Chapter 6. I Decided to Part Ways
Chapter 6. I Decided to Part Ways
“Hold on. Jason, did you really restore this car yourself?”
Grrong, grrong, grrong—
“My father did it. I only installed the engine.”
The next day, as promised, I went to show the car to Steven.
He circled the sleek black body with great care, letting out admiring exclamations the whole time.
“Wow, even so... this thing is seriously killer. You really don’t see a ’67 Mustang this clean very often.”
Well, back when parts had still been relatively easy to find, it seemed my father had already taken care of the exterior and interior.
And now that a rebuilt drivetrain had been added later, this car was probably in quite good condition among currently running Mustangs of the same year.
“You did a clean job on the engine install too. And the parts selection is... good.”
He practically shoved his head under the hood as he inspected everything, then pressed down on the lever of the butterfly-shaped throttle body—the device that regulated the amount of air entering the engine, connected to the accelerator pedal.
(Translator’s Note: The throttle controls how much air goes into the engine, which in turn affects acceleration.)
Grrroooong, grroong!
The thin round metal plate opened and closed smoothly like fluttering wings, and the engine howled even more roughly.
“Whew. It’s properly alive.”
Turning back to me with a deeply satisfied expression, he went on.
“This is exactly why old cars are fun. You might think things like carburetors or cable-operated throttles—where the pedal is connected directly by a wire—are just outdated technology, but they’re what give a car its unique character and personality.”
(Translator’s Note: A cable throttle physically links the gas pedal to the engine by a cable, unlike many modern cars that use electronic “drive-by-wire” systems.)
Steven was exactly right.
A carburetor, especially, drew in fuel purely through airflow, so its settings could easily drift depending on temperature, altitude, or the weather.
But because of that, it made the engine feel alive.
It was a kind of emotional appeal you could never get from modern cars, where everything was controlled by a computer called an ECU.
(Translator’s Note: ECU stands for Electronic Control Unit, the computer that manages many engine functions in modern cars.)
It was also one of the reasons not just I, but many other people, missed and loved old cars.
“I like simple, straightforward analog systems more too. Sure, they’re less efficient, but when it comes to cars, I just don’t want to care about that.”
“Huh... right? Ahem. That’s actually a pretty good line, coming from you.”
Steven’s eyes widened at what I said.
I had felt this for a long time, but when it came to cars, Steven and I actually had pretty similar tastes. I just had never shown it.
“So, uh... mind if I ride in it once? Just from the passenger seat, of course. I got curious about how a car you built actually feels on the road.”
“I don’t care. But what about your shop?”
“Oh, really? My father’s there, so it doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’m much help even if I stay there anyway...”
For a moment, I thought I saw a shadow pass over his face, but I pretended not to notice.
Thump—
When Steven dropped into the passenger seat, his huge frame made our shoulders keep bumping. It was profoundly unpleasant.
“Don’t crowd me. Buckle up.”
“It’s not like I’m doing this because I enjoy it. Enough nagging already—just hurry up and drive.”
The moment he awkwardly fastened his seat belt,
Vroooorooong—
I immediately stepped on the gas.
“W-Whoa, Jason! Take it easy!”
“I am taking it easy.”
In reality, it only felt that way because the torque was so strong. The actual speed was not especially high.
Before long, Steven had one arm hanging out the window, thoroughly enjoying the wind rushing past.
Vroooorororong—
“Go, Jason! Go!”
After enjoying the drive for a while like that, the two of us got suddenly starving and stopped by a nearby McDonald’s.
“Hah! Man, that really cleared me out. Your Mustang is the real deal. Told you—cars are Ford.”
Steven said it around a mouthful of hamburger.
“Yeah, it’s a good car. So in your opinion, how much do you think it could sell for in that condition?”
The jaw that had been chewing abruptly stopped.
“...Didn’t you say that was a car your father had been building since back then?”
“Yeah. If you want to get technical, it’s his keepsake. So what?”
At my sharp response, he quietly went back to chewing his burger for a moment.
Then he took a long pull from his Coke and said in a more upbeat tone,
“Well, it’s a fastback body, the body itself has no rust, and the rebuilt engine’s in good shape, so... at the very least, over fifty thousand dollars. If you get lucky, you could maybe even aim for seventy.”
“Cough—what? Seventy thousand dollars?”
I was so startled that I nearly spat out the half-chewed burger in my mouth.
“That’d be if you found exactly the right buyer. Realistically, it’d probably sell around sixty thousand on average. The body’s good, but the engine and transmission are a little on the mild side.”
Well, fair enough. Even so, that was still incredible.
