Chapter 57
I’m translating the chapter directly into published-form HTML, keeping the narration fluid and splitting dialogue and the bank/system-like inserts into the required block styles.CHAPTER_TITLE: Chapter 57: A Better Set of Wheels
“You worked hard, Kang Assistant Manager.”
“Hard work? I barely did anything beyond climbing up on the farm equipment and taking a few photos.”
“Still, it was easier because you were here. Anyway, we finished earlier than expected, so how about we grab some gukbap?”
“Sounds good.”
“Come on. Country-style gukbap here is seriously good.”
Dragged by Assistant Manager Park, I ended up inside a sundae gukbap place.
“Thanks to you, I actually felt like I had some pull today. You know, sometimes two people just look better than one.”
He chuckled to himself as he thanked me, but honestly, I was the one who should’ve been grateful.
Whether I was here or sitting in the Seoul office, work was still work. But coming out here had let me see the true value of my talent.
It was more capable than I’d imagined.
What surprised me most was that I’d even mastered how to pilot a drone perfectly.
Most drones used today weren’t exactly big enough to ride in, of course. But since there were drones that a person could ride, I’d apparently picked up the operating principles for all drones.
In other words, if a vehicle could carry a person, I could drive it, no matter the type.
Wait a second. If that’s true, then I could probably ride a horse too.
After all, horses had carried people since ancient times, whether under saddle or by pulling a carriage.
Then what else is there?
It felt like I could skip all the things that normally required training.
“Assistant Manager Kang. Want a shot of soju?”
“No. I still have to drive back to Seoul.”
“I said I’d drive on the way back. It’s gukbap, so if you want one, you can drink.”
Assistant Manager Park grinned and added, “If you do want a drink, just call a designated driver.”
“Forget it. Do you know how much a designated driver would cost from Asan to Seoul? If I’m going to drink, I’d rather do it after getting to Seoul.”
“Fair enough.”
He snickered as he poured water into a cup, and I took out a spoon and chopsticks.
Then it happened.
Tap-!
Maybe Assistant Manager Park’s hand slipped, because the water cup he’d been setting down fell straight under the table.
In that instant.
Thwack-!
My hand shot out and caught the cup in midair.
“Whoa, that’s insane!”
Assistant Manager Park burst out laughing in disbelief.
“Your reaction speed is nuts. How’d you catch that?”
“……Huh?”
I was the one who was baffled.
“Seriously. How did I catch it?”
Normally, even if I saw something, I wouldn’t have reacted in time. At best, I would’ve tried to stop it with my foot and ended up in a total disaster, water spilling all over my shoe.
My arm had already shot out before I’d even had time to think.
“You working out these days?”
“……No?”
Even then, I wasn’t sure exercise had anything to do with it.
Clap-!
“Damn it, why are there gnats in February?”
At that moment, an irritated voice came from the table next to us.
Apparently, one lone gnat had hatched at the wrong time and was now buzzing around their table, making itself a nuisance.
Even when the old men slapped at it, it dodged with absurd agility and kept surviving.
Vvvvv-!
Sure enough, it veered over toward us as if trying to escape.
“You little thing, you. I’m getting you.”
Assistant Manager Park sharpened his eyes and waited for the right moment.
Smack-!
He clapped hard and clean.
“Ah, missed it……”
The gnat drifted away as if nothing had happened.
“Leave it. That thing’s got some serious life in it.”
I laughed and waved it off.
But before I’d even finished speaking, it came buzzing toward the radish kimchi I was about to eat.
“This little bastard……”
Chop-!
“……!?”
I caught the gnat with my chopsticks.
“……What?”
“You caught it?”
“It got caught……”
I wrapped it in tissue and threw it away.
“That’s crazy.”
Assistant Manager Park’s eyes went wide as he handed me a new pair of chopsticks.
“How did you catch something even hand couldn’t catch?”
“No idea……”
Then it hit me.
Wait. Don’t tell me this is because of that?
Rank: S
Passive Effect: The user’s senses become fully synchronized with the vehicle.
You can intuitively sense road conditions, traction, airflow, resistance, and every other environmental factor, allowing for perfect control.
You can operate any mode of transportation flawlessly.
Your dynamic vision and reflexes increase dramatically.
Was it because of that last line?
My body had reacted faster than I expected when the cup fell.
Come to think of it, it doesn’t say the boosted dynamic vision and reflexes only apply while driving.
So that must mean my body was reacting on its own even now.
It probably wouldn’t help much in everyday life, though.
