The Genius Decided To Live An Ordinary Life [EN]: Chapter 41

Hong Ki-joon was flustered.

“Hee hee hee hee-.”

His daughter used to cry buckets of tears every time they parted. Now, as if she had grown up, she wasn’t crying at all, but sitting quietly in the back seat, giggling.

“Hehehe! Su-jeong, you’re not crying even though you’re leaving Oppa?”

Hong Ki-joon looked at his daughter in the rearview mirror and smiled.

“There was a reason.”

“A reason?”

“She says she kissed Jinhyuk. When you and Gwang-yeon went to catch octopus during the day.”

Hong Su-jeong said she was taken advantage of by Jinhyuk, but in Yoo Se-ra’s eyes, it was the opposite.

Considering Jinhyuk’s expression, as if he was being falsely accused and serving a prison sentence, and Hong Su-jeong’s personality.

‘Our daughter must have done it.’

Hong Ki-joon’s thoughts were no different from his wife’s. He tilted his head and mumbled.

“Did Jinhyuk have that side to him?”

Even looking at Jinhyuk’s father, Son Gwang-yeon, he was a friend who wouldn’t even glance at a beauty like Yoo Se-ra. That’s probably why they say you never know about relationships between men and women.

Hong Ki-joon stopped thinking and glanced at his wife.

Yoo Se-ra was sitting with her legs crossed and arms folded.

‘Did something upset her again?’

Was she stressed because of the work she had to deal with when they got back? Well, Yoo Se-ra didn’t like company work. She was talented but didn’t like doing things she was forced to do, so she always said she wanted to quit.

Even so, her father, Chairman Yoo Myung-sun, trusted Yoo Se-ra with great responsibilities. And Yoo Se-ra, with her outstanding skills and easygoing personality, quickly shed the prejudiced views of the public about daughters of chaebols [large family-owned business conglomerates]. To Hong Ki-joon, his wife was a respectable business executive.

Hong Ki-joon thought he was a lucky man.

Of course. A son-in-law of a chaebol family, a beautiful wife, and a lovely daughter.

Of course, Yoo Se-ra loved Hong Ki-joon too. Recently, her affection had deepened.

However.

She was enjoying the freedom of having different thoughts with a somewhat displeased expression.

‘If I had, uh… stamped my mark on her early on, would my life have been different?’

Do they say you stamp your mark, or do you put a pin in it? I don’t know what the right expression is. Seeing what my daughter did, it seemed like putting a pin in it.

Anyway, the daughter and the mother were no different in having such audacious thoughts.

It’s just adding a family to a family to a family, so what does it matter?

Yoo Se-ra’s posture didn’t change until they entered the highway and stopped at a rest area.

Hong Ki-joon thought as he watched his wife smile after she and his daughter each had a hot bar [a type of Korean street food, often a sausage or fish cake on a stick] in their hands.

‘Please, let today be peaceful too….’

Yoo Se-ra, who had been dozing off in the passenger seat without even finishing her hot bar, suddenly opened her mouth as if she had remembered something.

“Was it next week?”

“Yeah. The New York business trip is next week.”

As always, Hong Ki-joon answered Yoo Se-ra’s vague question perfectly.

“Aren’t you going to the US too often these days?”

“There’s a bit of business. I was originally going to go last week, but I postponed it to go after the vacation.”

“What’s wrong with you these days?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re living too hard. You haven’t been tired for years.”

“You have to live hard when you’re young.”

Hong Ki-joon had a clear goal.

To become the owner of Sein Group. It wasn’t something he was going to get right away. He expected that his father-in-law, who favored his daughter and was disappointed in his lackluster sons, would hand over the management rights to his daughter. He decided to add his own abilities to that.

The wife, who hated company work, would hand over the management rights she had obtained to her husband and devote herself to fostering young athletes. Hong Ki-joon had also foreseen that. That’s why he released the sports foundation bait along with the Son Jinhyuk bait.

However, he couldn’t be proud of getting it by just sitting still.

He wanted to acquire the group with his own strength.

“What does living hard have to do with going to the US?”

“Oh, I have a business I’ve planned.”

“Is it a plan you can’t even tell me about?”

“It’s nothing much. I just started an investment company.”

“An investment company?”

‘It’s not because you have another woman, is it?’ Yoo Se-ra was about to ask that but swallowed her words. There’s no man you can trust in this world, but her husband, Hong Ki-joon, was a man she could trust and should trust.

