“Why did you lie?”

Shale CC’s halfway house.

Round the back of what everybody calls the shade hut.

The elders’ group, passing the drink round.

And Oyang Group’s future royal family, making do with a light bowl of ramyeon instead.

They sat clustered together, letting the time go by.

Only Lee Jeongguk, the eldest grandson, had not made today’s gathering; he was abroad on business.

Present were Lee Hyoeun, daughter of Lee Seokpil, Chairman Lee Dojung’s eldest son.

And Lee Hyoju, the only child of the second son, Lee Seokjun.

And, for the rest, Lee Jeongho and Lee Jeonghun, the two sons of the third son, Lee Seokjong.

Lee Jeongho, who had taken his grandfather’s stinging look in front of the whole party, put the question to Lee Hyoju as though calling her to account.

The two of them are in the second year at the same Cheonghwa High School.

But at school their eyes never meet.

Nor, of course, are their parents on close terms.

Their grandfather, Chairman Lee Dojung, is nearly eighty.

The moment he passes, the group’s shareholding is set to be broken up.

And which of them inherits the choice companies out of that will decide their futures.

It is not a thing that has arrived yet.

But the children keep their antennae up, each of them, against a situation that could come at any time.

It is the private trouble of most of Korea’s corporate houses.

“A lie? Me?”

Lee Hyoju had just taken a mouthful of iced coffee, and she shot Lee Jeongho a cold look over the rim of it.

Lee Jeongho has no interest in study whatsoever.

He is aiming at a name university on a sports place, with the family’s money out in front of him.

His character is no better than his marks, and cousins or not, Lee Hyoju has never shared the smallest warmth with him.

“Yeah. You.”

“What lie am I supposed to have told?”

Lee Hyoeun and Lee Jeonghun watched the quarrel with interest.

Are they going to have it out properly today?

Lee Hyoeun has a cat’s face with no shortage of envy in it, and she narrowed her eyes and smiled to herself, satisfied.

She too has a sports place behind her; that is how she got into Yeonguk University.

Envying Lee Hyoju, whose marks were always at the top, is something close to her destiny.

It had been a long time since the younger cousins had collided, and it made good watching.

She has no intention of stopping it.

They are competitors, all of them, who will have to go at it properly one day and take what is theirs.

“A friend? Heh heh. Since when have you had friends?”

They are in the same year, so Lee Jeongho knows the state of things around Lee Hyoju well enough.

Among the children at school who are said to do a bit of work, Lee Hyoju passes for a swot.

On that one fact alone, everybody found her hard to deal with.

Most of the pupils there are the children of houses that count.

But children from inside the hundred largest groups are extremely rare.

The children of the groups you can count on your fingers all have each other worked out, whether they know it or not.

And Lee Hyoju is of his own house, and a future competitor besides.

So Lee Jeongho knew her more exactly than anybody.

The few boys he goes about with at school are forever asking him for news of her every move.

“On what grounds have you decided I have no friends?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Who’s going to make a friend of an ill-bred little shit like you? Heh heh.”

“Pff!”

“Hyung, isn’t that a bit strong? Hee hee hee.”

The three cousins, Lee Hyoju excepted, made common cause and laughed at her.

Part of why it goes this way is Lee Hyoju’s mother, Han Soeun, who is of a different grain.

She is a woman out of a properly educated house.

Where she came from was another thing entirely from where the cousins’ mothers came from.

The difference in how the children had been raised was on plain display.

Lee Hyoju’s grandfather on her mother’s side is a former Supreme Court justice.

And her mother Han Soeun took her degree in business at Seoguk University.

The single largest reason her father Lee Seokjun, who has nothing to him but goodness, was able to take the top job at Chemical——

That too was thanks to his wife, Han Soeun.

Which naturally made the envy of the other wives in the house unavoidable.

The cousins grew up hearing every small shift that took place inside it.

So it was only natural that they had no liking for the second son’s family.

The one comfort available to them is that there is no son, only the one daughter.

Chairman Lee Dojung dotes on the granddaughter openly enough, but when it comes to the succession itself her position can only be pushed to the back.

