My name is Gang Tae-gwang, fifty-one years old.

…And right now, I was out making apologies over a defect complaint about one of those frozen products our company had made.

A deputy manager at the client company hurled a box of frozen food at me.

The box tipped over, and the fried rice spilling from a split bag inside dirtied even my shoes.

Staring down at my ruined shoes, all I could do was bend at the waist and bow.

The vice president came scurrying over, clapping me on the shoulder and praising my efforts.

"Got an important round of golf today. You have no idea how hard I trained this past month to beat Representative Bak."

Golf, at a time like this.

The unlucky aura that had dogged me, tiresomely, from the day I was born.

Tae-gwang (太光).

A great light had come into the household.

But not me.

It wasn't anyone's fault. I was just unlucky.

The neighbors whispered.

"They say Tae-gwang was named with the 'gwang' for 'light,' but you don't think Tae-gwang's father wrote the wrong character in the boy's name, do you?"

A familiar number lit up my phone screen.

"Danaul Nursing Hospital."

[Ms. Han So-seon… passed away a short while ago.]

"……My mother?"

I ran out of the company.

Crash!

—and then my body floated up into the air.

So this was death.

"I wanted… to smile too…"

Before my eyes, a flash like thousands of starbursts blazed.

The light was more than I could bear, and I shut my eyes on reflex.

"…Huh!?"

I cracked my eyes open.

Two women were drawing back the curtains at the window.

Beyond the window, a lawn of dry yellow grass and gaunt, bare branches swayed in the wind.

And this was not a scene you'd see in a hospital, either.

'Is this the world of the living? Or the world of the dead?'

As I slowly turned my gaze, fixed until then on the view outside—

"Is our Tae-jun awake already?"

A young woman, dripping with wealth by anyone's reckoning, met my eyes and broke into a bright smile.

'Tae-jun?'

The clock on the wall read 6:50.

Wasn't this the hour to hurry and wash up and get ready for work?

But the thing was, I couldn't even tell where on earth this place was.

Just then, the young woman's eyes went round.

"Oh my, Tae-jun, it's freezing out—why are you standing there barefoot? Let's go put on some socks."

"Hm? Does Tae-jun not want to wear his socks?"

Again our eyes met.

In that instant, I looked down at my feet without thinking, and indeed they were bare.

But wait… how could feet be this small!

I quickly spread my hand, and a glance was enough—it was even smaller than my foot.

The soft, lovely hand of a child, without a single callus.

Just moments ago I'd lived past the half-century mark, and now, as I stood there blankly, unable to make heads or tails of what was happening—

"Ahjumma!"

The young woman called out into the air for the housekeeper.

The whole ride, I never took my eyes off the window.

Just as the car turned into the alley again, a brightly colored fence came into view.

Even at a glance, the grounds were enormous.

It was a kindergarten with a wide, grass-covered yard that boasted not only a playground but a swimming pool besides.

To think a kindergarten facility like this existed back in '79 — it was a genuinely astonishing sight.

Even back when I was seven, most children attended kindergarten.

After all, the rundown Seoul neighborhood where Mother and I lived had a kindergarten too. Even if it was only a mission school attached to a church.