Chapter 4
Click.
Yoo-hyun opened the file of his self-introduction letter.
It was filled with many certificates that he didn’t know where to use, formal volunteer activities, unnecessarily high English scores, records of his school life, and reasons why he wanted to join the company.
It was the sa kind of self-introduction letter that he had read thousands of tis as an interviewer.
He could see his past life between the poorly decorated contents.
He rummaged through the drawers and found a pile of notebooks.
They were full of traces of his studies, with no blank spaces, and coffee stains here and there.
“I worked really hard.”
He had lived a desperate life, almost pitifully.
He felt more heavy than proud of his passion.
He knew better than anyone what the end would be like.
He looked at the records left on his phone and saw that he had almost no friends.
He had no contact with his schoolmates or seniors.
From then on, he ran only for success.
What made him like this?
Why did he cling to money and success so much?
Yoo-hyun tried to recall the edge of his mory.
It was probably when he ca back from the army on vacation.
When he returned ho with a happy heart, he saw his father fighting with debt collectors and his mother crying with swollen eyes.
There were stickers of seizure all over the house.
The only thing left was debt.
That’s how the large garden and the apple tree that he planted with his childhood disappeared completely from his mory.
That’s when he realized it.
He felt in his heart how scary money was.
His life changed from then on, too.
He changed his major for employnt, and worked hard to get scholarships sohow.
All he could see was a narrow path to success.
“…”
It was a painful mory that changed his life completely, but it was also blurred now.
Maybe the feelings he felt now would also fade away soon.
He might wish to live differently, but then fly away and repeat the sa mistakes again.
He couldn’t do that.
“No. I can’t. I won’t.”
Yoo-hyun straightened his posture and put his hands on the keyboard.
He closed his eyes and looked back at the past 20 years.
The mories of joining Hansung Electronics and becoming the president flashed like a panorama.
They were monts that he once thought were great enough to be proud of.
They were records that he wrote down thinking that they would be a compass for soone else’s life.
But now they were history of regret and wrong milestones to correct.
It was useless to package them as a brilliant path to success.
He couldn’t hide the people who were hard by Yoo-hyun, who ran without regard for ans and thods along the way.
Yoo-hyun knew it too.
He just ignored it.
Yoo-hyun had no colleagues.
They were all competitors or tools for success.
-You admit it. You have a lot of talent. If you used that talent not for your own sake, but for your colleagues who work with you, you would have lived a more wonderful life.
The words that his boss, whom Yoo-hyun respected the most, left him ca to his mind again.
Whenever he heard those words, he rembered his face that had been a brake for him.
But now he was soone he couldn’t see even if he wanted to.
“I wish you had taught more before you left.”
But then,
Yoo-hyun realized it suddenly.
He was still alive too.
That ant?
There was still a chance left for him.
It felt like he had poured a bucket of cold water over his head.
Yoo-hyun straightened his face and sat up straight.
Even if this was a dream, he had to change it.
Whether he was President Han Yoo-hyun or rookie Han Yoo-hyun or just Han Yoo-hyun as an individual, he didn’t want to live a life that made everyone unhappy like before.
He was determined not to delay or run away any longer.
Tadadadadak.
As he typed on the keyboard, the screen showed the way he would walk from now on.
He didn’t know exactly how to do it.
The only thing certain was that he shouldn’t walk the sa path as before.
From now on, it wasn’t a life that only looked ahead for money and success.
A life that looked around.
A life that wasn’t lonely without anyone to confide in sincerely.
A life that was rich with people’s warmth.
A life that helped soone else.
That’s what he wanted to live.
Yoo-hyun wrote down the new history that he would write again at Hansung in his head, and didn’t take his hands off the keyboard for a long ti.
It was night before he knew it.
Yoo-hyun filled his hunger with the side dishes his mother sent him and opened the front door and went outside.
He walked down from the fifth floor and walked on the concrete floor.
He spread his hands and took a deep breath, and the warm air filled his lungs.
It was a sll that reminded him of the old days.
He walked a little and saw a hill that went up along a narrow road.
He climbed up the hill and saw the neighborhood at a glance.
He saw low buildings crowded under the dim street lights and cracked concrete walls.
He felt familiar with the old cars parked on the side of the road and the signs of buildings stuck everywhere.
His mories were vivid.
He felt like he had really co back to the past.
Honk, honk.
The sound of car horns ringing late at night was followed by people’s shouts.
“Shut up!”
“That bastard!”
He turned his head and saw a car parked at the corner of the hill.
It seed to be stuck, unable to pass through the narrow alleyway where cars were lined up on both sides.
The cars on the sloped road didn’t know why they had stopped.
They only sensed that sothing was wrong.
If only that one car would move…
It looked like a simple task from afar.
