Fate's Prank (5)
My phone rang on the way to pick up Grandmother after I’d finished registering as a hunter.
It was an unknown number.
Who is it?
I had just turned the Dio Guild into a wreck not long ago.
And I’d even killed Go Ju-hun, the guild’s leader, with my own hands.
Right now, Purple Devil was a hot topic in hunter circles.
Please tell me my identity hasn’t been exposed.
I pressed the answer button with my nerves stretched tight.
“...Hello.”
“Hello, is this Choi Yongki?”
A middle-aged woman’s voice came through the receiver.
Still on guard, I asked, “It is. Who’s this?”
“I’m Choi Sungmin’s homeroom teacher.”
For a moment, all the tension drained out of me, and I let out a short breath.
It was a call from my younger brother’s high school.
“I’m calling because I need to discuss something about Sungmin. Do you have a moment?”
I remembered.
In my previous life, I’d gotten the same call.
What had I said back then?
“I’m busy.”
I’d cut the call off coldly and hung up.
I’d been responsible for the household, trying to claw our way out of poverty.
Back then, I was obsessed with working like a madman.
My brother’s school life hadn’t mattered to me at all.
Maybe that was why.
Long after that, my brother and I became worse than strangers.
We lived our lives resenting each other, and in the end, we both died carrying that bitterness.
This time, I didn’t want to repeat the same mistake.
Grandmother was due to be discharged late in the afternoon after her final checkup.
I still had plenty of time.
I adjusted my grip on the phone.
“I’m on my way now.”
What if I’d still been working at the factory?
In my last life, I’d never once taken a half-day, let alone a vacation.
Work had been everything.
It had come before family.
Thinking back on it, I couldn’t understand why I’d gone that far.
Maybe I’d been trapped in a victim’s mindset.
Providing for my family was only the surface-level reason.
My life had been so damned miserable that I’d rationalized everything just to numb my own thoughts.
Now was the time to tear off the shackles I’d wrapped around myself.
As my mind loosened, things I hadn’t noticed before began to catch my eye.
“Daddyy! Pick me up!”
A little girl walking along the roadside held out her arms.
The man beside her chuckled and muttered, “She’s exactly like her mom.”
Then he scooped her up with one arm and kept strolling along as if nothing weighed him down.
Watching the backs of that peaceful father and daughter, I felt a warm breeze seem to settle over the street.
Then the little girl suddenly looked back.
Her huge, innocent eyes met mine.
I gave her a small wave.
The child grinned and waved back with her tiny hand.
I had gone to a vocational high school for hunters.
It was a place that focused on teaching practical skills more than academics.
Because of that, there were plenty of delinquent students there.
Tattoos were common, and most of them had cigarettes tucked in their pockets.
I’d learned how to ride a motorcycle from a friend back then, too.
The teachers were rough as hell, since they had to manage vocational students.
Some of them would slap the faces of kids smoking in the bathroom, and one homeroom adviser even dragged around an iron pipe like a gangster.
Maybe that was why the staff office at my brother’s regular high school looked so peaceful.
Strange. Unfamiliar.
Students in neat uniforms, bright smiles on their faces, were greeting the teachers like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Please have some of this.”
My brother’s homeroom teacher held out a paper cup filled with instant coffee.
I set it on the desk without bringing it to my lips, then looked the other person in the eye.
Grandmother would be discharged soon.
I skipped the useless small talk and got straight to the point.
“What did you want to say?”
“Well, that is...”
The teacher hesitated for a moment, then spoke.
“Could you take a look at this?”
What he handed me was Sungmin’s report card.
There didn’t seem to be anything especially wrong.
My brother was a model student, so most of his grades were excellent.
Only math was completely zeroed out.
Back in middle school, he’d often been first in the entire grade.
At the time, I’d just assumed puberty had hit him late.
Neither Grandmother nor I had paid much attention to his grades.
“Looks like Sungmin isn’t getting along with the math teacher.”
The homeroom teacher continued talking about my brother.
“Apparently the math teacher said, ‘Poor people are poor because they’re lazy.’ Sungmin took offense, and the math teacher got angry and scolded him badly in front of the other students...”
I roughly understood the situation.
And it wasn’t just me.
