It doesn’t look like a joke… haa, what on earth is this boy?

The fearless kid was demanding a billion dollars for a one percent stake without turning a hair, and Lee Zhangchang could make nothing of him.

Lee Zhangchang was called the invisible godfather of the overseas Chinese.

Across the overseas Chinese world—Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore—Lee Zhangchang passed for an elder.

He also had considerable connections with the highest power circles on the mainland.

A large share of the overseas Chinese money invested in the mainland was tied to Lee Zhangchang, directly or otherwise.

And now this young boy in front of him had thrown down a challenge.

He treated a billion US dollars as pocket change.

A billion dollars in pure cash was a considerable sum even for Lee Zhangchang.

Lee Zhangchang started weighing it.

He could see in the boy’s eyes that it wasn’t a joke.

He’d met every kind of person where money was concerned, but this one alone he couldn’t read.

His only daughter, Clara, had been praising the boy since last winter as a decent man.

His one and only daughter looked to like the boy, so he had set up the occasion.

Before he could ask a single question, the drinking contest had laid him out first.

Not even the internal energy he had trained all his life had held up.

And yet the boy had appeared in the morning perfectly fine.

And then he’d named a billion dollars, with the arrogant(?) air of a man doing him a favor by taking it.

“Do you think the stake is too small? The stake stays at one percent however far the amount goes up.”

“And the reason for that? If the investment goes up, surely common sense says the stake goes up with it?”

“Common sense exists to be broken. And that money doesn’t mean much to me.”

“A billion dollars is close to a trillion won in Korean money. And that’s small?”

A grin.

Instead of answering, the boy smiled.

He was young, but the look in his eyes was an old operator’s.

Several sly old snakes were clearly coiled up inside him.

Ha. I’m getting shown up properly by a young monster today.

He ought to refuse, tell the boy not to joke with him, and cut this off at a decent point.

But in one corner of his mind a ridiculous feeling came up, telling him to invest.

Lee Zhangchang was thrown.

His reason said refuse, while his instincts howled at him to grab this absurd investment stake.

This was the investment instinct that had never once failed him, firing.

“A lot if you call it a lot, but isn’t it an amount that’s small if you call it small?”

A young fellow who answered in riddles.

“Nngh.”

Lee Zhangchang let out his second groan.

Young as he was, there was no dismissing him.

That the boy’s internal energy ran deeper than his own had been settled over the liquor.

“And even if you invest, you can’t be involved in the work in any way. Don’t ask about it, either. We settle up right away. Where to invest is mine alone to decide.”

“Well now… that’s absurd…”

The strong-arming went beyond anything he could have imagined.

The boy said it without hesitating—a billion dollars in and you can do nothing—and he looked like a monster saying it.

At that age, Lee Zhangchang couldn’t have dreamed of nerve like this.

“Are there other investors besides me?”

“Of course~ my people should be rounding investors up right about now.”

“Your people? Who?”

Instead of answering, the boy with the money demon in him only smiled.

Lee Zhangchang was craving hard liquor again, and it was still morning.

His head throbbed and throbbed.

“Robert, it’s been a long time.”

“Jack. Politics suits you better than scholarship after all~.”

“Whew. What are you saying. These days it’s absolute misery. I should have stayed at the school. I went into politics, which doesn’t suit me, and I can’t see a future in it. And how have you been? What I heard was that things weren’t going especially well…”

Jack Brown held a senior party post on the economic side at the Democratic Party. He looked at his old classmate Robert and passed on the news of the years between.

Rumor had it he’d been restructured out of his company and divorced his wife and been left with nothing.

It had gone far enough that people were saying the alumni ought to take up a collection for him.

They said he was finished, so what’s this office? And those clothes are all designer.

But the rumor was starting to strike Jack as false.

The state of Robert’s office suite in Manhattan was no joke.

The floor space had to run to several hundred pyeong, and the staff numbered more than twenty.

A hundred thousand dollars a month in rent, plus salaries—on that scale the costs had to run into hundreds of thousands every month.

And there Robert wore the title of managing director.

Anybody looking would see a successful Wall Street financier.

