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  • Love After a Fortnight
  • Park Sang Young (bio)
    Translated by Sean Lin Halbert (bio)

Character is destiny.

Afterwards, this is what I repeat to myself.

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Had the full moon not been out that night, I wonder what would have happened. Had I not worked late that day, had I not ridden home in Han-yŏng's car, would things have been different?

It's been just two years, but now it's hard to imagine that I ever had to work late at the office. That day, Han-yŏng and I were managing an event with more than two hundred people. Although we were the same age, and although he had skipped a grade in elementary school, Han-yŏng entered our company four years after me and was placed as my subordinate, a turn of events brought about by a working holiday in Australia and partying away most of his twenties. Being a superior to someone the same age as myself was confusing at first, but we quickly became friends because of our dislike for everything about office parties except for the drinks, of course. We were so close, in fact, that people in the office playfully nicknamed us "office husbands."

At the time, our company was riding the American economic boom and enjoying a period of favorable export conditions. [End Page 17] Every day was a new market cap record for our company, and the furnaces of factories around the world were burning hot. But our company feared being hit with heavy taxes as sales were far surpassing our target operating income, so we were looking for excuses to spend a lot of money in the shortest amount of time possible. The company hastily set up a business headquarters for online services (something they knew would become a money sinkhole) and brought in as many famous industry experts as they could. Even at the marketing headquarters where I worked, there were new projects for the sole purpose of spending capital. We paid the hottest celebrities of the time (from both traditional and internet media alike) to appear in advertisements, and we planned all sorts of social contribution activities. It was a capital smorgasbord, a 24/7 business buffet.

That day's event was one such feast. We planned a speech for new recruits at the main auditorium at Sŏch'o-dong headquarters and brought in a lecturer who charged a premium. But to make it a real cash dump, we turned it into a "talk and concert" with a hip-hop artist who had won an idol competition and was worth their weight in gold. Even though registration for the event was only open to new recruits, tickets sold out in just three minutes. And on the day of the event, you could hardly find an empty seat in the two-hundred-person auditorium. Unfortunately, the lecturer's presentation only elicited yawns from the audience. He wanted to encourage the new recruits, but he had an odd way of doing it, as he spent most of the talk bemoaning the fact that the current generation was incapable of maintaining its mental health under the weight of fierce competition. "Mortgaging away your youth for the future by ignoring your emotions is foolish," he said. "Live, love, and die!" As I listened to his lecture, which was bordering on the line of irresponsible instigation, I couldn't help but wish that people would pay me to stand up in front of a crowd of two hundred people and spout my unsupported opinions. But thankfully, the hip-hop concert—which I had my reservations [End Page 18] about—was enjoyable, even though they did show up twenty minutes late.

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The event finished, and perhaps because we had used the most reputable (and most expensive) event planning service we could find, everything from clearing off the stage to packing up went by without a hitch. Han-yŏng and I sat in chairs placed in the corner of the auditorium and watched as the robot-like workers rushed to clear the stage. It was 9 p.m. by the time everything was put away and the auditorium...

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