The Chaebol Chairman's Secretary (2)
Kim Chirok called Oh Ha-young.
"Ms. Oh Ha-young?"
"Oh my, Kim Chirok actually calling me? You got home all right that night, didn't you?"
"Why are you posting those pointless photos?"
"Photos? That's my hobby. And it's proof I'm not seeing anyone but you."
"See other people if you want. Go ahead."
"Are you mad?"
"There's something called portrait rights. How can you upload those without even asking me?"
"Hehe. Then we'll just say I have your consent as of now."
"Delete them right now!"
"Is there someone who'd give you grief if they saw those pictures? Ah, wait—I heard there's a monster in the chairman's secretary's office. Is that what this is about?"
"A monster?"
"There's this formidable woman they call Bang Yeo-jeong, isn't there? Don't tell me you're doing this because of her."
"What? I don't even know that woman."
"Bang Yeo-jeong and I are Instagram friends."
Kim Chirok did not use Facebook or Instagram. He had accounts, and that was all. He was the sort of man who believed that messing around with that stuff only got your personal information scraped and wasted your time.
"I'm asking nicely. Delete them."
"I'll delete them—except for a few of the good shots."
"Delete all of them."
"I can't do that. It's for your protection."
"Protection?"
"It's to keep those monster-type women from latching onto you. That's how you should think of it. And next time, come over to my place. My dad wants to meet you too."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Anyway, good luck at work."
"Hey, wait—!"
He was about to say something more, but the line had already gone dead.
He was about to call her back when his team leader summoned him.
"Kim Chirok! What's with the long phone call? Analyze this. It's a company our group is considering for an M&A."
"Right now?"
"Do it now. And send it over to me when you're done."
Kim Chirok never got the chance to call Oh Ha-young back. Work had made sure of that.
He finished the assignment and sent the analysis to his team leader. By the time he hit send, quitting time had already come and gone.
Looks like I'll be late to Japanese class today.
Kim Chirok headed to the Japanese language academy in Yeoksam-dong. Class had already started, so he crept in as quietly as he could and took a seat in the very back. He opened his textbook and listened to the grammar lecture.
Studying was when Kim Chirok felt happiest. For a poor man like himself, it was the only thing he knew how to do. He had no other gifts. As a business school graduate, he sometimes entertained the idea of starting his own company. But he had no dazzling business idea, and no seed money to launch one with.
Listening to the grammar lecture, Japanese started to come into sharper focus.
Then came the mid-class break. The young female instructor smiled brightly.
"You're a bit late today."
"Yes. I had a lot of work at the office."
"You work at H Group, don't you? That's a wonderful company."
She had spotted the company badge pinned to his suit lapel. It was a job he went to only reluctantly, but other people envied him for it. H Group was a major chaebol conglomerate—the kind of place that was brutally hard to get into.
The instructor looked as though she wanted to ask him something more. Kim Chirok was tall and good-looking, and he worked at a prestigious firm; that combination seemed to make her even more eager to keep talking. But when he made a show of looking at his textbook, she simply walked away.
By the time Japanese class ended, it was already past nine.
On the subway, Kim Chirok received a text from Jeong Chan-young, a former classmate who worked at the same company.
"Tomodachi?"
Kim Chirok let out a short, dry laugh at the word. Tomodachi meant "friend" in Japanese.
So we're meeting friends at a bar called Friend?
He let out a faint sigh. His old classmates still had a tendency to look down on him, however quietly. Without thinking, he reached up and touched the place on his head where Lim Jae-geun had once struck him.
Kim Chirok arrived home in Bongcheon-dong—a villa perched on the hill above the back alley of Bongcheon-dong Central Market. His mother had set the table and was waiting for him.
"Why are you so late these days? Is it because of work?"
"No. It's because I'm taking Japanese classes."
"Japanese?"
"They said I need a second foreign language."
"That must be hard on you. Come on, let's eat."
"You haven't eaten yet? From now on, don't wait for me. Go ahead and eat first."
"Alright. I'll do that."
"And I'll be late tomorrow too. I have an alumni gathering."
"Your high school classmates?"
"Yes."
"Those boys who used to pick on you—they're not around anymore, are they?"
"No. We're all working adults now. Who's going to bully anyone?"
"That one who hurt your head back then—he lived in the Raemian apartments where I used to work, didn't he?"
"You don't need to know about that."
"Those damn brats! Looking down on us just because we were poor! Kids and adults alike—they're all the same."
It seemed his mother had been snubbed by the apartment residents in Gangnam. And Kim Chirok had been beaten by their sons. That was why she was venting like this.
Mother and son ate in silence at that late hour. Midway through the meal, she lifted a piece of seasoned bellflower root with her chopsticks and spoke.