“Haaah.”

Lee Hyoju let out a short breath.

If it were not for her grandfather’s unbending will she would never come to a gathering like this.

She feels it every time they meet. It is childish, and it is pathetic.

Lee Jeongho, drinking and smoking since long before he should have been, something close to a punk.

Lately he has been forging an identity card to get into clubs.

Even so, she had taken it for somebody else’s business and pretended not to know.

And today he is picking at her as though he had made up his mind to.

“And Second Aunt’s the same. However much it’s about her own child, you don’t lie in front of Grandfather……. Heh heh.”

Lee Jeongho was going for the line.

By the look of him he thought he had got hold of something good.

Lee Hyoju. You’re out today.

The two of them are the same age, and inside the house that has made them a comparison nobody could resist.

“Lee Jeongho!”

Lee Hyoju called the name out like a threat.

A cold light came into both her eyes.

What are you looking at. Fuck. Keh keh keh.

Lee Jeongho swallowed the obscenity down, as though drawing her out had been the object all along.

“From now on you call me noona.”

“Nooooona? You?”

For a second Lee Jeongho couldn’t believe it.

“Grandfather said it himself. Between cousins there’s a rank, even on one minute.”

“Rank? Don’t talk shit. Heh heh heh heh.”

Lee Hyoju had come back at him, and Lee Jeongho poured scorn on her for it instead.

“Hyoju, I don’t think that’s right. Noona, over a few months’ head start? What are your friends going to say?”

Lee Hyoeun, who had been watching, came in with covering fire for Lee Jeongho.

“Right. Hyoju noona, that’s not on. Noona, when you’re the same age.”

Lee Jeonghun, Lee Jeongho’s younger brother, took his brother’s side too.

Not once, in all this time, has any of them taken Lee Hyoju’s side.

She knows it perfectly well, and she got smoothly to her feet.

She had no wish to sit with them any longer and trade words.

“Hyoju. Go and tell Grandfather the truth, that you haven’t got any friends. If you’ve got a conscience. Heh heh.”

Lee Jeongho threw jeering words after her to the last, picking at her back as she turned away.

And just then.

“Hyoju——!”

From somewhere, a man’s voice they didn’t know was calling her.

“Fuck! Does this make any sense? Why has the putting suddenly gone to pieces!!”

Park Dojun stood in front of the halfway house and swore.

His temper was up and he felt he might go out of his mind with it.

He had been beaten on the driver, but among professionals there are more long hitters than people think.

So he does not push greedily after it.

His speciality, in any case, is the putter!

And Park Dojun has almost never come off worse in the short game.

Today he made an utter hash of it.

He laid the approaches up well enough, and then the three-metre putts went astray too.

There were almost no birdies.

And to injure his pride, he recorded a three-putt, which is the exclusive property of the hundred-shooter.

What threw him was that pars were scarce as well; he was reduced to something close to bogey golf.

Over nine holes, a par thirty-six, he shot forty-three.

Shale CC, where he has played rounds often enough, is a comfortable course for him.

Which made the shock of it larger.

A professional of Park Dojun’s standing has to shoot at least seventy-two to break even.

And…… forty-three?

That is somewhere around the middle eighties, the sort of number an amateur puts down.

“What is that Ha Tae-ung bastard? And what the hell is that An Hyeonju bitch!”

Choi Yurin is in an even worse heat than Park Dojun.

An Hyeonju has hardly been out on a field since the scandal.

And yet her distance off the driver, and her accuracy with it, are at a level that astonishes.

The approach and the putting on top of that had reached the standard of a ranked tour player.

Over the thirty-six she had fallen a full three strokes behind.

Choi Yurin’s composure is in worse pieces than even Park Dojun’s shock.

Today’s round was arranged to wipe the floor with An Hyeonju.

Instead, the very pair who laid the ground so neatly have cracked.

“Shall we bolt?”

Out of nowhere the words came out of Choi Yurin’s mouth, and nobody had expected them.

This is not a thing that ends at pride.

