Sangdo woke because the fire had gone out.  Automatically rising from the grass he crawled his way over to the wood pile.  The humidity had remained strong into the night, so there was little need of warmth, but the fire kept the bugs at bay. 

Glancing around first to make sure his travelling companion was asleep, he replaced the charred logs in the pit with fresh ones and stuck his hands under them.  In an instance a fire was rolling into life. 

Satisfied with his work, he dusted off his hands and stood, eyes automatically going toward the sky.  There were still plenty of hours left in the night.  He wouldn’t need to get them moving again until closer to dawn. 

They had to make it to the next town over before the newspapers if he wanted to have any luck in finding a job for the day.  It was almost impossible to find work if they didn’t keep moving, not with so many out of work and desperate.

The touch of sleep completely gone from his eyes, he wound up sitting on one of the logs too big for the fire—he’d pawned his hatchet a week ago— the 5 dollar bill in his pocket.  It was the last of the money he’d saved from the railroad job last month.

He heard small movements from close by but pretended not to know until there was a tap on his arm.

Turning, he smiled down at his travelling companion. 

The five year old girl had run into him while escaping the farm she’d been sent to work at.  A lot of kids suffered that fate when their families could no longer support them.  Their parents hoped that at the very least they were saving their children from starvation.  Sangdo understood that, and he was far from well-off himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to send her back. They’d been hopping trains together ever since. 

“What are you doing awake,” he asked her.

“I had bad dreams” the little girl told him.

“About what?” he said, lifting her onto his knee. 

She played with the hem of his shirt and answered:  “A dragon.”

Sangdo was notably warm-blooded, but his heart went cold.

If she noticed the change in his demeanor, she didn’t show it.  Trying to hide the tightness of his throat, Sangdo said, “There’s no such thing,” staring over her head into the fire.  “They’re just make-believe.”

When he’d managed to coax the little girl back to sleep again with a slightly melancholic rendition of her favorite song, he placed her back into her bed of moss and leaves and took to pacing at the edge of their temporary encampment.

Every now and then his eyes would fall on her sleeping form and his heart would wrench. 

He must have known all along that this would happen.  It always happened sooner or later.  Moving from town to town had helped, but when even his own family had been turned against him—it was always only a matter of time.

She was almost 6 now.  Fondly, he remembered the bracelet she’d made out of flowers for his birthday.  He’d lied and told her he was turning 22.  It was a nice age, but it wasn’t true.  He’d had more birthdays than that.  He hadn’t looked any older since he’d turned 20, though.  He didn’t feel older either.  Fortunately he had always looked mature for his age, whatever that age really was, or else it would have been more difficult to pass the girl off as his own daughter.

She couldn’t stay with him any longer.  Bad dreams were only the start.  She would start to hate him soon and then. . . 

Making up his mind, he checked to make sure she was fast asleep and then slipped away from the camp.  He was going to have to search the woods for the pull of a different fire. 

. . .

Sitting in the second to last car of the cargo train, Sangdo watched the first rays of a red sun rising in the distance.  Sometime soon a family of four would wake up around their cozy fire to find a strange little girl sleeping beside them.  Pinned to her shirt they would find a note explaining her circumstances and a five dollar bill.  It was enough money to sustain a girl of her size for a month.

 He prayed they would take her in.  They seemed like a caring bunch:  the parents’ dedication to their children was obvious by the fact that their two little boys had new shoes and they did not.  He didn’t like to add to their burden but a five dollar bill was all he had to his name.

His little girl on the other hand:  she would hate him.  He knew that she would.  He wouldn’t blame her though.  He had that same opinion of himself at the moment.  

When the train reached its station in the next city, Sangdo quietly snuck out of his car.  Hefting his small bag onto his shoulder, he turned in place to get a panoramic of the new city.  It was definitely larger than any he’d been in for a while. That was good and bad news.  There would be more jobs, but also more people, and plenty of drifters like himself looking for day work. Seeing no advertisements on the walls of the station that weren’t selling something, he headed out into the streets.

