11
Fortress Teachers
Fortress Academy took up the second and third floors of Building E at the Blue Gate office complex.
Ever the optimist, Lion had negotiated an option to rent out two additional floors in the same building at the first availability.
The high-end commercial complex was owned by Joel Bu, the second son of a wealthy landowner in Hawaii.
Joel was friendly with Lion’s older brother, Ray, and had given him a favorable lease.
Lion and Yun had designed the office section of their second hagwon with great care.
There was a large office for the directors and a smaller one for Mido, the business manager.
As at Cypress, the walls were lined with shelves filled with books on education, psychology, parenting, self-improvement, and college admissions, as well as every kind of test guide.
Lion and Peter managed the teachers and curricula, and Mido took care of all the administrative functions.
She was in charge of enrollment, scheduling, practice tests, updating study guides, inventory management, and payroll.
Both Peter and Mido taught boot camps, tutored privately, and managed the pilot program for college counseling with DH, who had a month left before law school.
There were six regular tutors, six part-time tutors, including Bo, and three college counselors.
When Tek arrived at Fortress, Mido let him use her office, and he started his work immediately.
As usual, he could focus wherever, regardless of any number of distractions.
Mido did not have this ability to tune out everyone around her.
He claimed that his foam earplugs did half the work, but when she tried them, her focus was only marginally improved.
It was Sunday, when teachers reviewed the practice tests from the day before. The students were separated according to their verbal or math score ranges, but the class roster was not fixed. Each week, students could be moved from one class to another.
Seated in an armchair opposite Mido’s desk, Tek read his files while she reviewed student score reports. Just as with her kindergarteners and middle school students, Mido wanted to get to know each of the Fortress students.
Throughout her years in school, Mido could not recall ever having a teacher care about her in a personal way.
She had witnessed many other students being chosen by an instructor—clear favorites who had been marked as gifted or special—but long ago, Mido had accepted that she would never be one of those students. She was too quiet, shy, and plain.
A student like her could not stand out in a large classroom of thirty or forty students, or in a lecture hall of hundreds.
It wasn’t the teacher’s fault. They were busy trying to teach the material and manage a large class.
Now that she had been in front of the classroom herself, she was beginning to appreciate just how impossible the job must have been for her teachers.
The only instructor Mido recalled paying careful attention to her was Sean Teacher at the hagwon in Seoul.
He didn’t seem to have a favorite, but in the classroom of ten or eleven students, he listened to her and seemed to genuinely care.
She felt like he liked her the way she was, and perhaps because he thought she was okay, she wanted to learn more about whatever he knew.
After Tek finished his last page, he removed his earplugs and looked up. Mido was taking notes on a yellow legal pad.
“What are you working on?” he asked.
“I’m putting together the list of kids who requested private tutoring. Demand exceeds supply. Peter thinks we should create study groups. Then we don’t need to hire more teachers—keep costs down for everyone, and, most importantly, keep the kids more motivated.”
Tek looked doubtful, never having been a fan of hagwons or private tutoring.
“Will you be leading a group?”
Mido nodded.
“Really? You haven’t taken the SAT here, right?”
“Actually, I have taken it.”
“And?”
“I did well enough to teach it. To get hired here, all the tutors have to show their results. In verbal, I got a perfect score.”
“And for math?”
“I did quite well, thank you.”
She didn’t mention that she’d scored in the ninety-ninth percentile. “I could apply to UCLA or Berkeley, or I guess any other university in the States. But getting in is another thing altogether. There are many more factors here than just the standardized tests and grades.”
Mido checked the digital clock on the wall. It was already one thirty. “The kids are breaking for lunch.”
“What are we eating?” Tek jumped up and rubbed his stomach. “Hungry.”
“There are lunch boxes for the faculty in the lounge. Do you want to eat here? I can bring you one, or we can join the others.”
“I think we should eat here, no?”
They fed the students at Fortress SAT boot camp. Mido had ordered enough gimbap and cutlet sandwiches for everyone. With only a forty-five-minute break for lunch, the kids ate in their classrooms, but the tutors could eat anywhere.
