Chapter 20: The Fishing Rod
The portfolio crossed fifteen million won on a Thursday in September, and Daniel bought the fishing rod on Friday.
He’d been tracking the number for weeks—watching it creep upward through thirteen million, fourteen million, the growth accelerating as the market recovery gained momentum. Samsung was at 740,000 won, up fifty-one percent from his buy price. Hyundai was at 95,000, more than doubled. The portfolio, which had started as 4,320,000 won of tutoring money and electronics profits, was now worth more than his father made in half a year.
But Daniel didn’t celebrate by reinvesting, or by checking the next quarter’s projections, or by doing any of the things that the first version of himself would have done. He went to the sporting goods store in Incheon.
The rod was exactly where his father had described it: on the wall behind the counter, third from the right, in a section labeled “Premium.” Carbon fiber, telescopic, with a reel that was smooth enough to make a grown man slightly emotional. The price tag said 320,000 won.
“Is this the best one you have?” Daniel asked the shopkeeper, a weather-beaten man in his sixties who looked like he’d spent more time fishing than selling fishing rods.
“Best in the store. Shimano manufacture. Japanese. The action is medium-fast, good for freshwater and light saltwater. You fish?”
“My father does.”
“Then he’ll know what this is.” The shopkeeper lifted the rod from the wall with the reverence of a man handling a sacred object. “I’ve had this on the wall for three years. Your father’s been in here to look at it, hasn’t he?”
“You know my father?”
“Cho Byungsoo? Factory worker? Comes in once a month, looks at this rod for ten minutes, then buys two-thousand-won hooks and leaves?” The shopkeeper smiled. “I know all my regulars. Especially the ones who want things they won’t buy.”
Daniel paid in cash. The shopkeeper wrapped the rod in a soft cloth sleeve and placed it in a long cardboard tube.
“Tell your father that a rod like this wants to be used. Not admired.”
“I will.”
He brought the rod home at dinner time, which was strategic. His father was in his chair, television on, beer open—the holy trinity of Cho Byungsoo’s evening routine. His mother was in the kitchen. Minji was at the table, doing homework with the aggressive focus of someone who had recently discovered that math wasn’t impossible after all.
Daniel walked in with the cardboard tube and set it against the wall next to his father’s chair. Then he sat down at the table and started eating as if nothing had happened.
His father looked at the tube. Looked at Daniel. Looked at the tube again.
“What is that?”
“Open it.”
“Daniel—”
“Just open it, Dad.”
Cho Byungsoo was not a man who opened presents quickly. He approached the cardboard tube the way he approached everything—with deliberate, methodical caution. He slid the cloth sleeve out. Unrolled it. And then he was holding the rod.
The kitchen went very quiet.
His father’s hands moved along the carbon fiber shaft with the practiced touch of a man who understood materials—who spent his days shaping metal and knew quality by feel. He extended the telescopic sections one by one, each click smooth and precise. He tested the reel. He held the rod up at arm’s length and looked down its length the way a carpenter sights along a plank.
“This is the Shimano,” he said. His voice was strange. Thick.
“From the sporting goods store. Mr. Kwon says you’ve been looking at it for two years.”
“Three.” His father cleared his throat. “Three years.”
“Well, now it’s yours.”
“How much?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How much, Daniel.”
“Three hundred and twenty thousand won. From the portfolio profits. Not from the principal. Not from the family savings. From money that didn’t exist six months ago.”
His father was quiet. He held the rod the way other men held their children—with a gentleness that was almost painful to watch, as if he was afraid it might disappear if he gripped too hard.
His mother came to the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked at the rod. She looked at her husband’s face. And then she did something that Daniel had never seen her do: she walked over and kissed Cho Byungsoo on the forehead.
“About time someone bought you something,” she said softly.
“I don’t need—”
“Hush.”
“Soonyoung—”
“Hush, I said.” She turned to Daniel. “Thank you.”
“The washing machine is next,” Daniel said. “And sneakers for Minji.”
“I want the sneakers first!” Minji interjected from the table, where she’d been watching the whole scene with the wide eyes of a child who was old enough to understand that something important was happening but young enough to still want sneakers.
