“Tae-ung’s family — which group is it?”

“……”

“His father’s a company director, he says……. All the same, the family doesn’t seem an ordinary one to me.”

Ha Tae-ung had said his father was a director at a small company.

But Han Soeun didn’t take that at face value.

Her sixth sense gave her the certainty that something was being kept back.

The surname Ha……. Surely not!!

Haryun Group, one of Korea’s ten great groups!

That’s the only house where the group family carries the surname Ha.

But the youngest of the Ha family is a university student now.

“I don’t know.”

Lee Hyoju, who had put her eyes out of the window to hide a complicated calculation, tossed the words out.

She genuinely knows nothing about Ha Tae-ung.

No — there’s one thing.

Ha Tae-ung is a charity case.

Ha Tae-ung the charity case, in whom she has never taken a shred of interest until now.

“You don’t know?”

“We aren’t as close as you think, Mom.”

She’s speaking honestly, and it’s the truth.

“You said he was a friend, didn’t you?”

“……”

Mom is right.

Lee Hyoju couldn’t think of anything to answer with and shut her mouth.

“Are you two…… only getting to know each other now?”

“Yes.”

“Are you?”

The two of them are on their way home after finishing the meal with Ha Tae-ung.

In the car, Han Soeun asked her daughter Hyoju about a number of things she was curious about.

“That boy’s been well brought up. There’s polish in the way he talks. And a grace to him.”

Han Soeun, not forgetting to praise him once again.

Of the young people she has seen recently he pleased her most.

Polish? Grace?

Lee Hyoju was at a loss inwardly.

At school this is a Ha Tae-ung about whom a mad dog rumour has already started going round over what happened a few days ago.

Ha Tae-ung had been different from how he is at school, that much is true.

“He knows a great deal too. He’s the same age as you and he’s well read.”

Han Soeun said it, thinking back on the conversation she’d had with Ha Tae-ung at the Italian restaurant.

Starting from property, they had been able to talk freely across society and culture generally.

Economic terms Lee Hyoju didn’t know herself had gone back and forth between the two of them.

World politics had come up in the middle of it as well.

Han Soeun, who had held the conversation herself, was no little surprised by Ha Tae-ung’s grasp of things.

Lee Hyoju, watching it happen, had had no choice but to keep her mouth shut.

“Invite him to the house sometime.”

“In— invite him?”

Lee Hyoju was badly thrown by her mother’s words.

It’s a thing that has never happened once.

Mom seems generous, but she’s a person quicker at calculation than she looks.

Setting Lee Hyoju’s own clothes aside, she had laid out nearly ten million won on Ha Tae-ung alone.

All of it is Mom’s investment strategy aimed at Ha Tae-ung.

She understands that far, but as far as an invitation?

Lee Hyoju was confused.

If the children at school so much as found out it would cause an uproar.

This was a Lee Hyoju who had kept a haughty manner and gone through school life at a distance from the other children.

Her, keeping company with a charity case?

Among children who love talking about other people it will plainly be inflated however they please.

“Be friendly with him at school. There’s something about that boy.”

“……”

Mom, thoroughly taken with Ha Tae-ung.

It seemed she had seen something Lee Hyoju hadn’t managed to see.

“All right.”

Lee Hyoju put her eyes on the scenery going past outside the window.

Ha Tae-ung, who is giving an odd energy to a school life that had been tedious.

Today he had lodged in her eye for certain.

“A monthly rent? Fully fitted, available for immediate occupancy?”

“Yes.”

“……”

A large estate agency near the Latte Signiel.

Staff who had been getting on with other things turned around at what the young man talking to the agency manager had said.

The Signiel’s monthly rents are considerably high.

Ordinarily it runs to twenty or thirty million won on a three-hundred-million deposit.

A young man who looked quite young was asking after a rent like that.

“You haven’t got one?”

“W— we have.”

He appears to have basic capital behind him, and the nerve on him is no joke.

Now and then there’s a nightmare who drains the staff dry for the fun of it.

But the air about this young man was different.

The ease he showed in particular was.

A big one!

The agency manager rose from her seat.

She’s a woman handling nothing but prime property in Jamsil.

The smell of money is one thing she picks up with maddening accuracy.

The look in the manager’s eye as she watched the young man in front of her now is out of the ordinary.

She has the air of somebody who has already caught the thick smell of money coming off him.

At a glance, a designer watch and designer shoes, and the wallet he’d taken out onto the table alone gave her an estimate.

“As it happens, a good property has just come up. It’s on the fifty-seventh floor, and it’s one of the rare 90E types. Unlike the other units it’s a true rectangle, and the view is extremely good as well.”

A bright smile spreads across the agency manager’s face.

“Immediate occupancy is possible?”

“Hoho. Of course. Occupancy is possible the moment the deposit is paid in.”

Lately it’s the case that existing Signiel residents move out frequently.

It’s a change that appeared as ultra-luxury redevelopment apartments and villas came on stream in the districts immediately adjacent to Gangnam.

The Signiel, whose monopoly on prestige in the early days is slowly draining out of it.

“Do you have photographs of the interior?”

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

“Here.”

Photographs of the property, checked on the agency computer.

They had been cleanly retouched and were good to look at.

