13
Rosetta Stone
Year one of the fifty-student pilot program had been, perhaps, too successful. From word of mouth alone there were a staggering number of applicants for the following year’s Fortress Seoul.
The five partners and managers met in the large conference room.
They drank coffee and took notes. They were not the kind of people who were interested in congratulating themselves.
Rather, they tried to figure out next steps.
Tom and Clara Song, the owners of Eagle Academy, felt confident that they could double in size, but Peter and Mido weren’t as certain.
Lion, who had flown into Seoul alone the night before, listened carefully.
“I’d have to find more consultants and train them well,” Peter said. “But I’d prefer to keep the size smaller. For another year, maybe.”
“But we can help more kids,” Tom countered. “Renee promised to find scholarships to send maybe even twenty kids to the United States if we double in size. This year we’re sending ten.”
Mido glanced at Lion, who refrained from talking. She couldn’t tell if he was jet-lagged or thinking.
Tom, suffering from allergies, sneezed twice, and his wife, Clara, handed him a packet of tissues from her purse.
“We have enough applicants to double or even triple the number of students, but Peter is right. It all depends on the consultant-to-student ratio. Parents like that Fortress only does the application section, and the kids seem focused,” Tom said, sniffling.
“We could keep it small and charge double,” Clara said.
“Would that even work?” Lion asked, facing the owners of Eagle Academy. Yun was better at the pricing models, and he wished she had come with him. She was busy overseeing Exodus and Fortress and didn’t want to leave the baby. “I don’t know the market here very well. Could they even pay that?”
“We charge considerably less than most college consulting hagwons in Seoul. We can certainly increase our tuition, if only to reduce the number of applicants.”
“That isn’t why we came here,” Mido said. “I thought we were going to be priced moderately and provide at least ten kids free tuition. If we’re less expensive, we could expand the number of applicants and select the strongest students, right? Not just the ones who can pay more.”
Lion was always trying to keep tuition prices down, and Yun had to remind him that they paid their tutors the highest rates in Orange County, so something had to give.
No resolution in sight, Clara raised her eyebrows and checked her phone before putting it away in her jacket pocket.
“I have to head back to Eagle,” she said. “Three meetings with mother groups this afternoon. Everyone wants to take the summer session with Fortress, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold them off. Please”—she folded her hands as if in prayer—“please just tell me the final numbers.”
“I’ll stay,” Tom said to his wife, and Clara waved goodbye before leaving.
“Do you think we aren’t charging enough?” Lion asked, and Tom laughed.
“Right now you’re sort of running a charity, and it’s interesting because you’re getting better results than some of the best consulting hagwons here.
We had eleven Ivy acceptances, one Stanford, two MIT, as well as the best state schools.
Some of the kids who got into these schools surprised even me,” Tom said.
“The parents keep calling me to offer to take us out to dinner.”
“Well, you know what that means,” Peter said. He never let a parent buy him a meal because too often it came with an ask.
“They’re mostly just trying to say thank you,” Tom said, dismissing Peter’s cynicism.
“I’m just glad that Fortress Seoul is taking such good care of the kids.
And you’re doing an amazing job training the essay tutors,” he said to Mido, who wasn’t allowed to work with the students directly since she didn’t have a college degree.
“I don’t know how much longer we can stay here,” Peter said.
Lion and Tom looked up.
Mido smiled at Peter, wanting to support him.
“The parents are making me crazy,” Peter said. “There’s no way I can handle twice the number. The kids are really bright, but they seem so freaked out. I feel like I spend half my time trying to remind them that this is not everything.”
“But it feels like it is. To them,” Tom said. “They’ve worked so hard for this moment. Believe it or not, you’re removing much of the stress from their shoulders.”
Mido sensed this was true. The students here wrote the tutors thank-you notes and brought them tiny jars of candies or stuffed animals.
The cards mentioned how they felt better because they liked coming to Fortress to work on the applications and had someone to ask for help who didn’t pressure them.
“Do you want to come home?” Lion asked Peter and Mido.
Before Peter had a chance to answer, Tom interrupted, “This hagwon might not work without you and Mido. Good teachers are incredibly rare.”