He spotted a man on a bike coming his direction with a load of newspapers in a basket behind him.  When he passed, Sangdo’s deft fingers lifted one from the basket.  He hoped the stranger wouldn’t lose any money for the missing paper, but it was likely he would. 

A few minutes later, he was sitting outside at a small café, pretending he just needed a few more minutes with the menu while the waitress’s skeptical glances let him know his ruse wouldn’t last long.  Scanning the newspaper when she left him to attend to the other patrons, he scoured the classifieds for anything promising. 

He genuinely meant to keep his mind in his own business, but the distinctively annoying voice of a man leaving the interior of the café gained his attention.

“Excellent.  Absolutely excellent.  You absolutely won’t regret this deal.”

“I’m sure I won’t.”  The second voice was softer and though the words themselves weren’t pleasant, the voice was a vast improvement on the other man’s.

“United Motors will be honored to have you joining our board.  Your majority share will give you practical control of the whole company, you know!”

Sangdo’s ears had perked at the name “United Motors.”  Glancing furtively over the top of his paper, he spied two men standing just on the sidewalk a few feet away from the front of the café.  One was wearing a brown pork pie hat which seemed oddly appropriate for him.  Pork Pie was talking to a shorter, younger looking man with a black fedora.  Though he was definitely the younger of the two, something gave weight to his presence, drawing Sangdo in. 

 “Listen,” Black Hat was saying, his voice almost below detection, “You can quit trying to sweeten the deal.  It’s trying of my patience and I’ve already agreed to sign.”

Brightening in a way that was in its own right annoying, Pork Pie lifted his briefcase onto his arm and popped it open.  “In that case, why wait!  I’ve got the documents right here—”    

“I wouldn’t sign if I was you.”

Pork Pie and Black Hat both turned in his direction.  Sangdo leant against the small metal fence surrounding the café seating.  When they had both stared at him long enough to prove their interest (or at least their disbelief) he stepped down to the sidewalk and began,

“United Motors has no future in production.  It’s much more profitable for them to sell their patents to the competition and cut their losses.  That means in less than a year’s time every auto company in the nation will have United Motor technology under the hood, rendering UM cars completely defunct.” 

Pork Pie’s mouth was opening wider with each sentence, but not a word of protest came out. Black Hat’s expression was unreadable.  That weight of age he couldn’t possibly have possessed clouded him. 

Stepping forward now until he had joined the other two, Sangdo finished, “Seeing as the patents are under the family name and not under company control, anyone left in charge of the company would have nothing but a bunch of useless factories while the family and,” he made a point of looking at Pork Pie directly, “any of their close friends and advisors, get to run off with a pretty sum.  I for one wouldn’t want to be the er they dumped the company on.”

He raised his eyebrows at Black Hat to share the humor of the situation.  He gained no response, but Black Hat stared at him and his interest was obvious even to Pork Pie. 

“Oh come on,” the taller (and wider) sputtered.  He threw his hand out in Sangdo’s direction.  “You can’t really listen to this vagrant.”

“I can,” Black Hat finally spoke.  His eyes stayed fixed on Sangdo, something beyond interest in his eyes—perhaps curiosity.  “It’s an interesting theory.”

“It’s more than a theory.  It’s all they're talking about 30 miles south of here.  Everyone’s worried about their jobs if the factory goes down.”

Pork Pie had paled considerably.  Simply taking enjoyment from one-upping ‘oh so clever’ Mr. Pork Pie, Sangdo smiled his most irritatingly pleasant grin.

Turning his attention once more to his original companion, Pork Pie pled, “Mr. Park, I strongly recommend that you reconsider—”

“I have reconsidered,” Black Hat interrupted with ice in his even words.  “And you can shut your briefcase now.”

Effectively silenced, Pork Pie seemed hypnotized into submission, shrinking under the gaze of the smaller.

Black Hat, now revealed to be one Mr. Park, waved his hand and a cab appeared almost by magic.  “I appreciate you stopping by this morning,” he remarked, “Since you took care of breakfast, allow me to pay for your cab.”

