Chapter 12
Chapter 12
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 12
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People do not change easily.
Jeong-go was someone who always had more than enough potential to cause trouble at any time.
Just looking at how rudely he spoke to Lee Cheol had been enough to predict it.
At those words, a worry far too heavy for his age appeared on Lee Cheol’s face.
“When I leave, I’m really going to worry.”
“What’s there to worry about? They’ll live their own lives.”
“... You’re colder than I thought.”
Kyung-wan nodded in agreement.
Heaven helps those who help themselves. He was not kind enough to meddle in the life of someone who did not value their own.
It was not like they had no one beside them, Lee Cheol, the eldest, was personally giving them scolding and even a few smacks of love.
If they still could not come to their senses, then it was their own fault.
Lee Cheol spoke with a hardened expression.
“After I leave, be careful of Jeong-go.”
“That underdeveloped brat? You’re joking, right?”
“To be exact, the group Jeong-go hangs around with. Those people are bad news.”
Lee Cheol’s story was long.
Honestly, for kids from facilities, unless they had wealthy sponsors or sharp minds, it was extremely difficult to go to college.
Because the cost of tuition was too expensive.
So most learned a trade and entered society early, but the problem was the temptations waiting to drag them into the wrong path.
Even after the government’s war on organized crime, punks still existed everywhere, and people who lived off intimidation, illegal shortcuts, and criminal work would never disappear.
But even they could not outrun time, and they aged.
In fancy words, it was a “generational turnover.” To spell it out, they needed underlings to serve them as they got older.
And for people like them, orphans with nowhere to rely on were perfect young blood to recruit.
Jeong-go was hanging around exactly that type of group.
“What about you?”
Kyung-wan asked.
Judging from what he saw today, it seemed Lee Cheol had been keeping the kids from falling into those circles. In that case, wouldn’t they have tried to recruit him too? That way they could secure underlings more easily.
Lee Cheol bitterly smiled at the long implication hidden inside the short question.
“I have a sponsor.”
I see, Kyung-wan thought, nodding.
If they touched an orphan with a sponsor, noise was guaranteed to arise.
“Does the director know?”
“He knows.”
“And he’s staying quiet?”
“Because of the money.”
Funny or sad, the donations from the gangsters were far from small.
The idea of thugs donating to a children’s home sounded like a cat giving cheese to a mouse, but when examined in detail, the reasoning made sense.
In times like these, even gangsters had to run at least one legal business.
And there was no method for tax avoidance, evasion, and laundering more convenient than making donations.
Kyung-wan frowned.
“So he’s one of them?”
If the director was in the same boat, that could disrupt his plan of quietly parking his backside in this facility for as long as possible.
Lee Cheol shook his head.
“He compromised.”
This bizarre country would gleefully dump budget into rivers, construction, and politically trendy issues like feminism, but whenever welfare spending came up, people screamed “commie.”
It was strange indeed.
In such an atmosphere, the director being crushed by budget pressure was natural.
To keep the facility running, he could not reject shady donations.
If he refused and the facility collapsed, or if the children ended up receiving even less support, that would be worse.
But in exchange, he had to change his guiding principles: allow the kids to choose their own future, even if that future involved illegal or questionable paths.
As long as they did not cause problems inside the facility, he had decided not to interfere in their choices.
A cowardly stain on an adult’s face, but as a plain, unremarkable individual, it was the best he could do.
After all, society’s default stance toward abandoned children was “indifference.”
Lee Cheol continued.
“So what I’m saying is…”
“No.”
“I haven’t even said it yet.”
“You’re gonna ask me to look after the kids.”
“... Yeah.”
“Putting aside whether I even want to do that, do you think that’s possible?”
“...”
Lee Cheol fell silent.
He could play the role of the big brother because he had lived here long, and spent that time interacting with the kids.
Even if Kyung-wan was older, would the kids recognize the authority of a newcomer?
Kids were no different from adults in that sense, if anything, more sensitive.
“Haa…”
Lee Cheol’s sigh grew deep.
But Kyung-wan ignored it.
= = = = =
Daily life in the facility remained the same.
The kids looked down on Kyung-wan for not going to school.
They were working hard to learn trades so they could survive when they left, but he lived like he belonged to another world, lazily drifting through his days.
It was an eyesore.
Even the normally disinterested director felt the atmosphere enough to call him in for a talk.
“How is your studying going these days?”
“It’s going well.”
Kyung-wan answered, but the director wasn’t easily convinced.
“I should test you.”
He had heard rumors that Kyung-wan was being lazy and creating discomfort by slacking off. So he did not take the boy’s answer at face value.
Kyung-wan replied energetically.
“When will we do it?”
The director checked his watch.
