Real Man

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 same kind of self-introduction letter that he had read thousands of times 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 memory.

It was probably when he came back from the army on vacation.

When he returned home 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 memory.

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 employment, and worked hard to get scholarships somehow.

All he could see was a narrow path to success.

“…”

It was a painful memory 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 same 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 memories of joining Hansung Electronics and becoming the president flashed like a panorama.

They were moments 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 someone 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 harmed by Yoo-hyun, who ran without regard for means and methods 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 came to his mind again.

Whenever he heard those words, he remembered his face that had been a brake for him.

But now he was someone he couldn’t see even if he wanted to.

“I wish you had taught me more before you left.”

But then,

Yoo-hyun realized it suddenly.

He was still alive too.

That meant?

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 same 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 someone 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 time.

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 smell 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 memories were vivid.

He felt like he had really come 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 seemed 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 something was wrong.

If only that one car would move…

It looked like a simple task from afar.

It seemed hopeless, but it could have been fixed completely with a little drive.

Suddenly, he thought that his life was the same.

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 confirmed 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 remembered the movement.

It was a bit awkward at first, but he quickly adapted, and he realized that his body’s movement was controlled by his brain.

Maybe acting was also like his old memories.

His body flinched at that thought.

No way.

That couldn’t happen.

He couldn’t repeat the same mistakes.

Before that, he had to sort out his current situation first.

He dressed up and headed to school.

It was his graduation semester, and he had already taken the final exams, so he didn’t need to attend any more classes.

But he had something to do.

It was the library assistant job.

He didn’t remember it well either.

He hardly spent any money, and he studied hard all the time, so he did this part-time 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 memories, but they were vague.

He couldn’t remember what the buildings looked like, what the classes were like, what club he was in.

He couldn’t even remember his classmates or seniors or juniors.

He only remembered studying hard.

He clearly remembered changing majors though.

He saw it in his resume, but he remembered that he entered psychology department.

He thought he did it for fun at that time.

There was also a reason that it was relatively easy to get in.

His life changed completely after changing majors, but he seemed to enjoy it then.

‘I think I got along with people too.’

He remembered 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 memory at all, but when he saw the building, it came 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 meet 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 remembered 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 basement floor, he remembered 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 meals a day here.

It was the perfect place for him, cheap and open late.

He still spent a lot of time 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 time 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 someone who drew lines on the book so hard that it tore the paper. 

There was also someone who kept dragging the chair and making noise.

He remembered someone who just slept on the table, and someone who fought over a seat.

“Right. I used to observe people here.”

He remembered 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 some 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 time.

“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.