“The money flow looks strange, you say?”

“Something’s off about the movement. Money of unknown origin is pouring in all over the place.”

“How much, roughly?”

“It starts in tax havens and flows into America, Europe and now Hong Kong.”

“The scale?”

“What we know of so far comes to tens of billions of dollars at least.”

“That’s not small change…”

A middle-aged man was on the phone with his subordinate.

He thought little of the enormous sum.

“It’s so cleverly hidden that it took everything we had just to find this much.”

“It isn’t the snake worshippers—they’ve got too much going on. The House of Child? Or the Knights?”

The man ran through a few suspects.

“We can’t identify it. It’s been run through private equity funds and routed through several layers. We traced the IP addresses, but it was pointless.”

“Hmm… I see… is that so.”

“Chapter Master, shall I report it to the Society and request a first-class tracking order?”

“Wait a little. With that much money, whoever it is will show himself sooner or later; better to look then. No need to move first and make him hide his tail.”

“Understood.”

“This is a critical time. The tide of the world has finally turned our way. For a hundred years we’ve swallowed our humiliation and endured. We have to take it back while the Child brats are drunk on their victory. Contact the Chapter’s guardians. Tell them to find the flow—carefully, and then carefully again!”

The man gave his orders forcefully.

“As the Chapter Master commands!”

He’d taken the call in a private VIP conference room at the airport.

“I’ll be in Korea for a few days. Contact me only on the encrypted line.”

“I’ll do that.”

Beep.

He hung up and looked out the window at the sky.

The sea wind blowing in from the south had swept it clear; there wasn’t a cloud in sight.

“The age of the black cat and the white cat catching mice is over. And the days of hiding our light and biding our time are almost done…” (TL Note: Two famous Chinese maxims of the reform era. “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”—results over ideology. “Hide your light and bide your time”—keep a low profile until you’re strong enough to act.)

A hundred years had already passed.

The Society, and the man, had endured it all grimly to keep the command passed down through the generations.

One single conviction had kept them going through the long, long ages since their ancestors left their homeland.

“For the Emperor!”

The man recited the incantation in his heart, quietly and fiercely.

“A director at a talent agency? Not bad.”

I was waiting for Clara and her family at Incheon International Airport.

I’d gotten word that not only Madame Emmanuelle but Clara’s father, Lee Zhangchang, was coming too.

I’d left the car in the parking garage and was drinking coffee while I waited.

I looked over the gold-foil business card I’d been handed yesterday.

Jang Tae-san, Director, M.T.S Entertainment.

Not a registered director—a director in name only.

CEO Hwang Yeon-tae seemed to know how the world worked better than I’d thought.

The moment he realized I was the money man, he’d started sucking up—in deeds, not just words.

The old place was bad luck, so he moved the company.

A five-story building nearby happened to be up for sale, and we bought the whole thing.

I sank twenty billion won into it.

The world was looking shaky, so it had come up as a fire sale and we got it cheap. Not an investment I’d lose money on.

We fitted the building out with several big practice rooms.

A cafeteria, proper offices, a recording studio and more went in, all built with top-grade materials.

On the fifth floor, a director’s office went in next to the CEO’s.

CEO Hwang swore up and down that he’d done it up even more luxuriously than his own.

The man proved you don’t get old for nothing.

We bought a few Starcraft vans, too, the kind the hottest celebrities ride around in.

They’re sturdy, so they’re safe, and roomy—the classy celebrity ride.

CEO Hwang’s connections were clearly no joke; the company took shape in no time.

A PR team, a finance team, a support team, a choreography team and so on.

The total investment easily topped thirty billion won.

For the sake of Korea’s name and the Korean Wave, it was money well spent.

Politics was going to be a mess for the next nine years, but I wanted to clean up this one corner, entertainment, at least.

I wanted to show that you could succeed on talent, skill and hard work alone.

I poured in a big bucketful of water to prime the pump.

To grow big fast, the only answer was capital.

CEO Hwang brought over trainees from small and midsize agencies he’d had his eye on.

More accurately, he bought them.

Trainee teams for a boy group and a girl group came together fast.

Every one of them had my approval, of course.

Face reading isn’t all-powerful, but I picked them carefully in my own way.

None of them were the idols who’d become huge stars in my old future.

But something told me they had it.

It felt like the future was changing, little by little.