"Your father used to love bellflower root namul..."
As she said it, she looked at the small frame hanging on the wall. Inside it was a poem his father had written, titled Fleabane. Kim Chirok had thrown it out on moving day; his mother had picked it back up and hung it there.
It had been a long time since Kim Chirok had seen his father. He had kept telling himself he ought to visit, but he hadn't gone in years. As they ate, he said,
"I should go see Father. Not this week, but I'll make time next week."
"Really?"
His mother's mouth fell open.
Kim Chirok wanted to buy his father a down parka and a cell phone. But he truly had no money to spare—he was putting three million won into a savings plan. Now that he had moved, though, he was no longer paying for a studio, and it occurred to him that he might actually be able to buy them. His father would refuse, of course, but Kim Chirok wanted to force them on him anyway.
Kim Chirok's father had a slightly eccentric streak. Perhaps because he had been a poet, he preferred nature to the noisy bustle of civilized society. And he clung to the Three-No Principle—meaning he would possess none of three things. No bank credit card, no driver's license, and no cell phone.
Kim Chirok had once despised a father like that. If some wealthy scholar had said such things, it might have sounded admirable. Coming from a father who didn't have two coins to rub together, it had only ever seemed pathetic.
The Three-No Principle? That's a loser's empty talk. Father is incompetence itself—a man with no sense of responsibility toward his own wife and child.
But as the years had piled on, Kim Chirok had begun to see his father in a different light. People with convictions like that were rare in this day and age. Perhaps a man like his father was a true poet after all.
"When I go this time, I'll buy him a cell phone at least."
"A cell phone?"
"Not carrying a phone doesn't make sense in today's world. Even if I have to talk him into it, he needs to have one."
"Your father's temperament is so stubborn... He wants to live like some kind of monk..."
"Just wait. Once he has a phone, he'll naturally start taking an interest in how the world turns. Then he'll come down from that mountain."
"But does the signal even reach out there? It's pretty deep in the mountains."
"It does. When I visited him once, my phone had a perfectly good signal."
"You'd still have to charge it, though."
"Out in the countryside, you can use solar power or a personal generator."
"Is that so?"
"From what I saw last time, Father seemed to be using a generator of his own."
"Aigoo, now that his son's got a job, he should just come down already. What kind of illness did he think he'd cure by going into that valley? If you're sick, you don't go somewhere like that—you find a good doctor!"
"That's true."
His mother lifted her head and stared into empty air.
"If he went to a doctor... he was probably afraid of the cost."
Those words made something catch hard in Kim Chirok's chest.
The next day, when evening came, Kim Chirok took the subway out to Gangnam Station. Following Jeong Chan-young's directions, he came out Exit 11 and went looking for Tomodachi Izakaya.
He didn't have to worry about the bar tab tonight. The five million won deposit from his studio in Yeonsu-dong, Incheon, had landed in his bank account.
Turning into the alley to the right of Exit 11, he saw a dense stretch of restaurant and bar signs—a glittering food alley. The izakaya they had agreed on was easy to find. It was a basement establishment.
When he opened the door, the hall was surprisingly spacious. There seemed to be private rooms as well. On the wall hung a large photograph of a geisha, a full-length portrait from the crown of her head to the tips of her feet.
Ah! Hirosue Yoshiko!
Kim Chirok took it for a photograph of Hirosue Yoshiko, the finest geisha in Kyoto. But when he stepped closer, it was a geisha, yes—just not Hirosue Yoshiko. It looked like a decorative piece the izakaya owner had put up for atmosphere.
His old classmates began to appear, one by one. Jeong Chan-young, who worked at the same group company, arrived, as did Hwang Byung-se, now a resident at a university hospital. And then Lim Jae-geun—the one who had tormented Kim Chirok—showed up as well.
The sight of Lim Jae-geun stirred something complicated in him. But he could not let it show. He smiled.
"Lim Jae-geun! It's been a while."
"Chirok, you bastard. You've gotten pretty slick. Joining a big company changed you, huh? How much do you make?"
As he said it, he gave the back of Kim Chirok's head a light smack.
This guy's got rotten hands, no matter how you look at it. Should I hit him back? No—if a fight breaks out, this bastard's a lawyer. He'll slap me with every charge in the book.
Lim Jae-geun never treated the other friends that way. It was only Kim Chirok he handled like a dog. The man was weak against the strong and strong against the weak—there was no doubt about it.
Once everyone had assembled, there were seven of them. Even among those who lived in Gangnam, the ones without respectable careers hadn't bothered to show. So the men gathered here tonight were lawyers, doctors, and employees of major corporations—and no one else.