Gift

Dain glanced over the book Ha Suyeon was reading. It was filled with messy computer screenshots scattered across the pages. The title was [A Million YouTube Subscribers Even a Monkey Can Get].

“Why are you reading something like this? Are you planning to do YouTube?”

“Yeah.”

In Dain’s eyes, reading a stupid book like this would be no help at all with YouTube. If you wanted to do YouTube, you needed to shoot videos, so why sit around reading a book?

“Whenever you start anything, you’re supposed to begin with a basic book.”

“Hey, even old people wouldn’t spout that bullshit. You can just look it up on YouTube, so why pay money for a book~ At least you borrowed it from the library.”

Ignoring Suyeon, who had flinched for some reason, Dain called the others over. The kids who came sneaking up glanced at the book Suyeon was reading and snickered.

“Has Yeonsu gotten even cuter? How are you supposed to learn YouTube from a book like this?”

“She’s become a total idiot.”

“Don’t do thaaat.”

When they stretched her cheek, Suyeon offered no resistance and merely kept saying, “Stop it.” Her eyes remained fixed on the problematic book.

Watching this, Dain thought Suyeon had changed a great deal. Even Chaerin, who was pulling her cheek right now, would have heard nothing but, “Hey, Kang Chaerin, are you crazy?” if this had happened about a month ago.

After that, she would have had her Instagram attacked with black-screen posts bearing comments like [Ha, this crazy bitch is ruining the whole school ㅡㅡ]. She would have been anonymously terrorized on Ask, and rumors would have spread among her friends, seniors, juniors, and the boys: Hey, I didn’t know Kang Chaerin was such a fucking idiot whore.

But now things were different.

‘She knows Chaerin is like that, so she’s acting this way too…’

The old Suyeon had been that kind of person. She was fun to hang out with, but she never really treated them as true friends. She endlessly ranked people, kept them in check, and expected them to worship her.

The Suyeon of now was different. She was indifferent to her seniors. Indifferent to the middle school students below her. Indifferent to friends in other classes. After school, she went home, and she never showed up for evening plans.

Sometimes, people who had thought they were close to her came looking for her. She responded to them, more or less, but that was the end of it. She never went looking for them herself. Rumors had spread that she had become a crazy bitch, but something that would have caused an uproar before no longer bothered her in the slightest.

“Yeonsu, you have Instagram, right? Why are you trying to do YouTube? If you just posted photos like before, sponsorships would come quickly. You’d make money.”

“I’d rather not.”

Ha Suyeon looked at Chaeina with a flustered expression. At that look, Chaerin and Ina stared at Suyeon with expressions that said, What’s going on?

“What, are you trying to become modest?”

“Did you get a boyfriend?”

“It kind of seems that way. No, I didn’t get a guy or anything…”

Kang Chaerin and Chaeina stared at Dain with expressions of, Eeeek! It was a reaction one might expect. Before, she had been the kind of girl who said things like, ‘It’s important to be subtly sexy,’ while figuring out what photos to post on Instagram to increase her follower count.

That didn’t mean she had become a complete model student, either. Suyeon used to listen diligently in class while saying things like, “It’s to your advantage to stay on the teachers’ good side.” These days, however, unless it was a core subject, she openly put her head down and slept or drew something strange in her notebook.

Looking at everything together… it simply felt as though she had become a different person.

‘How do I make money through YouTube?’

Myeongjeon closed the book. He could get a rough grasp of the basics from it, but the book was somewhat outdated. Since staying current was important with media like this, he couldn’t rely on this one book alone.

‘There’s no point asking those kids.’

The advice those kids could give would be limited to the sort of advice an ordinary high school girl could offer. If that was all they had to say, there was no point listening. They were suggesting things he would never do in the first place, so what good would it do to ask? If he didn’t follow their advice afterward, all he would accomplish was hurting their feelings.

But… perhaps he could at least get a general sense of direction.

“Let’s say I do YouTube. Then what kind of strategy should I use to gather subscribers?”

“Isn’t it in that book?”

