My Dream Is to Be a Building Owner
While some completely irrelevant little bear cub faced human malice head-on and watched her mind get eaten away, Siyeon was being a model student. Instead of parking herself in front of the computer, she sat at the low desk and opened her backpack first.
The thing I had been sure I would never have to do with my own hands again: homework.
"Mari, what's this?"
I looked at the page of the math book Siyeon held out while asking.
The problem was 5 minus 3.
I could have just given her the answer, but that wouldn't help a kid whose brain was still growing.
"Spread your left hand out wide. How many did we say this is?"
"Five!"
"Then let's fold three of them. How many are left?"
"Uh... uh... two!"
"And how do we write two again?"
The custom eye-level lesson went perfectly. A smooth curve formed under the tip of her pen and became the number 2.
Elementary school work only ever went as far as common sense. Up to this point, I could sit right beside her and teach without any trouble.
"Good job. That's the right answer!"
"Ehehe."
Elementary homework is nothing...
Thinking that, I stuck close to Siyeon for a while longer, giving her hints until the rest of her homework was finished too.
The real problem would start in middle school.
Anything past the common-sense level of elementary learning—middle school material—I didn't remember a single scrap of. Venn diagrams, probability and statistics... where the hell was anyone supposed to use those? Even if there was a use, the countless calculator gods on the internet would handle it for you.
Ah, right. I had homework too.
Watching Siyeon work made me remember belatedly. I shoved the keyboard aside and finished mine in an instant. It was the kind of homework you could start the second you got to school, so I had completely forgotten about it. A little dictation practice and writing the same Chinese characters a few times over only took a couple of minutes.
After that I played classic games until Siyeon finished. Then I gave up the computer so she could watch cartoons, and that was the end of the evening.
The next morning on the way to school.
Cars carefully crept past the narrow road in front of the school—child protection zone territory. A loud horn blared, followed immediately by the sound of kids laughing.
"Uwahaha—!"
A narrow crosswalk with no traffic light. A pack of little brats suddenly darted out in front of the slowly moving cars, delighting in how close they could cut it.
The popular game of chicken with cars among kids around third grade.
Thanks to the child-protection-zone buff and the fact that elementary schoolers were legally untouchable as juvenile offenders, any accident would automatically be the driver's fault. The kids were exploiting that terrible law for all it was worth.
Watching only that, I had no choice but to cast my precious vote for the theory that humans are evil from the root.
They need to get a couple of bones shattered playing like that before they learn anything.
I muttered it to myself while remembering the flood of internet news articles I'd seen not long ago. Some of the more vicious little monsters even threw themselves on purpose against slow-moving cars and then demanded settlement money at that age.
Meet one genuinely crazy driver and it would be instant death, yet these kids had no idea how precious a life was.
I kicked my indoor-shoe bag as hard as I could, slipped in through the side gate, and walked down the hallway. As always, the central corridor and main staircase were somehow off-limits to students. I still hadn't figured out why. I just kept walking until I reached the classroom.
Ah, I want to go home.
That was the first thought the moment I sat down at my desk. First-grade elementary school life: relearning common sense I already knew. Was there any stretch of time more empty and pointless than this?
After a short wait, the teacher's two little slaves arrived. A pair of kids who had fallen for the empty titles of class president and vice president walked in carrying a plastic crate full of milk cartons. I stood up out of habit, grabbed one carton from the bin at the front of the room, and returned to my seat.
From the front pocket of my backpack I pulled out the cookies-and-cream chocolate powder stick I always mixed into my milk. I tore one corner of the carton, folded it into a point, then twisted open the stick between thumb and forefinger.
"Hey, can I have some too?"
The pure beasts of malice who caught the sweet scent of the powder stick started gathering one by one.
Of course it was going to turn out like this.
"Why should I?"
I didn't even bother tilting my head. I just dumped one stick straight into the opening of my own milk carton as I answered.
Kids were shameless as hell. Especially this one who had trotted all the way up to the front row just to beg for a milk stick—the same clueless brat who liked to turn other people's names into tteokbokki jokes whenever he got bored.
"I won't call you Gimari anymore! Promise!"
He clung to me throwing a full-blown tantrum, as if he still thought he was in kindergarten.
"Thanks!"
"Me too! Me too!"
The second I gave one away, the rest of them started circling and edging closer. It was only a twenty-stick pack that cost about four thousand won—cheap sugar dust.
"Here. Eat up, you shameless black-haired little beasts who act like you own the place."