In the faculty lounge, as Mido was collecting two lunch boxes and two bottles of water, Peter walked in.
“Hey,” he said, pointing to her lunch boxes. “Is one for me?”
“Oh, here.” She handed him one.
“You want to eat here?” he asked. They usually ate together.
“Tek’s here. In my office.”
“Your fiancé is following you to work now?” Peter laughed.
“He’s not my fiancé. He was kidding.”
“Didn’t sound that way.”
Mido punched his left shoulder lightly, and Peter winced dramatically, pretending to fall backward.
“Why do Korean girls hit?”
“Why do Korean guys need to be hit?”
Peter laughed. She used to be so quiet; now she snapped back at him.
“He’s not here for long and wanted to hang out today.”
“You’re hiding your boyfriend in your office? Do your students know?” Peter grinned. “Should I tell them?”
“You better not, Peter Son.”
“Got it. Well, then.” Peter sat down at the empty table opposite the food and opened his lunch box.
“How was class?” she asked.
“Highly motivated bunch,” he said. “No joke.”
“I gave you and my brother the top scorers because they need help on the hardest problems.”
“Thank you.” He liked being the musician who could make precalculus look easy.
“There’s a very long list of kids who want math tutoring. How many do you want?”
“I can do six.”
“Can you do sixteen? I was thinking of trying out that group thing. There would be four groups of three.”
Peter laughed. “I’m glad you teach verbal.”
Mido tapped her mouth. “I mean four groups of four.” She pretended to punch his shoulder and tapped him with her fist.
“Wait, you get the math wrong, and I get hit? How is that fair?”
They both turned when they heard the knock on the heavy glass door of the faculty lounge.
Tek waved at her, then entered.
“Here you are.”
Peter leaned in and whispered, “Doesn’t give you much breathing room, does he?”
Ignoring him, Mido picked up another lunch box.
Peter picked up his food and followed.
“May I join you? So we can keep chatting about the small groups?”
Just then, DH and Bo arrived. They would want to eat with them, too.
“All right,” she said.
The five of them moved to the director’s office for more space. They had less than half an hour before Peter, DH, and Bo returned to their classrooms. Mido wouldn’t teach until later, when the kids switched to verbal.
Tek didn’t seem to mind that the others had joined them, which was a relief to Mido.
Occasionally Peter spoke to Bo in Korean, and though they knew each other well, Peter still used honorifics and addressed Bo as Brother, because he was a year older.
As DH’s best friend, through a kind of social transitivity, Peter had become Bo’s younger brother, too.
Recently Bo had given up the van driving to take more classes at Fullerton and increased his weekend tutoring, which made more money and gave him more time for his schoolwork.
Now that DH was here, creating the college counseling program and teaching math, Mido was working with both her brothers and Peter.
She enjoyed their company and knew she’d be sad when DH left for school.
Tek had a lot of questions about college admissions and standardized tests. He didn’t understand why there were so many factors in college admissions.
“Why should it matter if a person can throw a ball?” Tek asked.
“I wouldn’t have gotten into Yale unless I played soccer,” DH said, taking a bite of his chicken sandwich. He was already on his second lunch box. “I got a likely letter way before most of my peers at Andover.”
“With all due respect, mate, why should soccer matter to your admission status at a top university?” Tek asked.
“Athletes are as valuable to a school community as someone who does well in math,” Peter offered.
“I was a walk-on for Yale soccer, and it was a tip for me to get in.” He studied Tek’s profile, realizing that Tek was likely considered better-looking to women than he was.
“What was your thing outside of school?”
“I was a national debating champion,” Tek answered.
“It’s quite academic, though. Debate. I wouldn’t have been able to do law or become a barrister one day without that early training.
I think it’s terrible for society that we overvalue athletes.
Sports are fine, but they don’t help society.
Only a few athletes can have jobs doing it, and so many boys lose their minds over it. ”
“Is my sister’s boyfriend putting down soccer?” DH turned to Peter, aghast.
DH had met Tek for the first time earlier in the morning, but hadn’t spent any time with him.
Bo knew him a little better since they’d met when Bo was in Sydney.
