The Genius Decided To Live An Ordinary Life [EN]: Chapter 18

My dad got an Ogye [Korean black chicken].

To give a chicken as a New Year’s gift, how innocent and heartwarming these neighbors are.

‘It looks really scary.’

The Ogye was extremely aggressive, becoming a tyrant as soon as it entered the chicken coop. Although smaller than other roosters, it was superior in strength, speed, and stamina. Once it flapped its wings, the other chickens scattered.

This tyrant not only pecked and broke the eggs laid by the hens but also ate the yolks. It even caught and ate a rat that had invaded the coop to steal feed.

Goodness, a chicken eating a rat.

The sight of it swallowing the rat in one gulp was so grotesque that the Son father and son had to hug each other and tremble, thinking they would be pecked to death.

‘Oh, that’s an amazing fellow.’

Jinhyuk’s eyes sparkled.

Those glossy feathers, weren’t they like a raven, the king of the sky? And those sturdy-looking legs. They reminded him of Ben Johnson, a sprinter.

‘From now on, your name is Chicken Johnson.’

Jinhyuk slyly opened the chicken coop.

As expected, the chicken, with a great desire for freedom, Chicken Johnson, strolled out, looking around with ominous eyes. Jinhyuk, fully understanding that desire, even felt a deep sense of camaraderie. Just a few days ago, he had run to find his own freedom.

Camaraderie is camaraderie… He lightly tapped the Ogye’s head with a stick.

Tap-.

Bbeobbeobeok! Chicken Johnson reacted in a hundredth of a second. It was indeed worthy of the name of a sprinter.

As the Ogye charged, Jinhyuk kicked off the ground.

He ran away!

“Aaaah-!”

He got pecked on the butt. He was pushed back at the start.

Then, he needed to create some distance.

He provoked it by throwing a small stone from afar.

Bbeok bbeok bbeok!

The Ogye flapped its wings and charged. As expected of Chicken Johnson, its posture and balance were perfect.

Jinhyuk quickly dodged.

‘Good! This will help with my start.’

The day he could beat Janggun in a sprint was not far off.

However, Chicken Johnson was not an easy opponent.

Kokokok-. A three-hit combo of pecks landed on his butt.

“Aaaah! That hurts, you punk!”

Chicken Johnson, it seemed, had been hiding its strength.

Goodness, a strength-hiding chicken.

A strange light flickered in Jinhyuk’s eyes. A genius must live with the envy and jealousy of those around him as his destiny, so perhaps Chicken Johnson was hiding his strength because he knew that.

‘Chicken Johnson… I respect you, chicken.’

Jinhyuk covered his left fist with his right hand and extended it. It was a gesture of respect towards Chicken Johnson. It was both a courtesy to his teacher and an acknowledgment of a strong rival.

His dad, who was watching, held his stomach and laughed.

In the new doghouse made of wood, Janggun looked at him with a pathetic gaze.

Ignoring Janggun’s gaze, Jinhyuk began a serious investigation.

‘If I had known about Chicken Johnson earlier, my agility would have improved.’

If that had been the case, he wouldn’t have suffered the humiliation in the short-distance race with Janggun.

Even though he had a physique and speed that were hard to believe for a thirteen-year-old, Jinhyuk was still disappointed.

Talent, the earlier it is discovered, the longer it is honed, the more it shines like a jewel. So, he decided.

“Dad, can you buy me a few more Ogye roosters?”

“Sure.”

His dad, who had been happily watching Jinhyuk abuse the Ogye every day while training his start, readily answered. He had been planning it in his mind. He had bought him a computer and a game console, but his son only played with his younger sibling or read books at home. He thought his son had a peculiar taste, but if he liked playing with chickens, he decided to be a dad who would buy him chickens.

‘He’s a rooster, so he uses all his energy on mating.’

Son Gwangyeon chuckled, thinking of the hen whose feathers on the back of her head had been completely plucked by Chicken Johnson. Roosters would peck at the back of a hen’s head when mating. Was the back of a hen’s head an erogenous zone?

Anyway.