“I’ll tell you later when it goes well. Don’t worry, I won’t touch company money or create a slush fund to upset Father.”

Was it because he had finally developed a manly boldness after nearly 10 years of marriage? Yoo Se-ra liked her husband’s answer and didn’t ask any more questions. Hong Ki-joon was indeed a man who knew how to satisfy Yoo Se-ra.

In contrast, her brothers were…

‘Fools.’

They were being called in by their father every day and getting their foreheads cracked.

She heard that her eldest brother was on his last legs.

There were constant scandals involving young actresses and female employees.

‘If it’s reached my ears, Father must know too.’

Even though she wasn’t really interested in management rights or inheritance, she didn’t want to have it taken away by her unlikable brothers. She couldn’t bring herself to do worse things than those pathetic brothers. That’s why Yoo Se-ra had actively participated in management. And now, even her husband was revealing his ambition.

‘They say it depends on the woman how a man turns out.’

She decided to make her husband the chairman.

He was Yoo Se-ra’s husband, so she couldn’t let him live like a pushover.

She glared and chewed the last remaining hot bar with gusto.

‘I will become a wonderful woman who pursues honor.’

Like Joan of Arc.

Cough-.

Yoo Se-ra choked without even swallowing the hot bar.

There were few places as conducive to sleep as the passenger seat of a car.

Hong Ki-joon shook his head. He checked on his daughter in the rearview mirror, who was fast asleep with a hot bar clutched tightly in her hand.

‘Like mother, like daughter,’ he thought. How could the mother and daughter even have the same angle when they tilted their heads?

‘She definitely took after her mother.’

***

Jinhyuk headed to Choi Mi-kyung’s house early in the morning.

He was holding his younger sibling in one arm and a watermelon in the other.

“Hup! Hup!”

Choi Tae-yang was seen shirtless, digging in the empty field next to the yard.

A different light flickered in Jinhyuk’s eyes as he looked at Choi Tae-yang. It was the training camp period, so he shouldn’t have much time? Why was someone so busy with training at home?

He greeted him as childishly as possible.

“Hyung, good morning.”

The business-like tone he used with people he wasn’t close to came out naturally.

Yoo-jin also bowed her head, following her brother’s greeting.

“Ehehe-, Hyung, good morning-?”

Her speech had improved a lot, but her pronunciation was still inaccurate.

“Oh! Jinhyuk and Yoo-jin! Did you come to give us watermelon?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Ehehe-.”

“What are you doing?”

“Hahaha! Yoo-jin’s speech has improved a lot? I’m trying to make something. Aigo, I thought it would be easy, but it’s quite hard.”

Choi Tae-yang straightened his back for a moment and took a breath. “Aigo, my back,” he groaned.

His sweaty upper body glistened nicely in the sunlight.

“Make something? Make something?”

Yoo-jin seemed curious about the purpose of the digging.

Choi Tae-yang grinned at the baby’s round eyes.

“You could say it’s a makeshift wrestling ring?”

“Makeshift? Wrestling ring?”

Choi Tae-yang continued to explain, seeing Jinhyuk looking blankly, wondering what he was talking about.

“The training center and dormitory are under construction. The school’s training center was a tin shack. Someone donated money to build a state-of-the-art one. The friends in town can do it at the school’s gym, but since I live far away, I’m going to do it at home.”

Ah, I see. Jinhyuk nodded.

It meant that they were building a new wrestling team dormitory and training center that he had seen during the track and field preliminary.

Then, a strange thought came to him, and he tilted his head.

‘It was a rotten tin shack even when I graduated middle school?’

Jinhyuk had no connection to middle school yet. He had even less connection to the wrestling team.

Could it be that Hong Ki-joon had used his influence?

“Hyung, who is the donor?”

“Well? The coach doesn’t know either. They said they donated anonymously? Some say it’s a school senior, some say it’s someone from Tae-yang’s hometown. Some say it’s the chairman of a university in Gyeonggi-do. It’s all just speculation.”

Putting together what Choi Tae-yang said, it seemed like someone who was a successful university chairman from Tae-yang’s hometown. Jinhyuk, who didn’t know much about it, could only think, ‘I guess so.’

In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for successful people to donate to their hometown or alma mater. It could be that a university with a wrestling team invested in selecting and training athletes.

“But who are you training with?”

“Who? Training?”

“Ah…?”

Choi Tae-yang scratched his head.

He hadn’t thought that far.

He mumbled to himself, as if he was just trying to do image training.

Choi Mi-kyung sat in the shade, holding Yoo-jin.