“Washing machine first,” his mother said firmly. “Your sneakers can wait.”
“But Mom—”
“You have feet. The washing machine has been making the death rattle for six months. Priorities, Minji.”
“The death rattle is an exaggeration.”
“It woke your father up last Tuesday.”
“I sleep through factory noise. If a washing machine wakes me up, it’s dying.” His father was still holding the rod. He hadn’t put it down. He was sitting in his chair, beer forgotten, television unwatched, running his fingers along the carbon fiber like a man touching a dream he’d given up on.
“Dad?” Daniel said.
“Hmm.”
“We should go fishing. This weekend.”
“I have work on Saturday.”
“Sunday, then. There’s a reservoir near Suwon. Minho’s dad used to take him there—” Daniel stopped. Minho’s dad, who was currently unemployed and pretending not to be. “Actually, let’s go somewhere closer. Songdo has piers.”
“Songdo piers are for tourists.”
“We’ll be tourists for a day.”
His father looked at him. The television flickered blue light across his face. The fishing rod lay across his lap like a scepter.
“Sunday,” he said. “Early. Five AM. Fish don’t wait for people who sleep in.”
“Five AM. Got it.”
“And bring food. Your mother’s kimbap. The kind with tuna.”
“I’ll make it tonight,” his mother said. She was smiling—really smiling, the kind of smile that used up her whole face and made her look ten years younger.
Daniel ate his dinner. The rice was warm. The kimchi was perfect. The jjigae was his mother’s best. And across the table, his father held a fishing rod and tried very hard not to show how much it meant.
He failed. But that was okay. Some failures are the good kind.
They went fishing on Sunday.
Five AM was brutal. Daniel’s seventeen-year-old body, which was usually excellent at mornings, rebelled against the alarm with every fiber of its being. He dragged himself out of bed, pulled on a hoodie and jeans, and found his father already dressed and waiting in the kitchen.
Cho Byungsoo was wearing his “outdoor” clothes—a faded jacket, rubber boots, a hat that had been old when Daniel was born. The Shimano rod was in its tube, slung over his shoulder like a rifle. His expression was the closest thing to excitement that Daniel had ever seen on his face, which meant his eyebrows were slightly elevated and his jaw was fractionally less clenched than usual.
“You’re late,” his father said. It was 4:58 AM.
“By two minutes.”
“Fish don’t care about minutes. Let’s go.”
They took the bus to Songdo—an early-morning bus that was nearly empty, occupied only by them and a handful of ajummas heading to the fish market. The city was still waking up, the streetlights competing with the first grey suggestions of dawn.
His father was quiet during the ride. Not the tense quiet of a worried man or the comfortable quiet of a content one. This was the anticipatory quiet of someone who was about to do something they loved and was savoring the approach.
The pier was concrete and salt-crusted, stretching into the grey-blue water of the Yellow Sea. A handful of other early-morning fishermen were already set up—older men, mostly, with the weathered patience of people who understood that fishing was ninety percent waiting and ten percent everything else.
Cho Byungsoo assembled the Shimano with the careful reverence he’d shown the night before. Each section clicked into place. The reel mounted smoothly. He threaded the line with fingers that were thick and calloused but surprisingly dexterous—factory hands, trained for precision.
“You remember how to cast?” he asked Daniel.
“It’s been a while.”
“It’s like riding a bicycle. Except you can drown.”
“Encouraging.”
His father showed him. The motion was smooth and practiced—a flick of the wrist, the line sailing out over the water in a graceful arc, the sinker hitting the surface with a soft plop. In the morning quiet, the sound was oddly satisfying.
Daniel’s first cast went sideways and nearly hooked the ajumma three spots over. His second went approximately two meters. His third was decent.
“Not bad,” his father said. “For a businessman.”
“I’m a student.”
“You’re a student who runs a business. Different thing.”
They fished. The morning warmed slowly, the sun climbing through a haze of marine fog. Seagulls argued overhead. The water lapped against the concrete pilings with a rhythm that was almost meditative.
