After my grandmother passed away, a man came to see me while I was dazedly preparing for the funeral.
“Kim Mu-hyeok?”
“…Who are you?”
“I was sent by your maternal grandfather.”
“Pardon?”
He was Manager Ha, who had come down from Seoul on my grandfather's orders.
“Chairman Cheon wishes to see you once the funeral procedures are complete.”
“…”
“We will handle all the expenses and paperwork for the funeral, so once it's over, please come up to Seoul with me.”
At Manager Ha's firm tone, I could only nod. And so, I came to meet my maternal grandfather, known as Chairman Cheon or Old Man Cheon. At our first meeting, he said just one thing.
“I hear you've been living like a scoundrel. Get into a university in Seoul within exactly three years. If you do, I will give you a great gift.”
With those words, the conversation between grandfather and grandson ended. After that, I lived in a small apartment my grandfather arranged for me and attended school.
Friends, women…
I gave up everything and decided to live the life my grandfather wanted, solely to gain his approval. All my ties with my friends were severed then. In the first semester of my second year of high school, Myeong-soo and I were placed in different classes.
While I was engrossed in my studies, Myeong-soo's legs were shattered by the merciless violence of the school bullies.
But…
I didn't care. Not long after that, Myeong-soo left school.
Lost in thought as I watched Myeong-soo's receding figure, I went back into the emergency room. A doctor and a nurse were preparing to move my grandmother's bed to a hospital room.
“Young man, we're admitting her to room 703. Can you go home and bring some underwear and other things for your grandmother?”
“Yes.”
I held the hand of my grandmother, who was looking at me from her bed.
“Grandma, I'll be right back from home.”
“How will you manage? You must be tired.”
“It's fine. I'll be quick.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Ah, really!”
Leaving my grandmother, who was worried about me to the very end, I registered at the administration office and decided to pay the bill tomorrow. When I stepped outside the hospital, a darkened sky awaited me. A hillside neighborhood with hardly any streetlights.
I struggled up the stairs and arrived home. In a room with barely any furniture, I searched for my grandmother's underwear, socks, and a change of clothes. The moment I saw my grandmother's underwear box, tears streamed down my face.
Underwear worn to shreds. Socks with holes in them. And the few clothes my grandmother owned.
It was completely different from the box that held my clothes and underwear. Grandma, who worked so hard to earn money to buy me clothes, underwear, and shoes. Why didn't I realize it back then?
For now, I packed a few pieces of underwear that were still wearable and left the house. I returned to the hospital, opened the door to the room where my grandmother was staying, and went inside. The other patients in the room all looked at me at once.
Ignoring their gazes, I sat down next to my grandmother's bed.
“You're back.”
“Yeah. Grandma, are you okay now?”
“I'm fine. Don't worry about me, just go home.”
“It's alright, I'm sleeping here.”
I could feel the warmth in my grandmother's hand. I was so, so happy that I could no longer feel the coldness from when she had collapsed. I arranged the things I brought from home next to her bed.
“I'm going to step outside for a bit.”
“Alright. Grab something to eat while you're out.”
“Okay.”
I left the room, took the stairs, and arrived at the rooftop. When I opened the rooftop door and stepped out, a few people were smoking. I sat down on a small chair in a corner of the rooftop and began to slowly process what had happened to me.
'I don't know the circumstances, but I've returned to the past. I prevented my grandmother's death in 1990. Back then, while preparing for her own death, she had contacted Chairman Cheon before she died.
Manager Ha will probably come down this time, too.' As my thoughts began to clear, the anger and resentment I felt before I died surged up once again. The two brothers, Cheon Su-man and Cheon Su-han.
My mother's older brothers. They had no ability, only greed, the very culprits who eventually joined hands with the Blue Wind Association to eliminate me. And the Blue Wind Association… a force lurking behind all the power, violence, and wealth in the Republic of Korea.
I don't know the exact details of its members, but it's a group that has existed since the era of military dictatorship. It changed its name with the times, but its predecessor was centered around the military dictatorship forces, including the coup faction Hana-hoe, and the descendants of pro-Japanese collaborators.