She was playing the role of a nanny, feeding the child small pieces of watermelon and wiping the juice that dripped down her chin.

Her gaze was lazily fixed on the high school student and elementary school student who were firmly gripping their wrestling belts in the field.

‘How romantic.’

Wrestling was a boring sport. But the sight of two handsome men grappling and competing with strength and skill was quite impressive.

Thud-!

Choi Tae-yang fell awkwardly.

‘He lost again.’

Her brother, Choi Tae-yang, was a national-level wrestler.

Even though he was a second-year high school student, he was a champion who could lift a third-year student and slam him onto the sand.

That’s why the current situation didn’t make sense.

Thump-!

Aigo, her brother lost again. This time, he fell headfirst, looking ugly. Well, he had eaten dirt when he fell face-first earlier, so you could say he had improved a lot.

“Kyahahaha-!”

Yoo-jin raised her short arms and laughed heartily.

The sound of two men talking in the field could be heard. They always talked like that after a match, like a teacher sitting down and teaching a student. It was strange that the teacher was so young, though.

“Hyung, you’re trying to lift your opponent just by relying on your strength. Doing it with just strength only works on beginners. Against an opponent who can read your moves, you have to use techniques and engage in a battle of wits. If you rely on strength and the opponent resists or counters, you’ll be defeated by your own strength.”

“Uh, yeah. That’s right. But… I don’t just rely on strength-.”

“Someone with short legs and weak strength wouldn’t use a lifting throw as their specialty.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re right.”

Choi Tae-yang nodded blankly.

Jinhyuk’s point was correct. Choi Tae-yang used his large height, long and thick limbs, and the strength that came from them to use a lifting throw followed by a push as his specialty.

“Let’s do it again.”

Choi Tae-yang brushed the dirt off his head and knelt down again.

He had never been defeated by strength, and he had a technique that he could execute perfectly. These were the two weapons that had made the 18-year-old Choi Tae-yang an undefeated high school wrestler. But after losing five matches in a row to Son Jinhyuk, he realized that his training was lacking.

‘Instead of pulling rubber tubes, I need to dig up kudzu roots [a type of vine with edible roots].’

Jinhyuk mulled over Choi Tae-yang’s techniques.

Not only his lifting throw but also his leg sweep using his iron-like legs was excellent.

However, the distribution of strength and weight was not appropriate.

‘This hyung doesn’t seem to have much experience losing.’

The fact that he was using imperfect techniques meant that the positive effects of success had a big impact. Jinhyuk decided to return Choi Tae-yang’s techniques as they were. But with more perfection.

“Until now, I’ve only been countering.”

“Yeah, you have.”

Choi Tae-yang nodded, breathing heavily as if he was panting. His chin was resting on Jinhyuk’s shoulder.

“I’ll use your technique, so compare it.”

With a short shout, Jinhyuk pulled the belt and stuck his lower body close.

Like a lie, Choi Tae-yang’s body was lifted. He had lifted an opponent taller than him purely with the strength of his waist and forearms. Choi Tae-yang was able to hold on without struggling because his legs were longer than Jinhyuk’s.

The moment Choi Tae-yang barely managed to stand on tiptoes, Jinhyuk’s right shoulder pushed against Choi Tae-yang’s chest. The hand holding the waist belt was fixed, and at the same time, his skill in pulling the leg belt strongly was skillful.

‘Push!’

It wasn’t a technique that a small wrestler would use against a wrestler with a large height difference. However, Choi Tae-yang’s mind had long forgotten the textbook. This elementary schooler was not a typical opponent that appeared in textbooks.

Choi Tae-yang quickly stretched his left leg back. If he pulled both legs out, he would surely be pulled and knocked over. He had been caught by that trick earlier.

As expected, Jinhyuk pulled the belt while pulling his butt back.

‘I won’t be fooled this time!’

When an opponent stronger than me pulls, I should use the opponent as an axis and rotate-.

Thud-!

‘Huh?’

Choi Tae-yang fell nicely. It seemed like he rolled about two times sideways.

He had tried to lose his strength by turning around, but his foot axis had been locked. Once his foot was trapped, he had fallen over.

‘Oh, my whole body is tingling.’

At this moment, victory or defeat was not important to Choi Tae-yang.

A sense of relief, as if he had contemplated his own limits, and a sense of exhilaration that he could become stronger, surged in.

“Kyahaha-!”

The neighborhood baby, who was clapping while eating watermelon, seemed to have a different idea.