59.
Today, she’s mostly called “Director Ryu” by those around her. But there was a time when she was called by her name more often than by formal, respectful titles referencing her social position or assigned role.
The character for joy (喜) and the character for so (然). With her surname, it became Ryu Hee-yeon. Those three syllables were the name of a woman who now is rarely called anything other than “Doctor” or “Director.”
Like a minor incident that every girl of a certain age experiences, her childhood was marked by endless power struggles with non-existent, imaginary male siblings. Not all families might be stuck in such pre-modern patterns, but at minimum, this was the atmosphere in the household where Hee-yeon was born and raised.
Hee-yeon’s father was the eldest son of a renowned family whose direct ancestor was a historical figure known to everyone in Korean history. While his sisters above and below him had to beg just to attend middle school and hide their sorrows, he graduated from a prestigious university with excellent grades without any worries or concerns, living in a monthly rental near his school. The same year he graduated, he went to study in the United States, earning his master’s and doctoral degrees in a straight sequence. After returning to Korea, he went on arranged dates with a mother from a similar family background, set the wedding date on their third meeting, and held the family introduction ceremony on their fourth.
At the time of their marriage, his father-in-law was the vice president of a famous university. Thanks to this, having completed all his degrees at a sufficiently competitive university, he was appointed as an assistant professor without any obstacles or experience as a part-time lecturer, and the following year, he had a daughter. Since it was natural that the pain of childbirth and the burden of child-rearing fell solely on his wife, he could enjoy only the pleasure of raising a cute daughter without experiencing any loss or difficulty, just like all the other achievements he had gained throughout his life.
Around the time his daughter entered kindergarten, he was promoted from assistant professor to associate professor. By the time she entered elementary school, he had been promoted again from associate professor to full professor. His father-in-law, who had narrowly lost the university presidential election, carefully supported his son-in-law, the only one among his children to hold a professor title. After all, shouldn’t there be at least one university president in the family?
His life was smooth in every way, and everything simply seemed natural. Amid all this, the only hardship he experienced was the lack of news about another child after his beloved daughter.
Daughters were cute in their own way, but to perpetually pass down all his glorious legacy to future generations, he needed a son.
His mother, spending her later years in a rural clan village, fully agreed with his opinion.
His mother, who was endlessly compassionate toward him alone as if he were a living Buddha, occasionally showed harsh sides to his sisters. When the long-awaited proper child of her firstborn son—that is, her first “grandson”—failed to appear for a long time, she often unleashed unkind words on his wife as well.
While others might not understand, to him, his mother was always the epitome of compassion, so he could easily dismiss the numerous verbal lashings directed at his wife as “words she didn’t mean.” It was very easy to pretend not to notice his mother’s unfamiliar behavior and equally easy to ignore his wife, who sometimes couldn’t sleep, sighing and showing tears.
If he were to replace his wife’s name with those of his sisters, that would be the approach to life he had learned to breathe like air since he was very young.
His mother frequently pounced on her daughter-in-law like catching a mouse, saying heaven was angry because she harbored evil thoughts, which was why heaven wasn’t sending down a plump son. His father, who had developed a hobby of pretending to be virtuous with his hands behind his back, easily ignored the sight of such a vicious wife and pitiful daughter-in-law, just as he did. Going back several decades, in the position of today’s wife would have been his father’s mother, and in the position of the daughter-in-law would have been his mother, enduring the same harsh words in the same manner. It was natural. Even the daughter-in-law who now seemed pitiful would follow the same path when she met her son’s wife in the future.
That was the essence of the sublime history created by a great culture.
His mother would make his wife scrub herself with cold water in the yard even on cold nights in the eleventh lunar month, saying she needed to cleanse her evil thoughts.
He, a darling of modern science with master’s and doctoral degrees in physics and an heir to cold intellect, did not dare doubt his mother’s actions and merely clicked his tongue at his wife trembling in the cold. How evil must her thoughts be that after nearly ten years of marriage, they had only one daughter?
