Boring.
I’d only spent a single day lazing around, and I was already bored.
So bored that I even found myself thinking, Should I call Daehoon out?
Even so, I endured it well.
If anything, I enjoyed the boredom.
I put down my smartphone, didn’t turn on the TV,
indulged in contemplation, and looked out at the scenery.
When would a day like this ever come again?
If I was that bored, couldn’t I just go back to the Philippines?
Well, I could, but right now I wanted to rest a bit.
I’d done too much work in the Philippines.
I’m really not a greedy person.
But once you start working, there are things you just can’t let slide.
I’d only meant to put together the bare minimum, but things kept getting bigger.
Those guys brought me more work again.
And the weird thing about those Filipino bastards is, normally they handle things perfectly well on their own,
but the moment I show up, they ask me about every little thing.
Sandro, Dennis, Anna, Simon—everyone does fine, but when I’m there, they always ask me.
At this point, even Manager Kang asks me things.
What do I know about interior design?
I just tell them they did well, that it looks great, that it’s excellent, and give them a thumbs-up.
The only person who doesn’t ask me anything is Im Yuna.
But that kid’s face turns red no matter what I say, so it makes me look like I’m scolding her.
It’s awkward to talk to her.
In any case, the Philippines runs fine without me now.
You could say the system has settled in to some extent.
I just have to make the important decisions.
The rest is rolling along on its own.
Of course, another traitor like Department Head Nam will pop up eventually,
but that can’t be helped.
I always say this, but betrayal and greed are human instincts.
They aren’t the kind of things reason can overcome.
But does that mean I should assume everyone is a traitor and work that way?
That’s even more unrealistic.
If you work while constantly thinking people will betray you, you can’t do your job properly.
You trust them, leave things to them, and later judge by the results.
That’s my standard.
I don’t want to live my life endlessly doubting someone, worrying over whether they might betray me.
That’s not something I do for that person’s sake, but for my own.
Once you start hating and suspecting someone, it isn’t their heart that becomes hell—it’s yours.
For now, I trust them.
So for the time being, I’ll stay here in Seoul and take some time to reorganize my thoughts on the Philippines once more.
I’m planning to do an overall review of all the businesses.
Until now, I’d made sure each area stayed thoroughly separated and couldn’t cross into another,
but this election completely tore that down.
Sandro built a relationship with Dennis,
and Anna ended up working at Candy Tour.
For that reason, I had to check over the businesses in the Philippines once again.
This time, not as a player, but as a spectator.
I want to watch from afar.
Only when you take a step back can you see the game properly and offer advice.
If you think of something as someone else’s problem, anything becomes easy.
It’s hard when you think of it as your own.
That’s why I’m planning things from Seoul, not the Philippines.
Seoul is a logical city.
There was another reason, too.
Internally, part of me was treating this as a vacation.
When I’d crossed over from the Philippines, I’d already wanted to cool my head and get a change of mood.
I don’t know how many more days I’ll stay, but I’m thinking of remaining for at least a week.
.
.
.
I enjoyed my hotel staycation, but in the end, I lost to boredom.
The hotel room started to feel a little stifling.
Let’s go out.
I’ll have a beer at the hotel bar or something.
I went down toward the hotel bar, but then it felt strange to come all the way here just to drink at the hotel bar, so I decided to eat outside.
Korea is safe, and I can communicate just fine, so there’s no need to stay inside the hotel.
The weather was nice, so after walking a bit, I came upon a busy district.
But why are there so many academies?
Here, there, everywhere—nothing but academies.
Even the street name was Academy Street.
My urge to drink beer changed.
Seeing young kids in school uniforms made me think of the old days for no reason, and I felt like I should be doing bread-shuttle errands.
Without realizing it, I went into a convenience store and bought bread and a drink.
Instinctively, I scanned the price tags, trying to match it to 2,000 won.
I didn’t have to do that anymore, but I wanted to.
But I failed.
Compared to the school snack bar, and compared to my memories, convenience stores were far more expensive.
Come to think of it, it had already been over seven years since I graduated high school.
Prices had risen a lot in that time.
I picked up one cheap-looking, appropriately dry bread and one carton of milk.
Bread and milk.
The things I had bought and offered up every single day when I was a shuttle.
If I ate those, would I be able to feel what Yang Jeongwon felt?
Would I feel a sense of superiority?
Was this some kind of mystical potion?
To experience it, I decided to buy and eat them.
Holding bread and milk in a way that didn’t suit me at all, I headed to the counter, and the moment I turned the corner, I felt a thud.
Looking ahead, it seemed I’d bumped into a woman who looked like a college student.
She had a kind face.
A face that looked like it had never committed a sin in its life.
She didn’t fall over, but the student must have felt the impact too, because she let out a low cry.
“Ah!!”
“Are you okay? I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.”
“I’m fine. I didn’t see you either.”
“It felt like we hit pretty hard. Shouldn’t you go to the hospital or something?”
