Walking over with a cigarette between his lips, Senior Manager Kim Seok-hun held out his hand without preamble.
“Where's my lottery ticket?”
Behind him, the Team Leaders of the Store Development Team and the Franchise Operations Team were sending me sympathetic looks.
It seemed he had already spread the news that a disciplinary committee was being held.
The heads of other departments.
Looking at them, my mind raced.
Ordinarily, it would have been an awkward situation, but at this very moment, they could not have been more perfect as an audience and witnesses.
The bastard in front of me was a man who valued saving face more than his own life.
Just as he had done, I held out an empty hand.
“Should you not give me the money first?”
A brief silence fell, and after blinking blankly for a moment, he shouted.
“What was that, punk?! Are you out of your mind?!”
The reaction I had expected.
For ten years, I had never once asked for it.
He had always taken the lottery ticket as if it were his birthright, and I hadn't bothered clashing with him over a measly five thousand won either.
However, things were different now.
If the contents of the diary came true just as written…….
“You need to give me five thousand won.”
At least ten wrinkles seemed to crease between Senior Manager Kim's brows.
Hurling the cigarette he was holding onto the ground, he let out a scoffing laugh.
“What? Five thousand won?”
“Yes. You need to give me the five thousand won for the lottery ticket. Is that not only natural?”
“Huh, look at this bastard? Hey, are you messing with me right now?!”
Senior Manager Kim's voice rose, and naturally, the gazes of the people who had come with him focused on me.
“Why is a guy who's never brought up money once until now suddenly acting like this?! Don't tell me you're doing this because of the disciplinary committee? Did you do a good job?! Huh?!”
Provocation—this was a moment that called for provocation.
Things would get quite exhausting for a while, but to protect the lottery ticket, I had to bear with it.
“Is it not a reasonable demand? Even if I cannot get paid for running the errand, I should at least get the principal back. From the time I joined the company until now, the tickets I have bought for you alone must add up to well over a million won.”
“Th-This… has this crazy bastard lost his mind?! Did you hit your head in the car accident?!”
Car accident, my ass.
No such accident even happened, mister.
Senior Manager Kim grabbed the back of his neck as if dumbfounded.
For the first time, I held my head stiffly upright and glared at him.
Talking back to him and demanding a few bucks right in front of the other department heads was more than enough to scratch his millet-sized pride.
On top of that, there was even murmuring at just the right volume to be overheard.
The perfect situation to rile up Senior Manager Kim unfolded all on its own.
“What's with Manager Kang? He's acting a bit different than usual, isn't he?”
“Tell me about it. Just how badly must Senior Manager Kim have hounded him for that good-natured Manager Kang to act like that?”
The whispers coming from behind poured oil onto the already boiling Senior Manager Kim.
With even his ears burning bright red, Senior Manager Kim poked my chest hard with his finger.
“Hey! Kang Jin-hyeok! Are you seriously acting like this toward your superior over chump change like that?! Are you confident you won't regret it?!”
Regret?
You have no idea. Right now, I'm doing my absolute best not to regret anything.
I debated whether to snap back with one more remark, but there was no need to waste any more words on him.
I turned my head to the side, averting my gaze, and crumpled my face into a scowl.
That look was the finishing blow.
“Ha-. This bastard has really lost his mind. I don't need it, you bastard!!!”
Senior Manager Kim shrieked at the top of his lungs.
It was music to my ears.
“Do you really not need it?”
“Yeah! I'm so disgusted I'm not buying it! Not buying it! Like hell a ticket bought by an unlucky bastard like you would ever win! Eat it yourself and get lost, you beggar bastard! I'll just buy another one with my own money—you think I'm going to beg a bastard like you?! Acting all high and mighty over a measly 5,000 won?!”
-BANG!!!
Senior Manager Kim Seok-hun kicked an innocent trash can and stormed out of the smoking area.
The remaining department heads sent me sympathetic looks, but I really couldn't have cared less.
Why had I waited until now to do something this refreshing?
Perhaps, under the excuse of needing to build up my strength, I had been turning myself into a pushover all along.
What kind of face would he make if he found out that this lottery ticket was worth 8 billion won?
I wouldn't even buy him frozen pork belly.
***
The evening rush-hour traffic was no different from usual, but my heart was speeding down a wide-open Autobahn.
Every time I stopped at a red light, I opened the diary app out of habit.
With tension that felt like it might burst my chest, I tapped on next Monday's date.
[No recorded entries.]
I was flustered.
The contents hadn't changed—they had vanished completely.
I had expected to see cheers written down, like ‘I won the lottery.’ or ‘8 billion won just hit my bank account.’
Could the future have disappeared?
Just as anxiety was about to wash over me, I remembered what I had always used this app for.
An emotional trash can.
I had never once recorded a happy occasion.