“There’s a built-in refrigerator, and a dryer and washing machine and so on, all complete. You can move in with nothing but yourself.”

“That’s good.”

“Shall we go and see it, then?”

The property was rather good in the manager’s own eyes as well.

See it in person and he’ll want to sign on the spot, as though he were under a spell.

“No.”

“Sorry??”

What is this, is he joking?

Refused by a man with a face that doesn’t suit word games, the manager was thrown for a moment.

“Let’s contract now. I’m busy.”

“Ah, sorry? You don’t need to check it?”

“No.”

“……Yes.”

The agency manager had never seen a customer like this.

She looked over the customer’s face once more with startled eyes.

“What documents do you need?”

“None. All you need is a resident registration card. The residence abstract is for confirmation and isn’t strictly needed as a document. The owner has left the contract entirely to us, so I can handle that.”

“That’s convenient.”

The prospective tenant held out a resident registration card straight away.

Ha Tae-ung. Eh? Nineteen??

In all that time there had never been a friend this young among the customers who came to the agency to contract a monthly rent on a high-end residence.

“And your guar— sorry, your parents……”

“Are they necessary?”

“N— no. But the deposit alone is three hundred million and the rent is twenty million……. Will that be all right?”

The agency manager waved a hand as she said it, and still couldn’t hide that she was flustered.

There’s no problem with a visitor filling in a contract himself.

It’s a legal adult contracting his own residence.

Only that the deposit is three hundred million and the rent twenty million a month.

It is by no means a small sum.

It’s a bit much to call him self-made already, isn’t it? ……An inheritance?

The manager tipped her eyes up slightly and studied Ha Tae-ung carefully.

Living alone in the Signiel on a rent of tens of millions?

No — there’s nobody of that age who does.

An actor? It isn’t a face I know, though?

There are a few young entertainers living in the Signiel, it’s true.

But new actor or not, the man in front of her is a face she’s seeing for the first time.

“Transferring the address is possible?”

“Of course. If you have a digital certificate you can register it straight away on Government 24.”

“Print the documents out, please. I’ll sign, and…… there’s somewhere I have to be.”

“Sorry? Yes!!”

Honestly, a visitor like this is always more than welcome.

The great majority of cases end in nothing but legwork with no contract signed.

But a prime customer who hands over a vast commission of his own accord, without any of that trouble.

“And by the way, if a super penthouse comes on the market, do contact me straight away.”

“A pent— a penthouse??”

Time is gold.

I think I understand exactly what that means now.

Taking today alone, time went past in a rush.

I bought a car, bought clothes, and found a place to live.

The time it took to finish all of it was half a day.

The know-how from living hard through a life that never went my way came out concentrated.

When I had no money there was far too much to weigh up.

But now capital in sufficient quantity has cut the consumption of time to a minimum.

This was the true meaning of the upper class’s saying that time is the same thing as gold.

They’ve found the optimised balance point between time and capital allocation, for the sake of wealth’s continuance.

Look back at the old life and I used public transport because of money.

I saved coppers and went round the markets to shop thriftily.

The rich, on the other hand, use private aircraft to shorten time.

If I’d had no experience of working life, I might have been confused about setting priorities too.

“Lee Hyoju’s head will be aching.”

Lee Hyoju, encountered outside school.

Right to the end she didn’t reveal my standing as a charity case.

Thanks to which I was given free golf clothes and equipment as a present, with no prejudice attached.

Shopping with the two of them, mother and daughter, I got secondhand experience of their own shopping know-how as well.

“Gu Hyejin, thank you.”

Gu Hyejin, the girlfriend before the regression, liked Italian restaurants too.

It was a strain at the time, but the table manners I picked up then came out naturally.

Lee Hyoju’s mother watched me closely.

Her goodwill was running quite high.

Into the conversation with her I mixed in a little of the living knowledge from a past I’d already been through.

We talked across a wide range — the flow of a world order that is changing, political issues, and so on.

Lee Hyoju’s mother, marvelling one moment after another.

“Oyang Group and Doa Ilbo. Not bad.”

At this point in the past, I couldn’t get a word out to Lee Hyoju.

If that one life had been the end of it, I’d have had cause to feel wronged.

This life, the one I’ve come back into, is plainly different.

For the sake of the future I’m going to meet, I earned a few points with Lee Hyoju’s mother.

However much time passes, Oyang Group and Doa Ilbo are another thing from the run-of-the-mill chaebol.

Their history is as long as Hyundo’s, Ilseong’s, Haryun’s.

“She’s going to get very curious. Heh.”

On the subject of my parents I told her the truth(?).

My father is currently a director of a company he runs in partnership with a friend.

She wanted to know about me in all sorts of ways, so I cleared up one of Lee Hyoju’s mother’s curiosities.

I held to the mystique and pulled her curiosity up to its limit.

Screeeech.

With somewhere to live settled, I went to one place to deal with the most important business.

It’s also the most important of the jobs I have to get through today.

I came to a stop in front of the barrier.

“What is your business, sir?”

A security guard looks out of the side door and asks what I’m here for.

A building that outside vehicles other than registered ones can’t enter in the first place.

A sign standing where the eye falls caught my attention.

JO & JANG!

This place is Korea’s specialist legal services outfit.

The Jo and Jang Law Office!

(End of Chapter 33)