“Why would I go to the hospital over something like this? I’m fine. Are you okay, mister?”
“I’m fine.”
“Then I’ll be going first. I’m late for a meeting.”
After saying that, the student left just like that, and I also paid for the bread and milk and was on my way out.
On the convenience store floor.
At the spot where we had bumped into each other earlier, I saw something lying there.
A pink pouch smaller than my palm.
Ah—this isn’t good… I’m curious.
I could just pick it up and tell the counter, “I found this, so please find the owner.” That would be enough… but I couldn’t.
I was curious. About what was inside.
After hesitating for a moment, I decided to satisfy “only my curiosity” and then leave it with the counter.
Then I could resolve my curiosity, and this girl could get her pouch back.
Wasn’t that a win-win?
Impressed with myself, I sat down on the plastic chair in front of the convenience store.
Between the bread and the pouch, I chose the pouch first.
At the moment of choice, the fun thing, the good thing, always comes first.
Save something too long and it turns to shit.
Of course, I can just put things in my inventory.
The inventory doesn’t spoil.
Carefully, I grasped the zipper of the pink pouch.
For some reason, it felt like I was committing a crime.
It’s not like I’m trying to steal it.
I’m just checking the contents so I can return it.
Making excuses to myself like that, I opened the zipper.
Why was I nervous over something like this?
It felt like I was opening someone else’s private life, their secret.
Zziik… The pink pouch opened.
Inside the pink pouch were a resident registration card, one credit card, 21,000 won in cash,
and several candies smaller than a fingernail, sealed in a zipper bag.
An ID, a card, and cash.
It was nothing more than an utterly ordinary wallet? Pouch.
There was nothing special.
But those candies.
Why did they look so familiar?
They were candies I’d seen somewhere before.
Were they candies I ate when I was young?
There was no way I had anything like candies I ate when I was young, so I ruled that out for now.
I racked my brain for a long while, trying to remember.
It felt like I was about to remember something, but it wouldn’t come to me.
That made it even more frustrating.
Ah! I remembered.
I’d seen them when I was in Macau.
Candies with drug components in them.
Marian had told me they were popular in Thailand.
Only now did I remember.
I recalled there being several flavors, but why were they in this pouch?
Surely not.
And a college student, too?
There were so many candies with similar designs,
so I might have seen wrong, or my memory might be mistaken.
I’m stupid, and my memory isn’t good either.
So my memory must be wrong.
After thinking that far, I stopped thinking any further.
I had to stop my thoughts from spreading.
I felt like I needed to do something else.
I had to turn my mind somewhere else.
So I started eating the bread and milk.
It was something I’d planned to do anyway.
I chewed the bread that looked dry and dense, but I couldn’t tell what it tasted like.
I felt nothing.
I had ambitiously chosen this bread to feel Yang Jeongwon’s emotions, but I failed.
This bread couldn’t make me become Yang Jeongwon.
The milk was the same.
It only relieved the dryness in my mouth a little.
But why, at this important moment, did I suddenly need to go to the bathroom?
I asked the convenience store part-timer where the bathroom was.
The part-timer frowned as he told me the location.
I wasn’t even going to take a dump. No need to be so stingy.
On my way out of the bathroom.
I saw the college student from earlier, with her back to the convenience store, running somewhere.
While I’d gone to the bathroom for a moment, she must have come to look for the pouch, failed to find it, and left.
Of course it wasn’t in the convenience store.
I had it.
If I left the pouch with the convenience store now, it would be too late.
And leaving a pouch containing mysterious candies at a convenience store felt a bit off.
If I hadn’t seen them, that would be one thing.
I started running after the college student.
The woman ran quickly while still scanning the ground as if searching for the pouch.
She headed toward a study café.
In front of the study café, three or four men and women in their early twenties, carrying laptops and tablets, were looking for something nearby,
and the college student who had bumped into me joined them.
They were the kind of college students you could commonly see while walking down the street.
Their freshness still intact.
“It’s not there. I think I lost it.”
“Seriously? Look again.”
“I had it up to the convenience store earlier. I thought I dropped it when I bumped into someone there, but I went back and it wasn’t there.”
“What about the way here?”
“I searched every inch. It’s not there.”
“This is bad, isn’t it? You said your ID was in there too.”
“Yeah. I had nowhere else to put it, so I put it in the pouch. This is seriously bad.”
“It’ll be fine. They’re just candies anyway. People won’t know at all. They’ll just let it pass.”
“You think so?”
“Of course. Even we don’t think they’re drugs just by looking at them.”
“Right?”
“Haha. It’d be fucking hilarious if some dumbass turned it in to the police.”
One of the boys with them failed to read the room and laughed as if he found it funny.
At the boy’s words, the girl who had bumped into me reacted sharply.
