“Holding my hand, even… how embarrassing.”

The German uncle, Professor Reichert, held my hand and heaped on the praise.

I’d picked him on purpose.

He was a pianist of some fame worldwide.

He was far more flexible than the professors Hanguk University had picked from its own ranks.

That was exactly what I’d been counting on.

Naturally, I could now take the piano department’s major electives too.

There were no restrictions, even for students from other departments.

What lunatic would sign up for another department’s advanced major credits?

In the performing arts, no less.

Plenty of students from other departments took the law school’s major electives and required courses, too.

A lot of Hanguk University students were preparing for the bar.

That was why major courses were open to students from other departments.

Professor Reichert gave me his phone number.

He told me to come see him anytime I wanted to share my thoughts on music.

His eyes sparkled so much…

It was exactly the kind of scene people love to misread.

“Nova hyungnim is so talented. When did he master the piano like that?”

I’d known he was an all-around entertainer and a star, but only now did I learn he played the piano at that level.

Just looking at piano sheet music made my fingers move on their own.

I hadn’t summoned the music gods yet.

It’s not like I had karma points to burn, so there was no need to spend them recklessly.

The talent Nova hyungnim had passed on to me was plenty.

I wanted a freshman year rich in culture.

That’s why I’d signed up for major courses in the art and music schools.

They were a hidden network of their own at Hanguk University.

In cultured high society, art and music are essential ingredients of life.

With the art school stirred up by my paintings, I’d set my sights on the music school too.

That’s when the piano suddenly came to mind.

I was searching the internet for famous pianists’ sheet music when I settled on one man.

Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff.

A world-class musician Russia produced.

The last composer of twentieth-century Romanticism, a prodigy taught piano by his mother from the age of four.

He had a brilliant future and swept up many prizes, but he couldn’t escape the tide of history.

He fled to America during the Soviet revolution and worked there as a pianist.

“I’ve got a lot of ties to these ‘post-‘ guys. Maybe because I’m living my own post-life?”

I’d taken the Post-Impressionist painters as my teachers.

The same ones who’d been doing day labor under Uncle Hwaseon.

We’d painted murals together and gotten very close.

I’d kept back a few points and drained the rest into them.

Thanks to that, the painters were promoted from day laborers to contract workers.

The power of karma points is truly incredible.

I saw them level up right in front of me.

Whoa!

It was the first time I’d seen other gods level up.

Their clothes turned shinier on their own.

The light radiating from their faces and bodies grew more intense.

At a glance, they looked high-end.

Every one of them hugged me and wept with gratitude.

I was happy too.

It made me glad to know that a few karma points could turn day-laborer immortals into contract workers—non-permanent, but still.

“Can’t wait for tomorrow. College classes really do taste different.”

On Monday and Tuesday I’d played around in the art and music buildings.

They were three-credit classes starting from second period in the morning.

This afternoon’s class was composition.

The professor had something come up, so the first day was canceled.

The two courses added up to twelve credits.

That left six of my eighteen first-year credits.

I added one more on Wednesday morning, a violin class in the instrumental department.

The arts colleges were the one field of flowers at Hanguk University.

Spending a semester playing around with beautiful women wasn’t bad.

I’d packed my classes into Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

I left Thursday through Sunday for business and for my own training.

Beeep.

“Sir. Attorney Jo from Samu Law is here.”

Yu Se-ra’s fresh voice came through the speakerphone.

“Please send him in.”

“Yes.”

I’d moved the company.

After the Ana Group chairman’s goons attacked, I’d started looking for a building.

A good property had come up in Samseong-dong, right in the middle of Gangnam.

A newly built building that went bankrupt a few days before its occupancy permit.

The mortgage fallout had started hitting big projects for real.

A building worth three hundred billion won had collapsed because they couldn’t cover five billion won in promissory notes.

The banks had stopped lending.

A midsize company that had been doing well invested beyond its means.

A disaster born of greed beyond its station.

They’d been speculating on construction in Gangnam under the excuse of building a headquarters, and it had come back to bite them.

Attorney Jo stepped in.

Once Samu Law got involved, it was over in no time.

The banks, lien holders and creditors came to an agreement, and my investment corporation took it over.

The price dropped sharply.

It cost about a hundred thirty billion won in all.

For a building that would someday be worth several hundred billion won, it was a steal.

Through Robert, I’d set it up as a joint investment with an American private equity fund.

It was a joint purchase: a hundred billion won from the fund and thirty billion won from my investment corporation.

If it were owned by my corporations alone, the government would jump on it and try to eat it alive.

I’d cut off that possibility from the start.

Government agencies controlled by those in power would eat away at Korea for the next ten years.

“Oh! CEO Jang. What a view! It’s better than our firm’s head office!”

I’d made the top floor of the twenty-story building the CEO’s office.

Each floor was about three times the size of the office I’d been using until recently.

The president’s office alone was over a hundred pyeong.

Behind the executive meeting room, I’d set up a separate investment room.

I’d done it up luxuriously with Scandinavian furniture.

I’d modeled it on the furniture I’d seen at the head office of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.

The view was killer, too.

Bongeunsa-daero was spread out in full view.

Bongeunsa Temple and Gyeonggi High School were right there in sight.

Not a single building blocked the view.

Even the Han River was visible in the distance.

Anyone could see it was a jackpot of a location.

“It’s all thanks to you, Attorney.”

“What are you talking about? People will think I bought this building. I’m jealous, CEO Jang!”

Attorney Jo smacked his lips, taking in the view through the window.

“Want to move in?”

