Chapter 22: The Score
The results came on a Wednesday in December, and Daniel found out from Soyeon before the official portal even loaded.
She called him at 6:47 AM—thirteen minutes before the College Board released the scores online—which meant she had either hacked the system or had a contact inside the Board, and knowing Soyeon, both were equally plausible.
“Check your email,” she said. No greeting. No small talk. Soyeon didn’t believe in conversational foreplay.
“The portal doesn’t open until seven.”
“I didn’t say the portal. I said your email. I sent you something.”
Daniel pulled up his email on the ancient family computer—the one in the living room that took three minutes to boot and wheezed like an asthmatic whenever it loaded a webpage. One new message from kimsoyeon_study@hanmail.net. Subject line: Estimated scores based on answer key cross-reference.
He opened it. Inside was a spreadsheet. Of course it was a spreadsheet. Soyeon had obtained the official answer keys—how, Daniel didn’t ask—and cross-referenced them with the answers Daniel had reported to her from memory after each section.
Korean: Estimated 94th percentile.
Mathematics: Estimated 98th percentile.
English: Estimated 99th percentile.
Korean History: Estimated 96th percentile.
Combined: Estimated 97th percentile.
SNU Business School cutoff: 96th percentile.
Daniel stared at the numbers. Then he stared at them again. Then he closed his eyes and pressed his hands flat against the desk and breathed.
“Daniel? Are you there?” Soyeon’s voice, tinny through the phone speaker. “Did you read it?”
“I read it.”
“Your estimated combined puts you at 97th percentile. One point above the SNU cutoff. It’s tight but it’s enough.”
“Soyeon.”
“The Math score is the anchor. 98th percentile is remarkable for someone who was at 78th eight months ago. I’ll need to analyze which questions you—”
“Soyeon.”
“What?”
“Thank you.”
A pause. The sound of her pen tapping—three times, her thinking rhythm, even at 6:50 AM.
“Don’t thank me until the official scores confirm the estimate. My margin of error is plus or minus two percentile points.”
“I’m thanking you for the eight months. Not the spreadsheet.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“You did the work,” she said. Her voice was quieter now. Less analytical. More human. “I just pointed you in the right direction.”
“That’s literally what teachers do. And you were the best teacher I’ve ever had.”
“I’m not a teacher. I’m a study partner with control issues.” But there was something in her voice that sounded like it might be, under several layers of intellectual armor, pleased. “Check the portal at seven. And call me with the official numbers.”
“I will.”
“And Daniel?”
“Yeah?”
“Congratulations. Provisionally.”
She hung up. Daniel sat in the living room, the computer humming, the early morning light creeping through the curtains, and felt the specific joy of a man who has worked for something and earned it—not through future knowledge or temporal advantage, but through genuine, honest, exhausting effort.
In my first life, I scored 72nd percentile. I went to a mediocre university. I built an empire on hustle and connections and dumb luck, and it crumbled because the foundation was never solid.
This time, the foundation is real. 97th percentile. Earned. Every single point.
His mother cried. This was expected.
His father did not cry. This was also expected. What was unexpected was the length of time he spent looking at the official score report after Daniel printed it out at the convenience store—six full minutes, reading each line, running his finger along the numbers as if verifying them by touch.
“Seoul National University,” his father said. Not a question. A fact being processed. “The business school.”
“If I apply and get accepted. The score qualifies me to apply.”
“You’ll get in.” His father said this with the flat certainty he usually reserved for statements about factory production schedules. “You’ll get in because you’re the hardest-working person I’ve ever met, and I work with men who press metal for twelve hours.”
It was, by Cho Byungsoo’s standards, a Shakespearean declaration of love.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Don’t thank me. You did this. All of it.” He set the score report on the table, perfectly aligned with the edge, because even emotional moments didn’t excuse slovenly paper placement. “Your mother and I didn’t go to university. Your grandfather didn’t finish middle school. And now our son is going to Seoul National.”
His mother, who had been crying quietly at the stove, made a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh. “Byungsoo, you’re going to make me cry more.”
“You’re already crying.”
“I’m crying appropriately. There’s a difference.”
Minji burst through the front door at 4 PM, home from school, and demanded to see the score report before she even took off her shoes.
“Ninety-seventh percentile?!” She stared at the paper with the awe of a twelve-year-old encountering a number larger than she’d believed possible. “Oppa, that’s—that’s—”
“Good?”
“That’s insane. How did you—you were a C-student! A year ago you were a C-student!”
“People change.”
“Not like this! Not from C to ninety-seventh percentile in one year! That doesn’t happen!”
“It happened.”
“Are you cheating? Is Soyeon unni helping you cheat? Is this a scam?”
“Minji.” Their mother’s warning tone.
“I’m just asking! It’s a legitimate question! People don’t just—”
“Minji.” Their father’s warning tone, deeper and more final.