“‘Promote your channel in outside communities,’ ‘use foreign-language translation features,’ ‘leave good comments’—that’s about all it says.”

“But if we knew that, we’d be doing YouTube too.”

Of course, Myeongjeon thought with a sigh. Seeing Suyeon like that, Dain scratched her head and opened her mouth.

“Whether it’s YouTube or Instagram, there’s a cheat code people like you can use, Suyeon.”

“What is it?”

“Like this, for example…”

Dain took out her phone and showed them a video. Whatever Vlog. Top of the school, blah blah blah. High school dropout, blah blah blah. Daily life during vacation, blah blah blah. Judging by the titles alone, they were the sort of videos no one should have been curious about.

“If you’re pretty, just put your face front and center and that’s it. Then ramble on about whatever, and foreigners, guys, and kids will come along saying, Wow, you’re so pretty, blah blah blah… It’s a cheat code only the chosen can use.”

“Or…” Dain showed the blank-faced Suyeon another video. It featured a woman playing the piano. Her piano skills were good, but the real point of the video was…

“You show your cleavage like this.”

As Suyeon watched the video, her face gradually turned red. And judging by the way her brow furrowed, she was definitely different from before her head had been cracked open.

“You want me to do something like this?”

“I’m not telling you to. Just like what you used to do on Instagram, anyway, whether it’s men or women, pretty and sexy is best. Blessed girls like you need to put your looks to use.”

Suyeon and Chaerin nodded along with Dain’s words.

“You used to make good use of it, so why not now?”

“Honestly, if you don’t do that with a body this insanely hot, it ought to be illegal.”

The girls each added a comment of their own. Listening to them, Myeongjeon could only think that he shouldn’t have asked these kids in the first place.

* * *

“I’m home.”

“Welcome home. How was school?”

“Well…”

When he got home, ‘Mom’ happened to be there. He greeted her first and casually put his things down. Hadn’t she gone to work today? He remembered eating breakfast with her before she left for work.

“It’s the company’s founding anniversary today, so I got home early. Didn’t I tell you yesterday?”

As he stared at her, thinking that over, Ms. Lee Hyein spoke in a wounded tone. Had she said that? Myeongjeon couldn’t remember clearly. But in any case, it wasn’t important.

Myeongjeon nodded vaguely and tried to head inside to play guitar. But then ‘Mom’ called out to him.

“Sweetie, let’s go shopping today.”

“Huh?”

“Since I got off work early today, there’s something I want to buy you. Okay?”

“If I were going to play guitar at this hour, practice would already be over…”

Hyein gave a small laugh at Suyeon’s grumbling. Even as she complained, the fact that Suyeon’s feet kept following her was incredibly lovable to Hyein.

Was it during elementary school, or early middle school? Back then, the two of them had often gone shopping together. They bought clothes they wanted and food they wanted. They had gone everywhere together so often.

At some point, they had stopped being able to do that.

‘But still, we somehow managed to recover.’

These days, Suyeon seemed less interested in going out and mostly shut herself in her room, touching only her guitar. Still, it was better than the days when she would shout, “Mom, go by yourself!” whenever Hyein suggested going out to buy something, or simply not be home at all.

In any case, she had come out, and even after coming out, she was following along while merely grumbling aloud, wasn’t she? Hyein remembered Suyeon running away several years ago after saying she was going to the bathroom. Compared to nearly having to report her missing, things were much better now… Hyein felt happy.

By contrast, Myeongjeon was dying.

‘How many hours is this shopping going to take?’

When Hyein said they were going shopping, Myeongjeon had expected it to be over in about thirty minutes. He had come partly to humor ‘Mom.’ But before thirty minutes had passed in total, she had already spent thirty minutes in a single store. Myeongjeon was rendered speechless by her astonishingly generous sense of time.

This outfit would look good on him, so he should try it on. This outfit looked good on Hyein, too. He repeatedly tried things on and took them off, then said, “I’ll look around one more time.” Once would have been fine, but the whole process was repeated more than three times. After investing all that time, they ended up buying about three outfits for him and one for Ms. Lee Hyein.