“No thanks. Hanging around the investor just gets tiring.”

“I won’t eat you.”

“CEO Jang, you scare me.”

He was smiling, but his eyes meant it.

“I draw a sharp line between friends and enemies.”

“Thanks. For making me a friend.”

He was quick on the uptake.

He knew I was moving on a scale beyond anything he’d imagined.

He’d seen with his own eyes more than a hundred billion won in overseas private equity money move.

As the investment corporation’s auditor, he also knew my stock assets topped several trillion won.

“As long as you never betray me.”

I said it with a smile, but it was real advice.

“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got no taste for stabbing people in the back. I’m not some gangster punk.”

Expecting total loyalty from grown adults made no sense.

Friendship lasts only when both sides get something out of it.

“Is the inauguration tomorrow?”

“Yeah, Head An U-hyeon takes office. Want to meet him before that? The head’s curious about the investor, too.”

Former Justice An U-hyeon’s inauguration as head of the law firm was tomorrow.

With the title Justice attached, even the new administration wouldn’t move against it lightly.

The sturdier the shield, the better.

“I’ll meet him another time. I’m busy with school.”

“Right… I forgot you’re a student. Sigh, I wonder what I did in college? I just posed around the library trying to become a prosecutor.”

His life was nothing to envy anyone for.

A life like Attorney Jo’s was success enough.

He didn’t have to die and regress to get there.

“It’s the era of the hundred-year life. Just meeting me was like winning the lottery.”

“The era of the hundred-year life? Ha ha. That’s true. That’s a saying going around these days, huh?”

No. It’s something the whole country will be saying a long time from now.

“You’re busy these days, aren’t you?”

“Heh heh. So busy I don’t have a minute. I’ve been getting calls from all over. Seniors, juniors, classmates—they’re dying to see me. I don’t know why everyone’s so desperate over a law firm director.”

“Manage your connections well. You’re Samu’s front man, Attorney Jo.”

“You mean the drinking director, right? I can hold my liquor. Don’t worry. The next Prosecutor General’s probably going to be one of my classmates, too.”

Being a Samu Law director was already getting him inside information.

“That’s impressive.”

I had no desire to butt heads with the Choe Byeong-bak administration.

The people had chosen that leader, after all.

However much you called him a thief, it wouldn’t get a grain of traction.

“I trust you’ll do well.”

“Heh heh. Trust me. Anyway, why’d you call me here today? Something important?”

“It’s about the company acquisition I mentioned the other day.”

“Ah! That company?”

Attorney Jo looked interested.

He’d handled the contact and the background check.

“Yes. We have an interview with the CEO shortly.”

“Why me?”

“Why not? You’re a director of the great Samu Law. You have more experience in the world than I do, so it makes sense for you to sit in on the interview, doesn’t it?”

“Right? But I’m starting to get a funny feeling. I’m a director at a major law firm—I’m not here to review documents like some rookie lawyer and stand next to you as a background extra, CEO Jang, am I?”

This guy… was scary quick on the uptake.

“You get an advisory fee, don’t you? You’ve got to earn your day’s wages.”

He’d figured it out anyway, so I just pushed ahead like it was only natural.

“Fine. Got it. You got me a new car, so I should at least do that much.”

I’d given him a new car, too.

Samyong’s top-of-the-line limousine, the Cheriman.

Beeeep.

“Sir. The interviewee has arrived.”

“Please send him in.”

“Yes.”

Team Leader Yu Se-ra was happy with the office too.

It was brand new, so the space was well laid out.

The space she and I worked in had a high, duplex-style ceiling.

The furniture was all new, too.

I’d had that space done up in Team Leader Yu Se-ra’s style.

There were none of the usual office partitions.

The center of the office was full of potted plants.

There was a reception room, a waiting room and a meeting room, too.

In the whole twenty-story building, the only occupants were Team Leader Yu Se-ra and me.

Swish.

The door opened smoothly, and a man appeared.

The feel of him was exactly…

A bear.

“How do you do! Sir!”

Built like a Siberian grizzly, the man bowed his head to Attorney Jo.

Attorney Jo and I were still standing by the window, looking out.

What a voice he had.

“Ha ha. Sorry, but I’m not the CEO. This gentleman here is CEO Jang Tae-san.”

Attorney Jo indicated me with his eyes.

“What? H-he’s the CEO?”

My eyes met the bear’s.

It’s Zhang Fei! Steadfast Zhang Fei! (TL Note: Zhang Fei, the fierce, loyal sworn brother of Liu Bei in the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms—a byword for a big, blunt, devoted warrior.)

I could feel it right away.

A man who might have been Zhang Fei in a past life, burning with loyalty to Liu Bei.

He was about 180 centimeters tall, with shoulders so broad even Fedor would cry.

His forehead was broad and open.

His big, glaring eyes were tiger eyes.

The eyes of a tiger that always ends the life of any enemy it has marked.

Crackle.

Tiger eyes and mine collided.

The tiger, sizing me up.

He was trying hard to figure out what kind of being I was.

The feeling-out period, as they say.

I’m not one to flinch.

A smile played on my lips.

I kept my eyes on the tiger and never looked away.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Jang Tae-san, CEO of the investment corporation.”

I offered my hand.

He reached out his.

“Han Jin-ung, CEO of A.T Security.”

A bear’s paw took my hand.

Squeeeeze.

Between men, conversation begins with the body.

A good, strong pressure on my hand.

I smiled.

And Han Jin-ung’s hand…

I squeezed it very warmly, with all my strength.

(End of Chapter 117)