In children who haven’t reached twenty, the face is shaped by the karma of their past life and the karma of their parents in this one, both at once.

Once they’re adults, the face is completed by that karma combined with their own thinking and character.

The ones who’d make it, I could tell at a glance.

You could read their character from their faces, too.

Reading so many faces had brought me to a whole new level without my noticing.

CEO Hwang never once questioned my interviews.

He was convinced I had the spirits in me, so he just went along with it.

A big open audition was in the works, too.

I told CEO Hwang to dream big.

I told the group kids—more of an order than a suggestion—to study general knowledge and languages alongside singing and dancing.

I’d seen it countless times: a pretty face opens its mouth, out comes the rattle of an empty can, and the image is wrecked overnight.

From here on, the audience for the entertainment business would be college-educated as a matter of course.

And this was the age of globalization.

Meeting their standards would take thorough planning and blood, sweat and tears.

On top of that, idols are idols to kids.

If your idol is smart, gifted and a good person besides, the ripple effect is enormous.

They become a good role model for the kids who follow them blindly.

“CEO Hwang will handle the rest.”

With employees, trainees and Seo-ryeon’s group, the headcount passed forty in a single week.

Unlike me, with my one lonely full-time employee.

Still, it made me happy.

Only Robert knew that I was the one secretly running the Pelton Hotel.

And soon the Ana Group would be in my hands, too.

“Uncle, are you well? I’ll be coming to pay you a visit soon, too.”

I had no intention of leaving alone the family that had driven Mom out.

In the 2008 financial crisis, a huge number of companies change hands.

The fallout runs not just through 2009 but for years afterward.

It’s a game nobody can deny: put your money down and eat companies.

Clack-clack-clack.

Meanwhile, the arrivals board flipped.

Clara’s family’s plane was landing.

“Would it kill them to bring out smartphones a little sooner? Should I just buy a company and hand them out?”

The government was dragging its feet on the iPhun’s electronic certification to buy time for its competitors.

The public didn’t know what a smartphone was yet and didn’t much care.

They didn’t know it was a worldwide trend.

Under the government’s protection, domestic phone makers were racing to develop smartphones, roasting beans over a lightning bolt. (TL Note: The Korean expression is “to roast beans over a flash of lightning”—to do something impossibly fast.)

Thanks to that, Korean smartphones would make a name for themselves worldwide, but the launch was still more than two years off.

I’d handled everything by smartphone in the future, so it drove me up the wall.

Still, I had to be patient.

Compared to coming back to the past and raking in a fortune, it was more than bearable.

“Guess it’s about time to get to work. Heh heh heh.”

Apps that would hit it big once smartphones spread kept popping into my head.

Face Note had already started its hit parade.

It wasn’t the right time to invest yet.

I was waiting for my moment.

In July 2008, the biggest party in years kicks off.

It wouldn’t hurt to throw the first punch.

Someone was going to eat that loaf of bread even if I didn’t, so I planned to break off a piece for myself.

The world was racing ahead, and there was food lying around everywhere.

A privilege only a regressor could get.

“I’m so glad I saved that grade-schooler back then.”

If I ever ran into him later, I’d like to buy him an ice cream company or something.

Swish.

While I was lost in happy daydreams, people came pouring out of the wide-open gate.

And then…

“Daniel!!!”

Clara spotted me, dropped her bag and ran.

She flung herself into my arms.

“What? Are they shooting a movie?”

“They look like actors…”

Passersby saw Clara, a walking magazine spread, in my arms and looked around for the camera.

That’s how perfect the two of us looked.

“Clara. This isn’t Hong Kong, darling.”

“Ahem. Daughter, I’m hurt.”

Meanwhile, Madame Emmanuelle, a radiant middle-aged beauty, and Lee Zhangchang, the Chinese uncle, came over to us.

“Welcome. It must have been a long trip.”

I gently set Clara aside and bowed to the two of them.

“Hao! Good to see you, young Tae-san—you’re like a son to me!”

Lee Zhangchang’s face lit up in a big smile.

“Ugh, they’re Chinese?”

“No wonder… I thought I smelled something.”

A nosy mother and daughter, who’d been watching, each threw out a jealous jab.

We’d been talking in thick Cantonese, so they took me for Chinese too.

“That’s enough. Go to America and people will call you the same thing!”

I didn’t let it slide.

I’m not especially fond of China as a country, but people are people; you don’t hate them for it.

