When you keep receiving the same kind of customer day after day, sometimes, without even realizing it, your mind drifts elsewhere in the middle of a consultation. It is almost always the same thought. It goes back to something that happened when I once wanted to study poetry.

  Back then, I wanted to become a poet.

  After finishing the college entrance exam, I chose literature as my major. I enlisted in the military, earned some money, finished my bachelor's degree, and then went on to graduate school.

  My supervising professor was P.

  P was a fairly well-known poet, but not the kind of poet whose style I liked. Once, P asked me what my goal was.

  “Because I want to study poetry.”

  P told me we should go have a beer at a pub that evening.

  There was a postseason game for a popular sport on, so the pub was packed with people playing darts and others cursing at the screen while watching the game.

  Ever since I was young, getting along with other people had always been both easy and difficult for me.

  “Two beers, please,”

  P said to the person who seemed to be the most senior among the pub staff. Maybe he was the owner.

  “Figures today would be cursed,”

  the man joked with a grin, before quickly bringing out two beers.

  “This one's a new graduate student. This lunatic says he wants to ‘study’ poetry.”

  He made air quotes around the word study.

  That scene has always lingered in my mind.

  When he said it like that, was it the joking attitude of a poet-scholar who believed poetry was not something to be studied?

  Or was it the more practical pity of someone who knew that trying to study poetry was the kind of thing that could leave you starving to death?

  “So what exactly is the flow here? I'm not very educated, so I'm having trouble understanding. Could you explain it to me, counselor?”

  The woman asking the question was in her forties.

  Her clothes were neat, but most of what she wore looked like new clothes bought cheaply at an outlet years after they had gone out of style. Fatigue and hardship were written all over her face, and it had clearly been a long time since she had last had her nails done.

  Her question pulled me out of that pub scene in my head.

  “We deal in life-insurance reinsurance,” I said gently.

  “A lot of people hear the words hedge fund and imagine a place where rich people gather to grow their wealth even more. What we do is slightly different.”

  I glanced at the documents she had brought.

  “Your mother has a life insurance policy. When she dies, it pays out one million dollars.”

  “She bought it when she was forty. It’s a whole life policy with a twenty-year premium term. Once those twenty years are fully paid, the payout remains one million dollars whenever she dies.”

  “As her only heir, you would receive that money.”

  I stopped there and watched her expression.

  Did she understand?

  If she misunderstood and started asking unrelated questions later, the conversation would become exhausting very quickly.

  “Yes, yes, that's right,” she said.

  Her face hardened.

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  Fortunately, it wasn’t confusion.

  It was anger.

  I continued.

  “The problem is that your mother says the premiums have become too burdensome. She wants to surrender the policy early.”

  “Over fifteen years, she has paid about two hundred sixteen thousand dollars.”

  “The current cash surrender value is around eighty percent. Quite generous, actually. She would receive roughly one hundred seventy thousand dollars if she cancels the policy now.”

  She let out a slow breath.

  “So she wants to take the refund. That's what my mother wants.”

  Feeling the weight behind that sigh, I continued.

  “This is where our company comes in.”

  “We would offer to purchase the policy from your mother for two hundred fifty thousand dollars.”

  “If she agrees, we would continue paying the remaining premiums for the final five years.”

  “And when your mother eventually dies, the one million dollar payout would go to us.”

  I paused briefly.

  “To be blunt, yes, it sounds cruel. Our downside is simply that we must wait until the insured person dies. But financially, it is still a profitable structure.”

  “For your mother, who needs money now, it is not a bad option either.”

  “And for you… it is not necessarily a bad outcome.”

  “Whatever portion of that money your mother does not spend would eventually pass to you.”

  I watched her face again.

  She was clearly a bright woman. Someone who had worked hard her entire life.

  She must have had many chances once. But her education had probably ended long before her ambition did.

  She understood everything immediately.

  Silence filled the room.

  Five years ago, I might at least have heard the ticking of a clock.

  But digital clocks these days pass without a sound.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  The imagined sound echoed quietly in my mind.

  Finally, she spoke.

  “Excuse me… so?”

  “I heard this place isn't just some fund office.”

  I smiled faintly.

  “What do you mean?”

  She leaned forward slightly.

  “My mother always told me to be a dutiful daughter.”

  “My father was poor. My mother was poor too.”

  “Two poor bastards got married. Then my father got hit by a car and died while working.”

  “The reason my mother bought death insurance—even while struggling—was because my father left nothing behind.”

  “She worked two jobs to raise me.”

  “She always said the same thing.”

  I live only for you, my child.

  “You must always be grateful to the parents who gave birth to you.”

  She laughed bitterly.

  “But you know what?”

  “I never agreed to any of it.”

  “Not once did I consent to being born into a household so poor we could barely afford a stick of deodorant.”

  “Two poor people relieved their sexual desire and I was born from that.”

  “Tell me something.”

  “What is the difference between a woman giving birth to a child and someone taking an object out of a jar?”

  Her voice trembled.

  “When I wanted to go to college, my mother cried.”

  “She said instead I should work as a waitress in some tiny restaurant and help pay for her medicine.”

  “She asked me how I could think only about myself.”

  “How I could refuse to support my parents.”

  She slammed her hand lightly against the table.

  “Can a child really owe a debt to their parents?”

  “I never chose my race.”

  “My country.”

  “My parents.”

  “This poverty-stricken life was never something I chose.”

  Her voice finally broke.

  She began sobbing uncontrollably.

  “The one thing I held on to… the one tiny hope…”

  “That at least when my mother died, I would receive the insurance payout.”

  “But now she says the premiums are too expensive.”

  “She wants to surrender the policy.”

  “She says she needs to buy her new boyfriend a used car.”

  “Crazy bitch.”

  “Fucking bitch.”

  “Worthless bitch.”

  “A lunatic driven by nothing but sexual desire.”

  Her grief had turned into hatred.

  I pulled out another sheet of paper and slid it across the table.

  “Ma'am, this reminds me of a line from a poem I once read.”

  “The clouds wanted lips, and the birds brought them.”

  “Please calm down. I will explain the rider.”

  After she settled slightly, I continued.

  “If your mother sells the policy to us and dies before we finish paying all the remaining premiums, there is a special rider.”

  “If she dies within one year, the heir receives four hundred thousand dollars.”

  “If she dies after one year but within two years, the heir receives three hundred thousand dollars.”

  “For us, there is still no downside. The capital simply turns over faster.”

  “In finance, speed matters.”

  “You would receive the consolation payment.”

  “And your mother would finally reduce the burden she has placed on her child.”

  The moment the words left my mouth, I regretted them slightly.

  She looked up.

  “I heard you also provide guidance.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “You seem to have misunderstood.”

  “You might think you can do it.”

  “But you probably can't.”

  “We'll do the praying for you.”

  Then I decided to be completely honest.

  “Prayers for her to die quickly.”

  “But ma'am, all circumstances are recorded and filmed here.”

  “This entire conversation.”

  “Even the way we look right now.”

  “There is just one favor you must do for us.”

  She signed the rider.

  As she stood to leave, I said,

  “Please tell your mother this.”

  “I searched carefully and found the place offering the most favorable terms possible for her.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “As expected, you're smart.”

  “Even someone like me—so full of rage I could kill someone—still wouldn't be able to kill my own mother.”

  “But if it were someone else's parent in a similar situation…”

  “Even if I ended up in prison, the insurance payout would already have been received.”

  Once again, I found myself thinking how clever she was.

  I answered calmly.

  “Don't worry.”

  “Prison?”

  “Cases like that are extremely rare.”

  “We will guide you properly.”