Chapter 25: The Road to Seoul
The morning Daniel left for Seoul, his mother packed him a lunch that could feed a small army.
Kimbap—three rolls, tightly wrapped in foil. Fried chicken, still warm, in a container that she’d sealed with approximately seven layers of plastic wrap. Kimchi in a jar that she’d labeled “EAT WITHIN 3 DAYS” in permanent marker, as if kimchi were a ticking time bomb rather than a fermented vegetable. Rice cakes. Fruit. Two bottles of water. And tucked into the bottom of the bag, wrapped in a cloth napkin, three pieces of hotteok that were still warm from the pan.
“Mom, I’m going to Seoul, not the Arctic.”
“Seoul doesn’t have proper food.”
“Seoul has eight million people. They eat.”
“They eat restaurant food. Restaurant food is not real food. Real food is made by someone who loves you.”
She pressed the bag into his hands with the gentle ferocity of a woman who understood that packing food was the last form of control she had over her son’s nutrition, and she was not going to surrender it without a fight.
His father was loading the suitcase into the back of a borrowed car—Mr. Kim from upstairs had a Hyundai Sonata that he lent out for special occasions, and apparently, a son leaving for Seoul National University qualified. The suitcase contained everything Daniel owned that wasn’t already in Bupyeong: clothes, textbooks, his laptop (a used ThinkPad he’d bought at the flea market and refurbished), his plastic-covered notebook, and the acceptance letter in a protective sleeve.
Minji was leaning against the apartment building entrance, arms crossed, wearing the expression of a twelve-year-old who was trying very hard to be cool about the fact that her brother was leaving.
“You’re going to forget about us,” she said.
“Impossible. Mom will call me every day.”
“Twice a day,” their mother corrected from the doorway.
“See? How could I forget?”
“That’s not what I mean.” Minji uncrossed her arms. Then crossed them again. Then uncrossed them and shoved her hands in her pockets. “I mean—you’re going to SNU. You’re going to be around smart people and rich people and people who—who aren’t from Bupyeong. And you’re going to—”
“Minji.”
“What?”
“I’m going to Seoul, not another planet. It’s an hour and a half by train. I’ll come home every other weekend.”
“Every weekend.”
“Every other weekend and holidays.”
“Every weekend, holidays, and whenever I text you that it’s an emergency.”
“What qualifies as an emergency?”
“Anything I say is an emergency.”
Daniel pulled his sister into a hug. She resisted for approximately half a second before melting into it, her face pressed against his chest, her arms tight around his waist. She was small—still small, still twelve, still the girl who thought quadratic equations were dumb and fish metaphors made emotional sense.
“I’ll call you every night,” Daniel said. “And I’ll help with your homework. Over the phone. Same as if I were here.”
“It’s not the same.”
“I know. But it’s what I’ve got.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“If you break this one, I will read the diary.”
“Understood.”
She let go. Wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Go. Before I start crying and ruin my reputation.”
“You don’t have a reputation.”
“I’m working on one.”
The drive to Seoul took two hours in Saturday morning traffic.
His father drove. His mother sat in the back, surrounded by the overflow of food containers that hadn’t fit in Daniel’s bag. Minji had stayed home—”I’m not going to wave goodbye at the gate like we’re in a drama, oppa”—but Daniel had seen her watching from the fifth-floor window as they pulled away.
The highway unrolled before them—grey concrete, green signs, the flat landscape of Gyeonggi province giving way to the dense urban canopy of Seoul. Daniel watched the scenery change and felt the specific vertigo of standing at a threshold—the moment between what was and what would be.
“Nervous?” his father asked, eyes on the road.
“A little.”
“Good. Nervous means you care.”
“Did you read that on a calendar?”
“I read it in a fortune cookie. Same thing.”
Daniel laughed. His father didn’t smile—his father was driving, and driving required the same level of concentration as operating factory equipment—but the corner of his mouth moved in a way that suggested satisfaction.
They arrived at the SNU campus in Gwanak-gu at 11 AM. The campus was enormous—rolling hills, brick buildings, tree-lined paths that looked like they’d been designed for thoughtful walks between profound thoughts. Students moved in clusters, carrying boxes and suitcases, their parents trailing behind with the dazed expressions of people who had just driven two hours to deliver their most precious possession to a building that didn’t have a kitchen.
Daniel’s dormitory was in Building 919—a concrete rectangle that was functional in the way that Korean university housing tended to be functional: four walls, a bed, a desk, a window, and the absolute minimum amount of charm required to technically qualify as human habitation.
“It’s small,” his mother observed.
“It’s a dorm room. They’re all small.”
“Where do you cook?”
“There’s a communal kitchen on the first floor.”
“Communal.” She said the word the way you’d say “contaminated.” “Other people use it?”
“That’s what communal means, Mom.”
“I’m leaving extra kimchi.”
