Thock!

From seventy metres out, an elderly man laid his approach up close to the hole cup.

He looked to be somewhere in his mid-seventies, and remarkably well on it.

“Nice approach!”

“Grandfather, that was perfect!”

“Father. Magnificent.”

Clap, clap, clap, clap!

Applause broke out from the people who had seen where the old man’s ball came to rest, in close beside the cup.

Across the faces of the party watching from around him — men and women, young and old — the same bright smile was fitted into place, every one of them.

“Haha. The ball’s meeting the club today.”

The old man turned back to them with the wedge in his hand, smiling broadly.

His frame is on the small side, but the bone under it looks solid.

The head of Oyang Group, settled comfortably inside the sixtieth rank of the country’s corporate order.

Chairman Lee Dojung.

And, at the same time, the younger brother of Chairman Lee Doseong of Doa Ilbo, one of the country’s two great national dailies.

Grandson of Sangchon Lee Jangsu, whose name stood among the three great fortunes of Korea in the last years of the empire.

He is also, at present, one of the principal trustees of Gogeuk University.

The weekend had come round, and he had brought the household out onto the field.

However crowded the diary, once a month most of the family are required to come out onto the field with Chairman Lee Dojung.

It is a rule laid down by the elder of the house.

Three sons and their wives, and five grandchildren, are out here with him now.

The wives and the grandchildren have made themselves the gallery for the men playing the round.

They do not move by cart.

Shale CC belongs to Oyang Group.

When Chairman Lee Dojung has a round, the tee times in front of him and behind him are cleared as a matter of course.

No carts run. The field is enjoyed on foot.

Hours given over whole to the bright May weather.

“Seokpil.”

“Yes, Father.”

Chairman Lee Dojung took the putter from the caddie and called his eldest son over.

“The congratulatory money. How was it handled?”

A round on the field is never entirely about the exercise.

Out from under the closeness of the house, business talk passed between them on the grass as naturally as anything else.

“It was delivered in cash.”

“By you?”

“No. It went through one of the men close to him, as you instructed.”

Lee Seokpil, the eldest son, who has charge of Oyang Construction, the core company of the group.

Chairman Lee was checking on the inauguration gift to the newly elected president.

Oyang Construction grows on public works.

The business had been entered late, and it owed a great deal to their uncle, the chairman of Doa Ilbo.

Bound in close with each administration as it turned over, it has served all this while as one of the group’s important cash cows.

“Good. A few coins will leak away on the road, but that’s all surety money. Even if one of them gets caught wrong and goes to prison, the ones who skimmed keep their mouths shut, near enough every time. Sing, and they only lose more.”

From before the last years of the empire the house had been a house of great wealth.

The Japanese occupation, and after liberation the rough seas the country came through.

The house held through the whole of modern Korean history, and that holding is the strength underneath it.

In the present age the group has slipped somewhat in the rankings, but for history it is counted on one hand.

The know-how by which it has survived in Korea until now has never once been let out.

Nor do the children, standing off at their proper distance, ever miss a place where the living history of the house can be learned.

It was the ground on which the descendants who will run the group receive their education in the flesh.

“Keep your distance from the men of this administration. Don’t get too close.”

“May I ask why——”

Lee Seokpil put the question as though he wanted to know.

“They’ve got the handle of the knife and they’re swinging it about too freely. Use power that way and something goes wrong with you. That’s how the world runs. Anything taken too far breaks.”

Chairman Lee Dojung looked up at a sky that was uncommonly clear and remarked on a very common truth.

“At this rate, three years at the outside. Mind how you carry yourselves.”

“Yes. Understood.”

All three sons bowed their heads at once and accepted it.

Their father’s years are not few, but the eye he has for what is coming is like nobody else’s.

“That aside…… Hyoju and Jeongho are getting on well with the entrance preparations?”

Chairman Lee Dojung turned his attention to the granddaughter and grandson following at a distance behind.

“…… Yes.”

Lee Hyoju answered her grandfather quietly.

“Jeongho?”

When no answer came, Chairman Lee Dojung stopped walking and turned round.

And looked at Lee Jeongho, whose face was covered over with acne.

A grandson’s face, cowed, and full of something that would not fall into line.

“Hoho. Father. Jeongho is preparing well too.”

Lee Hyoju, only daughter of the second son, and Lee Jeongho, eldest son of the third.

Both attend the same Cheonghwa High School.

Chairman Lee Dojung’s eyes gave nothing away.

Jang Huiae, the third daughter-in-law, spoke for her son with a smile.

“So he should. If we’re paying that kind of money for him to ride a horse, the horse had better be worth it.”

There was bone in the rebuke, and it wiped the smile off Jang Huiae’s face.

Where Lee Hyoju’s marks are excellent, Lee Jeongho has no interest in study at all.

He is preparing for university on a sports place.

“……”

The colour went out of the third daughter-in-law’s face.

Her husband Lee Seokjong’s went the same way.

He set his teeth on a pride that did him no good.

Against his two elder sisters-in-law, cultured women out of good schools, his wife Jang Huiae falls somewhat short.

She too was one of those children a family put through university with money.

Lee Seokjong, the third son, has always been the greediest of the three.

