“Anyway, so.”
Nam Da-un, who had tilted his head back with the can in hand, said.
“What story did you call me for?”
“Well….”
It was at this point that I fell into a moment of contemplation. Was it really right to ask this person about that?
Of course, since this person was involved, they probably knew well. However, thinking that the cause of the incident lay with me, I felt hesitant.
…But still, it was true that no one else could give me an accurate answer about that incident except for this person.
Moreover, ‘that person’ had already heard about it once.
“I, um, wanted to ask about something that happened during childhood.”
“Oh, that.”
Contrary to what I was worried about, Nam Da-un took my words very lightly.
“I told you last time, right? It’s just a rumor. You don’t have to worry about it.”
Yeah, I knew it because I read his mind.
But the Nam Da-un I knew would say such a thing even if something like that actually happened. He was the one who approached me, who others feared and avoided, saying I reminded him of himself.
“…Really? You really disappeared like nothing happened?”
In my childhood memories, this person suddenly vanished.
There was no farewell left for me, and I hadn’t heard any news of moving before. At one moment, he just stopped coming to school.
And after that, I truly became alone.
At first, I resented him, but later when I learned that it was because of this person, I couldn’t think of anything else.
Often, when I passed by, I could hear whispers that seemed to be deliberately aimed at me, awful rumors about the things he might have gone through.
Maybe those were the things said by others, saying that I was close to someone who was popular at school, but I couldn’t just ignore those rumors.
“This is something I mentioned last time,”
Nam Da-un said, letting out a somewhat exaggerated sigh.
“If I had really gone through something like that, would I have thought about going to this school?”
“…”
“No matter who I am, it’s scary to be targeted by the richest company chairperson in the world. You wouldn’t think otherwise, would you?”
“…”
Honestly, it would be frightening.
I wouldn’t even dare think of approaching.
“Still.”
But I said it anyway.
“I still want to hear it.”
“Hmm.”
As I spoke like I was begging, Nam Da-un stared at me for a moment, as if measuring something. Then,
“…That woman seems to have moved again?”
He asked like that.
“…Maybe that’s the case.”
I was somewhat certain, but how or to what extent she was moving remained unknown. If something even slightly similar to the rumors that this person went through happened—
—I probably wouldn’t be able to hold back this time.
The person I hold most dear, the people they cherish.
The thought of everything being destroyed because of that made it unbearable.
“Well… It’s actually not something I want to talk about much.”
Having accurately read the expression that came to my face, Nam Da-un spoke with his chin resting.
Though his gestures might have lightened up a bit compared to the Nam Da-un I remembered from childhood, those eyes that seemed to see through people remained the same.
“Well, if you really want to know…”
In the end, Nam Da-un opened his mouth.
*
“…Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true.”
Nam Da-un said while crumpling the empty can he was holding.
“The company went bankrupt due to the primary contractor’s mistake. I still don’t know the details well, but it’s probably true that it was because of that chairperson.”
“…”
“Stealing the patent is also true, and it’s true that they filed a lawsuit against our company with that patent, resulting in us paying a significant amount of damages. But that’s not because of ‘you’ or ‘me.’ It was purely coincidental.”
“How do you…?”
“How do I know?”
Nam Da-un covered his eyes with his hand.
“My eyes are quite accurate. There hasn’t been much difference between my childhood and now. My memories from then are vivid. In the first place, that kind of thing is what Yujin Group often does. They think it’s trivial, but when a contractor produces something useful, they claim they made it first.”
“…”
I had nothing to say.
“However, at that time, it seems that became a backlash. Back then, my father’s company was doing quite well as a mid-sized firm. Although we didn’t obtain a complete victory in court, we were holding on tight for a long time. Well, I’m not an expert, and what I heard is just part of the story I got through my father.”
Nam Da-un stared intently at the crumpled can in his hand as he spoke.
“Reporters who caught a whiff of that started to gather, and as public opinion turned, Yujin Group took some sort of extraordinary measures.”
“Extraordinary measures?”
“Coincidentally, the bank that my father’s company and your group were using was the same.”
“…”
“Well, a company like Yujin Group probably doesn’t keep all its money in just one bank. There are also insurance companies, securities companies, they make cash assets, and do stock buybacks… But still, it seems that the amount of money ‘deposited in the bank’ was definitely more than ours.”
“So…”
“Even now, Yujin Group is quite a large company, right? The company’s assets could hold their own against the total assets of most domestic banks. It means they could at least exert pressure on this important bank regarding ‘funding.’”
“But that…”
I swallowed the words, “That’s illegal.” There were plenty of illegal activities in the things I had done in this school. Counting the illegal things happening within this school alone would exceed the number of fingers and toes I had.
“Anyway, that means there was all-around pressure. Just because of that one patent.”
“What kind of patent is it, anyway…?”
“Honestly, I think it was related to some phone screens or something.”
Nam Da-un shrugged as he said that.
“Anyway, that was a blunder. The bank ended up losing a significant client because of another client. And it seems that the surviving clients couldn’t trust them anymore. Our company went bankrupt, and because we couldn’t continue the patent lawsuit, Yujin Group ended up acquiring the patent, but the image suffered a tremendous blow as it leaked outside.”
“…And tangled in that, rumors about my senior spread, right?”
“Rumors about you also spread.”
“…”
“Why, can’t you believe it?”
Seeing my expression after hearing everything, Nam Da-un asked.
“Then about my parents…”
“My parents are both alive and well.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. No, just think about it. Would someone with that much money really do something like that? In a situation where their image is already severely damaged due to the patent lawsuit, if such an incident were to unfold, wouldn’t the company’s life be put at stake, whether they did it or not?”
“…”
That could… be the case.
But it could also not be.
As the bank staff had said in my memories, this country was too small to handle Yujin Group.
“At least, I couldn’t avoid an investigation. Yes, it’s true that my father collapsed. He had a stroke. He suffered from chronic anger for a while and even went to a psychiatrist. But no one has hit him. My mother has never had anything strange happen to her, and there’s never been a fire at home. It just became difficult, and we sold and moved to a cheaper place. Whatever happened after that, I don’t know.”
“Then those rumors…”
“Someone must have made them up. Elementary school kids can come up with all sorts of meaningless rumors. Like those things that say if you see some pictures on the internet a few times, you die, or that there’s a corpse buried somewhere in the school. The reason behind all sorts of strange rumors swirling around about my sudden disappearance can’t be anything other than that, right?”
But who believed so fervently?
The rumors that ruined my life were not just believed by children. If adults hadn’t believed, I would have had no reason to experience such a past.
“Sometimes,”
Nam Da-un said with a sigh mixed in his voice.
“It seems that adults believe the things children say without a second thought. Especially when they think it could affect them. I don’t know well who passed on those ‘who’ rumors among the adults.”
Emphasizing the ‘who’ part, Nam Da-un finished his story.
“Do you understand now?”
“…”
“It seems you can’t completely believe it.”
“I’ll ask one more thing.”
I asked Nam Da-un.
“What?”
“Why did you come back to this school?”
“…”
At my question, Nam Da-un paused for a moment, looking into the distance.
The direction of his gaze was towards the children practicing soccer hard, kicking a soccer ball far away.
…Well, I think he was looking this way until just a moment ago, but let’s just move on.
“I know roughly what kind of place this school is. I saw it with my own eyes back then.”
Nam Da-un said while quietly watching that scene.
“But when I think about the moments that were the happiest in my life, they all happened at this school. So that’s why I came back.”
