< Report Card of Life >
It looks like my son is getting married.
Since ancient times, it has been said that a meeting between the two families is a battlefield without gunfire.
‘For my son’s happy family! Let’s calm down and go in!’
I came out with such a strong determination.
The in-laws who showed up at the meeting flinched as soon as they saw me.
“Oh my god!”
“Ahem!”
It was because of the burn scars that covered more than half of my face.
I took off my bowler hat and greeted him as politely as I could.
“Nice to meet you. My name is Kang Woo, and I am Cha Jeong-hyeok.”
As expected, the words pouring out in front of me were sharper than the tip of a sword.
The eyes that look at me up and down and give me an estimate are hot.
As if it were a place to evaluate my life.
“You said you live in a multi-family house in Sillim-dong?”
“Then you’re saying that you can’t even afford to help with the villa deposit? Ahem!”
“If you live off dirty money…, maybe a sanitation worker?”
Somehow my life has become so messy that I’m living with black money.
People here call me ‘Sillim-dong ant hell.’
If the chaebols operate in the sun, we operate in the shade.
I was one of the five big shots who controlled the underground finance in South Korea.
“Of course, you wouldn’t be prepared for old age.”
“Are you planning on asking the kids for living expenses?”
Since this was an important issue, I had to make my point clear.
I waved my hand.
“That’s not possible. As a parent, I can’t help my children, but how can I cling to them like a parasite? I can’t be that shameless.”
I was just trying to correct a misunderstanding.
My in-laws are just staring at my hand with astonishment.
I tried to lighten the mood with a laugh, hiding my blunt hands under the table.
failure.
The atmosphere became even colder because of the four gold teeth on the upper and eight on the lower.
“You’re missing two fingers?”
This is when I got involved with gangsters back in the day… If I tell the truth, I’ll be embarrassed.
“I saw you earlier and you had a limp.”
It’s because it’s entangled with a North Korean contractor… There’s no way to explain this either.
‘I guess I should change the subject.’
I took out the things I had prepared in advance one by one.
There were two very old bankbooks.
“This is what Kang-woo’s dead mother left behind.”
She was a woman who saved every penny she had.
As soon as he saw the bankbook, the man who would become his wife snatched it up like an eagle.
He looked through it carefully and then snorted.
“No matter how much dust you collect, it’s just dust. How dare you push something like this into your bank account? I’m really astonished.”
The prospective bride drank the water in gulps.
Then he glared at his daughter fiercely.
“Hey, do you really have to get married? No matter how you choose a man, you have to choose someone worse than an orphan!”
Then he pressed his lips together silently.
-You said you had a lot of money!
The prospective daughter-in-law, who had been questioned, kept her mouth shut and glared at my son with a contemptuous look.
The son was being sworn at with his eyes by the woman he was going to marry.
“The ancestral rites and holidays are over and there is no need to look forward to them, so I will pretend that I am not a person.”
I lowered my head.
“Could you please just look after my child? If you just take away the father, he’s a pretty decent kid. Please.”
A request must always be accompanied by sincerity.
‘I thought it might be like this, so I prepared a 124-pyeong penthouse with a view of the Han River.’
The house has 7 rooms, 4 bathrooms, 4 parking spaces per household, and the sale price is 14.9 billion won.
I was just about to take it out of my arms, but my son was faster than me.
“Father, lift up your head. Why are you bowing your head like a sinner?”
The son threw down his napkin and jumped up from his seat.
“Hyunyoung, I’m sorry. I don’t think I can go through with this wedding.”
“Mr. Kangwoo!”
“I don’t think I need to explain the reason.”
“Let me just ask you this. Mr. Kang-woo, are you really not able to afford even an 80-pyeong apartment in Gangnam?”
The son shut his eyes tightly.
“The luxury goods, foreign cars, and even the way Mr. Kang Woo spends his money are all fake?”
“Father, that’s enough. Get up.”
The son stormed out of the meeting without even looking back.
I also jumped up.
“My child is still young and doesn’t know much. I’ll go and get him right away.”
“Oh, that’s enough! I guess I won’t be seeing you again!”
The prospective wife threw down her napkin nervously and tried to sit up.
My gaze towards my in-laws naturally grew cold.
The woman who had been acting nervous hesitated when their eyes met.
“The meeting isn’t over yet.”
Naturally, my tone of speech also became cold.
The in-laws looked at me and hesitated for a moment before sitting back down.
“That bankbook doesn’t belong to your in-laws yet.”