‘I had heard women take a long time shopping, but…’

Even the girlfriends he had briefly dated in his previous life had never taken this long to shop. Had they done that out of consideration for him as a man? He had no idea.

“Bored?”

“…Yes.”

“Heehee. I knew you would be.”

‘Mom’ tugged on Myeongjeon’s cheek. While he was entertaining the pointless thought, Why do women like pulling cheeks so much…? Ms. Lee Hyein moved toward the electronics section of the department store.

“Suyeon’s been playing guitar lately, right?”

“Yes.”

“So I wanted to give you a present. An amp?? I think that’s what it’s called. But it looked like you already had one at home? So I asked the people in my department what would be good for someone who does music.”

Without looking back at Suyeon, Hyein strode in one direction, her heels clicking against the floor.

“They said these days, all you need is a computer. But you don’t have one, Suyeon. So as a present for getting out of the hospital, Mom decided to buy you a computer.”

What Hyein picked up was a laptop bearing a bitten apple. It was a high-end device costing more than two million won, fully capable of handling music and video production.

“What do you think? Is this color okay?”

‘Mom’ said that with a confident smile. It was the smile of someone who believed her gift was certain to be a hit.

And seeing that smile, Myeongjeon felt a pang of sorrow.

‘What kind of life did this girl live…’

Myeongjeon himself had not been particularly filial in life. If anything, he had been closer to an unfilial son. How could someone who had refused to inherit the family business and run away to make money with a single guitar be called filial?

But that had also been a kind of self-defense. What could he possibly say to a father who raised a club and ordered him to inherit the family business? All he could do was run away and send word that he was doing well.

Even so, Myeongjeon thought he had done his duty as a son. Once his income had stabilized, he visited at least once a month and often sent his parents on trips. Before they passed away, he even sent an employee to care for them. He had not followed his parents’ wishes, but he had ensured they never went hungry and could do everything they wanted.

Even so, he sometimes felt guilty about leaving his parents behind, despite having grown so old himself. Still, they had loved him dearly, so perhaps that was why they had tried to go that far… That was how it felt.

But what about this girl?

He didn’t know what circumstances she had faced. There must have been some reason. And since she was going through adolescence, perhaps her emotions had been fickle.

But had a mother who had lost her husband and had little time to care for her child really needed to act this way…? Was it necessary to push her so hard? Had she really thought she was that important?

He could not ask the dead ‘Ha Suyeon.’ In the end, the only one left was him. Which meant that everything depended on how he chose to act.

Seeing Suyeon suddenly fall silent, Hyein’s heart sank.

Why was her child acting like this? Was she telling Hyein not to treat her kindly? Telling her not to suddenly play the role of a mother? Or was there some other problem? Had she somehow offended the girl?

One movement from Suyeon calmed Hyein’s flustered heart.

With obvious hesitation, Suyeon slowly approached and came into her arms.

“Um… I, uh… th-thank… thank you.”

When Suyeon continued, Hyein felt tears welling in her eyes. She didn’t know what kind of change had come over the girl. Perhaps Suyeon had suddenly become grateful simply because Hyein had bought her something. Perhaps she was grateful for some calculating reason.

But to Hyein now, none of that mattered in the slightest. What importance could any of it have? The only thing that mattered was that her daughter, her child, had reached out to her.

“Okay.”

Hyein reached out as well and hugged her child. The girl’s body trembled slightly, and it was much bigger than Hyein remembered.

‘When did she grow this big…’

Had it really been so long since she had held her that she hadn’t noticed her growing up? It was sad, but it didn’t matter. The past was not important. What mattered was the present.

“Um…”

“Yes?”

Still holding each other, Suyeon suddenly spoke.

“S-since you’re buying me something anyway, c-could you buy me a little more? I have a lot of things to get…”

“Just name it. You don’t know your mom? She has lots of money. You can buy everything here if you want. Don’t worry.”

That was nothing to her. If it was something her daughter wanted, she could give her anything.