Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Meeting the weekend, I headed for Sydney's eastern coast with Dong-myeong.

Our destination was Bondi Beach, said to be the most famous in Australia beyond Sydney.

The moment we arrived, the huge crescent beach spread before the eyes and waves the size of a house were overwhelming, indeed as the fame.

And a peculiar huge pool set at the end of the beach caught the eye sharp too.

"Hyung... aren't they cold?"

Dong-myeong pointed at the pool and freaked.

Australia now was like mild late-autumn or early-winter weather, midday about 17 to 18 degrees.

Still, on the beach enjoying sunbathing, or going into the sea, isn't that a bit...

"Leave them. Their skin must be different from ours. Let's just walk."

I said, lifting my half cast.

I want to go in the water once, but with this arm it's too much.

So we began walking the coastal-cliff walk of about 6 kilometers from the south of Bondi to Coogee Beach, the so-called Bondi to Coogee Coastal Walk.

The course with sheer sandstone cliffs and the deep-blue South Pacific spread without end beside was a scenic view, literally.

Passing Tamarama Beach where dazzling men and women gathered, taking in the unreal scenery of Waverley Cemetery with tens of thousands of white gravestones set right above the coastal cliff, I could realize how blessed an environment Australia was.

'When summer comes it'll be a riot.'

Thinking this place fills with people, it seems tremendous.

We finished the walk to Coogee Beach and came back to Bondi.

"Hyung, I'm thirsty, shall we have a beer. Shall we go to a club-like place over there?"

Grabbing Dong-myeong peeking at the Icebergs Club on the south, thick with a flashy rich-village feel, or the noisy Hotel Bondi, I dragged him to a crude two-story building at the north end of the beach.

"Showy places, I'm tired, no. When resting, cheap and quiet is the best."

The place I took him was the North Bondi RSL Club.

In the guidebook it was written as a pub run by Australia's returned-services league, a common space where real neighborhood local uncles in old shirts and veterans gather and drink cheap, rather than flashy tourists.

My taste fit this side a hundred times too.

"Welcome. Can I see some ID?"

When we tried to go in the entrance, a big black guard blocked the way.

While Dong-myeong, who had thought only of a Korean hof and tried to go in empty-handed, flustered and stammered, I took the driver's license from the wallet indifferent and showed it to the guard.

And I scrawled name and address familiar on the visitor book set on the counter.

Australian clubs and pubs had a strict rule of absolutely not letting you in if identity wasn't confirmed.

"Wow... hyung, your English is really good. You don't fluster at all and write smooth."

Dong-myeong too wrote following me with sense and said going in.

"So study some English! And when this house remodel ends, for a while I won't do other work. During that you do other work."

"Yes!? Why!?"

"This bastard, looking for a Japanese blanket dirty much."

"Ah! Hyung!!"

"Trying to live with a bit of room. Even coming to Australia, youth is too precious to only work."

Dong-myeong tilted his head at my words, but knowing my future, youth was really precious.

"For now wait a bit. When the work ends I'll ask Michael."

"Michael?"

"The name of our dedicated manager at Bunnings Warehouse. Year-end holiday season approaching, he'll probably try to get even an ant's help. During that you get a forklift certificate too. You don't have to, but better if you have it."

"Yes! Understood, hyung!"

Answer like that and he'll do it right away.

The moment we unpacked on the outdoor balcony, Dong-myeong, young blood boiling, couldn't stand the heat of the beach and threw off his clothes and ran out toward the sea.

"Freeze to death and I don't know!"

"It's fine!"

Seeing a huge muscular body over 190 centimeters running out, an exclamation came of itself.

Sending Dong-myeong like that, I went up right away.

Beer was too much because of the hurt arm, so thinking to enjoy the scent quiet, I got a recommendation of one glass of Australian wine from the bartender and ordered.

Taking the drink and sitting at the outdoor balcony seat again, the whole of Bondi Beach was viewed refreshing from the north of the beach toward the south.

With the sound of waves, the savory Australian-English accent of local uncles laid like background music.

I sipped a mouthful of dry wine and tilted my head.

"What is this? Seems tasty, and seems not. The taste is strange."

A taste as if red wine and white wine were mixed?

I don't know wine well, so I can only express it that way.

'Well, doesn't matter.'

I gave a short laugh and took an English book from the bag and opened it.

A basic book about the Australian stock market, the ASX.

I began wrestling the type with my brow furrowed hard.

