“CEO, what on earth do you actually do?”

When I came in properly for the first time in a while, Team Leader Yu was startled.

The company welcomed me the same as ever.

Outside it was a brutal minus ten, but inside the place overflowed with warmth.

My company.

My mind was at ease in a way that doesn’t compare with my days as an employee in the past.

“Me? I’m the CEO here.”

The wide office was being kept by Team Leader Yu Se-ra alone.

Red roses and baby’s breath stood in a vase on the central table.

And in front of me was a beauty no less than the flowers.

In a blouse and a semi-formal skirt, Team Leader Yu Se-ra, the godmother of the office look, was as good-looking as ever.

Her makeup game, the kind teenage girls could never imitate, was superb.

The bare-face look, where you can’t tell whether she’s wearing any, drew admiration even from me.

Her mind must be at ease, because there wasn’t one blemish on that clear skin.

“Ah~ is that so~.”

“Why? Has something happened, Team Leader Yu?”

“Even if the company only has one employee, isn’t this too much, CEO? I’ll forget your face, and anyone who saw us would think I own the company!”

Team Leader Yu Se-ra’s voice, like a little bell, rang through the office.

Cute.

To me, who died as a bachelor ghost in his thirties, Team Leader Yu Se-ra is young.

I still haven’t told her I’m a high schooler.

I can’t reveal that the body is a teenager’s and only the mind is a middle-aged man’s.

“What’s wrong with that. You’re the face of this company, Team Leader Yu. Have some pride. When I become chairman later, I’ll cut you off a president’s seat as a founding-employee privilege.”

“Pfft, you’re too good at talking, CEO.”

A few words and Team Leader Yu is smiling broadly.

Just like that… the office brightened.

There’s a reason company presidents hire secretaries with looks.

The fatigue clears away and the mood is good.

This must be the taste that makes men want to be presidents.

“CEO, but has something happened? Have you finished all the business in the provinces?”

The business in the provinces…

I’m graduating from high school this time!

“From now on I’ll be working in Seoul.”

“Really? Then you’ll be coming in every day?”

Team Leader Yu’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Every day would be hard—I’ll come in now and then.”

Once I’m in college I’m back to being a student.

I want to spend the second campus life of this second life with no regrets.

My high school years, which were a chain of regrets in the past, are finishing well.

The next assignment is a university life dripping with romance.

“I know you’re busy, but don’t leave a lonely, lovely employee to fend for herself too much.”

“It isn’t leaving you to fend for yourself, it’s letting you run free. Because I trust you.”

“…”

When I said I trusted her, Team Leader Yu’s face went softly red.

“Would you like coffee? I bought some new Ethiopian Momora natural beans. The soft acidity is quite good.”

Team Leader Yu changed the subject.

“Sounds good. One cup, please. And have you thought about the winter vacation?”

The summer vacation I’d sent her on in style too, twelve days and eleven nights in Europe with her mother.

I’d prepared a winter vacation as a bonus too.

From now on I intend our company’s staff to take two holidays a year.

Whatever else, staff welfare at this company is the best there is.

“Not yet…”

“For family travel, hotel and airfare are covered for up to five people. Not business class, though.”

“C-can I really?”

I’d have liked to splash out a little more, but for fairness with other staff later, something moderate was better.

I also took into account the ancestors’ saying that too much is worse than too little.

“Let’s eat dinner together tonight. If you’ve no prior engagement.”

“Oh, I don’t!”

“If there’s a place you’ve wanted to go, book it.”

“!!!”

Team Leader Yu’s face filled with emotion.

“Then I’ll see you shortly.”

“Yes! CEO. I’ll deliver the coffee at once. Loyalty!”

Team Leader Yu gave a playful salute and headed for the kitchenette.

Her back as she walked away.

Fine enough that I wanted to be the only one who saw it.

Sending her off like that, I opened the firmly shut door of the CEO’s office.

Return to the battlefield complete!

Three monitors and a wide desk welcomed me.

My hidden weapon, like Guan Yu’s Green Dragon Crescent Blade after a while apart from its owner. (TL Note: Guan Yu, the general of the Three Kingdoms and later a god of war, carried a long-handled blade called the Green Dragon Crescent Blade; in Korea the pairing of the man and the weapon is proverbial.)