Even after subtracting the $6,500 I had invested, there would still be a huge amount left over.
As expected, installing the engine really was the right call, even if it was a pain.
It was obvious, but even a classic car was still a car, and whether it could actually run or not made a huge difference in the price it could fetch.
And now I also had a special ability related to restoration.
There were skills that would continue to grow stronger, and if I made good use of the coins that piled up with each restoration, the profits would only get bigger.
So the real thing I needed to ask this bottom-feeding veteran of the car world was—
“What do you think about restoring old cars and classics like this for a living?”
“Huh? Out of nowhere? Well... it’s great! If you can actually make a living off it, I mean. For someone who likes cars and has the right disposition, it’s probably the best job there is. But...”
“But?”
“The problem is that doing it as a hobby and doing it as an actual business are completely different things. If you don’t have some kind of special edge of your own, you won’t even last a year.”
“Whew... figures.”
Naturally.
There were plenty of people in America who were crazy about cars, and that meant there were just as many real experts.
“...Why? Are you seriously thinking about getting into restoration work?”
His expression had turned unexpectedly serious.
“I’m considering it. Honestly, while I was doing this job, I had way more fun than I expected. My head cleared up, all the random thoughts disappeared... I don’t know, maybe it was something like the joy of total focus?”
Now that I had said it out loud, it sounded like a pretty ridiculous thing to say. And not exactly the kind of thing I ought to be saying in front of someone who looked like an orangutan’s cousin.
“Well, think it over carefully. If there’s something you want to try, you should at least try it, shouldn’t you? Not that I’m in any position to say that, since even my father doesn’t acknowledge me... But from what I can see, I think you’ve got a knack for it. Heh. Jason going into car restoration. You really do have to live long enough to see everything.”
From my perspective, the fact that I was even sitting here talking face-to-face with Steven was already something you had to live long enough to see.
But surprisingly, instead of mocking what I said, he seemed to have taken it fairly seriously.
On the way back, my thoughts became even more tangled.
If I was really going to pursue restoration properly, I would need the right space and tools for it.
This rental storage unit was no good for that. I could not even properly use electricity or water here.
And if I was going to secure all of that, then in the end there was only one way to get the funds—
sell this car.
I thought I had no lingering attachment...
To drown out the noise inside my head, I pressed down harder on the Mustang’s accelerator.
Vroooooom—
On the quiet Arizona desert road, the sound of the metal horse galloping rang out softly.
A man has to forgive his father someday.
It was some nonsense I had picked up somewhere, and back then I had not related to it even a little.
Forgive him? I could resent him for the rest of my life and it still wouldn’t be enough.
But after learning the sentence that came after it, my thinking had changed a little.
Not for the father’s sake, but for his own.
“Whew... for his own sake...”
Back at the motel, I lay on the bed staring at the empty ceiling.
Without so much as touching the beer I had gone out of my way to buy.
Like a painting gradually filling a blank canvas, all kinds of images floated across the ceiling.
The happy memories with my parents when I was eight.
The night my mother left when I was ten.
The moment I came home after school at fifteen and realized my father had left me too.
Enlisting in the Navy SEALs.
Enduring Hell Week.
(Translator’s Note: Hell Week is the infamous, extremely demanding phase of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training.)
Living, struggling, and surviving alongside men who had felt like my own brothers.
And then losing one of them.
And after that, all the years I had drifted along without forming any ties with anyone at all...
Lately, the only time I had felt connected to anything had been while working on the Mustang.
And now even that was over.
What am I supposed to do starting tomorrow?
“How will I make a living?” was not really the big problem.
I was still young, and healthy. Taking care of this one body was no great hardship. I was even fairly good at construction helper jobs.
The more important and urgent question was how I would live.
There was something good about living freely and going wherever life carried me, but sometimes that unfilled hole in my soul felt unbearably cold.
What exactly was Father thinking when he left me this car?
Because it was the only thing he owned?
Or because he wanted to ask for forgiveness?
There was no one left to answer, even if I wanted to ask.
[I hope you live a better life than I did.]
My father’s last words.
I did not know what a better life was supposed to mean.
But at the very least, it probably did not mean drifting aimlessly through life like I was now, never forming deep ties with anyone.
“...Yeah. Let’s stop running.”
It struck me that I could not keep letting myself be trapped by the past and ruin my present.
Someday, I would have to shake it all off and fly free.
I already had a pretty sturdy pair of wings, after all.
I picked up the phone I had tossed beside the bed.
There was a Korean proverb that said even an iron horn had to be pulled while it was still hot.
Iron horn or cow horn—I still got that part mixed up—but I liked the meaning well enough.