A million won a stroke!

Park Dojun is already down more than ten million.

“Shall we?”

For Park Dojun too, it is no longer a question of pride.

As it happened, this was the pause for a rest at the halfway house.

An Hyeonju and Ha Tae-ung had gone off to the toilets.

“Quickly. Let’s go.”

Choi Yurin was already the loser.

She had no wish to go on with the game and be shamed by it.

And if An Hyeonju goes about afterwards telling people what happened today, there is nobody who will believe her.

“Agh. The fucking humiliation.”

Park Dojun, who had lost the feel of the putter and had now thrown his pride away after it.

He went over to the caddie with his face full of irritation.

“Caddie.”

“Yes?”

“Something urgent has come up. I think the two of us will have to go on ahead.”

“Then……”

Shff.

He counted six fifty-thousand-won notes off quickly and put them into her hand.

“Yes.”

The caddie had a rough idea of the situation, and she took the notes as they came and closed her hand on them without appearing to notice anything.

It is not a caddie’s business to get involved in any case.

“Take us down quickly.”

Choi Yurin looked round in every direction, got up onto the cart and pressed her.

Park Dojun loaded himself onto the cart like a criminal absconding in the night, and kept his eye on the halfway house.

Kreeeek.

And so the cart drew away from the halfway house, unhurried about it.

The caddie drove with an awkward look on her face.

That Ha Tae-ung was watching them go from a distance, neither of them had any idea at all.

There are far more people in the world with none of the basics in them than you would expect.

Think back over school, the army and the company the first time through and it is no different anywhere.

There are always the ones who dodge and run the moment a thing turns against their own interest.

They work it out that getting clear of the crisis for the moment is worth whatever selling the conscience costs.

And every one of them, of course, ends badly in the end.

What they can’t get clear of is that heaven knows, and they know themselves.

I had expected them to behave like this.

From the first hole Park Dojun and Choi Yurin were finished.

Park Dojun had had the talent plundered out of him, and his putting went to pieces without mercy.

Choi Yurin lost ground to Pro An Hyeonju as well.

Anyone could see the gap in basic ability was severe.

The looks, and the character, and the ability on top of it!

The distance between them was that bad, and as the hours went on their faces twisted like demons’.

What the two of them chose in the end was flight.

I can do without their few coins.

But there is something they have failed to think of.

That Pro An Hyeonju is going to work on them as a trauma for the rest of their lives.

And one more fact, sadder still.

Park Dojun’s professional career is over.

Having had his life talent plundered will work on him hard.

The money I would have taken on the bet can go against the cost of the plunder and call it square.

“Ta— Tae-ung.”

Lee Hyoju makes me out and is startled.

I looked at her, her eyes gone round.

She is thrown, like someone who has seen a goblin walking about in daylight, and it is adorable.

I am as startled as she is.

That I would run into her here today, and at this hour of it, I hadn’t imagined for a second.

Coming out of the toilets I had heard their conversation without meaning to.

What I happened to hear was cousins quarrelling.

So this, I thought, is what a royal family really looks like with the lid off.

Turns out there is nothing in it that ordinary people’s lives don’t have.

Only the subject of the quarrel and the unit the money comes in!

The children of a group family split each other’s heads open over money too. That is the reality of it.

“Who’s this?”

A woman who looks oddly like Lee Hyoju was looking at me with curiosity.

A decently pretty face, and the colour of the aura coming off her is dark and thick.

Close to a blackish red.

The lads sitting along from Lee Hyoju are the same shade.

Young as they are, they are already giving off dark grey.

One of their faces I know.

Lee Jeongho, second year at Cheonghwa High School.

The same sort as Oh Gwangjun, whom I stood on after the regression.

He got into Yeonguk University on an equestrian place the first time through.

“And who might the person asking be?”

I put it to her with a smile at the corner of my mouth and time to spare.

The game has ended early, and there are signs of today’s new battlefield.

“Might be? Who the fuck are you!!”

As though fate had swept in on us, the air around me went fiercely hot.

(End of Chapter 42)