Pork Pie sidled into the cab, his briefcase clutched to his chest. 

Mr. Black Hat Park leaned down to the cab’s open passenger window and greeted the driver.  As he was facing away from him, Sangdo had a hard time hearing what was said by the quiet man, but the cab driver’s enthusiastic and bright responses were enough.  When he’d finished his conversation with the cab driver, Mr. Park wished him well, asked him to say hello to his wife for him, and paid him a little bit more than the estimated fare probably called for, judging by the smile that lit up the driver’s face.

A moment later the cab had pulled away, leaving Sangdo alone on the sidewalk with Mr. Park.

“What a way to start the morning,” Sangdo laughed.  “Sent him home with his tail between his legs.” 

Mr. Park turned.  The gravity that clung to the man had affected Sangdo’s judgment, but he was certain now that Mr. Park couldn’t have been that much older than him at all. And yet. . . he seemed to have the feeling of an old Stradivarius violin, or impossible, something even older.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you around the city before,” Mr. Park said. 

“Well it’s a big city,” Sangdo joked. 

Mr. Park didn’t seem to appreciate the humor as he answered with confidence, “If you had been here before I would know.  What’s your name?”

“Sangdo.”

“You realize I can’t put down just “Sangdo” in the company records.”

Baffled, Sangdo questioned, “What records?”

“You’re not otherwise engaged to another company are you?  Because I can ensure a higher pay.”

Realizing what the other was offering, Sangdo was startled.  He’d dealt with businessmen before.  They were like Pork Pie, full of their selves and loud voiced.  Mr. Park gave off a completely different, more dangerous air.  Yet try as he may, he couldn’t dislike or distrust him.

“It’s Yu Sangdo properly.”

“I take it you don’t know who I am, seeing as you’re new to the city.”

“To be completely honest I arrived this morning on the 6 o clock train.  Just don’t let the ticket master know that,” he added with a laugh.

Smiling for the first time in a way that lifted the weight over him, Mr. Park introduced, “I’m Sehyuk.  Though my close friends call me P Goon.  I don’t have too many of those I’d say, but that comes with the territory.” He reached over the small café fence and grabbed an abandoned newspaper from the table.   Unfolding the front page with one hand, he held it out to Sangdo.  “I’m a little preoccupied with business.”

Under the primary headline: New School To Open its Doors on Schedule was a picture of the very man standing in front of him now with a few other gentleman in the picture described as contractors.  Sehyuk’s description was a little weightier:  Park Sehyuk III, owner of Kingdom Investments and philanthropist.  Quickly scanning the rest of the article, Sangdo was quick to discover he was standing before the man who practically owned the city.

“You might say I built the city,” Sehyuk added to Sangdo’s look of dawning awe.

“Well, your family certainly did,” Sangdo said with respect, continuing to scan the article.

“A technicality.  It helps the mere mortals put lives like ours in their terms.”

Sangdo looked up with surprise.  “Excuse me?”

Smiling like he was joking, though Sangdo knew that he wasn’t, Sehyuk set forth, “So, are you going to accept my offer?”

Sangdo didn’t have any other offers, but even if the President himself had asked him, he wouldn’t have turned down Sehyuk now.  He had a lot of questions for the other man. 

“You have a deal, Mr. Park,” Sangdo said, reaching out to shake his hand.

Sehyuk reciprocated, insisting, “Call me Sehyuk, at the very least. Mr. Park was me 60 years ago.”

A/N  First of all, thank you to all of my new and old subscribers! <3  It's the start of a new school year and I have four day weekends somehow so I decided to sit down and try to get some writing done.  But of course I struggled for an hour to get one paragraph for the main story but banged out 7 pages of backstory in an hour and a half.  Oh well. At least it's something I don't have to make you wait for. 

I feel like I could write entire stories on just the background so I'm sorry if this felt rushed!  

Thank you all so much for reading.  Feel free to comment, critique, or question!