The four of them decided to take a few days to think about a possible expansion. Tom left first, and Lion remained with Peter and Mido.
While Lion spoke with Peter, Mido got a text.
Once or twice a month, she heard from Tek. She hadn’t seen him since their dinner. Tek was dating someone, he said, which made Mido feel better about them being friends.
The message read: Heading to Seoul for work. Dinner tomorrow?
Mido met him at a Japanese restaurant famous for its shabu-shabu. Tek was waiting at the table when she arrived.
“How’s work?” Tek asked, sounding no different from when they were in college.
“It’s busy. After I eat, I need to get back to the office. I have to review a lot of files.”
“You’re doomed.”
“Hmm?”
“Your hours. Koreans work nonstop, and Americans never take any time off. You’re both. If you had stayed in Australia, you’d have some balance in your life. When’s the last time you went on holiday?” Tek asked, his Australian accent getting stronger.
Mido tried to think. After the family moved to California, she had never once taken a vacation. No one in her family had. Everyone worked. They had to.
“You have to take a holiday. All this work is not good for you. You’re going to get sick.”
“You work a lot,” she observed, taking a sip of her tea.
“How long will you do this, Mido?” he asked.
“What?”
“This hagwon business. It’s a nice, updated concept. Promotes more fairness. I get that. But you haven’t finished uni. When does that come in?”
“It’s funny. In LA, no one outside my family seemed to care whether or not I got my degree. At work, no one seems to care anymore. Here I get asked quite a lot. Not that it’s stopped the business from succeeding.”
“Koreans are so damn crazy about education and degrees,” Tek said. “They’re obsessed.”
“That’s not always a bad thing. I don’t blame them.
I mean, it’s better than not caring very much about education.
In the States, hardly any politician talks about reading, math, or science levels.
It’s like a taboo subject. Almost no one in America blinks if a child practices all the time for a sport, but it’s somehow terrible if a child studies nonstop,” she said.
“I enjoy sports, but most kids won’t become athletes.
Nearly every kid could benefit from getting a sound education. ”
“You sound like a Korean parent,” Tek said, laughing. “My mother used to tell me this when I wanted to keep playing badminton. I wasn’t great, but I loved being on the team.”
“That’s good that you liked it and played,” Mido said. “I don’t mean it has to be one or the other.”
“Well, at some point, you get serious and have to give up something to get something else,” Tek said.
“Now who sounds like a Korean parent?” she said, smiling. “What is a Korean parent anyway? If you are Korean and have a kid, you’re a Korean parent, and would you like someone to presume you’re one way or the other? I’ve met so many Korean parents, and each one is different.”
“I’m not having kids,” Tek said. “I doubt it.”
She was surprised. They had spoken about having children when they were together, and she didn’t know what had brought this about.
“You might change your mind,” she said. “Kids are great.”
“Doesn’t sound like it from my colleagues who have them. I am endlessly hearing about learning disabilities, or teenagers who are disobedient, or the expenses.”
“Well, I like kids. The more I work with them, the more I like them.”
Tek raised the temperature on the stove below the shabu-shabu pot.
“Koreans aren’t having kids because of you,” he said. He removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves as if preparing to have an argument.
“What do you mean?”
“Hagwons cost too much. Everything costs too much, and if the kids don’t turn out well, then parents get blamed. But all my counterparts here say they’re sick and tired of the costs of education. Their number one complaint is hagwons. That’s you.”
“Is that why you invited me to dinner?” Mido asked.
None of these arguments were new to her.
It was true that every parent she had ever met complained about education costs and how it was impossible not to send a child to a hagwon, usually starting around kindergarten.
“You wanted to lecture me about hagwons. You think I’m part of the problem. ”
“I think you should quit this absurd industry and finish your degree. Find your calling and do something else. You used to write plays.” Tek said this last part more cautiously.
He wanted to help her, but from her expression, he could tell that he’d hurt her feelings.
“You were good at it. You were even considering acting. Remember?”
“You think I failed.” Mido put down her teacup. She didn’t want to get up and make things worse. No doubt he thought he was helping her, being a good friend. She wanted to see it from his side, but it was painful to be reminded of what she hadn’t finished. “I didn’t fail.”