Chapter 1

Chapter 1

A registered letter arrived from Sydney.

The recipient was Han Jeong-su.

The sender was the legal representative of the wife who had vanished without a trace.

His fingertips had begun to tremble even before he tore the envelope open.

He realized that whoever had mailed it no longer had even the heart to place a single phone call to him.

Inside the envelope, the English original and a kindly translated Korean copy had been bound together.

[Divorce Agreement.]

I dropped heavily into the old dining chair.

An eighteen-pyeong apartment on the outskirts.

A place whose furniture amounted to one table, two chairs, and a single television.

Enough for a man living alone, and far too bare to be called the trace of a family that had once lived there.

There, I slowly read down through the translation.

No claim for alimony.

No division of property.

Nothing regarding custody.

The children were already grown.

The eldest, Ji-yeong, was twenty-five. The youngest, Ji-hun, was twenty-three.

When was the last time I had seen their faces... I could not even remember.

I had graduated from the architecture department of a university at the very tail end of the rankings in Seoul, and spent thirty years on construction sites in field construction and management.

At six in the morning I tied the laces of my safety boots; when the sun went down, I closed the drawings.

On days they poured concrete I was on site even in the rain, and if a single shore post went out of line I stayed through the night.

The buildings I raised that way numbered in the dozens across the country.

But my name was not on the executive roster.

It was as good as being told to leave.

When I asked around, all anyone brought back were excuses — that his academic background fell short, that he had never lined up the right connections, or that he had simply been diligent for too long.

"Manager Han, everyone knows you're the most capable one. But a company, well······."

And so the working life to which I had given my entire youth came to an end.

Leaving the company, in some ways, left me feeling lighter inside.

'Right. Now I can make a choice of my own.'

So I called my wife in Australia.

"Honey. How about I come live in Australia this time? It's been three years since you and the kids last came back."

I was a wild-goose father.

Twenty years. I had sent my wife and children to study in Australia and remained alone in Korea.

A wider world. A better future.

The neighbors next door, the ones upstairs, my colleagues at the company — everyone had done the same.

Perhaps that was why I had not thought much of it.

For the first few years I went to Australia a couple of times a year.

Watching the children run toward me at the airport crying "Dad!" I told myself, again and again, that I had chosen well.

But as time passed and word spread of the damage done to wild-goose fathers, I grew uneasy too.

So I told my wife to come back.

Over that, we had a terrible fight.

"The kids are in high school! Do you really think they could adjust if they went to Korea!?"

Even I thought my wife was right.

The gap between children raised freely in Australia and children who had competed fiercely in Korea was not something that could ever be closed.

After that, the children did not come to Korea even during vacation.

Video calls grew more and more broken off, and they only contacted me when they needed money.

"...Dad. I need money."

Even when I went to Australia, it felt less like family and more like sharing a house with awkward strangers.

And so I drifted farther and farther from the fence called family.

Perhaps I had already sensed it then.

That it would end like this.

But I could not accept it.

'If I let go of this, what exactly would be left for me?'

From then on I watched the exchange rate every month.

When the won was cheap I sent more, and every dawn I woke to check whether the dollar was rising or falling.

That was the only thread still tying me to my family.

"What are you talking about!? Where do you think you're coming at your age! I was planning to go back to Korea once the kids were fully settled anyway! So just stay put!"

Through the receiver came my wife's sharp voice.

She might at least have kept some other man's voice from sounding behind her.

In the end I made no choice at all, went back to day labor on sites, and even studied for a barista certificate, thrashing to stay afloat.

Thinking that once the severance came through I might try a small café.

And then contact from my wife broke off completely.

The children, as if by prior agreement, could not be reached either.

That was three months ago.

Looking down at the divorce papers on the table, strangely, I was not angry.

Or was it that I did not even have the strength left to rage?

Only an empty question circled.

'Who... who exactly did I live for? After sending money to my family, the gritty taste of instant coffee I swallowed while staring at an empty account balance, and the bitter loneliness I felt listening to rain fall from a sandwich-panel roof on rainy days — what was all of that for?'

Only memories of the past kept rising.

Driving as a proxy driver after work. Sending money while denying myself the food I liked and the places I wanted to go.

No matter how I tried to recall... it seemed I had truly done not one thing for myself.

That was when it happened.

The left side of my chest tightened as if it would tear.

Pain spread gradually into my shoulder and arm, and cold sweat poured like rain.

'Ugh! My heart...'

I forced myself up from the chair to find the phone in the living room.

"Ugh!"

My chest seized again, and I collapsed to the floor.

But still trying to live, I crawled across the living room floor, meaning somehow to press 119.

I reached out, trying to close even a little of the distance, but it did not move an inch.

In the end my strength left me and I lay there as I was.