I still hadn't found the cause of that crazy 900-percent surge disaster that happened when I bought Fortescue penny stock a while ago.

'Even searching the internet, penny stock is so sensitive, and it only says the obvious, that if you buy when volume is low it can jump.'

Buying only 8,000 dollars and the order book going to Andromeda was not a normal situation however I thought.

What I touched that the chart had a seizure, I had to know the rules exact to continue the next accumulation.

"Ah shit... what sound is this. Australian order method is completely different from Korea?"

The problem was the content wouldn't enter the head at all.

Clearly not a bad head, but trying to understand market order, or the Australian stock market's unique matching system, only as text, progress didn't go.

'Ah, really... if only there was a smartphone at a time like this!'

Search 'how to buy Australian stocks' on YouTube and hundreds of kind videos would pour.

From the position of a future person used to the convenience of a smartphone, 2004's analog type-search was terribly stuffy and a shame.

"Puhaa! Hyung!"

Wrestling the book tearing my head like that, Dong-myeong in the shape of a wet mouse dripping water approached the balcony.

Lips gone blue, trembling, and the face at least looked very refreshed.

"Not cold?"

"Ugh, dirty cold. But tremendously refreshing."

Dong-myeong took a towel from the bag he brought and wiped his body.

"What are you doing, hyung? Not looking at the scenery, what book?"

Dong-myeong trembled and looked into the thick book set on the table.

The guy left the bottoms, put on a T-shirt and hoodie, and asked.

Sometimes this bastard really seems a beast.

"Studying stocks."

"Yes? Stocks? Suddenly what stocks. A laborer should think of earning money sweating, and that kind of thing is a shortcut to ruin, I heard."

"Who said that kind of sound?"

"Yes?"

"If a friend said that, cut them right now and don't get close."

"Uh... even in dramas they say that. Do stocks and you ruin."

I gave a short laugh and said.

"Shall I tell you a way you can become rich?"

Then Dong-myeong's eyes flashed.

"Yes! Just tell me and I'll devote my life and serve!"

I made a "whoa~" sound and quickly pulled my body from Dong-myeong.

This bastard, burdensome.

"Get off, bastard."

I closed the book, lightly shook the wine glass, and grinned toward Dong-myeong.

A guy so agreeable and not refusing dirty work, I wanted to spread this guy's life a little too.

"Dong-myeong. Later when you gather some money, don't spend it wrong, buy stocks. Not Korean stocks, American IT-company stocks or stocks centered on quality companies. Or there's a fund product called an ETF. Called an exchange-traded fund, they say a fund that tracks the S&P 500. Buy that product and don't sell, and every time you get paid keep gathering. Gather like that only twenty years and I guarantee, you become rich no question."

"Twenty years? Come on, in twenty years how old am I."

"Still early forties. Still young. So no talk, do as told. Then probably in the future you'll be a rich man not envious of others."

The tremendous leak of heaven's secret I let slip, Dong-myeong seemed to think only an idle joke, and laughed it over, "come on, understood!"

From the look, he absolutely won't do it.

Well, later seeing me hit a jackpot, the mind will change.

I dumped the remaining wine and stood.

"Anyway let's go. Cold and hungry. Let's go change clothes and eat something good."

"Oh! Hyung, tonight's dinner you're buying steak?!"

"Shut up, eat a burger."

We stopped at the house a moment, left the car, and soaked deep in the taste of home at the Korean restaurant we had gone to with Daisy.

"Wow! Kimchi stew the best!!"

As expected, I knew Dong-myeong's eyes would turn too.

Like that the second honey-like holiday ended pleasant too.

* * *

The Crane yard site, having rested a whole week and come to work again.

Stopping at the office early in the morning to write my name on the attendance book, Rosie who found me shot up from her seat and brightened.

"Oh, Jeong-su! Good heavens, finally back! How's the body? Livable now?"

"Well, as you see. No hindrance catching the wheel."

I laughed, lifting the half-cast arm light.

Exchanging light chat about the wound with Rosie, I suddenly thought and asked.

"By the way, your car still all right? Didn't die?"

"Ah... it rattles a bit and is uneasy, so I'm using it careful only for commuting. Absolutely not running long distance."

Rosie answered, winking.

A car that wouldn't be strange if it died right now, not repairing, and running it precarious only for commuting. Whether to call this cunning, or terribly frugal, I don't know.

I gave a short laugh and finished signing the document.

"Got it. When the arm cast comes off, catch me and I'll fix it clean. Hold out well only until then."