That was my lesson for the nasty woman and her daughter who’d been whispering beside us.

“Wh-what did you say! Are you calling us dirty Chinese?”

“Oh my~ look how ignorant he is. Guess that’s what happens when you date some dirty Chinese girl.”

The shameless woman and her daughter came right back at me.

“These are my guests, and they’ve come a long way. If you’re any ruder to them… I won’t let it go.”

I drew up my internal energy and glared at the two women.

Bad enough they looked the way they did; their personalities were rotten too.

Flinching at my energy, mother and daughter backed away.

“Hmph! What a creep!”

Mother and daughter disappeared, tossing off a line to put you off your lunch.

I felt the anger rise, but I held it in.

The world was full of people that immature.

They should thank the law that they get treated like human beings at all.

“Daniel… let it go.”

Clara didn’t speak Korean, but she’d sensed what was going on.

“I’m sorry, Clara.”

Other people had made the scene, but the shame was mine.

No human being anywhere in the world deserves contempt for being of a different race.

That mother and daughter didn’t know that contempt comes back someday with interest, several times over.

“I’m sorry about that. Shall we?”

I shook it off and led Clara and her family out with a big smile.

Clara’s parents watched me.

They looked at me the way you’d look at a dependable son-in-law… or so it seemed.

“Ahhh… I’m stuffed!”

Clara patted her cute little belly, round and full.

“Daniel~ that was a fantastic dinner. Perfect!”

Madame Emmanuelle heaped on the praise.

“Young Tae-san! The more I see of you, the more I like you. That was the finest red-braised chicken I’ve ever eaten!”

Lee Zhangchang licked his bowl clean and nodded his satisfaction.

“I’m glad it suited your taste.”

I’d brought them to the house in Seoul.

Taking them straight to the countryside might be too much after the trip.

I served them dinner at home.

I’d already shopped for top-grade ingredients.

While the three of them toured the house, I whipped up the food.

My immortal auntie Jang-geum’s recipes have everything.

For Clara, who loves seafood, I made grilled cod with lemon sauce and shrimp teriyaki.

For Madame Emmanuelle, who came from France, a gourmet’s paradise, the main dishes were stir-fried chicken with whole garlic cloves and a sweet-and-sour curry of mashed kabocha squash and enoki mushrooms.

And for Lee Zhangchang, who loved his liquor, I served Beijing-style sweet-and-sour pork loin and red-braised chicken to go with his drinks.

For the drink with dinner, I poured munbaeju, forty percent alcohol. (TL Note: Munbaeju is a traditional Korean liquor distilled from millet and sorghum, named for the pear-like scent it carries though it contains no fruit.)

With good drinks and good food, the evening flowed by romantically.

We traded all the little stories from the time we’d been apart.

Everyone loved the feast, with the Han River flowing grandly through the glittering night view beyond the windows.

“The view here is excellent. Not as good as our place in Hong Kong, but it has its charm.”

Lee Zhangchang, face flushed red, was lost in the Seoul night view.

“Daniel, I love this house. It’s more beautiful than the Seine I used to look at from my home.”

Looking at the Han River, Emmanuelle thought of the Seine.

“Daniel, should I move to Korea? I love the house so much.”

Whoa, whoa! Clara, please hold off on that.

I’m still a poor(?) student.

“My mother bought it. She has an eye for these things.”

“I knew it! You have to give it to Mommy’s taste. Hehe~.”

Clara called my mom Mommy.

She really had no shame.

“Excuse me a moment while I clear the table. Tea is ready over there.”

Doing everything myself kept me busy.

“I’ll help you.”

Clara stepped up.

“Then could you clear the table for me?”

“Mm-hm~.”

“Daniel. Thank you.”

Madame Emmanuelle looked at me with sincere gratitude.

“Please, don’t mention it.”

“Come visit us in Hong Kong. I’ll treat you properly this time!”

The Chinese uncle, talking big.

I sent them off to the tea table and carried the dishes into the kitchen.

Just then!

— Karma points acquired in abundance.

Serving a meal and getting paid in points for it—I loved how unfair that was.

And then…

— You have leveled up. The divine protective barrier that shielded you is now gone. The gods who reject you, and their descendants, will begin actively watching for you.

The warning was like nothing I’d heard before, and it landed quietly and heavily in my ears.

(End of Chapter 106)