'Now that I'm back like this, I will enter their core and crush them. I will slowly grasp their lifelines and end their lives.' I don't know if it was God, Buddha, or Allah, but isn't that what the being who sent me back wants?
Now that I had a goal, I decided to slowly formulate a detailed plan. I got up from the chair and was about to leave the rooftop when a man called out to me from behind.
“Hey, kid. Come here.”
I turned my body, which had been holding the rooftop doorknob, and looked at him.
“I'll gouge your eyes out. Come over here.”
“Are you talking to me?”
“You're the only kid here. Who else would I be calling? What a funny guy.”
“What is it?”
“Hey, you son of a bitch. When I tell you to come, just fucking come. You talk too much.”
“…”
“Ke-ke-ke, boss. What are you doing, messing with a kid?”
As I got closer, his face became faintly visible in the glow of his cigarette. It was a face I'd seen somewhere before. Who was he?
A tattoo on his neck was faintly visible above the collar of his patient gown.
“A young punk like you shouldn't be smoking already. You shouldn't be smoking.”
“I don't smoke.”
“Huh? Then why the hell did you crawl up to the rooftop?”
“I came up to sort out some thoughts. If you've said all you need to say, may I go down now?”
The man let out a short laugh.
“…You're a fearless one.”
“Do you know me? I believe this is the first time we've met.”
“You, you don't know me?”
“I do not.”
“Ke-ke-ke. Boss, what a humiliation!”
As the guys next to him snickered, the man glared in their direction.
“You really don't know?”
“No.” “Hahaha. Interesting bastard. Nice to meet you, my name is Park Dong-soo.”
“Yes. Mr. Park Dong-soo, it was nice to meet you. May I leave now?”
I feigned composure on the outside, but as soon as I heard the name Park Dong-soo, I remembered. Park Dong-soo, the underboss of the Sa-seong faction, one of the two major crime syndicates that control the central district of Busan. He'll be arrested during the upcoming War on Crime and sentenced to life in prison.
Taking the fall for all the crimes of the boss, Lee Sa-seong...
“Hahaha! You've got guts, kid. What school do you go to?”
“I'm a first-year at Dongseong Technical High. My grandmother is hospitalized, so may I go down now?”
“Sure, sure. Let's see each other again.”
I gave a perfunctory nod toward the amused voice and turned away. The next day. Early in the morning, Myeong-soo came to the hospital.
“Hey! Aren't you going to school?”
“I have to. What brings you here so early?”
“Are you really Mu-hyeok? Why the hell are you speaking in that awkward Seoul accent?”
“Cut the crap. What did you come for?”
Myeong-soo took an envelope out of his bag and held it out to me.
“It's 500,000 won. I asked my father and borrowed it. It's for the hospital bills and your grandmother's medicine.”
“…”
“Take it. My arm hurts.”
I silently looked back and forth between Myeong-soo's face and the envelope of money.
“What? Why? Pay it back. I'm lending it to you. I'm not giving it to you, I'm lending it.”
“Thanks. I should refuse, but I'm not in a position to. I'll definitely pay you back.”
Only when I took the envelope did he grin.
“Let's go to school. Have you eaten?”
“Let's go after I see my grandmother eat.”
“Alright. I'll wait.”
I helped my grandmother with her breakfast, then went to school with Myeong-soo. When we arrived at school, I was called to the teacher's office. It was my homeroom teacher, the one who answered my call yesterday, known among the students as 'Viper'.
“How's your grandmother?”
“She's alright. Thanks to you, she's past the worst of it.”
“Hey, if something like that happens, you should tell your teacher right away.”
“I'm sorry.”
“It's fine. Do you have enough for the hospital bills?”
“Yes, Myeong-soo's father helped me.”
“Okay, if anything comes up, let me know right away.”
“Yes.”
“Go on. Get ready for class, and don't cause any trouble.”
“Yes.”