Chicken Johnson would repeat the training about 10 times and then get tired and go back into the coop on its own. As befitting the name Chicken Johnson, he even mixed medicine into the feed and fed it gochujang [Korean chili paste] according to folk remedies. As the ruler of a harem with numerous hens, Chicken Johnson’s limitations were clear when it came to being Jinhyuk’s training partner. But a harem chicken? It somehow felt like a brand name.

While contemplating this, Son Gwangyeon’s face brightened.

“It’s done!”

“Why did you make another sled when we already have one?”

“Soo-jung can ride it too.”

“Ah…”

Since half of the vacation had passed, it was time for guests to come from Seoul.

At eight years old, Soo-jung should be able to ride the sled alone. How many times had he fallen into the water with her on his lap because the ice was too thin? It was a shallow rice paddy, so it wasn’t dangerous. However, regardless of the depth, the fact that the ice, the only foothold and safety device, was breaking was enough to make a person feel fear.

‘Even though she laughs, saying it’s okay even when her butt gets wet.’

It would be safer if she rode alone.

Jinhyuk rubbed the new sled on the sand and dirt. He put more strength into his arms to forget the strange feeling of sadness that he had to ride alone.

That’s how you polish the wire attached to the bottom of the wood. Doing so makes the sled slide better on the ice. Especially for girls who are weak in their arms and struggle to push the sled on the ice, it was an essential preliminary task.

***

In rural areas where rice farming is done, water is stored in the paddies after the autumn harvest. Then, before plowing in the spring, the water is drained. Plowing was called ‘rotary tilling,’ and when rotary tilling was done with a cultivator, the soil would clump together in large chunks. So, even after plowing, farmers had to break up the clumps of soil one by one with shovels or rakes, but the soil that had clumped together over the winter was so hard that it required a lot of labor to break it up by hand.

To skip that process, the paddy soil was soaked in water throughout the winter. That was the winter flooded paddy. That way, they could flatten the soil, make seedbeds, and plant rice seedlings in the spring.

After tractors were introduced, the number of paddies that were flooded in winter almost disappeared. Tractors were powerful and had many functions, so it was possible to do fine rotary tilling without having to soak the soil for a long time. This drastically reduced labor and working time, so the popularity of farmers who owned tractors soared, and tractor drivers who did odd jobs with their tractors while farming less also appeared.

When the farming season came, the tractor was the first to be put into his dad’s paddies and fields. It was partly due to his financial power, but it was more reasonable to see it as due to his character. And his dad, who owned a lot of farmland, also instructed the work on the neighboring land that was attached to his paddies and fields. No neighbor disliked that. The farming in Dunae-ri started and ended on Son Gwangyeon’s land.

“If you do rotary tilling with a tractor, it makes the soil too mushy, so you have to do it a month before planting rice seedlings. Otherwise, the soil won’t hold the seedlings, and they’ll all float away.”

“Then, wouldn’t it be better for Dad not to flood the paddies?”

“I still have to flood a few. So our Jinhyuk can ride his sled.”

Oh, father.

Jinhyuk silently followed his dad, listening to his explanation.

The two men were carrying red rubber baskets and shovels, which were made sharp by cutting off the wings on both sides with a grinder. They were similar to the shovels used by the men who dug up mud and caught octopuses in the tidal flats in the middle of summer.

“But Jinhyuk, do you think there will be any loaches?”

“There are some that are hibernating.”

Because they hardly used any pesticides, they could find a lot of crucian carp, loaches, and minnows in the summer paddies with a lot of water. Jinhyuk decided to catch the hibernating loaches using the method he had heard from Kang Jinsu. He could make loach soup to nourish his parents, and he enjoyed spending time doing something with his dad. He also felt the need to divert his dad’s attention from the sparrows he was always talking about in the winter.

The two Son men entered a paddy that had not been flooded.

They wore boots just in case, but the ground was so firm that their feet didn’t sink in, so there was no need for them.

“Dad, if you look here, there are holes as thin as pencils.”

“Yeah, there are. They’re similar to the octopus burrows.”