Then maybe I should learn a sport.
At the very least, it would be a huge help in athletics.
Still, thinking about getting into sparring in my thirties and being beaten to a pulp makes me lose confidence……
Maybe because I was getting older, one injury took forever to heal, and the aftereffects lingered like a bad debt.
I’d have to think it through slowly.
***
On the way back to Seoul, Assistant Manager Park asked me, sounding curious, “Hey, Kang Assistant Manager.”
“Yeah?”
“Isn’t it about time you changed cars?”
“I’ve actually been thinking seriously about that lately.”
It was a ten-year-old rust bucket, but I’d driven it well enough all this time.
Lately, though, the thing just wasn’t performing.
It used to be a car I only drove occasionally on weekends, but these days I’d been using it to commute to the workshop, and now the warning lights were coming on and the whole thing felt like it was falling apart.
“Besides, an SUV’s been catching my eye.”
“Because of your side business, right?”
“Pretty much.”
Woodcraft in particular had a lot to do with it. If I was hauling raw lumber and other heavy materials around, a sedan had its limits.
And lately I’d gotten pretty hooked on camping after a few trips.
A small car just didn’t cut it when I wanted to load gear and go.
“You’re making good money on your side gig, so just get one.”
“I’d love to, if I had my way.”
While we talked our way through one thing and another, before long the car entered Seoul.
A road in Seongdong District.
“Hm?”
Assistant Manager Park tilted his head and looked straight ahead.
“Aren’t both lanes going straight here?”
“They are. So why is only the left lane packed?”
The second lane was wide open, while the first lane was jammed.
“Is there construction or something?”
“Let’s go see.”
“Sure.”
Since we were already in the second lane, we kept going.
But then.
“Ah…… so that’s why.”
“Ha.”
We both let out hollow laughs.
“A Ferrari?”
“Yeah. A 458.”
A supercar worth over half a billion won sat there like it owned the road.
That was the thing parting the sea like Moses.
Assistant Manager Park also hit the brakes, maintaining three times the usual safe distance.
“You want me to drop you at home?”
“No, drop me in Jongno. It’d be better for me to go to the workshop from there.”
“Got it. I’ll return the car to the company and head home.”
The light turned green.
Vroooom-!
With a fierce exhaust note and engine roar, the Ferrari shot off faster than anyone else.
I stared after it absentmindedly, as if I’d been bewitched.
A Ferrari……
Just looking at it made my chest feel strangely hot, or at least that’s how it seemed.
***
“Damn it.”
Forget driving talent or anything else.
A much bigger problem had appeared.
“You useless old heap.”
Lately it had been wheezing and limping along, and now it had finally given up the ghost.
For a while, the warning light had been coming on whenever I started the engine, and every time I took it in for inspection, they told me it was just a sensor issue caused by the car’s age and there was nothing they could do, so I’d been turning it off and on three or four times in a row just to get by.
But now it wouldn’t even start.
I called the insurance company and took it to a repair shop.
“A 2013 model with 370,000 kilometers? Wow, that’s something else.”
He whistled in admiration just from the year and mileage alone.
After a few more checks, the verdict came down.
“This is hard to repair.”
The employee shook his head firmly.
“You’d have to replace the whole interior, starting with the engine. It’d be a waste to pour hundreds of thousands into a car like this. Just scrap it.”
“How much would it cost, specifically?”
“At least around 7 million won? And even if you spent that much, you probably wouldn’t get 1 million won for it as a used car.”
“Ah…… then scrapping it is the right call.”
It was the only choice.
I’d taken over a relic more than ten years old and driven it for years, so it was only natural that its life would be ending now.
Yeah. It’s time to let it go.
A few days later, I sent the car I’d driven since my rookie office-worker days to the scrapyard.
On the way back, I stopped by Eosu Chultto and bought a plate of flatfish sashimi.
I was looking forward to dipping it in the spicy sauce and making a wrap when I reached the workshop, and just then—
Ding-!
A new alert sounded.
Year of Production: 18th century (Qing Dynasty)
Creator: Unknown.
Rank: Treasure-grade
Notes: A specialized astronomical text that diagrams constellations and records observations of the heavens.
Though it was a printed woodblock edition, some constellations were colored with rare pigments.
It should have been burned and lost along with the original during the Cultural Revolution, but one Red Guard secretly smuggled the book away.
Its academic and cultural value was extremely high, but more than half of it had been burned, leaving much of its contents lost.
It was a rare book I’d picked up at a flea market in New York when I’d gone on a trip there.