When I opened the back door of the first-year class 8 classroom and stepped inside, the noisy room fell silent in an instant. As I went and sat at my desk, the one at the very back by the window, Myeong-soo ran over.
“Hey! What did Viper say?”
“He just asked if my grandmother was okay.”
“Bullshit, he's just acting nice. You'd faint if you knew how many bribes that bastard takes from my dad.”
“Quiet. Just study.”
The classroom, which had gotten noisy, became quiet again. Everyone was staring at me strangely.
“Who are you? Where did Mu-hyeok go?”
Myeong-soo, who had a bizarre expression on his face, grabbed my head and shook it from side to side. A laugh escaped me without me realizing.
“You crazy bastard. But why are the other kids looking at me like that?”
“Huh?”
“It's just a feeling I have.”
“…Are you really okay? Why have you been acting like this since yesterday?”
I remembered belatedly. I had forgotten over the course of thirty years. Just how much of a delinquent I was before meeting Old Man Cheon.
“Why is it so noisy?”
As Viper, the homeroom teacher, entered, the noisy classroom became as quiet as a temple deep in a silent forest.
“You all know the exams are next week, right? For every point you drop below the average, you get ten hits. Don't forget.” …What?
“And, you bastards who smoke, don't get caught. If you do, you're dead.”
To think there would be an exam right after I came back. I stared at the chalkboard, dumbfounded. As soon as school was over, I returned to the hospital.
I went to the administration office to pay for the tests and then went up to see my grandmother. My grandmother, lying in her hospital bed, greeted me.
“You're busy with your studies, you don't have to keep coming to the hospital.”
“I come because I want to.”
“My boy… when did you get so big?”
Tears welled up in my grandmother's eyes. I left the hospital room and went up to the rooftop. I felt the disconnect between my 48-year-old self and my 17-year-old self.
As I was looking outside and getting my emotions in check, someone called me from behind.
“Hey! You there, student.”
I turned around to see a familiar face smiling slyly at me. It was Park Dong-soo.
“You smoke, don't you? Be honest.”
This guy is really stubborn as a mule.
“I do, but not at the hospital.”
“I knew it. I could smell the cigarettes I smoke on you, a stranger.”
“…”
Silence fell.
“Ahem, did you come to visit your grandma after school?”
“Yes.”
“A filial grandson, a filial grandson. How did someone like you come from Donggong? Can you fight?”
“…Yes, I can handle myself.”
“Huh.”
As Park Dong-soo let out a dry laugh, the big guy next to him snickered.
“U-haha. Look at our boss, he's flustered. 'I can handle myself'!”
The two of them bickering didn't look much like gangsters. I recalled something I read in an article that was covering the lineage of our country's organized crime syndicates. 'He was said to have cared for his underlings a lot…'
It was a life sentence, but I heard his underlings continued to serve him to the end while he was in prison.
“This kid is an interesting one. What's your name?”
“It's Kim Mu-hyeok.”
“Kim Mu-hyeok? Good name.”
“Thank you.”
“You heard my name yesterday, right? If any thugs mess with you, use my name. This is fate, so let's get along.”
“…Yes.”
I continued the conversation with them, making small talk. The more we talked, the more I felt he was an approachable person. '...He could be useful.' I thought that if I played my cards right, I could use him to deal with the Blue Wind Association's hunting dogs.
“I'll be going down now.”
“Sure, sure. See you next time. Little bro.”
“…I think I'm a bit too old to be called your little brother.”
“Puhahahaha! You funny bastard. Aren't you scared of me?”
“Is there a reason to be? You seem like a neighborhood uncle.”
“U-haha! Right, right. A neighborhood uncle.”
“Well then.”
I said my goodbyes and went down to the first floor. Because of Park Dong-soo, I was so distracted I couldn't even organize my thoughts. I sat down on an empty bench.
'The exam is next week...' Just as I was thinking about what to do next, a shadow fell at my feet.
“Kim Mu-hyeok?”
I looked up. A familiar face was looking down at me with a smile. It was Manager Ha.