Indeed, they were similar to the octopus burrows he had learned about when he went to catch octopuses with Choi Janghwan and Yuk Younggu. That day, Son Gwangyeon was exhausted from the heat and couldn’t catch many, but he was good at learning with his eyes and head.

“You shouldn’t dig too deep at once. The loaches might get cut in half.”

“Ugh-, that would hurt.”

His dad was as expressive as Yujin, who was learning to talk. It seemed he had already empathized with the loaches.

Jinhyuk suppressed a laugh and scooped up the soil with the shovel. The shovel moved smoothly like an ice cream scoop. He didn’t scoop up a lot at once. About two adult fists’ worth, and he had dug about three times.

“Oh-, there really are loaches? But aren’t they frozen to death?”

A loach with a bright yellow belly was curled up, exposed to the cold winter air.

“They’re hibernating. They’ll move if you pick them up.”

Just as Jinhyuk picked it up, the loach wriggled vigorously.

“Winter loaches are good for your health. They’ll be delicious if we make loach soup.”

“Loach soup…”

Jinhyuk pretended not to see his dad drooling. It seemed like he really had hand, foot, and mouth disease.

Now the lesson was over.

His dad’s eyes began to burn like those of a warrior facing a demon king, so Jinhyuk moved to find another burrow.

“Hahaha- this is fun. It’s so great to do this with my son.”

I’m having so much fun too, Jinhyuk muttered.

Watching his dad, who was as excited as a child while shoveling, Jinhyuk’s happiness level was full. ‘If I could live again,’ how much he had thought about it, how desperate a dream it had been. As he lived each day filling it with happiness as he had thought and dreamed, he didn’t have any other desires.

In the distance, he could see men catching loaches in other paddies. Judging by their unfamiliar builds and gaits, they were probably from other towns.

‘Are those men catching loaches too? That’s my dad’s paddy over there.’

What comes from the land belongs to the landowner.

Even without following the law, that was an obvious truth. He didn’t intend to argue about right and wrong, but as a man who had lived half a century in the capitalist world, he was not happy with the behavior of people who freely took other people’s property, citing so-called ‘rural generosity.’

Of course, he didn’t have any particular complaints about those men.

“They’re doing side work in the paddies that Dad leased out. They should enjoy their lives too.”

“Yes.”

His dad was an amazing person.

It was as if he could read Jinhyuk’s thoughts just by looking at his eyes, without him saying anything. Because the wounds from his previous life were so deep, he had always closed his heart to anyone outside his family and lived on guard, but when he saw his dad, who was respected for doing good deeds, he always reflected on himself.

“It’s okay to share if I’m not being harmed. Even if I’m called a pushover, if I have more left in the end, I’m the one who’s making a profit.”

I don’t know what you mean, but okay.

He tried to ponder it, but his dad’s cheers broke his concentration.

“Yay! One is one! Two is two! Three is three!”

“…”

“Jinhyuk, Dad named them.”

“…What did you name them?”

“Mekander.”

It was a casual answer. He was focused on shoveling.

Jinhyuk was going to ask why he named them that. It felt like it was the right thing to do for his dad. However, his dad’s work song was faster than Jinhyuk.

“Ah, Mekander the first! Ah, Mekander the second! Ah, Mekander- the youngest-. If the three Mekander warriors unite-.”

Why was that serious person suddenly acting like that? It seemed like it had been three years since that show ended. He must be excited because catching loaches was much easier than catching octopuses. Jinhyuk answered himself that way and quickly looked around. Fortunately, no one was in sight.

“-Fight bravely-. Mekander- V!”

Goodness, he even did the action. He put one hand on his hip and extended the other hand, making a V.

Jinhyuk stared blankly at the loach holes.

Maybe they were hiding in the ground because they were embarrassed.

‘My friends didn’t act like that at that age.’

Jinhyuk’s eyes were quite sad.

It was because he had learned the art of shame along with the blossoming of his sensitivity due to the onslaught of hormones.

‘But it’s good that he looks happy.’

But why do I keep missing Mom?