Seeing my main battle room, I felt my chest heat up.

I felt a tension tighter than the school interview.

My main battlefield existed beyond the invisible world of the internet.

From there, it called me.

Come quickly and sweep it all away!

Yesterday’s interview I finished perfectly.

I finished the first round with the professors, with pride on the line.

The race didn’t end there.

If I pass through the second round, I have their promise of A0 or above in every law professor’s own subject until graduation, plus exemption from classes.

It wasn’t an interview hall so much as a gambling den.

The professors have their pride too.

Since no genius has ever passed both rounds in one run as a serving second-year, they threw down a bold bet.

I’d bought a year’s grace.

The professors were innocents who don’t know how frightening it is when the game’s rigged.

“Ye-rin sunbae, a chance that’s gone by doesn’t come again. I’m not that innocent a guy.”

When the interview ended I walked straight out of the school.

Sadly(?), I couldn’t keep the promise to Ye-rin sunbae.

Ye-rin sunbae‘s phone number had changed in the meantime, and I didn’t know it.

How do you find a number that doesn’t exist and get in touch?

I left the school reeking of cool.

Time spent agonizing over a regret that’s already gone is time wasted.

“This year is the best shopping season there is. I’ll sweep up 2008 and 2009 both.”

The US dollar, plunging right now, reverses once the Federal Reserve’s printing presses start running.

Big brother Bernanke scattered money out of the sky without mercy.

Every country went down on its knees to America.

It’s the greatest weapon only the country that issues the currency can use.

Europe and Japan started printing money for real too.

Exchange rates swing like mad.

There hasn’t been a crash and a surge like this in the last several decades.

When the subprime mortgage nuclear bomb out of America went off, the whole world screamed.

Company share prices crashed, and there were plenty of decent businesses going under while still in the black.

I waited for the moment.

Sliiide.

I hung my coat on the stand and sat down in the chair.

Snow was blowing past outside the window.

The vicious worldwide cold snap that comes once this winter is over.

For anyone who hasn’t prepared in advance, pain greater than the IMF is coming.

“Attorney Jo, how much did you say he’s investing?”

“Sunbae. I heard it was a hundred billion won.”

“A hundred billion… my word.”

Samu Law’s two heads licked their lips at the proposal that had arrived out of nowhere with Attorney Jo Yun-tae.

A large investment.

To catch Lee & Jang, the industry’s number one, investment was desperately needed.

The specialists belonging to Lee & Jang—attorneys, accountants, patent attorneys, tax attorneys, labor attorneys, customs attorneys and the rest—numbered over nine hundred.

The personal income they earned in a year had gone past eight hundred million won this year.

Against that, Samu’s roughly three hundred specialists had barely cleared four hundred million.

It wasn’t a question of headcount; the gap had opened because they couldn’t bring in the ex-officials with real pull and the people with real ability.

Without investment a law firm can’t grow either.

After this and that is carved off, not that much remains.

Once the salaries of the specialists and the support staff are taken out, whether five billion won is left is a close thing.

They were thirsty for investment, but it couldn’t be taken easily.

Filling a hole the size of a hundred billion won is not a simple matter.

“The stake the investor wants is thirty-five percent. Not small, but it’s a level that has no effect at all on your management holdings.”

Attorney Jo Yun-tae had quietly added five percent to the thirty percent CEO Jang Tae-san wanted.

The two head attorneys had been feeling the crisis keenly these days.

Gangchon Law, below them in total fees, had come up at a frightening rate.

Never mind catching Daeseoyang just above them—they were in danger of dropping to fourth in the industry.

“A little much.”

Head Bong-seok, who had been Deputy Chief Prosecutor at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, directly below the Prosecutor General, stroked his chin with his hand.

Until now the two heads had held the shares fifty-fifty.

If thirty-five percent were pulled out here, it would become the largest single holding.

“The affection between you two is known all through this business. Miss this chance and it won’t come easily again. The legal market opens to foreign law firms soon. Before that, we have to push further up.”

Oho, you’re going to hold out?

A prosecution senior he may be, but Attorney Jo Yun-tae was thoroughly Jang Tae-san’s man.

The two heads weren’t that decent.

If the numbers were small, junior or not, they cut your head off at once.

As of 2007 the number of attorneys had passed eight thousand.