The thought that food was the best way to control animals settled firmly in my mind. I just scattered the entire remaining sticks from my bag and told them to go wild.
"Uwaaa!"
They didn't understand a word of what I'd said. Their eyes were locked solely on the sticks. Greedy little claws snatched them out from between my fingers one after another like they were pulling chopsticks from a holder.
The most ridiculous part was that the very same brats who had been cheerfully calling me Gimari—the ones who seemed to have taught themselves etiquette with no adult supervision—were the first ones to grab without a shred of shame.
Did they actually not have parents? Were they seriously self-teaching manners?
A pure question floated through my mind. Since I never said it out loud, it definitely didn't count as cursing anyone's parents.
Shameless little jammin bastards.
After the silent curse, I gripped the top and bottom of my milk carton with both small hands and shook it hard. Because the opening wasn't fully sealed, a little milk spurted out onto my thumb and forefinger. I licked it off at once and tasted the light chocolate milk left on my tongue.
Not bad.
It wasn't rich chocolate milk, but it was good in its own way—far better than those artificially sweet strawberry or banana flavors. Licking alone left me wanting more, so I opened the carton properly and downed the whole thing in one go. Tiny grains crunched between my teeth while a faint chocolate sweetness spread. Best of all was the bottom of the carton.
Almost no residue!
Compared to the other three flavors that always left clumps no matter how hard you mixed, this was an outstanding result.
After morning assembly came a short free moment, then class. Honestly, outside of homework that actually needed doing, there was no reason to listen to anything. Still, some lessons required actual participation.
"Alright, everyone! Today we're going to draw ourselves after we've achieved our dreams!"
"Yeeees—!"
A group answer like a chorus of sharp screams rang through the classroom. Voices that had barely left babyhood scraped at my ears like the tips of blades.
"Ugh."
One limp, drained voice amid all that volume. The owner of that voice needs no introduction.
I held a gray crayon and stared at the blank sheet of paper with pure disgust. This might have been the first time in this life that I had ever held a crayon. For the entire hour I just scribbled vaguely on the empty page.
The other kids started fighting over the tiniest things—whether someone was using blue or not. The teacher walked around the room, praising kids who were drawing hard and breaking up arguments. Once I started noticing it, the sheer exhaustion of the teachers became painfully clear.
Ah, Teacher. Only now do I understand your suffering.
"Alright! Friends who want to present, come up to the front and tell us!"
After enough time had passed, the teacher tried to limit the presenters for the sake of the schedule. You might think not many kids would want to go up...
"Me!"
"I want to!"
A forest of hands shot up. Some kids even raised both. It was the age when showing off felt like the most important thing in the world.
"Yes, okay. Shall Ha-yan come up and tell us?"
"My dream is to become an excellent doctor! I'll cure diseases and make a world with no sick people!"
Doctor, teacher, YouTuber, chef, police officer, pro gamer, magical girl... even soldier. There was one weird one mixed in, but surprisingly almost no completely unrealistic jobs like president.
There's a soldier in there?
I tilted my head and decided kids still didn't know anything. Don't worry about it. Even if you never want it, you'll get to experience it for sure later on.
"Heh."
A quiet, pitying snort slipped out on its own.
Every student who had raised a hand finished presenting, yet the break bell still hadn't rung. That was probably why the questioning spark started drifting in my direction.
"Let's see... who hasn't presented yet..."
The teacher looked around the room for anyone left. That description fit me perfectly. I immediately ducked my face into the blind spot of the teacher's desk, trying to hide from her wandering eyes.
Useless. No teacher was going to miss a little kid just hanging her head.
"Mari, why don't you stand up and tell us your dream too?"
Damn it.
I had hoped to skate by without presenting, but the curse of the front-row seat got me. No choice. I scraped my chair back, walked up beside the teacher's desk, turned around, and held up the picture I had drawn for everyone to see.
Not a single person on the page. Just one lonely apartment-style building standing by itself.
The profession every modern person secretly longed for. At last I spoke its great name.
"My dream is to be a rich building owner."
"Huh...?"
The teacher stared at me while I smiled brightly through my presentation. The moment she heard the first sentence, her expression froze as if time itself had stopped. I glanced once in her direction, let the silence hang, then continued the interrupted sentence.
"Every single day I can just lie in the corner of my room ordering only my favorite delivery food, and money still flows into my bank account by itself. A true rich person who has both time and money—"
"Alright, alright, that's enough! Yes! Good job presenting!"
When I was only about halfway through, the clearly flustered teacher cut me off in a hurry.
I had only just gotten started.