— Pardon me, but would you be able to have a cup of tea with the Assemblyman for a moment?

"You mean now?"

One absurd thing after another.

The moment I decided to start planting connections in politics, the call came.

As if the gods had planned it.

— Yes, sir.

The voice was polite.

I know roughly who Assemblyman Yang U-seok is.

He's the man I made a National Assembly member in Jangju.

When the Hanguk Freedom Party candidate was blown to pieces by a sex scandal, he won the seat as the bystander who walks off with the prize. He and I had never crossed paths, though.

In the original timeline, he wins at the next election, and after the 2020 general election he becomes floor leader of the Joint Democratic Party.

Despite his simple-looking face, he's a tough, stubbornly honest type.

"What's this about?"

— He says he'd like to thank you.

Assembly members had sharp intelligence networks too.

I thought I'd handled it quietly, but he seemed to have figured it out.

"I don't think he has anything to thank me for."

I backed off once, for starters.

It wasn't something I'd planned.

And if I started meeting with an Assembly member often from now on, nothing good would come of it.

After the change of government, the surveillance begins for real.

I needed to keep my head down until Obama became president.

— It'll only take a moment. If that's a burden, how about just a can of coffee by the Han River?

The Han River?

Not a bad place.

"Let's meet at the Yeouido ferry dock in an hour. The Assemblyman has to come alone."

Something told me.

Thanks to me, Yang U-seok had gotten into politics sooner.

Maybe the connection had already begun.

— Understood.

The call ended quickly.

Chairman Ha Gwan-u looks at me, his eyes full of questions.

"My district's Assembly member wants to see me."

"Chairman, forgive me for saying so, but don't trust politicians. Just as politics moves like a living creature, so do politicians' convictions and resolve. There…