His father carried the suitcase in silence, set it on the bed, and surveyed the room with the practiced eye of a man who assessed spaces for structural soundness. He knocked on the wall. Checked the window lock. Tested the desk for stability by leaning on it with both hands.
“It’ll do,” he declared. Which, from Cho Byungsoo, was an architectural endorsement.
They spent an hour setting up the room. His mother made the bed with sheets she’d brought from home—”dormitory sheets are too thin”—and organized the food containers in the communal refrigerator with labels that said “CHO DANIEL — DO NOT TOUCH” in handwriting so aggressive it served as its own security system. His father assembled the desk lamp and confirmed that all electrical outlets were properly grounded.
Then it was time to go.
His mother hugged him in the hallway, not caring that other families were walking past, not caring that two boys from the room next door were watching with the amused sympathy of freshmen who had just gone through the same thing.
“Eat properly,” she said. “Sleep properly. Call me.”
“I will.”
“Every day.”
“Every day.”
“And come home.”
“I will, Mom. I promise.”
His father’s goodbye was different. He stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, the car keys jangling slightly. He looked at Daniel—his son, eighteen years old now in body, forty-three in mind, standing in a dormitory room at the best university in Korea.
“Your grandfather never finished middle school,” his father said. “I finished high school. You’re at Seoul National University.” He paused. “Each generation goes further. That’s how it should be.”
“I’m going to go a lot further, Dad.”
“I know you will. Just don’t go so far that you can’t find your way back.”
The words settled in Daniel’s chest like a stone dropped in water—heavy, spreading, reaching deeper than the words themselves.
Don’t go so far that you can’t find your way back.
In my first life, I went so far I forgot where I started. I built a tower in Gangnam and forgot the apartment in Bupyeong. I made four billion dollars and lost the family that was worth more.
Not this time. This time, I go far. But I always find my way back.
“I’ll be home every other weekend,” Daniel said. “With dirty laundry and an appetite.”
“Your mother will be thrilled about the laundry.”
“I’ll be thrilled about the food.”
His father nodded. Extended his hand. They shook—a father and son, at a threshold, acknowledging with a handshake what neither could say with words.
Then his parents were gone. The borrowed Hyundai Sonata pulled out of the campus parking lot, merged into the Gwanak-ro traffic, and disappeared.
Daniel stood at his dormitory window and watched until the car was a speck, then nothing.
He was alone in Seoul. For the first time in this life.
The room was quiet. The campus hummed outside—distant laughter, a bus engine, birds in the trees. Spring sunlight fell through the window in long diagonal bars, illuminating the dust motes in the air like tiny planets in a miniature universe.
His phone buzzed. Three messages.
Minho: “Welcome to Seoul, bro. KU campus is 30 minutes from yours. When are we getting tteokbokki?“
Soyeon: “Orientation is Monday at 9. Don’t be late. I’ve already mapped the optimal route from Building 919 to the Business Administration building. Attached.“
Minji: “Mom is crying in the car. Dad is pretending not to notice. Normal stuff. Don’t forget to call me tonight. Also I ate the last hotteok. Sorry not sorry.“
Daniel smiled. He typed three replies, then put his phone down and opened his notebook.
The last page of Part One. The end of the beginning.
March 2010. Seoul National University. Business Administration, Class of 2014.
Portfolio value: 22,000,000 won (from original 4,320,000).
Family: Safe. Healthy. Together.
Friends: Minho at KU. Soyeon at SNU Law. Both within reach.
What I came back with: 25 years of future knowledge.
What I’ve built in 18 months: A foundation.
What lies ahead: Somewhere on this campus, there’s a computer science student named Yoon Sarah who doesn’t know she’s going to be the best CTO in Asia. There’s a marketing student named Lee Marcus who doesn’t know he’s going to build a company that changes how people think about technology. And there’s a professor named Kim Jongwoo whose research will shape the next decade of artificial intelligence.
They don’t know me yet. But they will.
Volume 1: Complete.
He closed the notebook. Stood at the window. Seoul spread out before him—twelve million people, a million buildings, a hundred years of history compressed into concrete and glass and the restless energy of a city that never stopped building, never stopped climbing, never stopped believing that tomorrow would be bigger than today.
Somewhere in that city, his future was waiting. The company. The empire. The thing he’d come back to build.
But first: dinner. His mother’s kimbap was in the refrigerator, labeled in permanent marker, guarded by handwriting fierce enough to ward off any dormitory thief.
Daniel went downstairs, retrieved the kimbap, and ate it alone at his desk, watching the Seoul sunset paint the sky in shades of gold and rose.
It was the last meal his mother had made for him as a boy.
The next one would be the first she made for him as a man.
And the difference between the two was a year and a half, a fortune in a brokerage account, a fishing rod, a day at Lotte World, and the quiet, stubborn love of a family that had believed in him when believing made no sense at all.