“What are you talking about, you retard? Even if the police see them, they’ll just think they’re candies and move on. You think they’ll investigate that far? And if I get caught by the police, do you think I’ll just quietly go down alone? You think I’m going to take the fall by myself, you idiot?”
“What?”
“Of course I’d say you did it with me too.”
“You crazy bitch. Just try it. I’ll—”
“So instead of wasting time cursing, hurry up and go find the pouch, you stupid bastard. Stop fooling around here!!”
“Why are you the one who lost it, but you’re yelling at me?”
“Is that important right now? Finding the pouch is important. We need to put out the fire in front of us first. This dumbass doesn’t know the order of things. I seriously don’t know how someone like that got into a major company.”
“Fine. Let’s find the pouch first. It was a pink pouch, right?”
Hearing their conversation, my hope that they were candies with a similar design collapsed.
My memory had been accurate.
I wasn’t stupid, and my memory wasn’t bad either.
I thought about quietly turning the pouch in to the police,
but then they’d ask where I found it, what the name of the person who found it was, and if drugs came out of it, things would get even more complicated.
I gave up reporting it as lost property to the police because I didn’t want to get entangled in something unnecessary.
I absolutely hate when things get complicated.
Even so, I should return it to its owner.
I walked over to them.
The college student recognized me.
“Huh? Mister?”
“This is what you lost, right?”
I showed her the pink pouch.
“Huh? Why do you have that, mister? Give it to me already.”
“I’ll give it to you. I will, but before I do, I’m going to ask a few questions.”
“What questions? Wait, mister, did you open it?”
“I did.”
“Why would you open someone else’s things without permission? It’s personal property.”
“I had to open it. How else would I know whose it was and return it? I don’t have x-ray vision. I have other abilities, but not that.”
“What are you even saying? Give it to me already.”
“But. Where did you get those candies?”
“What? I just bought them at a mart. To eat one whenever my blood sugar drops.”
“Really? Then my blood sugar is dropping right now too. Can I eat one? Then I’ll go visit the police station.”
“Ah—fuck, what are you saying? Why would you eat a candy and go to the police station?”
At my words about eating a candy, the female college student reacted irritably and immediately spat out a curse.
The kind face I’d seen earlier was nowhere to be found.
“Should I go, ‘Mr. Policeman, I ate a piece of candy from this pouch I picked up, and now I feel really good. Please find the owner’? There’s an ID in here too. The name is…”
“Fuck, seriously.”
“I’m someone who knows what this is. Wouldn’t it be better if we both just cleanly got what we wanted and went our separate ways?”
“What do you want? If you’ve got questions, hurry up and ask. I have to get to my study group.”
“Where did you get the candy?”
“Uh…”
“Want to go to the police station?”
When I acted like I really would go, the college girl hesitated, then spat it all out in a rapid stream.
“There are guys who sell this. Tons of them. They sell them as gummies and candies that improve concentration. I bet there are seriously a lot of kids around here preparing for jobs who take this.”
“Really?”
I was genuinely surprised.
I’d thought these people were special cases. I hadn’t known so many people were taking it across the board.
“Yeah. At first, they just hand them out through friends and tell you to try one. Then, when you study after eating it, it really does feel like you can focus better, so I asked that friend where I could buy the candy.”
“And then?”
“They gave me a messenger ID.”
“You know this is a drug and you’re still taking it?”
“I didn’t know at first, and now I do, but… they said there’s just a very… very, very tiny amount of drug ingredients in it. That it’s only illegal in our country and legal everywhere else. That they even sell it in supermarkets. That there’s no problem… But can you please let me go? I’m late for my study group.”
“Fine. Go.”
I handed her the pouch.
The moment she took it, she disappeared as if fleeing.
I’d taken the candy out before giving it back.
She didn’t even check.
She was exactly the type to get scammed anywhere she went.
But was this right?
College students doing drugs?
And just because it supposedly helped them concentrate.
Even that innocent-looking college girl eating the candy didn’t seem like she was taking it because she wanted to do drugs.
She wanted a good job.
To succeed in finding employment, which everyone said was so hard,
wasn’t she just trying to do anything she could?
That college girl was in the middle of a desperate struggle.
She was trying to survive in this society by any means necessary.
It was just that her method was a little wrong,
and weren’t those money-crazed bastards using the desperation of job seekers as leverage to sell drugs?
No matter how good money was,
and no matter how many sons of bitches there were who’d do anything for it.
Hadn’t this crossed the line a bit?
Feeding drugs to young sprouts just beginning to grow.
If things were left like this, wouldn’t the Seoul I’d someday return to and live in become a city of junkies?
The situation was far more serious than I’d thought.
I hadn’t stayed in Seoul for long, but this didn’t feel right.
It seemed like drugs had seeped in far too deeply.
I thought of the peaceful Han River.
I didn’t want this Seoul to fall apart.
It looked like some kind of measure was needed.
While having dinner with Daehun, I said to him,
“Daehun. I think we need to take Seoul.”