then do it that way. But make sure you talk it over with your parents before you apply to college. Oh—and you told them your scores, right?”
“Yes. They were very happy.”
“Good. Well… then let’s go with that. And Dohyun.”
“Yes?”
“You worked hard. I know you’ve been working part-time every day after school, and even with that, you studied this hard.”
Everything Hwang Seongjae said to Kim Dohyun was sincere.
And Kim Dohyun, who knew better than anyone that sincerity when he heard it, understood that too.
“Thank you, sir. Because of you, I was able to keep going at school until the end instead of giving up.”
“…”
“Is that so? Thanks for saying that.”
Scratch, scratch.
Ahem.
Hwang Seongjae scratched his shining bald head and cleared his throat. It was a little embarrassing, and a little gratifying, to hear his student speak so maturely. He even felt his eyes sting a bit. Since he couldn’t show that in front of a student, he turned his gaze toward the monitor and said, “Then go back to your class, and tell the others to come to the faculty office starting from number one.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll go.”
And so Kim Dohyun’s college counseling ended.
The day after the CSAT, after counseling at school, time passed quickly, and by Saturday evening it was already here.
My father had gone out to do designated driving, and my mother still hadn’t come home from the restaurant. Seohee had started studying while saying, “Oppa, I’m going to study really hard like you and get a perfect score on the CSAT too!” But when I peeked in earlier, she was sitting at her desk, groaning to herself as she studied.
Once things settle down a bit, I should help Seohee with her studies too.
Good idea, Master. If you teach her yourself, your younger sister’s grades will improve very quickly.
So now I was alone in the living room, watching television.
It was 7:58 p.m. The most important moment in my family’s life—and in mine—was about to arrive.
Dong—dong—dong.
The wall clock struck eight o’clock.
And on the TV, the broadcast I’d been waiting for finally began.
The moment dreams become reality! The live Lotto 6/45 drawing starts now!
“…”
Gulp.
I already knew I’d won first place. Not just once, either—five times over.
And yet, for some reason, my palms were sweating.
That’s because you already know the result. Certainty can create a stronger tension than vague anticipation. Human psychology is curious that way.
So that was it.
Lotto is a donation that helps the marginalized members of our society.
After a brief promotional video for Lotto, which I had no real interest in, the actual drawing broadcast began at last.
“All right, we’ll now draw the winning numbers for the 311th Lotto drawing!”
Rattle-rattle-rattle.
The sound of the drawing machine turning was louder than usual.
Thunk.
The first ball.
“The first lucky number is 4!”
Right.
Thunk. The second ball.
“The second lucky number is 12!”
Right again.
Gulp.
As each number came out, I compared it against my lottery ticket. I’d already seen the numbers so many times that I had them memorized, but like Zero said, human psychology made me keep checking anyway.
“...And the final, sixth number! It’s 32!”
Thirty-two.
The last number.
And the very number I’d chosen.
“Congratulations to all of tonight’s winners. To our viewers, we wish you good health and happiness until this time next week!”
“Happiness!”
The male and female hosts delivered their closing remarks, and the TV moved on to the next program announcement.
But my eyes were, naturally, fixed on the lottery ticket.
“...I did it.”
Zero, how much is the first-prize payout for this Lotto drawing?
2.16532 billion won.
Round it down to the nearest ten-thousand won.
2.16 billion won. Master, with five winning games, the total prize amount is 10.8 billion won.
...10.8 billion won.
And… how much tax gets taken out?
According to lottery winnings tax law, the first 300 million won is taxed at 22 percent, and anything above that is taxed at 33 percent. The tax per winning game is roughly 680 million won. Across five games, the total tax comes to approximately 3.4 billion won.
3.4 billion in taxes. Before I won, I hadn’t thought much of it, but now that I’d actually won, it felt painfully wasteful.
Still, the next thing Zero said made me feel a lot better.
Therefore, the actual amount that will be deposited into Master’s account is 7.401 billion won.
Not 7 million. Not 70 million. Not 700 million. Not even 7 billion.
7.401 billion won.
The cash of South Korea’s top 0.1 percent had just fallen straight into my hands.
“…”
…
Silence settled in. Only the sound of my own heartbeat struck against my eardrums.
With trembling hands, I opened my wallet and tucked the ticket deep inside. Then I looked at Monday on the calendar above the TV and thought, Monday… I’ll go to the Seodaemun Nonghyup Main Branch and collect it right away.
At that thought, the corners of my mouth rose on their own.
So I really was only human after all.