"The best, Jeong-su! You work easy too!"

Leaving Rosie's cheer behind, I moved my steps to the site proper.

And going to get the forklift, I had to receive treatment as if I had become a war hero.

"Hey, Jeong-su! You're back!"

"Body all right? Still in a cast, can you drive the forklift?!"

Every worker I met came up, patted my shoulder, and was busy asking after me.

Welcoming me is thankful, but the eyes were all mixed with a longing as if seeing a savior.

"How much of a riot was the site for a week that everyone hangs on me like this? Without me, a dying taste?"

When I threw a mischievous joke, the Aussie workers including Peter shook their heads and confessed.

"Don't even say! Without you the material schedule all tangled, and the operator who came as a replacement, I thought I'd go crazy from stuffiness! Once moving H-beam, he ate the side of a truck trailer!"

"Uwak. Just imagining is terrible."

"That friend quit that day. And work fell on us double."

"What double? Only I one was missing."

Peter shook his head with raccoon-like eyes and said.

"That's what I say."

Bursting a laugh at the guys' exaggeration, I climbed the forklift seat right away and started it.

Vroom—!

And the moment work began, I understood in one go why the guys had made dying sounds like that.

Really without a gap to rest, busy enough to lose the mind.

With year-end approaching, the material volume going out to construction sites everywhere and coming in looked well over double the usual.

Trucks entered the yard tail to tail.

"Jeong-su! Load the H-beam here first!"

"Wait! Put these pipes down first!"

So busy that even smoko time, the sacred rest of Australian labor, had to be returned and the forklift rolled.

Sitting in the cab pulling levers, nothing hard physically, but having to mind all sides so an accident doesn't happen among large trucks and workers coming and going without rest, overload to the head.

Clearing volume hard all morning like that, and lunchtime greeted catching a breath at last.

Sitting near the outdoor rest room eating and about to bite a sandwich, from Foreman Gary to Peter and several workers flocked to my table at once.

I meant to read a book, and it all went wrong.

"Good work, Jeong-su. As expected, you have to catch the forklift for the site to turn taut."

Foreman Gary handed one cool can of cola and sat in front of me.

"Jeong-su! Eat this!"

Peter indifferently tossed one meat pie, his own lunch.

"All right?"

"I still have two left."

"Thanks. I'll eat well."

This bastard is subtly a big eater.

When I took the pie the size of Peter's face, Foreman Gary glanced at the big bandage on my forehead and the cast arm, then carefully opened his mouth.

"By the way, Jeong-su. That day the state was bad so I couldn't ask... what on earth happened? I asked David a bit, and he cut it, saying it's a matter under police investigation and he can't tell."

Of course. A murder-attempt case where one villain burned, so he couldn't speak rash.

At Foreman Gary's question, Peter and the other workers around stopped eating and pricked their ears.

Anyway the trash had already been dragged to the station and Immigration, and except Andy Hong there was no particular reason to hide.

I downed a mouthful of cola refreshing, and began unfolding without addition or subtraction the things I went through in the lot that day.

The big thugs who ambushed me, the story of not holding it when Dong-myeong was getting hit and blocking the club with my body, and even the melee in the pitch-dark lot where clubs flew. I spun the tale vivid, as if telling one Hong Kong action movie or a martial-arts play.

"So I blocked the club exact with the left arm, and in the gap of holding, the police siren rang."

"Oooh...!"

"What the fuck! Complete lunatics!"

The workers absorbed in my story put in thick interjections like "Jesus!", "Holy shit!" in the middle and let out cheers and sighs at once.

"In the end, to save one guy like a real younger brother, this wound came as a medal."

I tapped the cast arm and said square.

A line cringe even thinking myself, but throwing the body to save Dong-myeong was fact without an inch of lie, so strength went into the shoulders full.

"Whoa... Korean tough guy. Really cool?"

"Not a wound, a real medal. You worked hard, Jeong-su. Fortunate you're safe."

Foreman Gary and Peter patted my shoulder with sincere faces and sent comfort and praise.

The other guys too raised their sandwiches and drinks and offered a light toast, "for tough-guy Jeong-su!"

At the crude and sticky bond the rough men of the Australian site, different nationality and language, sent, I grinned and bit the remaining sandwich large.

A morning busy mindless and tired, but a lunchtime with one appetite dumbfounding good.

"But Jeong-su, why are you looking at that book?"

Peter asked me.

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