It seed hopeless, but it could have been fixed completely with a little drive.
Suddenly, he thought that his life was the sa.
It was tangled like a thread, and he didn’t know where to start unraveling it, but the answer might have been simple.
If he wanted to live a different life, he just had to change.
He could throw away his past and act completely differently.
“Yes. I just have to change little by little. I can definitely change.”
His resolution scattered in the air.
He slept very deeply.
When he opened his eyes, he felt a pleasant sensation throughout his body.
He didn’t feel the sharp pain in his shoulders or the chronic ache in his back.
He confird that he still had the body of 20 years ago and felt anew how good it was to be young.
His physical abilities had improved in many ways, but he still felt awkward using his body.
He suddenly wondered.
‘Can I play golf well?’
He knew the theory in his head, but he wasn’t sure if his body would follow.
He stood in front of the mirror and swung his arms around.
His waist turned smoothly.
“Maybe I can do it?”
His body rembered the movent.
It was a bit awkward at first, but he quickly adapted, and he realized that his body’s movent was controlled by his brain.
Maybe acting was also like his old mories.
His body flinched at that thought.
No way.
That couldn’t happen.
He couldn’t repeat the sa mistakes.
Before that, he had to sort out his current situation first.
He dressed up and headed to school.
It was his graduation sester, and he had already taken the final exams, so he didn’t need to attend any more classes.
But he had sothing to do.
It was the library assistant job.
He didn’t rember it well either.
He hardly spent any money, and he studied hard all the ti, so he did this part-ti job for fun.
He was excited on his way to school.
He had never been to school after graduation.
‘What would it look like?’
He looked at the scenery passing by the bus window and recalled his old mories, but they were vague.
He couldn’t rember what the buildings looked like, what the classes were like, what club he was in.
He couldn’t even rember his classmates or seniors or juniors.
He only rembered studying hard.
He clearly rembered changing majors though.
He saw it in his resu, but he rembered that he entered psychology departnt.
He thought he did it for fun at that ti.
There was also a reason that it was relatively easy to get in.
His life changed completely after changing majors, but he seed to enjoy it then.
‘I think I got along with people too.’
He rembered drinking with people on the lawn and laughing and chatting like a snapshot photo.
While he was thinking about this and that, he arrived at school.
When he entered through the narrow back gate, he saw an old green building.
“Ah, that’s the business building.”
It was amazing.
He thought he had no mory at all, but when he saw the building, it ca to his mind like a lie.
He drank 100 won coffee from the vending machine on the second floor, stood in a long line in front of the copier, he also went around the building once because he couldn’t find the classroom, and waited for more than an hour to et the professor.
He looked around the school with curiosity.
There was a pavilion on the pond and a wide lawn next to it.
Many students were laughing and smiling as they passed by.
He suddenly rembered walking on the campus street 20 years ago.
He felt like he knew where to go.
He arrived at the library without looking at any signs.
The building looked quite refined compared to other buildings because it was newly built.
When he entered through the entrance connected to the basent floor, he rembered studying there for hours.
He stayed up late many nights.
Probably, there was a snack bar next to it.
When he turned around the corner, there was indeed a snack bar.
He ate three als a day here.
It was the perfect place for him, cheap and open late.
He still spent a lot of ti at school or work, just like before.
What was so serious that he pushed himself so hard?
It was no wonder that he had no ti to clear up the misunderstanding with his parents.
He shook his head and went up to the third floor of the library.
Click.
He opened the library door with the key in his bag and passed through the gate with his student ID.
The first thing he saw was empty tables.
There were so many tables that it was more appropriate to call it a reading room than a library.
He sat down at the librarian’s desk in the center and saw the tables surrounding him clearly.
He imagined the people sitting in the empty seats.
He saw soone who drew lines on the book so hard that it tore the paper.
There was also soone who kept dragging the chair and making noise.
He rembered soone who just slept on the table, and soone who fought over a seat.
“Right. I used to observe people here.”
He rembered now.
He observed people and inferred their psychology when he was bored here.
He didn’t have a great pride or regret about psychology.
He was just curious.
The librarian’s job was a position where he could observe people for work.
He had to check if anyone took books out, if anyone left their seats unattended, if anyone ate food in the library.
He got used to observing people and gradually got more detailed information.
Then he realized.
His eyes were pretty good.
At so point, he could roughly figure out people by just glancing at them.
He spent a year and a half like that.
He must have observed thousands of people during that ti.
“So that’s why.”
He leaned back on his chair and chuckled.
When he entered the company, he discovered his great strength in an unexpected area.
It was the fact that he had good observation skills.
He could read their thoughts by looking at their expressions, clothes, accessories, and desk spaces.
Thanks to that, he could act according to their thoughts.
In other words, he moved with tact.
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