I had used it strictly to vent my anger, spewing out only rage, injustice, curses aimed at someone, or the misery of corporate life.
Because recording happiness didn't double the joy.
In other words, the fact that the record for March 9th had vanished meant that whatever would have made me angry or driven me to despair on that day had vanished.
Namely, the shitty event of Senior Manager Kim Seok-hun winning the lottery ticket I had bought for him.
It seemed the future me was so overjoyed that recording a diary entry didn't even cross my mind.
The amount Senior Manager Kim had supposedly won was 8 billion won after taxes.
The diary entry had stated that there were only two winners.
And one of those tickets was sitting inside my breast pocket.
If this was real….
Suddenly, a way to increase the prize money occurred to me.
What I had in my pocket wasn't just an 8-billion-won lottery slip, but the numbers that would win first prize.
Sixteen billion won had been split between two people.
What if ten people split it?
The prize money of that unknown other winner would shrink, and my prize money would grow.
Wait, would that be okay?
A complete stranger I had never met would be having money taken away by me, wouldn't they?
My tactless conscience couldn't sit still and began to ache on its own.
First, let's run the calculator.
If I bought ten more tickets with the same numbers, that would make eleven tickets in total.
The total first-prize pool before taxes would be around 24 billion won.
Dividing that among 12 tickets, the after-tax payout per ticket would be roughly 1.37 billion won.
Combined, the eleven tickets in my possession meant I could get my hands on the staggering sum of 15 billion won.
The person who had been destined to receive 8 billion won would have to settle for 1.3 billion, but since there was no way they would ever know this fact, they would be more than happy with that much too.
After all, the lottery was luck.
Knowing the winning numbers in advance was also my own stroke of luck.
After justifying it to myself with some plausible self-rationalization, I walked into a lottery retailer.
“Ten tickets with the same numbers, please.”
“Ten five-thousand-won tickets?”
Wasn't this a common thing?
The middle-aged woman behind the counter blinked her eyes and stared straight at me.
It was a good thing I had put on a mask before coming in.
Nothing good would come of having my face known as the person who hit first prize on a whopping ten tickets.
“I decided to split them with my friends, and if only one person wins, the rest of us would be green with envy.”
Since I didn't know which of the five games on the slip was the first-prize combination, I had to buy ten completely identical tickets.
I didn't feel the slightest bit of regret over the wasted lines.
Because the lottery tickets bought for 50,000 won were going to turn into 15 billion won.
I laid the ten lottery tickets out on the table and checked to make sure not a single number was wrong.
I had to be thorough.
If I didn't want to blow over 10 billion won because of a mistake by the woman at the counter.
It still didn't feel real.
Were these really first-prize lottery tickets?
Even though the disciplinary committee had been decided just as written in the diary, it was still utterly unbelievable.
What if the pay cut was also confirmed at the disciplinary committee on Friday?
By then, there would be no need to doubt any further.
And yet, why was it?
Even before I had complete certainty, I was already starting to ponder what I would do first once I won the lottery.
The very first among them was my father.
I couldn't do a single thing while leaving my father the way he was now.
One of the reasons I had clung so fiercely to the Seongun Group Commercial District Analysis Team.
And the most aching finger in my life.
It was my father, who had spent his entire life working solely for his family, yet had never received any reward.
I turned the car toward Gangnam.
A forest of buildings shooting out dazzling lights.
A shabby guard booth that looked out of place among those colossal buildings caught my eye.
“Welcome. Basement Level 3 is full, so please head down to Level 4.”
A white-haired old man bowing at a 90-degree angle toward a luxury sedan entering the parking lot.
His uniform hung loosely on him, and his hunched back showed no sign of straightening.
He was my father.
Once, he had been an owner grilling galbi in a restaurant under his own name.
My father's restaurant, which had boasted great cooking and quite a lot of regulars, had been swept away without a trace by the indiscriminate opening offensive of franchises and the massive wave of gentrification.
All that remained was an unbearable mountain of debt and one man's shattered pride.
“Father.”
“Huh? Isn't that Jin-hyeok? What brings you here at this hour?”
When I rolled down the window, my father welcomed me with surprised eyes.
As if I were some great son to be proud of.
Seeing him break into a wide smile the moment he saw my face made a lump rise in my throat.
“You haven't eaten yet, have you? It's your shift change time. Let's go grab a meal together. I'll wait right out front.”
“No, I'm fine. I packed a lunchbox….”
“Please don't say that and come on out. Something came up that I really need to tell you.”
I had only asked him to get a meal, yet a shadow fell across my father's face.
He truly never changed.
Even at this moment, my father was probably worrying that I might have come to ask for financial help.
A man who, no matter how difficult the situation, would give away even the smallest thing for the sake of his family.