“I was lucky enough to be put in charge of running a private equity fund.”

“A private equity fund!!!”

Judging by the size of the office, it had to be running a billion dollars at the least.

Quite the jackpot.

“The amount under management isn’t all that big. But the investor is a very bold gentleman.”

“Who is he?”

“Why, do you want to meet him?”

“Heh heh. You know perfectly well why. Next year is the presidential election. If there’s a benefactor out there handing out political money, I’m willing to go to the end of the earth to meet him.”

“I’ll help you with that.”

“Thank you. Robert~ you’re my friend! Hahaha.”

How much political money you brought in decided what present you got once your side took power.

“A super PAC is in the plan.”

“A what, a su… a super PAC!”

Jack was stunned.

The suddenness of it shook his soul enough to set his hands trembling.

American political money can’t be donated or received as you please.

An individual or a business can only work through legal lobbyists or donate a set amount.

Direct donations to a candidate, what’s called hard money, are barred above twenty-five thousand dollars a year for an individual.

But it was different through a political action committee, a PAC.

Through a PAC, what’s called soft money, the scale changed entirely.

As long as it isn’t advertising directly for a particular party or candidate, you can advertise without limit.

That is exactly the arrangement called a super PAC.

In 2008 especially, the presidential election runs at the same time as the elections for both houses.

Astronomical campaign money is bound to go in.

So if an individual had a super PAC in the plan, this was enormously good news.

“It isn’t free.”

“Of course not!”

“And I personally support Senator Obama as the presidential candidate.”

“What did you say? Senator Obama!”

“For the Democratic Party and for Senator Obama, I can put in a hundred million dollars—no, more than that.”

“Hup!!!”

At the words a hundred million dollars Jack Brown let out a groan.

Truly an enormous sum.

The kind of money only the rich in the Fortune top hundred could put in.

No—even for them it would be an impossible donation.

The economy was scraping the bottom right now, and cash was the same thing as a lifeline.

“H-Hillary has it sewn up. Don’t you know that?”

Jack felt him out carefully.

The strong candidate in the Democratic Party was Hillary.

“I know. But I intend to push Senator Obama.”

Robert spoke with finality.

Jack… don’t look at me with those eyes. My boss decided it that way, so I have no choice but to follow.

Robert didn’t know what was in his boss’s mind, and he didn’t ask.

He’d received word to throw his full support behind the young Senator Obama.

Hillary was certain to be the Democratic candidate, but Robert followed what his boss said.

Exactly as he’d promised at the start, he didn’t attach a single quibble. (TL Note: 토를 달다 — to attach a 토, the Korean particle written in beside a Chinese text to make it read; so, to add your own wording to someone else’s, to object.)

“The truth is… I support Senator Obama too. No—the call came from that side.”

Jack said it with a smile.

“Oh! That really is a relief!”

One layer of the weight on Robert’s mind came off too.

If they had ended up supporting different sides, it could have turned into a headache.

“Thank you, Robert… and pass on my gratitude to whoever your backer is. If Senator Obama becomes president, he’ll be the first among those who made it happen.”

“I’ll pass that on to our boss.”

The two of them shook hands warmly.

Neither of them had the faintest idea that the wheel of the future was rolling slowly along, according to the plan of someone they couldn’t begin to guess at.

“Time really does move~.”

More than a year had already gone by since I regressed into the past.

A lot had happened in that stretch.

I’d cleared away misfortunes and illegal business I couldn’t have dreamed of touching before.

And then came peace.

I’d spent a hot summer vacation in Hong Kong.

Madame Emmanuelle said several times over that she’d come to Korea during the winter break.

Clara talked about the beauty of the old house day after day, and her mother’s heart was carried clean away.

Lee Zhangchang couldn’t invest with me in the end.

A billion dollars sounds fine when you say it, but it isn’t an amount you invest on the strength of meeting someone once.

That was what I’d aimed at.

I had no intention of sharing so much as an eye-crumb of my stake. (TL Note: 눈곱만큼도 — not even as much as the crust in the corner of your eye; Korean for the smallest amount there is.)