Even though it was treasure-grade, so much of it had been destroyed that I’d thought it wouldn’t fetch much.
This is better than I expected.
I hadn’t expected it to go for over 100 million won.
If the condition had been just a little better……
Maybe the auction house hadn’t been exaggerating when it said it could’ve fetched as much as 1 billion won.
Every so often, the artifact appraisal just goes quiet and then pulls off something like this.
Thanks to that, my pockets suddenly felt stuffed.
If I’d known this would happen, I should’ve ordered tuna sashimi instead of flatfish.
It was a little disappointing, but I’d already bought it, so there was nothing for it.
Still, doesn’t this mean my balance is overflowing for real now?
“……This is insane.”
Just looking at it made me feel absurdly pleased, to the point that my mouth kept trying to curl upward.
“Even after tax, I’ll still have more than 100 million left, right?”
Wait a minute.
That meant……
“Since I’m changing cars anyway, should I go ahead and get a really good one?”
***
Porampe.
I’d joined a café for Porsche, Lamborghini, and Ferrari owners and was reading one review after another.
They really do look gorgeous.
No wonder people called them dream cars.
I’d been driving a beat-up old car for ten years, and as a salaried office worker, it had been the kind of thing I couldn’t even dream of affording.
But once I actually had money in my hands, my eyes naturally started drifting toward luxury cars like these.
Turns out I’m a man after all.
Just seeing supercars and muscle cars made my heart pound.
But that sense of admiration for the styling and interiors didn’t last long.
“……Why are they all this expensive?”
What was the point of a bare-bones model costing 90 million won if a few options pushed it well past 150 million?
And what kind of Porsche charges 4 million won just to put a symbol on the headrest?
That was a required option, too.
If you didn’t add it, they said depreciation would be brutal when you tried to sell it used.
My pounding heart just dropped straight to the floor……
My head was cooling off just as fast.
I’m clearly not ready to look here yet.
It was true that I’d been making a lot of money through my side business lately.
But since I’d started with so little in the first place, it felt like building a sandcastle on the beach.
Everything I earned seemed to wash right back out.
Honestly, a supercar was still out of reach.
If I really emptied the side-hustle account, I might be able to buy a Porsche with every last option checked, but……
“There’s no way I could afford to keep it running.”
Starting with fuel and moving on to insurance, I’d be in the red on salary alone.
And if it broke down and needed repairs even once?
I’d be bleeding.
“What the hell am I thinking about a Porsche for?”
I shut the café site down immediately.
“For Koreans, Hyundai and Kia are the best.”
Once I moved into Hyundai and Kia, the prices alone made me feel a lot calmer.
I think I can graduate from the Accent or K3 class now.
If anything, I wanted to go with an SUV.
Palisade, GV80, Telluride, EV9, ……
Big bodies, sharp looks.
When I’d been looking at Porsche, I’d gotten scared just from the price. But when I looked at Hyundai and Kia, they actually felt familiar, like cars I could comfortably live with.
Which one would be best?
A pleasant new kind of trouble began.
***
“Ah, yes. Thank you.”
I went to a dealership and test-drove a few cars in person.
“Sir, we’re running a discount event on this one right now, so the terms are really good.”
“Yes. I’ll get back to you.”
“Thank you! Take care!”
Leaving the bowing salespeople behind, I stepped out of the showroom.
It’s more awkward than I expected.
I hadn’t realized test-driving a car would be such a hassle.
Even in the showroom, all I could really feel was the cabin width and the sensation of starting the engine.
If I reserved a road test, the dealer sat in the passenger seat, which made it hard to examine the car freely.
On top of that, the drive time was short and mostly stayed in the city at midday, so I couldn’t really tell how it felt once speed built up.
Worse, the salesman would keep chattering away about the car’s strengths, making it hard to focus or figure out what the weaknesses were.
But relying on searches alone felt even more uncertain.
No matter how many reviews there were online, they couldn’t compare to actually experiencing the car yourself.
Maybe if it were just a couple million, I wouldn’t mind, but I’m scared to just buy some car worth tens of millions on a whim.
Given my personality, if I bought one, I’d probably keep driving it for years, so I wanted to choose a car I’d be 100 percent satisfied with.
I wish I had a chance to drive one properly……
As I kept wondering whether there was some way to do that, an idea suddenly came to me.
Wait. There was a job where they handed out money on top of free test drives and trial runs, wasn’t there?
A good idea had just struck me.
Maybe I should test it out for just a few days?