***
Even after checking the messages from the Director and my homeroom teacher, I wasn’t intimidated.
Rather, I was fired up.
Isn’t that natural? Why should I be discouraged there? Why must the phrase “it’ll be hard without connections” always stick to me like it’s the right answer?
The world always chattered away.
If you work hard, you can achieve it. Connections aren’t important. In the end, your will and sincerity make you.
It was always written that way in textbooks, and the Director who was my everything said the same thing.
I believed those words. No, I had no choice but to believe them. The reason I, who had no connections or anything, endured was because of that one belief.
However, that belief shattered to pieces after the interview ended.
It was fine until the last question. My mind went blank for a moment at the question about family relationships that wasn’t even in the expected questions. But somehow I continued speaking and got through the situation.
I came out of the building and walked slowly, trying to calm my pounding heart. I wandered around the campus for no reason, imagining a future of walking on the school grounds.
Was that the problem?
Me, an orphan, harboring expectations that I could attend this school.
Or the fact that I happened to be the last one in order.
I walked around the building wherever my feet took me and entered a narrow path behind it. It was a corner space where people’s feet didn’t reach. The smell of cigarettes brushed past, but I passed it without much thought.
However, if I’d known that place was the interviewers’ smoking spot, I would have turned back immediately.
“The last applicant is an orphan, right?”
I flinched at the voice I heard and turned my head. An awkward silence from around me overlapped with reluctant laughter.
“Well…. There are many students like that these days.”
The interviewer next to him smoothly handled it with an uncomfortable expression.
However, a voice that completely ignored that handling cut through again.
“They’re diligent, but I’m not sure if they can keep up with the department life until the end.”
At the sneering voice, I immediately recalled who it was.
The interviewer who had asked me questions in the interview room and raised the corners of his mouth as if mocking. Gold rings hung all over the fingers that flipped through the question sheet, and while the student answered, he openly looked at his watch and held back a yawn.
No, he only pretended to hold it back while already half-yawning.
“Our side is especially tight, you know. Overseas training is mandatory, there are many group projects and field investigations…. The cost burden is also big.”
The interviewer next to him carefully added.
“Still… the grades were very good.”
“Of course the grades are good. But in these cases, they ultimately don’t last long.”
Click-
Along with the sound of a lighter being lit, a thick cigarette smell rushed in. The other interviewers hesitated and refrained from speaking, but that interviewer didn’t bother holding back and continued speaking.
“Mm, it’s certainly not the picture we want on our side.”
He curled his fingers in a circle and blew out smoke long.
That appearance was closer to a bureaucrat more interested in taking care of his own line and managing donations than a professor protecting the department’s honor.
“I saw earlier that there’s also the son of Semo Corporation. Similar grades too.”
And their conversation naturally moved to the name of a classmate who had applied to the same department as me, as if I hadn’t been a candidate from the start.
Right. That damn son from a good family.
That kid whose grades were just barely passing.
My name was easily erased between the interviewers’ light laughter. What I had built up scattered in the air like smoke, and effort and belief crumbled like a burning cigarette butt.
If only I hadn’t heard that conversation.
Then I would have held onto even a shallow hope until the end.
With those conversations as the end, I realized one all-too-obvious fact.
The saying that a dragon rises from a stream.
That was nothing more than a spectator’s tale of others’ lives casually chattered by those born outside the stream.
And that “dragon” was ultimately an existence that only those lucky or who inherited the seeds to become dragons from the start could become.
I didn’t even have a seed. To me, who started at the starting line of being an orphan, only the muddy waters of the stream were given.
A position where I couldn’t and wouldn’t become a dragon.
Right, all those inspiring stories the world chatters about were ultimately just illusions that sparkle only in fairy tale books.
Naturally, I failed the interview. I had no hard feelings toward the interviewer. I was rather grateful that they made me realize the cold reality.
And only one thing remained for me.
Apply to a lower-tier school? I could have. Since my grades supported it, I could also aim for a full scholarship.
But if I hit the same wall of reality again? What would I endure with then?
The hopelessness that I couldn’t rely on anyone, poverty gnawed away at more than I thought.
In the gnawed places, only bitter reality remained, and after faith collapsed, only calculation remained.
At nineteen, what immature me chose wasn’t challenge but money.
No, money was the only thing I could choose.
In this unreasonable world, only money’s value didn’t change.