The prospective in-law hurriedly snatched the bankbook that the prospective wife had secretly taken and shoved it in front of me.
Only then did I look away and turn my back.
He limped after his son on his bad leg.
There is still room for improvement.
“It’s raining!”
The son was sitting on the sponsor bench, smoking a cigarette.
A red light burns rapidly down the pipe.
It seemed as if the son’s insides were burning.
The words he was about to say to his son were stuck in his throat.
I had no choice but to sit next to my son and pat him on the shoulder a couple of times.
“I got cursed at.”
“I did swear. I’m sure your father heard the swearing. I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for? It’s not like you did anything wrong.”
“It’s a sin not to have an eye for women.”
The son let out a long sigh.
This guy was a kid who used to sing about wanting to find a good woman and create a family filled with laughter.
“Wasn’t she the woman you loved so much that you even thought about marrying her?”
“Okay.”
“That’s enough. There’s no need to fight over money in a marriage.”
“I was always confused. Do you love me or do you love my money? Now that I’ve confirmed your sincerity, it’s a bit bitter.”
Feeling frustrated, I took out a cigarette and lit it.
My son lit the fire for me.
“I mean that bankbook. The one my mother saved up for me.”
“Yeah. I guess it was money your mother had squeezed out of you.”
Why did I bring it here?
“Buy your daughter-in-law something delicious, and buy your grandchild a snack. Even if your mother can’t buy you a house, she can buy you something like that. Let’s say that’s a wedding present that your mother prepared.”
“under······.”
The son had a complicated look on his face.
“This is the wedding present I prepared for you.”
I handed my son the house deed and bankbook I was about to take out earlier.
The son shook his head stubbornly.
“How can I accept this? It’s enough that you raised me, Father.”
“Take it.”
I forced it into my son’s hand.
My bank account must have been quite full.
‘This is the report card of my life.’
I put a few more sheets of paper on it and handed it over.
“What is this?”
“A weapon I brought to use if necessary.”
Then should we come to the battlefield bare-handed and without weapons?
There was talk that the in-laws’ house had been thoroughly raided.
“Ha, that really was a trashy corner of the house.”
As I handed over the documents I had given him, my son kept chuckling.
The papers were crumpled in my son’s hands.
‘Did you give it to me for nothing? No. It’s a hundred times better to know and be prepared than to get hit in the back of the head without knowing.’
It’s true that you feel dirty after seeing something ugly that you don’t necessarily need to see.
I patted my son’s shoulder a few more times.
“Go in and see. If there’s a woman you need to catch, you need to catch her.”
“Father, are you telling me to catch this mess after seeing this house?”
“Just because a few grapes are rotten doesn’t mean you have to throw away the whole bunch.”
“······.”
“Just look at the woman. If you look at her away from her parents, she’s a good woman. She’s a woman you want to spend the rest of your life with, even if it means risking her parents. That’s all you have to worry about.”
I smiled brightly.
“Don’t lose someone precious to you by being unnecessarily proud. That’s something only a loser would do.”
“after······.”
“Just live happily. That’s all I need. So······.”
“By the way, I forgot my mother’s bankbook. Please wait a moment.”
The son also smiled brightly.
It was the expression of a man whose resolve had been strengthened.
“That’s too much for Hyunyoung. Thank you, Father!”
The son headed to the meeting place, waving the documents he had plundered from the other house as if showing them off.
“My father said that the secret to happiness is to give up what you have to give up. I have no intention of picking up and using dirty toilet paper.”
It was said that it was ruined.
‘Damn, if I had known this would happen, I would have dragged you to the basement and threatened you before we met.’
Our company’s underground workshop is completely soundproofed.
I furrowed my brow and inhaled the cigarette smoke deep into my lungs.
“Life isn’t easy······. Knock knock knock!”
I started coughing.
It just wouldn’t stop.
Woohoo.
I took out my smartphone.
The sender is the director of Taesung University Hospital.
By the way, you will be my one and only testicle friend.
-Hey, Cha Jeong-hyeok! Why don’t you come running to the hospital right now? You have terminal lung cancer!
That was the reason why I rushed my son’s marriage.
“Anyway, it’ll only be a year at the longest and half a year at the shortest. You said to prepare yourself mentally.”
-So you want to let go of my hand and just let it go? Okay, fine. Hang up. I’m going to call Kang-woo right away.
“Who said not to go? Let’s go, let’s go!”
-That bastard won’t listen to me unless he sells his son. I’ll give you 30 minutes. Got it?
Stop.
The guy hung up first.