Poverty was a shameful thing to Sungmin, too.
Getting zero on a test wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
Even if you guessed randomly, you’d usually get a few right.
My brother had deliberately chosen every wrong answer as a quiet little act of revenge.
“Sungmin’s a fundamentally good student. And he’s smart, too. It’s not too late even now. Would you help him out?”
My brother was sharp enough that after being shocked by Grandmother’s death in the first timeline, he’d buckled down, studied hard, and made it into medical school.
But in this timeline, Grandmother had already received treatment, and her cancer had been cured.
Something like her dying again was not going to happen.
“I’ll talk to him.”
As soon as I finished the counseling session and left the staff office, I ran straight into Sungmin standing in the hallway.
“...”
He avoided my gaze.
The only reason the teacher had called me was because there was no one else to call.
Grandmother was around, sure, but I was the one who functioned as the actual guardian.
“Hey, Choi Sungmin.”
I raised a hand.
My brother squeezed his eyes shut, probably thinking I was about to hit him.
I did beat the crap out of him a lot when he was younger.
Especially back when he ran away from home, I’d hit him hard.
I lowered my hand gently and draped an arm over his shoulders.
“Come on. Let’s go.”
“Wh-where to?”
“Outside.”
“I’m getting out early? Yes! So I don’t have to do evening study hall?”
My brother made a pointless joke.
“Hyung, maybe I should just drop out while I’m at it? Going to school doesn’t even...”
“You want to die?”
“...Tch.”
He lowered his head and hunched his shoulders.
I tapped the tightly folded slope of his shoulders.
“You know Grandma’s getting discharged today, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s all go eat together. What do you want?”
“Jajangmyeon!”
He answered without hesitation.
“...And sweet-and-sour pork, too.”
“...”
“I-If that’s not okay, then it’s fine...”
When I kept staring at him without saying anything, his voice shrank away.
He was doing it because he knew what my wallet could handle.
The bony edge of his shoulder under my hand felt pitifully thin.
He was smaller than the other kids I passed in the hallway.
He’s still growing, damn it.
What the hell was money worth, anyway?
I couldn’t even buy him one meal he actually wanted?
“Follow me.”
From far away, a familiar face came into view.
My grandmother, with her snow-white hair and small-animal sort of frame.
My brother and I walked up to her.
Grandmother pulled both of us into her arms.
That familiar grandmother smell rushed over me.
“You little bastards! Been eating well?”
For security reasons, family visits were prohibited at the Sejong Cancer Research Center.
We had phone calls often, but this was the first time I’d seen Grandmother in nearly two months.
Luckily, her complexion looked bright.
“We’ve been fine. How’re you feeling, Grandma?”
I asked about her health, but Grandmother shot me an awkward wink.
“Perfect! I was great! You know, went all over the world on a plane and had myself a grand old time! Went to Japan! Went to those white people’s countries! Even went to the Soviet Union!”
The Soviet Union had collapsed ages ago.
Besides, the place we were standing wasn’t an airport—it was in front of a hospital.
We’d kept Grandmother’s hospitalization a secret from Sungmin on the surface.
It was a lie we’d agreed on ahead of time because we didn’t want him to worry.
Sungmin puckered his lips and stepped toward her.
“Grandma, are you okay now? You’re all better?”
“...”
My sharp-eyed brother asked about her condition.
He must have already known everything.
Come to think of it, he was already eighteen.
Looking at Grandmother’s wildly flickering eyes, I shrugged.
Realizing her lousy acting had been exposed, Grandmother let out a long sigh.
“Damn it all. If you’re gonna lie, at least get your stories straight. Of course I’m fine! And what about my little mutt? What happened to school?”
Without a word, Sungmin hugged Grandmother tightly.
“It’s my fault. I didn’t even know you were sick this whole time...”
The teacher had been right.
My brother had a kind heart, and he was smart.
Grandmother rubbed his back.
“Fault, my ass. Quit talking nonsense! I’ll handle my own business, so don’t you worry about it.”
She spat out the curses with all the usual grit, but even her eyes were getting damp.
I guided them both along.
“Let’s stop with the long-lost-family reunion act and go grab some celebratory drinks.”
