Chapter 8

Chapter 8

We went down to the Commonwealth Bank branch on the first floor of the same building.

Befitting Australia's largest bank, the inside was quite grand, European style.

Whether linked with the agency in advance, one Korean staff member had taken over an entire counter and was handling our account openings.

While twenty-year-old greenhorns gathered and murmured in line, half tension and half excitement, I quietly stepped back to the very last spot.

"You all go first. I will go last."

There was no need to step up and say I would go first.

I sat on the soft waiting sofa and opened the thick Sydney map book handed out at the agency.

Among the group who had come together, those who had finished opening accounts went off in twos and threes holding hands to open phones, or to see the Opera House.

Meanwhile I marked with a pen the places I had to go, and circled them on the map.

'The driving school is here, and the truck school is this way.'

Here, strangely, they took the heavy-equipment test at the truck school.

I spent the time carefully simulating the route of the things I had to do.

Before I knew it the bustling group had all left, and around the time the bank grew quiet, my turn came.

The Korean woman clerk sitting at the counter greeted me with a lively, kind smile, no sign of fatigue.

Definitely a young woman with more of a compatriot feel than Korea.

The work went in one flow.

Doing it in Korean, it was not hard at all.

After finishing the signature needed to open an ordinary deposit account, I got to the point.

"Excuse me, I want to open an Australian stock account. How do I do that?"

At that the woman clerk's hands, tapping the keys, stopped dead.

"Yes? A stock account? Oh my, among working-holiday people, someone saying they will open a stock account the moment they arrive, you are the first since I have worked here."

The clerk looked at me as if quite curious, then soon took a new bundle of documents from a drawer and began kindly explaining CommSec, the bank's brokerage platform.

"First I will link the ordinary account you just made as the account for stock settlement. You applied for a tax number at the academy earlier, right? Without that, a top rate of fully 47 percent is imposed on stock profits, so when the number comes out you must update it on the CommSec side."

I nodded.

The clerk held out the application form and lowered her voice slightly.

"But the Australian securities system is different from Korea, so when you first start it is tremendously cumbersome and takes a long time. It is all analog. If you apply now, for security, your information will all be split and sent as separate mail."

"The mail comes separately?"

"Yes. At intervals of a few days a mail with your client ID will go, then a temporary password, and last a mail with the CHESS HIN, the most important thing in Australian stock trading, will fly separately. Only when you have all three mails in hand can you finally make the first trade. Total time, generously, about two to three weeks."

Really, looking at this, Korea is heaven.

I do not know how they live with a system this slow.

Nothing to be done.

Anyway, to get a white card and fit the certificates to Australian standards, time is needed.

"And there is one more thing to be careful of."

"Yes? Again?"

The clerk grinned.

It seemed as if she were saying, welcome, first time in Australia?

The clerk tapped the address line of the document with the tip of her pen.

"Every time you buy or sell even one share, a contract note will be mailed to this address each time. Later your mailbox will probably be packed with letters from Commonwealth. The address is set as the agency now, right? The branch manager will be very annoyed. Still, manage the mail thoroughly. If you lose it, reissue takes another age."

At the compatriot young woman's sincere warning I nodded.

'I really need to find a house of my own soon...'

And so, following the clerk's guidance, I filled every document carefully.

That took a long while too.

"Hoo. Thank you for the kind explanation, Miss Daisy?"

"Ho ho. Not at all. I hope you achieve what you want in Australia!"

A young woman as blooming as her name.

* * *

Perhaps, being assigned a spot on the veranda mattress was a blessing?

Close one glass door and you can block the stale smell and noise of the living room, and above all, being able to put physical distance from those thoughtless, noisy kids was the greatest advantage.

Suddenly that thought came.

If I had not gone straight to the army right after returning to twenty-one, I probably would have suffered tremendous alienation and disgust in human relationships.

The mind is a man in his fifties who has been through everything, the body a twenty-four-year-old who has only just taken off the uniform.

Without the army, that suppressed buffer zone, just imagining what face I would have had to meet kids around my age with was tiring.

How to put it?

That their insides show too plainly?

In that sense, this chicken coop was a strange place where each side was wary of the other.