The fluorescent light on the ceiling drew away, then drew near.

The thought that came in that moment was, 'Who will come find my body?'

That there was no one who would come looking made me sad.

The last thing that rose was not the wife who had abandoned me, nor the children.

It was the worn smile of my father, who had left the world early, back in my younger days.

"...Father."

If there was a next life.

Then I would never, ever live so pathetically again.

And so the switch of my world went out.

* * *

"Hah!"

I sucked in a breath and my eyes flew open.

The pain that had been crushing my chest moments before was gone.

What entered my vision was yellowed floral wallpaper that might have been in fashion in the nineties, and a low-hanging incandescent bulb.

"Huh...? What on earth?"

I felt at my chest.

But the sensation was strange.

I hurriedly looked down at my hands, and stopped breathing.

"Hup!"

Before my eyes were smooth hands — no calluses, none of the rough, cracked lines earned moving from site to site.

Startled, I shot up from where I sat.

"Ack!"

For a moment I nearly headbutted the ceiling.

The knees that ached whenever it rained, the shoulders that had stiffened — all of it was light as a feather.

With trembling hands I hurriedly flipped open the folder phone and checked the screen.

'July 16, 2001'

And just like that, I sank to the floor.

"Ha, haha...!"

Laughter burst out of me.

I had clearly died. I had clearly felt my heart stop on the cold linoleum floor.

I had returned to 2001, to my days as a poor twenty-one-year-old student in the architecture department.

* * *

I sat on the floor like that for a long while.

Clenching and unclenching my hands, I tried to tell whether this was a dream or waking life.

They were clearly my hands, so why did they not feel like mine?

I got up again and walked to the mirror.

In the mirror stood the me of my younger days — country-looking hair, faint acne scars — looking stupid.

"Heh, heheh!!"

So it was not a dream.

It absolutely must not be a dream.

The prayer I made before dying had come true; if this were a dream, it would be too unfair.

This was an absurd miracle, and it had to be a regression.

I stepped up to the desk again.

'Architectural Structures', 'Building Construction', 'Mechanics of Materials'.

Books I had always carried when I was in university.

Things you had to learn all over again once you actually went out to a site.

On the desk lay a Monami ballpoint and a notebook, and in the corner sat a cathode-ray television.

And an old folder phone with a thick antenna.

"Hoo... I don't know how this happened, but first let's sort things out."

I had not even been to the army yet.

Others said the worst nightmare was going to the army twice, but fortunately that did not apply to me.

Because I had come out of the engineers.

And my service number had been a loose one, so the work might be hard, but I was not greatly worried.

"Come to think of it, there's 9/11 too."

My head was a jumble of every thought imaginable.

From construction, estimates, materials, and manpower management all the way to an eye for people — thirty years of knowledge learned on construction sites mixed with memories of the past, and I had no idea where to begin.

Go back into the company?

No. That would not do.

No matter how large the corporation, I could not go back under the people who had used me as a consumable.

And besides, I had knowledge of the future.

I had no intention of wasting an opportunity like this.

"Good. I've decided."

The first thing I had to do.

I reached out and picked up the phone.

And I called the person I had most wanted to see, and most wanted to hear.

"Hello? Jeong-su?"

"...Yes. It's me. Father."

My father, farming hard in the countryside with my mother.

Tears came for no reason at all.

I had learned that Father died of cancer, and that they had hidden the fact for a long while.

Father, who passed without his lacking son ever managing to give him even a single surgery.

This time I would not let it be so.

"Have you been well?"

"Heh heh. We're doing fine. Are you eating properly out there?"

"...Yes. I'm eating well."

"Good. Wherever you go, you have to eat properly."

"I understand. Father."

"Nothing's wrong, is there?"

"No. I just called because I wanted to hear your voice."

From beyond the receiver I heard Mother saying to put her on as well.

"Wait a moment. I'll put your mother on."

Soon Mother's voice came too.

Our mother, who had always lived lonely in the countryside.

"Jeong-su. Are you doing well?"

"...Yes, I'm doing well."

I answered, biting my lip hard.

* * *

After the call, I looked at the mirror.

Strength settled into the face that had been hazy until a moment ago.

"This time, I absolutely will not live like a fool."

Still awkward on the young man in the mirror, but...

"I won't end having done nothing but good for other people. I won't live the way the company tells me to, the way the family wants me to."

I picked up the major textbook on the desk.

'Building Construction'.

A book I had read through thirty years ago.

I toss it back onto the desk.

"Let's go to Australia."

The country my wife had liked, the country the children had chosen over Korea.

On that land where I had sent money until I nearly died and never properly even looked around, I ought to live once myself.

I have the right to.

I hurriedly sat at the desk and took out the notebook.

And I began furiously writing down the plans ahead.

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