For a long time, they didn’t talk. Fishing, Daniel was learning, was one of those activities that made silence not just acceptable but desirable. The rod in his hands, the line in the water, the slow breathing of the sea—it all conspired to create a space where words weren’t necessary.
His father caught the first fish at 7:15 AM. A small sea bass, maybe twenty centimeters, silvery and indignant. He held it up with a satisfaction that was almost boyish.
“Not big enough to keep,” he said.
“It’s a great fish.”
“It’s a fish for ants.” But he was smiling as he released it. The Shimano rod had performed perfectly, and his father ran his hand along it the way you’d pat a dog that had done a good trick.
Daniel didn’t catch anything. He didn’t care.
“Dad,” he said, watching his line bob in the water.
“Hmm.”
“Do you remember what you told me? On the balcony? About Grandfather?”
“I remember.”
“You said everyone has the capacity for good and bad, and the question is whether they have someone who makes them want to choose the good.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Who was that person for you?”
His father reeled in his line slowly, checking the bait. The question hung in the salt air between them.
“Your mother,” he said. “And then you kids.” He recast, the line sailing out in a perfect arc. “Before your mother, I was angry. At my father, for losing everything. At the world, for being the kind of place where a man works his whole life and has nothing to show for it. I was going to be bitter, like my father. I could feel it growing.”
“What changed?”
“Kim Soonyoung walked into the factory cafeteria on a Tuesday afternoon and asked me if the seat next to me was taken.” His father’s voice was factual, unemotional, the way he described all things that mattered too much for decoration. “I said no. She sat down. She talked for forty-five minutes about nothing—the weather, the food, a TV show she’d watched. I didn’t say ten words. When she left, I realized it was the first time in months that I hadn’t been angry.”
“And you married her.”
“Not immediately. I’m methodical. I ate lunch with her every day for three months before I asked.” He paused. “She said she’d been wondering what took me so long.”
Daniel laughed. The sound carried across the water, startling a seagull.
“Is that why you’re asking?” his father said. “About people changing? Is this about your friend? The Park boy?”
It’s always about Minho, in one way or another.
“Partially.”
“He’s a good kid. His father losing the job is hard on him. You can see it in his face.”
“Yeah.”
“Be there for him. That’s all you can do. Be there, and hope it’s enough.”
They fished until 11 AM. His father caught three more fish—two too small to keep and one that he declared “acceptable” with the quiet pride of a man who had just used his dream rod to catch something worth eating. Daniel caught nothing, which his father attributed to “bad technique” and Daniel attributed to “not actually caring about catching fish.”
They ate his mother’s kimbap on the pier, sitting side by side, the empty ocean stretching before them. The rice was seasoned perfectly. The tuna was just right. Everything was just right.
“Thank you,” his father said. Not for the kimbap.
“For the rod?”
“For the morning.” He paused. “I haven’t had a morning like this in—I don’t know how long. Years. Maybe since before you were born.”
Daniel looked at his father. Cho Byungsoo, forty-five years old, factory worker, fishing rod in hand, kimbap rice on his chin. A man who had spent three decades being responsible and was, for one Sunday morning, being something else.
Happy.
“We should do this more often,” Daniel said.
“Every Sunday?”
“Every Sunday.”
“The fish might not cooperate.”
“That’s okay. I’m not here for the fish.”
His father nodded. He didn’t say what he was here for either. But they both knew, and the not-saying was, in the language of the Cho men, the same as saying it loud enough for the whole ocean to hear.
They packed up the gear, took the bus home, and arrived at the apartment to find that his mother had bought a new pot because “if your father is going to start catching fish, someone needs to cook them, and I’m not using the dented one.”
“I caught one fish,” his father protested.
“One fish needs one pot. When you catch two, I’ll buy another.”
“That’s not how economics works.”
“That’s exactly how economics works. Ask your son.”
Daniel smiled and went to his room. He opened his notebook and wrote:
September 2009. Portfolio: 15,200,000 won. CSAT mock exam: 93rd percentile. Minji’s math: 91. Dad’s fishing rod: priceless.
Two months until the CSAT. Everything is on track.
But the best investment I’ve made this year cost 320,000 won and came in a cardboard tube.