It’s not like I only did part-time jobs from the start. I tried regular employment and contract work a few times. However, fast employment at a young age without parents or connections was merely an experience of acutely feeling the world’s absurdity.
Still, I had to survive somehow, so I had no choice but to hold onto even hourly part-time jobs. I earned indiscriminately and earned more.
And as if to prove to myself that this path I chose wasn’t wrong, I sent most of the money I earned to the orphanage.
At first, it was fairly okay. Friends envied me, who chose work immediately without going to college, as someone living alone and earning money.
Why, that’s right. In the early twenties, even working part-time and getting a paycheck looks decent in the eyes of broke peers.
But when they came back from the military and, after discharge, discussed realistic futures, I was crushed by a sense of alienation again.
“Hey, Sion. How long are you going to just do part-time jobs? You need to get into somewhere proper now too.”
Next to him, a friend poked him with an elbow as if telling him to read the room, but the guy didn’t stop.
“No, seriously. You studied well too…. Heecheol, who had worse grades than you, says he’s entering his dad’s company after graduation. But you’re still doing this? Life, who would know, they say, and it really turned out that way.”
The tone was light. Like a joke, like advice.
But to my ears, it stuck like a sharp blade.
“Hey, you know I don’t mean it badly, right? I’m saying this all for your own good.”
I forced a smile, but inside, I was helplessly crumbling.
After that, I couldn’t stay close with friends.
……No, actually, it was like that from the start.
Early twenties. Even when sitting side by side with them at a bar, I trembled while only looking at the snack prices ringing up at the register. Even amid the sounds of laughter and toasts, I just sat there counting the sound of cards being swiped and my bank balance.
When those friends discussed the future, I didn’t even have the imagination left to picture tomorrow.
That was the life of twenty-four-year-old Baek Sion.
***
“…What a damn realistic dream.”
I rubbed my eye sockets roughly and got up. I immediately washed my face and, as always, began preparing to open.
“Gotta shake it off and work.”
Sadness is brief.
Tomorrow. And the next tomorrow doesn’t have the luxury to be consumed by sadness. For far too long, reality has driven me that way.
After taking one long breath, I deliberately shook off the remnants of the dream.
Then I was busy moving around, preparing ingredients, and brewing broth in a large pot.
BOOM!
At the ear-splitting roar, the ladle slipped from my hand, and clang! the sound of the ladle hitting the floor spread.
“What?”
With my heart sinking, I looked outside the door and saw a small shadow crouched in front of the inn. Between the dust scattered by the wind, a form gradually revealed itself.
As I cautiously approached the form, I saw dark red fur soaked in blood and messily matted. Looking more closely, I could even see short horns protruding above its forehead.
A faint breathing sound rang in my ears. My chest ached at the precarious breath that seemed about to break.
“……Ha.”
A sigh mixed with curses leaked out.
The hand that had gripped the door handle hesitated for a moment, then I eventually turned around and looked at the creature again.
Bowing my head to look closely, the wound wasn’t a simple bruise. Deep scars as if slashed with a sword, already hardened blood and festering traces. Looking at the healed traces, it seemed to have been injured for a while.
Its chest was rising and falling faintly, and weak breath touched the back of my hand.
It’s alive.
I finally gritted my teeth and lifted the demon beast.
A body temperature that seemed to be cooling but was still warm seeped into my arms. A fishy yet bitter scent that might be the smell of blood, medicinal herbs, or both mixed together caught my nose.
“Really, Baek Sion. You’re dying to die from taking care of compassion.”
I scolded myself, but it was already too late. The moment I lifted it into my arms, the choice had already ended.
As soon as I brought it inside the inn, I laid the demon beast down and wiped the blood-soaked fur with cotton. The cotton quickly turned red.
“…Even though I don’t know when it’ll open its eyes and bite me.”
I was aware it was dangerous. Yet my hands didn’t stop.
Was it because I didn’t yet know the terror of demon beasts, or was it because of the dream I’d just had?
…Probably the latter. Because it seemed in a similar situation to me.
“You don’t seem to have the fate to become a dragon either.”
I regretted the impulsive decision, but I made excuses, consoling myself that I’d kick it out as soon as it regained consciousness.
Just then, thud thud thud-!
At the sound of someone pounding the door violently, I looked up with a start. When I glanced at the demon beast, it was still breathing faintly.