I’d calculated it in advance and thrown out a brutal number on purpose.

Still, I had to admit he was impressive.

Lee Zhangchang didn’t reject my offer out of hand—he thought hard about it. (TL Note: 일언지하에 — “beneath a single word”, to be cut off with one word; the four-character phrase for a refusal so flat it leaves nothing to say.)

And then he spoke.

If there was ever anything he could help with, I should say so any time.

That one thing was enough.

That he could keep his wealth going in a Hong Kong merged into the mainland was enough on its own. I had to grant Lee Zhangchang his ability.

I didn’t know his exact assets, but he was certainly a tremendous tycoon.

“Hoo~.”

I stretched out long.

The last semester of third year was going past its peak too.

All of it far too fast.

Unlike last time, I’d shared every moment with my friends, and I was still sorry to see it go.

I knew very well that once this time was over, these pure days would never come again.

I looked at the classroom with warm eyes.

The inside of the classroom was hot with intensity.

The energy of ascetics pressing silently on toward the entrance exam is no joke.

I looked at the sky outside the window.

A few months from now, I wouldn’t be able to come and go here freely either.

Enrolled student and graduate are completely different stations.

I filled myself up, as much as I liked, with the blue autumn morning sky beyond the window.

“Hyeong-seok didn’t come today either?”

“Something must be up with that punk.”

“…He’d come to school for the school lunch alone, if nothing else… something’s happened, hasn’t it?”

Just then somebody at one side of the classroom was asking after Hyeong-seok.

For the last few days we hadn’t seen his face.

The ones who’d been studying lifted their heads.

“Isn’t anybody close to Hyeong-seok?”

Tae-seok, the class president, asked.

“…Hyeong-seok’s having a rough time lately.”

Four-eyed Jae-yeol opened his mouth carefully.

“Why? Is something going on at home?”

“Hyeong-seok… told me not to tell anyone.”

“Hey! A friend isn’t coming to school and you’re holding back? Spill it!”

The others pressed Jae-yeol hard.

Jae-yeol thought about it for a moment.

“None of you know Hyeong-seok is from Sarangwon, do you?”

“Wh-what? Sarangwon???”

“…”

I knew Sarangwon was the only children’s home in our city.

I wasn’t close enough to Hyeong-seok to know he lived there.

“Sarangwon’s in trouble these days, apparently. They were living there cheap on jeonse, and they got told to get out because an apartment complex is going up there. The Assembly member for the district is connected to it, so city hall can’t do anything either. So Hyeong-seok’s out doing day labor.”

“Day labor?”

“That punk Hyeong-seok was going for social welfare, too…”

The kids’ faces turned gloomy.

Hyeong-seok, who was always there and not there, smiling like a little bodhisattva in his corner of the classroom—today the empty space where he sat was large.

In my last life he hadn’t been in my class.

After I came top in second year, the classroom and the friends both changed.

So I hadn’t known Hyeong-seok’s situation.

“What do we do about this? Should we pool our allowances or something?”

“Sarangwon’s a big place. What good is it if we scrape together pocket change?”

“Right… then…”

Just then the kids looked at me.

The little brats know big brother has money.

Well—I earned plenty of money so I could spend it on days like this.

In my bank account the money is shooting up faster than bean sprouts at the corner shop.

“I’ll talk to my mom about it.”

“Oh! Yes! You’re all we’ve got, Tae-san!”

“After the entrance exam I’m coming to work at your dad’s orchard!”

“Heh heh heh. Hyungnim, call me any time you need hands. For the record, I’m your eldest brother-in-law.”

“Shut it! I’m against that marriage, no exceptions!”

“Hyuuuuungniiiiim!”

Do-jung, who’d seen the twins once, had good-naturedly been calling me hyungnim ever since that day.

I’m sorry, but I have absolutely no wish to go hyungnim and little brother with my own friend~.

A friend I’ve shared porn with as my brother-in-law?

Just the thought is horrifying.

But if the Assembly member for the district is connected to it…

My mind snapped awake.

Damn it! It’s that bastard’s family again!!!

(End of Chapter 65)