At the age of 18, I met the greatest opponent of my life.
Wan-deuk is a high school student who lives with his hunchback father and has the unfortunate luck of being neighbors with his homeroom teacher. Despite his dad’s diminutive size and handicap, Wan-deuk considers him to be the greatest man he knows. Wan-deuk has all the makings of a troublemaker: he gets bad grades and comes from a poor, underprivileged family. But when it comes to fighting, he has never lost a bout. With no hopes, dreams, and nothing to offer, there’s only one thing in this world that Wan-deuk prays for—the day that his homeroom teacher, Dong-ju will disappear from his life.
Wan-deuk can’t seem to get away from him; stuck with the man all day at school and beckoned by him at all hours of the night at home. Dong-ju exposes details of Wan-deuk’s family life to his classmates and even freeloads off the rice that Wan-deuk receives as government aid. On the brink of hopelessness, Wan-deuk is surprisingly introduced to his Filipino mother—a woman whose existence he himself had not known about.
Learning to take charge of the world with the help of his pestering teacher, the unlikely hero experiences emotional growth and what it means to have a dream.