Minji shut up. But she continued to stare at the score report with the expression of a detective who knows something doesn’t add up but can’t figure out what.
“Lotte World,” she said eventually.
“What?”
“You promised. If you got into SNU, Lotte World. Non-negotiable.”
“I haven’t gotten in yet. I’ve qualified to apply.”
“Close enough. I’m booking the tickets.”
“You’re twelve. How are you booking tickets?”
“The internet exists, oppa. Welcome to 2009.”
Minho’s score was 88th percentile. Good enough for Korea University or Yonsei—the second and third tier of Korea’s SKY universities, the Ivy League equivalent. Not SNU, but strong.
“I’ll take it,” Minho said when they met at their bench near Bupyeong Station. It was cold enough for their breath to cloud, and Minho was wearing the expensive hoodie that Daniel suspected was the only warm clothing he owned. “Korea University, business school. My dad went there. He’ll be happy.”
“Are you happy?”
“Eighty-eighth percentile from a guy who planned to coast? Yeah, I’m happy.” Minho grinned, but it was thinner than his usual grin. “I’m not going to lie and say I’m not jealous of your 97th. But I’m not surprised either. You worked for it.”
“So did you.”
“Not like you. Nobody works like you, Daniel. It’s honestly a little terrifying.”
They sat in the cold, watching the Bupyeong traffic flow past. Christmas decorations were going up in the shop windows—early, as always, the commercial calendar racing ahead of reality.
“How’s your dad?” Daniel asked.
Minho’s grin faded. “He got a job. Smaller firm, less pay. But he stopped going to the coffee shop, so that’s progress.” A pause. “He doesn’t know I know about the coffee shop. I think it would kill him if he did.”
“Some things are better left unknown.”
“Yeah.” Minho pulled his hoodie tighter. “Hey, Daniel?”
“Yeah?”
“SNU is in Seoul. Korea University is in Seoul. We’ll both be in the same city.”
“We will.”
“So whatever you’re planning next—whatever the next phase of the Grand Daniel Plan is—I’m in. Same as before. You plan, I execute. The dream team.”
The dream team. You and me. In my first life, that’s exactly what we were. Until you turned ‘execute’ into something literal and executed my company from the inside.
But that was a different Minho. A different set of circumstances. A different trajectory.
This Minho sat in a coffee shop and watched his father pretend to be employed and sold his stocks to help. This Minho studied for the CSAT because he didn’t want to waste the chance he’d been given. This Minho is asking to be part of something, not to take from it.
I have to believe that matters. I have to.
“The dream team,” Daniel said. “But with rules.”
“You and your rules.” Minho rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “Fine. What rules?”
“We’re honest with each other. Always. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. No secrets, no hidden agendas, no doing things behind each other’s backs.”
“That’s—yeah. Okay. That’s fair.”
“And if either of us ever feels like the other is going down a bad path, we say it. Directly. No hints, no passive-aggressive bullshit. Just ‘hey, you’re messing up, and here’s why.'”
“Like an accountability partner.”
“Exactly like an accountability partner.”
Minho extended his hand. “Deal.”
Daniel took it. The handshake was firm, cold (it was December), and loaded with more significance than either of them could say out loud.
“Deal,” Daniel said.
They sat on the bench until the cold drove them home, talking about Seoul and universities and the future—the real future, the one that hadn’t happened yet, the one that Daniel was building one day at a time from the wreckage of a life he’d already lived.
That night, Daniel updated his notebook.
December 2009. End of Year Summary.
CSAT: 97th percentile. SNU application submitted.
Portfolio: 18,400,000 won (from original 6,320,000 = +191%).
Tutoring students: 10 (winding down for college prep).
Minji’s math: Consistent 90+.
Dad: Still employed. Fishing every other Sunday. Owns a Shimano rod.
Mom: Healthy. Happy. Still makes the best jjigae in Bupyeong.
Minho: 88th percentile. Korea University. Still an unknown variable.
Soyeon: 99th percentile. SNU. The most reliable person in my life who isn’t related to me.
Status: On track. Everything is on track.
Next phase: Seoul. University. And the beginning of what comes next.
He closed the notebook and turned off the light. Through the wall, he could hear his father snoring and his mother’s occasional murmur in her sleep. From Minji’s room, the faint glow of a phone screen—she was probably looking up Lotte World tickets, because Cho Minji did not make empty threats.
One year. He’d been back for one year.
In that year, he’d gone from zero won to eighteen million. From a C-student to the 97th percentile. From a lonely boy in a classroom to a son who sat with his father on fishing piers and his sister at kitchen tables and his friends on cold benches.
It wasn’t enough. Not yet. The real work—the company, the empire, the thing that would change everything—was still ahead. But the foundation was set. Solid. Real.
Built not on future knowledge, but on the people who believed in him.
Daniel closed his eyes. Sleep came easily—the sleep of a man who had earned his rest, in a room in an apartment in a city that was, in every way that mattered, home.