For money above everything.

With his own future in mind he weighed nothing else, trusted to her being the daughter of a rich house, and married Jang Huiae.

Lee Dojung, of course, had not thought much of the match.

But unlike the other groups, he allowed his children some say of their own in the matter of their marriages.

That each of them chooses a partner according to his own fate is Lee Dojung’s conviction.

“Hyoju.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

The chairman’s eyes on Hyoju were warm.

“Nothing troubling you?”

“No.”

“And you get on all right with your friends?”

“……”

There is nothing in Lee Hyoju’s school life that could be called getting on with friends.

For a moment she shut her mouth.

Lee Dojung knows his granddaughter’s nature perfectly well.

He knows it, and he still puts his finger on the place where she falls short of other people, and the reason he does it is plain enough.

“Father. I met a friend of Hyoju’s yesterday…… He was really rather good.”

“Was he?”

“Yes. I’m thinking of inviting him to the house before long.”

“Well done. A good friend got at that age becomes solid insurance later on.”

The answer was better than he had looked for, and the colour rose in Lee Dojung’s face.

He looked at Hyoju again, and this time there was satisfaction in it.

Past seventy, Lee Dojung still keeps up with his own schoolmates.

Ties held together by something stickier than any bond a man forms after he goes out into the world.

“Father. Your putt. There’s cold makgeolli waiting at the halfway house.”

“Is there? Then we’d better finish quickly.”

Lee Dojung nodded at his eldest son’s words, took the putter and stood on the green.

He is old, and his back still looks broad and solid.

Every one of the family standing round him looked at that back with complicated eyes.

This little bastard. What is he?

Park Dojun’s irritation shot straight up the scale.

Ha Tae-ung, who had said today was his first time out.

He had sent the driver more than three hundred metres.

Among golfers, driving distance is a question of pride.

And the accuracy on top of it was excellent.

Even the caddie had praised it as perfect.

Whirrrrr.

They are moving by cart.

“Hyeonju. Have you got some secret method going?”

“Secret method?”

“You’re going further than you did on tour.”

Choi Yurin was no less thrown by it.

For women professionals too, distance is everything.

The closer to the cup you can drop it, the easier the next stroke.

An Hyeonju’s distance was coming out longer than it used to.

Has she been on something?

Choi Yurin was finding her face hard to keep in order.

She was thirty metres behind.

An Hyeonju’s distance was a full two hundred and eighty metres.

Her ball had come down ahead of Park Dojun’s, and he a man.

…… Why have I got better?

The doubt was in An Hyeonju herself as well.

At some point she had felt the ball begin to run and run out in front of her.

That’s it. Now I think about it…… it’s been since that day.

With the distance confirmed on an actual round, An Hyeonju became certain of it.

Her distance had grown after the day she shook Ha Tae-ung’s hand. There was no question about it.

Her hips turn more naturally than before, and the finish comes down clean.

For ten metres of distance, professional or amateur, nobody grudges the money.

That is how much it matters. An improvement in distance is a certificate of ability in itself.

Even so, you’re no match for me. Heh heh heh.

He had been beaten on distance, but Park Dojun was overflowing with confidence.

His strengths are the approach and the putt.

And of the two, his putting is top rank in Korea — enough that he is called the prince of the putter.

Park Dojun covers a disadvantage in distance with the putter, and covers it comfortably.

“I think the sand wedge will do for me.”

Ha Tae-ung, meaning to settle a little over a hundred metres with a sand wedge.

“…… The seven, please.”

Park Dojun, on the other hand, knowing a sand wedge would come nowhere near it, chose an iron.

“Tae-ung, was it? Watch this. Dojun’s a master of the short game.”

Choi Yurin was putting the spirit back into Park Dojun.

“Is he? I’ll watch, then.”

What he said and how he stood were two different things. Ha Tae-ung folded his arms at his leisure and watched Park Dojun’s second shot.

Swish! Swish!

Two practice swings, and Park Dojun had his form lined up.

The target — on the green!

Crack!

The stance was out of a textbook. The iron cut through the air and struck the ball exactly.

“Nice!”

Choi Yurin saw the shot and called it out high.

Park Dojun’s ball, splitting the air with a tail of wind behind it, running on and on.

“On the green.”

The caddie had watched it come down.

The ball stopped about twelve metres from the cup.

“Tae-ung — you’ve got this!”

An Hyeonju looked at Ha Tae-ung and made a light fist for him.

Swish!

Ha Tae-ung took one light practice swing.

Thump!

Then sent the ball away with the wedge, easily.

And.

“Oh!”

“Nice!!”

The ball floated up soft and high and came down three metres from the cup.

Fuck.

Park Dojun saw where it lay and his face twisted.

The position is against him.

An Hyeonju and Choi Yurin played next, and both balls found the green as well.

Park Dojun took up the putter.

His ball is furthest from the cup, so the putt is his to make.

I’m Park Dojun.

Out to ten metres he could ordinarily drop it in the cup without effort.

The putt, struck exactly as he always strikes it!

Tick.

The golf ball came off the putter and ran across the green.

Toward the cup, fast and true……

“Oh!”

“Wh— what??”

It slid past.

(End of Chapter 41)