“Daniiiiiel!!!”

She came running.

A beauty anyone would notice, even from far away.

And then…

“!!!”

She spotted me, ran over and flew into my arms like a butterfly.

Right there on Hong Kong’s crowded Avenue of Stars, we were straight out of a movie.

Clara, who’d been missing me, showed no sign of letting go.

I gently stroked Clara’s long hair.

The faint, soft scent of her perfume drifted up and made my skin tingle.

Smack!

Clara lifted her head from my chest and planted a kiss on my lips.

Her arms around my neck, her blue eyes looked only at me.

“I missed you, Daniel.”

She must have missed me a lot.

Clara’s eyes were practically dripping honey.

“Me too.”

“Hmph. And you’re only coming to see me now?”

Clara knew how to get jealous, just like Korean women.

“Work kept me busy.”

“I’ve been busy too. Lately I’ve been learning how Korea can be so close and yet so far.”

Clara and I seemed to go back a long way.

We hadn’t seen each other in months, but it wasn’t awkward.

We’d texted almost every day.

“Let’s go.”

“Mm-hmm~.”

Clara linked her arm through mine as if it were only natural.

Winter was cold in Hong Kong too.

Clara and I walked along, shoulder to shoulder.

“You’ve been busy lately, huh?”

“I don’t know if I’m coming or going. I got assigned to the International Strategy Operations team, and… if I exaggerate a little, it’s war every day.”

Clara’s face looked tired.

The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank handled both commercial and investment banking.

Just the name International Strategy Operations was enough to make you tired.

“Want me to throw some business your way?”

“Really?”

“Ask CEO Robert.”

“Right! I had something to tell Senior Robert anyway—perfect timing.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure, but the higher-ups asked whether I knew Senior Robert. And they asked me to set up a meeting soon. Is he doing really well these days?”

I’d introduced Robert to her, but Clara still didn’t seem to know his position.

“Ask him yourself tonight.”

Dinner was booked for tonight with Robert and his girlfriend.

“If my senior’s doing that well… that means you are too, honey, right?”

Clara was no fool.

I didn’t answer her question.

How well I was doing was a secret that even my parents couldn’t know.

“I’m a student. I’m not rich.”

Only now that I was a college student could I reveal who I was.

“I knew it.”

“Really?”

“You never came during the Korean school term.” Half right, half wrong.

I couldn’t bring myself to say, Clara, I’m a college student, yes, but a freshman.

“What? You knew all along and pretended not to?”

“Well, you never told me, honey.”

The word honey sounded really nice.

Clara used to call me Daniel, but at some point she’d started calling me honey.

It felt like we’d gotten a little closer.

“Come visit next week with your parents. You promised.”

“Oh! You didn’t forget?”

“Of course not.”

“Mom’s been looking forward to it.”

“Can you take time off?”

“Of course. I want your mom’s short ribs, honey.”

Clara loved Mom’s cooking.

“She’ll be thrilled.”

Hand in hand with Clara, I walked the streets of Hong Kong.

Closer than friends, but too far apart to call lovers.

That was where Clara and I stood right now.

“Do you think we sold too cheap?”

“Hyungnim. In a recession like this, three billion is a good price. FOB’s taken off, but even squeezing them for event fees, we wouldn’t clear five hundred million going forward. And the competition in this business is brutal these days. If the next song flops, we’re done. We came out ahead. Didn’t Empire Boys suck seven hundred million out of us?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d go crazy back then. Damn boy group! We’ve made back everything we put in… so now what? Cash out? Or keep going?”

“First let’s see if we can squeeze more out of them, then decide. If that doesn’t work… we get the girls sponsors and sell them off while they’re worth a lot. Plenty of people are looking these days.”

“Heh heh heh. Just three hundred million a head, and think what that adds up to. This is why you raise a girl group, right? Hit big and you strike gold! Flop and you break even.”

“The girls have grown up juicy, all right. Seo-ryeon especially is worth a billion at least. If she’d just do as she’s told, we could get even more for her.”

“Heh heh heh. I’ve been saving her, saving her. She’s grown up nice and juicy, so before we hand her over…”

President Yang Deok-gwang let his lust show.

“Just be patient a little longer. When the price is right, we do what we did with the last girls—a little dope, some pictures, and it’s taken care of.”

His younger brother, Yang Deok-su, planned the crime as casually as a man who’d done it before.

“That bastard Manager Hwang is the problem. They’re not even his daughters—why does he coddle them like that? Should I just fire him?”

“Be patient with that too. He was a singer himself—that’s why he’s like that. Still, Manager Hwang takes good care of the girls. He’s good at what he does, and his temper keeps anybody from messing with them. That’s not bad.”

“True enough. When that bastard gets mad, even I get nervous. Heh heh heh.”

In the KNB Entertainment office, President Yang Deok-gwang was talking in secret with his younger brother, Yang Deok-su.

Ever since they were kids, the two brothers had always teamed up whenever there was money to be made.

The younger brother, Yang Deok-su, had started in this business as a road manager and worked his way up to having manager on his business card.

But he got greedy and set up a company in the name of his older brother, who’d made some money in real estate.

With the skills he’d picked up knocking around the business, Yang Deok-su gathered talented kids and got them debuted.

Most of the girl groups they’d invested in flopped.

Luckily, they’d broken even by getting the girls sponsors.

But the boy group that was supposed to be the next big thing went bust, and FOB scored a modest hit.

They’d made back their investment in the business and then some.

And now over three billion in investment money had come in.

They had no desire to grow the business any bigger.

They’d learned the entertainment business was harder than they’d thought.

The plan was to run the FOB girls into the ground, grab a nice pile and bail.