The day the orientation ended.

One of the men who had been here from the start, saying let's loosen the awkward mood, made a proposal.

Pool money, a little from each, and have a party.

We chipped in 20 dollars each, brought cheap sausages from Woolworths and cask wine and beer from the liquor shop, and spread a board on the living-room floor.

From the cheap cask wine came a sour smell of alcohol.

Sausages not even cooked properly, underdone, rolled on paper plates.

On their side a board opened boldly as a party of adults, but to my eyes it was a crowd of high-school students who had slipped out on a school trip to drink, nothing more and nothing less.

Am I looking too negatively?

... That is probably something I cannot help.

"Right, we have to live bumped together in a narrow house, so let's introduce ourselves first!"

This is why.

Coming all the way to Australia and saying let's sort rank first, the mood is foul.

Looking back, when I was young this seemed truly important, and getting older I learned it has no meaning.

More important than numbers was who was comfortable, who fitted.

"I'm Kim Myeong-ho, twenty-five, from Seoul, and I will study English hard······."

"I'm Lee A-reum, from Busan. Traveling all around Australia is my dream!"

I too only roughly gave name and age.

And I stepped back and sipped beer, quietly watching the nine youths.

Honestly, looking at these kids, I am a bit afraid.

How to say it, that they look like children playing by the water?

Most of them have done the army and are mid to late twenties, so why do they look so thoughtless?

In my heart I want to meddle and give hard words freely, but absurdly, here I am almost the youngest.

By Korean feeling, I must not step forward.

So I kept a half-forced bystander mode.

But these bastards, when I said I was twenty-four, naturally dropped the formal speech.

"Ah, the name is Jeong-su? Hyung will give you a drink. Did you do the army?"

A pale-faced returning student, playing the hyung, said it loftily.

A face I truly wanted to crack across the back of the head right then.

Afraid a stream of curses would come out if I opened my mouth, I only nodded roughly.

And among this crowd there was one human who was particularly a sight.

Park Ji-hun, twenty-eight this year.

The person who had proposed the party first.

This one, on the grounds that he was the oldest, was playing the head of this crowd as if he were.

"When oppa played in Gangnam before coming to Australia~"

"Aigu, our youngest, when you go to the farm oppa will look after everything. Don't worry."

What on earth did he play at in Gangnam...

The rough look made me suspicious, but setting that aside, openly panting at twenty- and twenty-two-year-old girls, is that not a bit much?

And standing on the heads of the men because they are younger than him, pressing them with a paltry power, looks natural.

Internet reviews said if you come on a working holiday you meet every kind of human, and a guy like that seemed to be one of them.

'Twenty-eight, gathering little kids and playing alley captain, is that fun?'

Watching the one giving a speech, a sound of air leaking finally escaped my mouth, unable to hold it.

"Pfft."

In that moment the noisy air of the living room froze cold.

Ji-hun, who had been bluffing, whipped his head around and fixed it on me.

"Hey. Han Jeong-su."

"······."

"Did you just laugh at me?"

I could have roughly apologized for ruining the mood and let it pass, but is my condition bad today of all days?

The site-chief mind asleep inside stirred.

I drank the can of beer I was holding and looked at him with narrowed eyes.

"I did laugh."

"What? Has this crazy bastard lost it. Hey, I'm twenty-eight. A young bastard, nothing in your eyes?"

Ji-hun flushed crimson and shot up from his seat.

The girls around screamed in surprise and drew back, and the boys urgently stopped Ji-hun.

"Hyung, hold it. The kid is still young, that's why."

"Hey! Let go. Look at the way that mannerless bastard talks."

"Hey! What are you doing. Apologize to hyung!"

A village farce, nothing else.

Why on earth did these kids come all the way here?

If it is going to be like this, isn't it better to have stayed in Korea?

I got up lightly.

"Twenty-eight. A fine age. But... hey. At an age when others get a decent job and go to work, why have you crawled all the way to this distant Australia, gathered twenty-one and twenty-two-year-olds, and are playing captain? Is it that thrilling?"

At the straight ball thrown openly, Ji-hun's pupils shook as if an earthquake had hit.