A few years from now, once law school graduates start appearing, that number will grow exponentially.

By then it’s obvious law firms will run even more on numbers.

Jo Yun-tae wanted to be an attorney who was warmer as a human being than he was about money.

He’d thrown himself into a law firm after retirement, for his family’s finances and his future, but there was no loyalty in the place.

“Since the IMF, foreign companies’ investment in Korea has been increasing. Large-scale M&A between corporations is getting busy, but our Samu isn’t putting up results worth the name. Raising a super organization like Lee & Jang’s international arbitration team is desperately needed. From here on, law firms have to be invested in sensitive business—fair trade, labor, conversion to holding companies. You two know it yourselves, don’t you.”

Attorney Jo Yun-tae bit down on the weak point.

To catch Lee & Jang they had to build manpower.

“We have to take the market before the law school kids start pouring out properly. Once the legal market is saturated it becomes a business of eating your own flesh. Before that we need something specialized, like Lee & Jang has. And for that, investment is desperately needed!”

Attorney Jo Yun-tae poured out his argument.

“And who will exercise those shareholder rights? I’d like to see the investor once…”

“The authority over the stake has been delegated to me. He’s a person who doesn’t want to show his face yet.”

“Attorney Jo, you?”

“Yes. He said all authority is delegated to me.”

“Haha. Then the story is simple. If you step up at director level, the shape of it isn’t bad either…”

Kim Gang-u, the head who came up as an attorney, let out a hearty laugh.

He knew well that Attorney Jo Yun-tae was a man who valued loyalty.

Even among prosecution alumni he was a hard-liner, so other law firms wouldn’t call him in.

At first he hadn’t seemed dependable, but lately he’d produced decent results.

If a Jo Yun-tae like that became a director, there was nothing bad in it.

“Right, I’d trust Attorney Jo too. When our Jo was in the prosecution, his name for loyalty was known far and wide~.”

Head Bong-seok expressed agreement too.

If I pull Director Jo onto my side… heh heh heh.

Bong-seok savored the thought.

They were partners, but Kim Gang-u, who did nothing but clash with him lately, grated on him.

If there were a change in the shareholdings here, he could become general head.

“The investment money is certain, yes?”

Kim Gang-u asked quietly.

Does he think recovering an investment is easy? Once it comes in, it’s all mine. Heh heh heh.

Kim Gang-u was plotting a wicked scheme.

“Of course. The investor has money rotting on him. He made a pile on overseas futures, and I persuaded him to invest over here. He seems to have a mind to buy a few buildings or small and mid-sized companies too, so if our firm takes his investment the work should come flooding in.”

“Oh! Is that so!”

“Whoever he is, he’s a remarkable man. Can’t I see him once?”

Kim Gang-u showed his greed.

He wanted to step forward himself, rather than Jo Yun-tae.

Idiots who invest a hundred billion won in a law firm aren’t easy to meet.

It looked splendid from outside, but the reality was different.

It’s a place fiercer than the competition between corporations.

“We’ve made a confidentiality agreement. Please understand.”

“My word—whoever he is, he’s a clever fellow.”

Head Bong-seok let his disappointment out.

“I’ve quietly mentioned further support too. I think you should draw up the industry-standard contract.”

“Further support too?”

“!!!”

The two heads, showing their greed.

Jo Yun-tae saw through the greed of both and felt sorry about it.

Tae-san may look young, but that boy is a monster.

This was a law firm takeover marked out by Tae-san, a man with something close to foresight.

Whatever it was for, he was certainly buying a piece for the board, for some larger game.

“Understood. We’ll take the investment!”

Bong-seok bit first.

“I’ll accept it too!”

Attorney Kim Gang-u nodded too, his eyes shining behind his glasses.

“Wise decisions, both!”

The designer’s collaborator smiled broadly.

“We’re counting on you, Director Jo~.”

“Congratulations, Director Jo!”

“I’ll run hard!”

The three of them laughed.

Three men sunk in their own thoughts—three beds, three dreams. (TL Note: 삼상삼몽 — a turn on 동상이몽, “one bed, two dreams,” the Korean phrase for people lying side by side with entirely different plans; the author adds a third.)

Each hid a dagger and smiled broadly at the others.

(End of Chapter 75)