Liar Game

Never trust anyone.
That’s what a bespectacled schoolteacher writes on the board for his class (in English) as he translates for added emphasis: “Never trust anyone. Never. Trust. Anyone.”
Why, he asks? Because humans are natural born liars. According to him, the average person will hear two hundred lies in a day—and when his students don’t believe him, he sets to prove it with a tally counter in hand.
He poses questions that can be answered by a simple yes or no, and in this case by a student raising their hands if the statements spoken apply to them. Things like whether they’ve cheated on exams, or stolen money—and instantly, the teacher is able to pinpoint who isn’t being forthcoming by studying telltale changes in their behavior when avoiding the truth.
Click. Click. Each time he catches a student in a lie, the tally counter goes up, and up, and up.
Meanwhile, the police are out in force to catch a man who’s slipped out of their grasp one too many times before. Judging by their numbers, they aren’t taking any chances. Is that the school they’re rushing into?
It only takes one minute and a little math for the teacher to tally enough lies to prove his point, which he repeats in English: “So, never… trust… anyone.”
This, he says, is what he wanted to impart to his students in his final lecture to them. The students—who had no idea this was his final lecture—whisper confusedly amongst themselves as the teacher turns his back to them and places his hands behind his head. He knows what’s coming.
“I killed someone,” he says, before the police burst through the back doors to arrest him. As they converge on him, he stares dead ahead at the writing on the wall: Never trust anyone.
One year later.
Hapless and hurried, Sunhwa finds herself at war with her conscience when she so badly wants to ignore the kindly grandmother asking for directions, but finds herself doubling back anyway.
She’s just as lost as the grandma is when it comes to the directions written down on a torn calendar page, though she helps to wheel the grandma’s large bag without complaint. We all know what it feels like to be in her shoes.
As they near the destination(-ish), Sunhwa agrees to watch the woman’s bags while she goes to the ladies room. Long minutes tick by, and though the grandma doesn’t reappear, Sunhwa still faithfully waits with her bags, even when the friend she was in such a hurry to meet calls to ask what’s taking so long.
Sunhwa tries to explain her situation, but her friend is much more flippant about Sunhwa’s sense of social responsibility—if she’s so worried the grandma left something important, why doesn’t she check the bag?
She does, and is not expecting what she finds: Money. That entire bag is filled with stacks and stacks of cold hard cash.
Meanwhile, mysteriously dapper television host Choi Seung hyun introduces his show with a worldview not too dissimilar from the never-trust-anyone teacher by saying how the aim of his show is to unveil people’s true selves by pitting them against an enormous sum of money.
To illustrate his point, Seung-hyun unmasks himself for the camera and grandly gestures to the cubic ton of dollar bills just waiting for the right contestant. Because while people may lie, money doesn’t.
Speaking of dollar bills, Sunhwa looks positively terrified as she pours out the contents of the grandma’s bag in her cramped apartment to count out the total: Five hundred million won, or half a million dollars.
The idea of the money is tempting when the only things written on Sunhwa’s calendar are due dates for bills, but she doesn’t let herself entertain it for long, and resolves to return the money to its owner… somehow.
But that doesn’t mean she can’t enjoy it just a little bit, since it’s not every day one gets to sleep on a pile of money. “I’ll take it to the police as soon as the sun comes up,” she says, before snuggling in for the night.

Notes

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