The idiot investor had handed them the entire management.

Plenty of guys went crazy for female idols, so selling them off to sponsors was nothing.

Passing girls around before their shelf life as stars ran out was a tradition in this business.

“By the way, did you find out what the investor bastard does?”

“No idea. It was a new investment company. From the way the Samu Law attorneys took care of everything, he’s definitely got money.”

“What a damn fool of a bastard. Heh heh heh.”

President Yang Deok-gwang was very pleased with himself these days.

With a wad of cash suddenly in his pocket, he was strutting.

“Oh! And who was it who said they’d use the FOB girls full-time for three days starting tomorrow evening?”

“I don’t know, but the call came from the investor’s side. They said they’d pay double the event fee, so there’s no way we lose.”

“Heh heh heh. Why are there so many suckers in the world these days?”

“Tell me about it. There have to be plenty of suckers for you and me to be happy, right, hyungnim? Heh heh heh.”

The two brothers laughed slyly.

While everyone else was tanking, nobody was making money like they were.

Their eyes gleamed with the desire to squeeze out a little more.

They had no idea whose money they’d borrowed.

“There are really scumbags like this?”

Reading the report, I felt the anger shoot straight up to my head.

The world is wide, and there are an awful lot of bad people in it.

“Typical entertainment-industry leeches who care about nothing but money. The two brothers are the real thing.”

“Both of them?”

“They’re cut from the same cloth. The older one’s the money, the younger one does the dirty work. They con the girls in their groups by promising to make them stars, and later they take sponsor money and pass them around.”

At first I didn’t quite get what pass them around meant.

But the next moment the meaning hit me, and my face twisted.

This was a world beyond anything I’d imagined.

“Sons of bitches!”

The curse burst out of me.

The office was well soundproofed, so nobody outside could hear.

“Word is they drug them and even film sex videos to blackmail them. Plenty of the girls it happened to couldn’t even press charges and quit the business.”

“Whoa… f***ing hell.”

This was beyond anything I could stand.

“One of them killed herself.”

“Those rabid sons of bitches…”

Just thinking about it made my blood boil.

Gutter scum who used other people’s dreams to feed their own filthy greed.

I’d known about it vaguely before, but facing it for real doubled my anger.

In my past life, I’d never known how rotten the company that raised Seo-ryeon really was.

It was information almost never made public.

“Wipe them out! Stomp on them so they never see daylight again!”

The thought that Seo-ryeon and her members had been raised like livestock under villains like that gave me goose bumps.

If I’d found out any later, it would have been a disaster.

“I’ll shake them down to the last crumb, so don’t worry. The idiots probably think that three billion was a gift. From the looks of it, it’s a textbook case for occupational breach of trust and embezzlement. Then we file charges for what they did to the girls, too. I’ll ask some of my ace juniors.”

Since he’d become an executive at Samu Law, Director Jo had changed too.

He was overflowing with confidence and showed the dignity he’d had as a prosecutor.

That’s what a director’s seat at a major Korean law firm—the kind that can pick its prosecutors—does for a man.

“What about the manager?”

“The one they call Manager Hwang is all right. I don’t know if you’d know, but fifteen years ago he had one big hit song.”

“But a singer working as a manager?”

“His looks didn’t cut it. He’s got a hell of a temper and doesn’t know how to compromise.”

“And someone like that went to work for a gutter company like this?”

“He’s got a track record of developing a few idols. But he’s stiff-necked, so most places fired him on bad terms. He’s got no money and nobody else would hire him, so I guess that’s why he went.”

Director Jo had dug up the details.

I’m not the kind of fool who invests and then stops paying attention.

I had a real bond with Seo-ryeon and FOB.

I wanted them to survive in the entertainment world for a long time and see their own dreams bloom.

“I’d like to meet him.”

I was suddenly curious about this Manager Hwang.

The bouncy FOB girls couldn’t move a muscle at the name Manager Hwang.

“Thinking of putting him in charge?”

As a former prosecutor, Director Jo Yun-tae was quick to catch on.

Good people are always in demand.

“We’ll see. I can’t lose money on an investment.”

“Forget it. Anyone can see this is a losing deal for you.”

Director Jo only said that because he didn’t know.

It had started because of Seo-ryeon, but it wasn’t a losing deal.

It wouldn’t hurt to have one entertainment company that competed on talent alone.

The Korean Wave is Korea’s signature cultural export.

There’s no better way to raise the country’s standing.

With capital, people, and the unique flair and sense only Koreans have, it was an industry with plenty of room to grow.

“Please make sure they’re tied up tight. Getting scum like that off the face of the earth is good for world peace.”

“All right. I’m not a prosecutor anymore, but I’ve still got the fire I had as a rookie.”

Director Jo’s voice was full of fight.

Meeting Director Jo must have been heaven’s will too.

In two weeks, a man who’d worked his cons thinking the Republic of Korea was his private property would be sworn in as president.

A swindler for the ages, who’d use the National Intelligence Service to paint the people as reds.

I was the only one suffocating over it.

But there was nothing I could do yet.

Until people burn themselves like candles and wake up, no one can help them.

“Please take care of it fast.”

But I could clean up my own neighborhood.

“Leave it to me. Sometime next week… I’ll have every one of them on prison rations.”

I nodded at Director Jo’s confidence.

In the law of revenge, a novice is one who does it with his own hands.

An intermediate is one who borrows someone else’s hands.

A master…

is one who borrows someone else’s hands and still knows the sweet feel of landing the blow on the back of the head himself.

Of course, I aim to be the master who knows that feel.

Just wait, you sons of bitches!

I’m coming to get you soon!

(End of Chapter 94)