"Wh, wh, what, you bastard? You done talking? I, I hated Korea's tight, uniform life and came looking for freedom! What do you know, running your mouth!"

"Freedom, he likes."

I laughed thinly and beat his solar plexus with fact.

"Losing on specs in the job market, no confidence to compete, so for now let's run, and you put up language study and working holiday as excuses and ran, isn't that it? A life dropout who came to Australia as an escape, and somewhere playing the adult and lecturing. Disgusting. You played in Gangnam? Cut the crazy dogshit. In Gangnam they would not even make a guy like you a waiter. So stay crumpled. Because of guys like you, working-holiday people as a whole get cursed."

"You, you fucking bastard, really!!"

Whether a sore spot was stabbed, he lost reason and raised a fist.

'Pathetic.'

If he was going to attack, he should have done it earlier.

Older, and bigger in build, but at a glance a soft body that has never exercised once.

I lightly rolled up both sleeves and showed forearms split with muscle.

I saw his eyes go to my arms.

"Why? You going to hit? Hit me once."

I tapped my cheek and provoked him.

At that his pupils shake without mercy.

Anyway that one cannot hit.

No different from an empty husk full of only bluff.

When I first joined the construction company and gained confidence learning the work a bit, I collided with the plastering foreman.

To my demand to match the schedule, a refusal that he could not unless paid more.

And this man was the sort who had been a gangster, his whole body wrapped in tattoos.

And how vicious the face was...

I, no different from a beanpole then, was pushed by that force and tucked my tail.

And when I went back to the site office, a handsome middle-aged chief not even 160, cracked my head and I had to eat curses until my belly burst.

"A site supervisor gets scared and runs, what are you going to do! From now on how cheap will those workers see you!"

And he went out panting, and grabbed the vicious plastering foreman, a head taller than him, as if disciplining him.

"Hey! Stop! Plastering team, pack your things and get off my site!"

"Aigo! Chief, why are you like this!?"

"Foreman Park! Why are you talking money to our youngest? If you want to negotiate, you should come to me!"

"No... that, I..."

Come to think of it, that was so.

I was supervision, a person unrelated to deciding wages.

In the end they had picked an intentional fight of spirit, and I had fallen for it and even lost.

"Noisy, plastering team, all of you pack and get out. Do not think of coming onto our site from next time!"

"Aigo! Chief!! I have committed a sin to die for. I am truly sorry!! I will never do it again!! If we are driven out like this our kids all starve to death!!!"

"Ah! I said get out!!"

I watched that farce from one to ten.

So admirable I asked the chief.

"How on earth did you do it?"

"A person looks at where he will lie before he stretches his feet."

"Yes?"

"That man has a family to protect, and a company to protect. It means he is a human who knows that the moment he swings a fist, there is too much he has to lose. People like that never swing a fist carelessly."

"..."

Is this sly?

Or wisdom of life?

"Then a person with nothing to lose?"

"You have to run and report, no question. Originally the ones with nothing to lose are the scariest."

From that day I was never pushed by anyone on a site.

"Hit me, Mr. Park Ji-hun, twenty-eight. This is not Korea, it is Australia. You are clenching a fist knowing that if you call the police for assault in a share house, the visa is cancelled right away and you are deported to Korea? Crawled all the way here eating your parents' money, and go back in a few days with a red line, the house will be truly proud, right?"

At my warning his lips trembled.

Watching the expression of the one who could neither hit nor step back, panting, rotting inward, I clicked my tongue lightly.

"Do not try to be treated by age, clumsily, and stay quiet. Next time it does not end in words."

I turned as I was, opened the glass sliding door, and went out to the veranda, my zone.

Of course, on the way out, I did not forget to take a can of beer separately.

I should play alone, looking at Australia's night view.

At my back I felt the stillness of the living room, quiet as a dead mouse.

'From the first day, the sorting of rank ended cleanly.'

Opening the can of beer and drinking it cold, I looked down on Australia's unfamiliar night view.

The mood was refreshing, but it was not a time to be at ease forever.

'I have to get out soon.'

Now is a time to look only forward and go.

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