“After dinner tomorrow, we’ll do a quick test.”
Kyung-wan nodded, then frowned as soon as he left.
He now had to cram.
He rushed to the study room, opened a high school textbook, and tried to fill his head as much as he could.
But he still kept to his sleep schedule.
All-nighters? That word didn’t exist in his dictionary.
The next day, as usual, he got up and planned to spend the time reviewing his textbooks until the test.
There was no need to aim for a perfect score.
But he couldn’t do too poorly either.
If he scored too high, they’d tell him to immediately take the qualification exam and then learn a trade.
If he scored too low, they’d tell him to forget high school graduation and learn a trade right away.
Obtaining a high-school-equivalency diploma was the director’s heartfelt advice, in the job market, a high-school grad was seen as less intelligent or less diligent than a college grad.
Even now, in an age where anyone could enter college.
The study room was quiet.
The textbook he had inherited was worn with fingerprints, marks left by seniors who struggled to improve their circumstances.
But those seniors weren’t only hard-working. They were ordinary in their own way.
“‘I want to have sex’? What the hell is this.”
He erased the random note scrawled in the margin with correction fluid.
The sudden phrase had broken his concentration and irritated him.
Other than occasional scribbles like that, the textbooks were clean.
The frugal director forbade writing notes or drawing lines in the books.
The best students could do was stick post-its. The true solution was to take separate notes in their own notebooks.
It was outdated and inefficient, clean textbooks going straight to recycling was the real waste of the era, but he forced himself to accept it.
After all, if new textbooks guaranteed better grades, then cats and dogs would enter Seoul National University.
But that thought sparked a new worry, and when Lee Cheol returned from school, he asked him for a small favor.
“What? You want to borrow my notes?”
Kyung-wan needed a prop, something to show the director if he checked for study traces.
He nodded.
“Yeah. Just Korean and Math.”
It wasn’t difficult for Lee Cheol.
It was material from a year ago that he barely looked at anymore.
With the minimum preparation complete, Kyung-wan finally stood before the director.
“This is a selection of problems from the qualification-exam past papers. Solve them.”
Fortunately, the director didn’t ask to see the notes.
Kyung-wan solved the problems moderately.
It wasn’t the whole exam, only twenty each from several sections, so it didn’t take long.
But after grading them, the director’s expression was unimpressed.
“You need to study a bit harder.”
“Is the qualification exam too hard for me?”
“With these scores, it’s borderline.”
Borderline? Perfect.
It was exactly the level he aimed for.
But the director wasn’t finished.
After thinking a moment, he offered him something.
“How about learning a trade starting now? Baking or cooking is fine, and what about welding? If you get a license and skill, you can even immigrate with technical certification. Or the mold industry, it’s mostly automated these days, so accidents are rare.”
The director suggested many paths for his future.
Apparently he wasn’t the type to just sit on government subsidies and donation funds while going to hostess bars.
But inside, Kyung-wan recoiled.
He wanted to leech off this society, which had decent welfare and some compassion left, and live as a harmless, drifting parasite.
So he answered quickly.
“I’ll study harder.”
“You can do both, you know.”
“They say chasing two rabbits makes you lose both. I’ll focus on studying first.”
“... Very well.”
Perhaps misreading the determination, which actually meant “I refuse to be a wage slave in capitalism”, the director nodded.
And from the next day, Kyung-wan had no choice but to study daily.
Time passed.
Winter came.
The college entrance exam ended.
And Lee Cheol began preparing to leave the facility.
He packed his things and shared his dream before leaving.
“I… I’m going to become a police officer.”
“Fighting.”
At the hollow encouragement, he smirked, then left Kyung-wan with his final words.
“Stay healthy.”
His face full of concern only made Kyung-wan more uncomfortable.
Good people always made him feel indebted.
= = = = =
After Lee Cheol left, spring arrived.
Kyung-wan passed the qualification exam, and the facility began rotating around Jeong-go.
Now that Lee Cheol was gone, Kyung-wan was the oldest, but he was an outsider, and he had no intention of kicking out the entrenched rock to take its spot.
But unfortunately for everyone, Jeong-go’s sense of responsibility was different from Lee Cheol’s.
While Lee Cheol wanted the kids to live safely within society’s boundaries, Jeong-go was determined to help them seize success by any means.
“I said I’m not doing it!”
“Hey. You think you can earn that much working in a factory? If you make money while you’re young and buy a building, you can date or get married however you want!”
“How am I supposed to trust what you say?”
“There are tons of older girls who made it that way. Some went overseas and earned a ton. Being a patriot isn’t hard, bring in foreign currency and you’re a patriot.”
“…”
“Rich guys prefer them young. That’s why the pay is higher.”