He was worrying first because he no longer had anything left to give.
“I got a bonus, so I want to treat you to a meal. Let's go first, shall we?”
After easing my father's worries, I headed to a nearby restaurant with him.
Just like always, my father didn't even touch the meat himself, busy pushing it over to my side instead.
It was truly an unwavering love.
“Is work at the company bearable? And is that superior of yours, Senior Manager Kim, still the same?”
“Yes. Well… people don't change easily. He's always the same. By the way, Father…….”
I set down my chopsticks and looked straight into my father's eyes.
“By any chance, wouldn't you like to try running a restaurant again? I think your galbi was much more delicious than this place's.”
My father's hands stopped, and his gaze dropped weakly.
“This kid, really…. Why are you suddenly talking such nonsense out of nowhere?”
“I analyze commercial districts for a living, remember? It's because there's a pretty good spot I found.”
“Forget it.”
My father shook his head firmly.
“I don't have the capital for that, and even if I did, I wouldn't want to.”
A bitter smile.
It seemed the wounds left behind by failure still hadn't healed.
A corner of my chest ached.
However, it was also the reaction I had anticipated.
And so, the second proposal I had prepared.
“Then instead of running a business, how about management?”
“Management? Are you talking about security work? I'm already doing that right now.”
“It would be different from now. You would be managing your own building, Father, not someone else's. I mean managing tenants, not working as a laborer. If things go well, I'm thinking of trying my hand at a franchise business myself.”
My father stared at me blankly.
His expression said that even as a joke, it was going too far.
“Are you feeling unwell somewhere? Where would we get a building? And running a franchise business is no ordinary undertaking…….”
“We don't have one yet. But I think we're going to have one very soon.”
A lingering unease of ‘what if’ still existed, but I decided to enjoy this moment to the fullest.
I picked up my water cup and wet my throat.
Just thinking about it made my heart start pounding all over again.
“Take a look at this.”
I rummaged through my pocket and held out a single lottery ticket.
“Isn't this a lottery ticket?”
“That's right. I had a good dream. It was such a good dream that I bought multiple tickets with the same numbers. When this hits, I'm going to build a building in a prime location.”
My father, who had been flipping the meat, froze solid right then and there.
I understood.
Because I, who had always been calm and collected, was spouting complete nonsense.
“…Just how good of a dream did you have to be this worked up?”
If it was about dreams, I had dreamed countless times.
Not in bed, but in reality, day and night without rest.
“I dreamed that the cur that used to bite at me every single day tucked its tail between its legs and ran away.”
“…Th-That's just a dog dream—a nonsense dream, isn't it?”
“Is it? To me, it felt like an incredible lucky dream. Because he was the only stumbling block in my life.”
This wasn't easy.
At a metaphor only I understood, my father's face filled with worry.
It was the look of a man gazing at a son who had genuinely lost his mind.
“Phew-. I can't even make a joke with you. The dog dream was just a joke. Just hold onto this safely. What matters is that when it wins first prize, I really am going to buy a building. When that happens, you have to help me out, Father. Got it?”
“Huhu-. What silly talk. Alright. It's a lottery ticket you gave me, so what's the problem with you doing whatever you want with it? I'll help you with the management work too. Though this thing has to win first.”
My heart nearly stopped.
Far from handling a lottery slip worth over 1.3 billion won with care, he was waving it around carelessly.
What was he going to do if it dropped into the charcoal fire like that….
“Please hand me your wallet for a second.”
I snatched the lottery ticket from my father's hand, folded it neatly, and tucked it into his wallet for him.
This was a ticket to heaven that would completely transform our family's lives.
Though, just as my father said, it had to win first.
“This kid, you really must have had a great dream. Let's see here. If it wins even fifty thousand won, your old man will treat you to a meal.”
Goodness.
Besides Senior Manager Kim Seok-hun, there was now one more person whose expression I wanted to see after winning first prize.
Even my father, who had always taught me not to wish for windfalls and to live honestly, wouldn't be able to hold back his laughter.
“You must never give it to anyone else. If I don't win first prize, I'm going to think you jinxed my luck, Father. Understand?”
“What's that? This rascal, what do you take your own father for?!”
Watching my father laugh heartily for the first time in a long while, I stepped out of the restaurant in high spirits.
The sight of my father's back as he returned inside the shabby container booth.
They were twilight years unfitting for a father who had devoted his entire life to his family.
I was going to build a building.
And I was going to fill the inside of it with my very own 1st branches.
I hoped my father would live comfortably there with me, looking down at the world.
If he said he wanted to run a business again, even better.
I knew.
When the happiest moment of my father's life had been.
After staring blankly at the old container holding my father, I turned on the diary app.
The vanished record for March 9th.
It was a moment that felt somewhat unsettling, yet kept filling me with hope all the same.