Chapter 2 · 11 min

Chapter 2

The next morning, I opened my eyes holding my breath.

And quietly looked at the ceiling.

Fortunately, that tacky floral wallpaper that had been in fashion in the nineties was still there.

'When I open my eyes, won't this illusion break and send me back to that cold eighteen-pyeong apartment?' The worry came to nothing. This was reality.

Slowly, very slowly, I cupped my own cheek.

It was warm.

A hand without a single wrinkle moved smoothly over the skin.

Beneath my palm I felt a pulse beating hard, and everything drew closer to being real.

The cling of the linoleum sticking to my fingertips, the faint smell of mold peculiar to a semi-basement brushing the tip of my nose — all of it was saying this was reality.

From then on my heart began to beat fast.

And as I went to shoot upright, yesterday came back to me.

I moved slowly, so as not to hurt myself.

I was nearly afraid that energy I could not control might fling my body aside.

"This... this really isn't a dream."

Relief rose together with a swelling thrill, and my chest trembled.

A fresh body at twenty was this wondrous a thing.

I walked slowly around the narrow room.

With every step I took, my body was so light it felt as if I were flying through the sky.

Carrying that rapt feeling, I went straight outside.

To deal first with the matter of the army, which had to be settled before I could go to Australia.

I had already received a Grade 1 active-duty ruling at last year's physical.

I had put off the military until now in order to finish my studies first.

Then, around the end of this year, something would happen at home and I would enlist as if fleeing.

And while building a bridge I would come away with a herniated disc, no doubt.

This time is different.

I mean to settle the military matter as quickly as possible, and cleverly.

So I hummed as I went, and ran without delay to the Military Manpower Administration to fill out an application for a technical administrative soldier.

Specialty number 1641.

'Operation and maintenance of field construction equipment'.

Being enrolled in an architecture department, and holding a computer-aided civil engineering technician certificate, made excellent proof.

In the specialty column I even wrote separately that I could operate most construction equipment.

And with a light heart, I finished the enlistment application.

"Good. Now I just wait."

To me, the army was no different from a two-year 'full room-and-board heavy-equipment academy, paid for by the state'.

* * *

Three months until the enlistment notice arrived.

An ordinary twenty-one-year-old would have spent that precious time drinking himself senseless and idling away the hours playing StarCraft with friends at a PC bang, but I did not waste the time.

The first thing I started was building my body.

'Australia or Korea, what matters most is grit and stamina.'

A truth I had felt to the bone, running countless sites in my previous life.

At this point in time I had fresh joints, but at 176 centimeters and only 53 kilograms I was a beanpole.

A frame nearly 20 kilograms under a normal weight.

No wonder my back had gone out, throwing myself around building bridges.

I poured, without stinting, the money I had saved from part-time work for tuition into food and exercise.

This was not the time to be saving it.

I signed up at a gym, ate a balanced diet, and built my body up little by little.

The second was English.

Early in my life as a wild-goose father, my wife had once urged me to come to Australia and work.

What I had refused to the end was this: I had only just gotten onto a major company's site as an experienced hire, and there was no reason to throw that away.

On top of that, not speaking English had made me hesitate.

But this time was different.

Every day I went to an English academy and practiced speaking intensively.

"Excuse me, would you mind assisting me with this excavator?"

Learning conversation, I paid particular attention to pronunciation.

"Hey, Han Jeong-su. What are you doing here?"

I was studying at a café in front of the school when Sang-u appeared, tapping my shoulder.

A classmate who had stuck to me since first year.

I had been truly close with this one too, and then contact broke off once we went out into the world.

Early on he had lucked into a job at a major construction company, met the wrong senior, suffered nothing but hardship, developed a panic disorder, and quit.

Then he came out, threw himself around saying he would start a business, went under, and contact broke off just like that.

I stared straight at him.

Sang-u, flustered, asked.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that? Something on my face? Checking if I'm fresh?"

"Debating whether to save you or not."

We meet after so long, and he reeks of alcohol and cigarettes.

No need to look. He spent the night at a PC bang and is on his way back.

Originally I should have been in that crowd too.

He snickered, tapped me, and sat down at ease.

Then he saw the English conversation book in my hand and spoke with a face that said he could not believe it.

"You haven't been coming to the PC bang lately, and you've been ignoring messages. What's with the English all of a sudden? Prepping for some exam?"

"What exam. I'm preparing to study abroad."

"Study abroad? Bullshit. A guy getting dragged into the army the day after tomorrow, what frozen study abroad is he going on?"

"That's why I'm going to the army first. I applied for the engineers yesterday."

At that, Sang-u's eyes went wide as if they would pop out.

"Didn't you say you'd go after graduating? Didn't you say you'd graduate while tuition was even a little cheaper?"

I nodded and said.

"That was the plan. Now I have no attachment left to our school."

"Why? What happened?"

Even so, he worries like a friend.

"Honestly, can we get into a major company coming out of our school. At best a small or mid-sized construction firm, and I hear those are real hell. I'd rather look somewhere else."

"So you're saying you're going to study abroad? Where?"

"No. Not study abroad. To be exact, I'm going to Australia on a working holiday."

"Working holiday? They said that's in fashion these days. Guess it's real."

I looked at Sang-u and said.

"Hey. You quit the PC bang too and go do your army early, like me."

"...Hey. What if your back gets wrecked? Go to the engineers and it's obvious you'll come out with a disc, a hundred percent."

An exaggeration, but not something that never happened.

I had been like that myself.

Still, this one would be fine.

He had been fine in the previous life too.

"Hyung has a plan. Don't worry about me, worry about yourself. How long are you going to live at the PC bang."