“This time, the chef’s special is Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, made with twenty-four fresh ingredients and pre-steamed shark fin. The bowl is hot, so please be careful.”
The waitress continued her explanation in a calm, gentle voice.
It was my first time in a high-end Chinese restaurant.
As soon as we opened the door, the server in a neatly tailored uniform escorted us to our room.
I acted as naturally as I could, trying not to show anything, but I did flinch when I saw the price.
Five hundred ninety thousand won per person?
Even after buying the factory, there was still tens of billions of won left in the safe.
Still, expensive was expensive.
I forced myself not to react and calmly lifted my spoon.
Grandmother and Sungmin were so unfamiliar with everything that they moved like robots, leaning toward me as if for guidance.
“Grandma, what’s Buddha Jumps Over the Wall?”
“Ain’t it a thing you stab with fire?” Grandmother said. “Back in my day, we used to iron clothes with a hot iron, I tell you.”
Truth be told, I didn’t know either.
It was also my first time seeing shark fin.
“Hyung, is Buddha Jumps Over the Wall really like an iron?”
I leaned close to his ear and whispered, “Shut up and eat.”
“...Okay.”
As if we’d planned it, the three of us scooped up the soup with our spoons.
It definitely tasted special, probably because they’d used top-grade ingredients.
Kind of like a thick seafood stew.
The shark fin had a strange chewy crunch that popped lightly in the mouth, which was interesting enough.
Not sure I’d call it insanely delicious, though.
While I tilted my head at it, Sungmin and Grandmother lit up every time a new dish came out.
“This coconut bird’s nest is served as a palate cleanser between courses.”
“Bird’s nest? You made it out of actual birds?”
“Yongki. How much is this stuff, anyway? We came here for jajangmyeon, didn’t we? They keep bringing out all this weird crap. Don’t we need to tell the chef?”
The waitress smiled and gave her a polite explanation.
“The jajangmyeon will be served later, according to the course. And no, it isn’t made from actual birds; it’s prepared using seaweed and bird saliva...”
Then dish after dish I’d never seen before kept coming out.
“Wow. Peking duck? This is ridiculously good! Not even close to Gochon!”
“Aigoo, steamed grouper? How the heck is this fish so huge?”
Sungmin and Grandmother stuffed themselves on sweet-and-sour pork and chili shrimp until there wasn’t a single bite left.
Watching them, I found myself thinking, So this is what people mean when they say watching is enough to fill you up.
Without realizing it, I was smiling at the two of them.
We even cleaned up the apple mango bingsu served for dessert.
“Ahh. I’m stuffed. I shouldn’t have eaten school lunch. We had fried pollock today.”
“Sungmin. Still, Grandma’s cooking tastes better, doesn’t it?”
“Well... that’s...”
“What was that, you little bastard?”
Grandmother stood up, patting her belly.
“Where’re you going?”
“To take care of business.”
“Want me to go with you?”
“Hell no. You want to follow me into the women’s restroom?”
Grandmother left the room, and Sungmin and I were left alone.
Once the meal was over, silence settled over the table.
We really had been close when we were younger, but as we grew up, moments like this sometimes turned awkward.
“The math teacher.”
I spoke first.
“He was the one in the wrong. Poverty isn’t because people are lazy, and it’s not our fault either.”
Sungmin listened quietly.
“But if we stay poor until the day we die, then that part really would be our fault.”
I had earned a billion won through thirty years of labor.
It wasn’t enough to live large on, but it had been enough to escape poverty.
“We can’t choose the environment we’re born into. The only things we can change are our attitude and mindset. Same goes for knowledge. Money can be stolen, but what I learned at the factory can’t be taken from me by anyone.”
Instead of forcing him to study, I told him a little of what I’d felt and realized in my previous life.
“...I’m sorry, Hyung.”
Sungmin said in a tight, choked voice.
“I knew all that already. I was just acting like that because I felt insecure about it.”
The awkward air in the room gradually warmed.
Sungmin lifted his head and looked at me.
“Hyung. Thanks. I’ll start working hard again.”
After I smiled at his resolve, I picked up the bill and rose from my seat.
The receipt showed a sum far too generous for a single meal.
But it didn’t feel wasteful.
“Yeah. A man should pay for dinner.”