The anomaly occurred right then. “Stop bullying my mom!” his daughter, the future research director, the adorable Hee-yeon who should only know how to rest her face on his knee and be cute, took a bucket of ice-cold water that was beginning to freeze and boldly splashed it on her father’s trouser legs.
There was an uproar in the tight-knit clan village. They had to bear the full brunt of family disgrace, with people asking how poorly they had set an example that a child barely ten years old would behave so outrageously.
From that moment, his evaluation of his daughter completely changed. It was clear that the one harboring evil thoughts was not his virtuous wife who knew how to endure sacred sacrifices properly, but his ten-year-old daughter who dared to rebel against the ideology of history. That wicked child must have been praying daily, harboring stubborn resentment, preventing any pregnancy from growing in her mother’s womb.
To emphasize once more at this point, his profession—born and raised as the precious eldest son of a prestigious family, receiving all forms of modern education and walking a smooth path—was that of a professor, and the discipline to which he devoted his life was physics, the study of the truths of the material world.
Indeed, he had named her wrong. Giving a girl the generation character “Yeon” in her name had been excessive. He repeatedly regretted it later. He should have just named her something like Mi-ja or Sook-ja and been done with it.
The daughter he bore without any labor pains quickly began to appear as an annoying reactionary who gave nothing in return. By the time she entered high school, everything from her daring to dismiss her father, a professor at a famous university, just because her middle school grades were good, to her being accepted into a science high school that he had unfortunately failed to enter long ago in his interview—there was nothing about her that pleased him.
Frequently drunk, he would deliver lengthy speeches in front of his daughter: “Instead of someone like you, Ho-yeon, Ho-yeon should have been born!”
The name “Ho-yeon,” derived from “hoyeon-ji-gi” in Mencius’s “Gongsun Chou” which his grandfather had favored, was a name he had cherished for a long time, intending to give it to his firstborn son. A vast and grand vital energy filling the space between heaven and earth! Wasn’t that a name with magnificent spirit befitting the precious son of a precious eldest son?
But unfortunately, what he had was not the precious son Ho-yeon but the detestable daughter Hee-yeon.
Hee-yeon grew up under such a father. She was the excessively intelligent and clever daughter of an incompetent man who seemed to embody the great tide of anachronism compressed into a single human.
Around the time she entered university, Hee-yeon completely gave up on her family. She had also found great pleasure in surpassing and covering over each and every glorious record of the revered firstborn son that they so despised their daughter for not being.
Entering the high school from which her father had been rejected was just the beginning. Hee-yeon entered and graduated with top honors from the same department at the university where her father had merely paid tuition for eight semesters. The greatest achievement of Hee-yeon’s early twenties was not having to beg from that petty father, thanks to the scholarships that came naturally every semester.
By the time she was graduating, Hee-yeon had become a uniquely famous talent among undergraduate students. Professors were anxiously lining up, unable to attract Hee-yeon to their research labs. Rejecting all offers, Hee-yeon went to study in the United States with money she had saved working as a private tutor during her university years.
She successfully presented excellent research results and equally excellent papers at a place valued twice as much as where her father had received his master’s and doctoral degrees. Around the time she received her doctoral degree, she was offered a post-doctoral position at a research institution within the Ability Management Bureau under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Both then and now, decades later, receiving a recruitment offer from that institution was proof that one was among the elite of the era. What pleased her most was that it was a place her father, satisfied with merely a domestic professor title, could never dream of, even if he were reborn.
The ancient kingdom of the clan village, with her father and grandfather as kings, raised the white flag of surrender and completely changed its stance around the time major domestic media outlets began to exalt Hee-yeon as one of the most influential future leaders and a great genius produced by Korea. As if all the achievements Hee-yeon had accomplished so far were due to their support, encouragement, and warm love.
The young Hee-yeon vowed. If that was what family meant, she would never create a family until the day she died. If that was what being a parent was all about, she would never become that kind of parent until she died.
It was around the time when Hee-yeon, as always, was successfully completing her post-doctoral course with innate talent and bleeding effort. That was when that man, David Howard, called the most uniquely powerful Esper in the world without rivals, appeared before Hee-yeon.