Sang-u scratched his head hard and got irritated.

"Ah, damn! Making me think about it again. Is an Australia working holiday that good?"

I gave a short laugh and whispered to Sang-u as if letting him in on a secret.

"If you've got the skill, five hundred a month."

"What!? Five hundred!! Hey, cut the bullshit!"

"I'm telling you it's real. Minimum wage there is 12 to 13 dollars an hour. The Australian dollar is 800 won to the dollar, so in Korean money that's 10,400 won."

"Hah! They pay that much?"

"And that's the full-time minimum. Part-time gets a lot more than that. Work 38 hours a week and that alone is roughly over 500 dollars."

"Come on. Then that's 2,000 dollars a month?"

"Hey. Who only works regular hours! With overtime it goes up to double over there. And if you work like people do in Korea, they say five million won comes easy."

"Hey, they really give you five hundred? If not, you're taking responsibility for me?"

"I said I got it."

Of course it was not a lie.

You really could make five million won, but to do it you had to work fourteen, fifteen hours a day without straightening your back, without sleep.

And that was how people died.

Of course I did not say that to Sang-u.

"Good! I'm going too! I'll go and earn all the Australian money!"

"They say it's easier if you've got a heavy-equipment certificate, so you come as an engineer too."

"Good! I'll apply for the engineers first thing tomorrow!"

I tapped his shoulder and gave a hollow laugh, as if to say he had thought well.

"Later, in Australia, let's have a blast with the white noonas."

"Ooooh!!"

This worked out.

I had nearly been bored going alone, and now I could drag along one house-elf of a guy.

I was drinking coffee to hide the smile at the corner of my mouth when Sang-u asked, casual.

"Hey. But even if the construction market is bad, once we get out there are plenty of places to get hired, right?"

"..."

There aren't.

Right around the time we would be looking for jobs, the subprime mortgage blows up.

And construction jobs dry up to nothing.

In the end, the place I had gotten hired in my previous life was also a field position at a tiny mid-sized construction firm.

That was why I had become proficient with every machine and every skill.

They called it a field job, but it was no different from laboring — plugging every hole that opened and doing every odd job there was.

I only escaped that hell after building a record and moving to a major company.

"Hey. Go out there and it's obvious. Work yourself to death and we still have no choice but to roll around as field hands. Just follow me to Australia and I'll feed you."

"Ha! Get lost, you bastard."

Leaving the dumbfounded Sang-u behind, I grinned and opened the conversation book again.

I was inside the reality of a twenty-one-year-old's young face and a poor one-room, but in my chest the hot sun of Sydney was already blazing.

And so, toward the vast goal called Australia, I went on preparing, one step at a time.

* * *

A few months later. 9/11 really happened.

Planes flew, struck the buildings, and the Twin Towers fell.

In my previous life I had heard it on the news long after, but this time I watched it live.

While the Korean press was in an uproar over America's anger, and the North trembled and denied it was them, I entered the army training center in Nonsan, South Chungcheong.

"Drop and push out! Watch the form! Move, move, why aren't you moving!"

A drill instructor in his early twenties, red cap on, screamed and ran the trainees into the ground.

The twenty-year-old cohort on either side of me went pale and shook, but I followed his words without expression.

'Good lungs on him. But since my joints don't hurt, even drop-and-push is manageable.'

In my previous life there had been no one I had not dealt with, from subcontract bosses to vicious complainants to demolition crews with gangsters in them.

A man from the field who had truly been through every kind of hardship, and there was no way I was going to flinch at the barking of a drill instructor barely twenty-two.

Rather, since I could throw my body around as I liked and it did not tire me, I even got through guerrilla calisthenics in a refreshed mood.

All of this was muscle in the middle of splitting.

* * *

Having finished the six weeks of basic training at Nonsan with ease, I moved on to the army engineer school in Jangseong, South Jeolla, for second-half training.

"From here on you will handle excavators and payloaders in the field. The equipment costs hundreds of millions of won, so one mistake and it's the brig. Understood!"

At the instructor's threat the others were thoroughly cowed, but my fingers itched to climb into the operator's seat right then.

"Trainee number 12, Han Jeong-su! Boarding!"

The moment I sat in the excavator's seat, fastened the belt, and gripped the levers, the sickening memories of my previous life rose one after another.

"What are you doing! Why aren't you working!"

"Operator Park didn't show."

"Drank himself under again?"

"Well... that's how it always is."

"No! We still have to dig this to close out the section! Come on out. I'll do it!"

It was like that every day.

When the subcontract operators no-showed, I, the field hand, had to climb onto the heavy equipment to plug the hole.

It had just been ignorance. Unwilling to take a scolding, I had gambled my life on something that was nothing.

If there had been an accident then, it really would have been ruin.

Kuurung!

The vibration of the engine, the sound of the hydraulics turning.

Feeling a sensation all too familiar, I grinned.

Whirr — clank!

At my fingertips the excavator's boom, arm, and bucket moved as smoothly as limbs.

I dug the soil at the marked spot without an inch of error and set it lightly down in the truck bed, and the eyes of the instructor watching from outside went wide as if they would pop out.

"Hey, number 12! You come from driving a pokeulrein outside?"

"Yes. I ran one a bit in the countryside."

"Huh. This isn't the touch of someone who ran one a bit. Watching that swing, you're a ten-year veteran."

"It was easy. Besides this, I can drive a payloader, a forklift, a crane — most kinds."

"Well! This bastard's the god of the job! Good. From now on you're our ace. Get down."

"Yes, sir!"

Ordinarily in the army, hiding yourself is the virtue, but I showed my skill without reserve in front of the instructor.

Because what I wanted was in those instructors' hands.