“Anyway, with that temper. Who would think I’m not your friend?”
I put out the cigarette butt that had burned to the point of reaching the filter by rubbing it in a sand-type trash can.
*
I left the guys who wanted to follow behind and took the wheel myself.
Perhaps because it wasn’t peak rush hour, the road to the hospital was quite deserted.
-There is a children’s safety zone ahead. Drive safely.
The intersection in front of the kindergarten.
Children wearing matching yellow uniforms line up and get on the bus.
A smile spread across my lips without me realizing it.
They were small and pretty children.
“There was a time when our Kangwoo was like that.”
When I picked up a child who was crying from hunger, wandering the streets in the middle of winter, the rain was just like that.
I couldn’t bear to turn away from the child.
Instead, I collected the bodies of the child’s parents who had been left abandoned in the house, held a funeral for them, and raised Kang-woo by adding him to my family register.
Booooooooo.
A 25-ton trailer was speeding along in the opposite lane.
Even though the light was red, the speed didn’t slow down at all.
‘What kind of crazy kid drives like that… Huh?’
It was drowsy driving.
The trailer hurtled towards the kindergarten children.
“······!”
A silent scream erupted.
A terrible tragedy foreseen came to mind.
‘No! The kids······!’
All of a sudden, all kinds of arrogant thoughts came to mind.
I bit my lips hard.
‘shit!’
From decision to action.
It was so fast that I couldn’t believe it even when I thought about it myself.
I stepped hard on the accelerator.
Next came the breaks.
The brake pedal wasn’t enough, so I pulled the side brake with all my might.
Squeak! Boom!
A trailer hit me square in the side of the car.
A tremendous shock followed.
It was more than I expected.
Kwakwakwakwang.
The car spun like a top, flipping up, down, left, and right.
That was my last memory.
*
King Yeomra said.
[Cha Jeong-hyeok, 52 years old, died in an accident. He struggled all his life. It was an unfortunate life.]
The 52 years of my life that I saw in a flash were summarized in two words.
A life of struggle and misfortune.
I didn’t really feel like refuting it.
Because it was true.
[With such a dirty fate, I would not have been able to avoid dying alone as a disabled person or a homeless person.]
I looked down at my uncomfortable limbs with a bitter face.
Even that seemed blurry because the physical body was gone.
But the burn scars on his face and the surgical scar on one of his kidneys that he had to sell for money still stung.
[You have been punished by heaven and have managed to live a useful life. You are admirable.]
Was that so?
[Cheonmanghohoe Soibulsil (天網恢恢 疏而不失).]
The net of heaven is large and wide, and although it may seem difficult to escape, it means that one can never escape from it.
[What a strange guy. He lived a life of poverty, wandering around back alleys his entire life, but he always struggled to not cross the last line. It must not have been easy.]
King Yeomra smiled benevolently.
[You have raised other people’s children as if they were your own, shown generosity to the weak, and taken care of your unfortunate neighbors from time to time. How could I ignore such merits?]
I closed my eyes.
I realized that this was the true report card of my life.
[He also gave his own life on behalf of fifteen young souls who had already been booked for the afterlife, which could be considered the most noble form of self-sacrifice.]
Thank goodness the kids are okay.
[I hereby forgive all the sins you committed in your past life.]
Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
“A sin from a past life?”
[Yes. You sold your country in your past life.]
I never would have thought that I sold my country in my past life.
[You have to live a miserable and difficult life because of the sins of your past life, so you should blame yourself, not heaven.]
There was a time when I even blamed the heavens for making my life such a mess.
But now I see that there was a reason for everything.
So I became very curious about that past life.
“How did I sell out my country?”
No matter how I look at it, it seems like it would be difficult to sell it in a normal way.
[Okay. I’ll give you a special chance to see it in person this time, considering the achievements you’ve made.]
Something fell with a thud.
[It is a mirror of karma that reflects one’s karma from a previous life.]
The karma reflected the previous life.
A general who was at the forefront of sweeping away the Japanese pirates who invaded Joseon.
That general was me.
-Don’t back down! We must defeat the Japanese and save this country and its people! Everyone, follow me!
That’s how I fought desperately against the Japanese until the end and died.
[······.]
“······.”
There was silence.
The already pale complexion of King Yeomra turned pale in an instant.
I smiled, shaking my head.
“scourge?”
King Yeomra shouted urgently.
[Cheonmanghoehoe Soi Bulsil. I will take responsibility for this life. You will live as the luckiest person since the beginning of time!]
< Life's Report Card > End
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