Bo felt sorry for Tek; it couldn’t be easy to face two older brothers and Peter, who loved watching soccer almost as much as he loved playing music.
Peter switched to Korean with Bo.
“Brother, would you like another sandwich? I’m going to grab another one.”
Bo shook his head no. Mido handed Peter half of her sandwich.
“I’m good,” she said, and Peter thanked her.
Tek glanced at Bo and Peter.
“How many students does this hagwon have?” Tek asked in English. His Korean had improved dramatically at school, but it would not have occurred to him to speak it with these guys.
Peter replied in English, “A hundred and twenty now, but there’s a waiting list. We could have two hundred if we wanted, but I’d have to hire more tutors. As it is, I had to pull Brother out of semiretirement. I hope I’m not going to affect your grades this semester.”
Bo was taking two extra classes this summer and working on a psychology research project.
He would apply to UCLA in the fall. He studied, worked, and slept.
At church, several college girls had tried flirting with him, but Bo refused to notice.
He was determined to transfer and eventually get into grad school.
Tek looked around the office. “This place looks like a serious business.” He stretched his arms and put his feet up on the coffee table, the soles of Tek’s shoes facing Bo.
Bo glanced at Tek’s feet and frowned.
Peter cocked his head in surprise, never having seen a Korean put his feet up on a table, especially in front of an elder.
“This place is clearly a moneymaker, mates,” Tek said, and he meant it as a compliment.
DH unwrapped the remaining half of his tonkatsu sandwich.
He was trying not to deduct points. In his mind, everyone started with a hundred, and they could keep that score or go down.
Earlier, he had met Tek in Mido’s office only briefly, and though he wasn’t an old-fashioned person, having spent most of his life in the States and Australia, even he’d been put off by Tek’s breezy casualness.
Bo could be far more accepting of people and would never look for an offense.
He would argue that Tek, an Australian-born Korean, wouldn’t necessarily know proper Korean etiquette.
DH wasn’t just offended by the athlete comments, which questioned the merit of his college acceptance; it also surprised him that Tek wasn’t recognizing his subordinate status in the room.
Tek was younger than Bo by a year and Peter by a few weeks, which shouldn’t have mattered but sort of did, and DH was almost a year younger than Tek, but he was still Mido’s older brother, which meant something, too.
Tek had committed the social sin of being too familiar.
The national debating champion had failed a test without having recognized its existence.
It wasn’t that Tek couldn’t sense that the guys didn’t like him.
He knew something was off. He was perplexed and checked Mido’s face.
The guys were annoyed, but he had no idea why.
He had gone to an all-boys school for most of his life and would have thought that he understood men, but Tek had not been around enough Korean guys.
Mido looked at his shoes, which were still on the coffee table. Tek followed her gaze and removed his feet and sat up straight, unable to believe that a bunch of young men could get so worked up about something so minor.
Tek said to Peter and DH, “I heard you two went to high school and college together?”
“I transferred to Pomona my junior year. Graduated in May.” Peter put his right hand through his buzz cut. He missed the long fringe, but this was much easier to maintain with just clippers.
“Was Yale difficult?” Tek asked.
DH shook his head, looking annoyed. “No, it wasn’t difficult for him. Peter’s a fucking genius. He was too smart for us knuckleheads on the soccer team. He just wanted more sunshine and smaller classes.”
Peter didn’t say anything. He got up from his seat and tucked his black T-shirt into his jeans.
“I heard you’re a musician,” Tek said, pointing to Peter’s head. “Cool hair.”
“Yep,” he answered. “We better get back to our students.” Peter closed his empty lunch box and tossed it into the wastebasket.
Unlike his musician friends, Peter didn’t hate professional types. His own family had money, and he was required only to finish college and stay out of trouble, which he had done. That said, from Tek’s tone and manner, Peter could sense Tek didn’t think much of hagwons or those who worked in them.
Bo picked up his lunch box and water bottle. “Time’s up.”
“Let’s go back to class.” As if on cue, Peter and DH followed Bo. Mido got up as well, and Tek was not entirely unaware that he might have lost their good opinion.