Ring ring—
“Hello? Ah, Mr. Cárdenas? This is Jason. We met at the taco place a while back.”
“Oh, Jason! The taco boy! What brings you to call me?”
The voice of the stylishly named Rafael Cárdenas sounded through the receiver.
“Do you remember when I mentioned that I was restoring a Mustang?”
“Of course I do. Didn’t you say it was a ’67? And a GT, no less.”
“Yes, that’s right. I’d like to sell it.”
“...Where are you right now?”
Rafael’s voice turned serious in an instant.
“Arizona. Southeast of Tucson.”
“Send me the address. It’s too late today, so I’ll head there first thing tomorrow.”
“You’re coming tomorrow?”
“Yes. This is the kind of thing that needs to be discussed in person. And I need to see the car myself.”
Unlike the laid-back impression he had given off at the taco place, Rafael was a man of remarkable decisiveness when it came to business.
“Hola, Jason.”
Rafael really did arrive before sunset the very next day.
He was a laid-back man with a cowboy hat and a striking silver mustache.
Unlike the way he had seemed at the taco place, though, his eyes were sharp.
“Welcome, Mr. Cárdenas.”
I came out in front of the storage unit ahead of time to greet him properly.
“None of that Mr. Cárdenas business. Just call me Rafael. Oh, so this is the Mustang? I see. It’s certainly worthy of confidence.”
His eyes sparkled like a child’s.
When men saw a car they loved, they all turned into boys, no matter their age.
Like a doctor examining a patient, he drew in a quiet breath and slowly ran his fingertips over the body panels.
At times he tapped them lightly, and at others he examined the panel gaps or carefully studied the traces around the screw heads.
“Good... a lot of care went into the bodywork.”
Next he opened the engine bay, and his eyes narrowed slightly.
“Who did this?”
“I did.”
Rafael turned to me with a small smile.
“You chose the engine and parts as well?”
“Well, the C4 transmission was already in it, and I selected the rest to match it.”
“Hm. How old are you, exactly?”
“Uh... twenty-eight.”
As if he had read the question in my expression, he continued right away.
“For a young man, you have remarkably good judgment. You chose the lightest and smallest V8 that fit this car’s chassis strength and transmission.”
The truth was, I had picked it because I was broke...
But there was no need to babble that out loud.
Rafael pressed on the belts, inspected the state of the wiring and the terminal connections, and carefully looked over the engine stampings.
Then—
“Start it up for me.”
At last came the moment when the stethoscope was pressed to the chest.
Chiiing, vroom!
The engine turned over strongly without hesitation.
The rough sound of metal friction echoed rhythmically through the storage unit.
“Clean. It’s a properly rebuilt engine.”
Thunk!
He shut the hood, then straightened his back with a crack.
“All right. At this level, I can confidently sell it under my own name. So... what kind of price are you thinking of?”
Rafael asked in a smooth tone, but I could tell the atmosphere had changed in that instant.
So it begins.
Fortunately, before meeting him, I had already heard the rough market price from Steven, and after that I had checked several classic car sales sites to get a feel for the market myself.
Keeping my expression as calm as possible, I answered.
“I’m thinking around seventy thousand dollars.”
Rafael had spoken highly of my judgment, but the truth was that the market valued bigger, more powerful engines. Or completely original factory-condition cars.
“Hm...”
Rafael looked me straight in the eye and slowly rubbed his mustache.
Right now, the condition of the car, the direction of the market, his list of potential buyers, and his margin were probably all swirling through his head.
“I’ll give you fifty-five thousand dollars, payable immediately upon transfer of the title.”
That was not a bad number.
Honestly, I had imagined one of those movie-style negotiations.
Seventy thousand dollars!
That’s difficult. Forty thousand!
No. Sixty thousand.
Then how about fifty-five?
Guess real life is a little different.
Even so, it did not feel right to accept it just like that...
“Could you do sixty thousand?”
“Heh. Jason, believe me or don’t—it’s your choice—but fifty-five thousand is already a fairly generous offer.”
Rather than putting force into his voice or showing emotion, Rafael continued in a calm tone.
“If you find the final buyer yourself and handle the sale directly, of course you could get more. You might even manage the seventy thousand you first mentioned. But if you’re passing all of that process and risk onto me instead, this is not a bad deal.”
Rafael glanced once across my face, tight with tension.
“But... I’d like your first deal to remain a good memory. So let’s call it sixty thousand, on the condition that you keep restoring fine cars like this in the future.”
Rafael held out his hand.
I stared at that hand for a brief moment, then gripped it firmly.
“All right. You have a deal.”
It was the strong, thick hand of a battle-hardened veteran.