“Hyoju. You really don’t know who Tae-ung’s grandfather is?”

“I said I don’t.”

In the car, out from her grandfather’s house and heading home.

Han Soeun put the question to her daughter again.

Lee Hyoju had gone through the day’s schedule prickling more than usual, all of it.

Somewhere in her teens the number of words out of her dropped noticeably.

A family gathering she would never have attended if her grandfather had not called her to it.

“Tae-ung-gun seemed to know you well enough……”

Her father Lee Seokjun asked it from the driver’s seat, watching the mirror.

As a father he has a good deal he is ordinarily sorry to her for.

She is an only child, and to Chairman Lee Dojung she is a pretty granddaughter and nothing more.

Set against the attention the boys get, exactly that much.

His father is a conservative man, and he will pass the group’s main companies to the eldest brother and to the eldest brother’s first son.

Work hard, and Lee Seokjun will be fortunate to inherit some affiliate shares and some property.

He is not putting much appetite into that part of it.

He runs a company that does not suit his nature, and only just, on his wife’s advice.

Today something unlooked-for had made the mood different from usual.

Learning that Hyoju has a friend who might be a strength to her.

And with that friend joining them, the smile had not once left his father’s face.

“It isn’t like that. And I’m tired.”

Lee Hyoju dodged the answer and shut her eyes on it.

Ha Tae-ung. What are you going to do now……

Her cousin Lee Jeongho, whom the family acknowledges as the one with nothing going on upstairs.

And today Ha Tae-ung got himself properly marked.

Come Monday and school, Lee Jeongho will know he is a charity case straight away.

And the news will go through the whole family fast.

Imagining it alone set her head throbbing as though it would split.

“He’s plainly the son of a house with bone in it……”

Han Soeun, in the passenger seat, putting seasoning on what her husband had said.

She put a woman’s antennae up and made her rough guess.

Bone? Tae-ung?

What Ha Tae-ung is, which even Lee Hyoju has begun to doubt.

Her grandfather certainly knows his grandfather.

But she cannot find the link, and her head grows more complicated the longer it goes on.

It feels as though a main character the charity case has been hiding all this time has come out.

“Keep it up with him. Your grandfather looks likely to invite him soon.”

“……”

Her father knew nothing of what was going on inside her, and went on instructing her.

Vrooom.

Lee Hyoju swallowed a deep breath down and kept her mouth shut.

Out through the window, far off, the Latte Signiel stood up tall.

“You don’t know him?”

“That bastard’s suspicious. If he were anybody, there’s no way I wouldn’t know him.”

“Is that so……”

Lee Seokjong’s household, third son of Oyang Group, just home.

“Honestly. What sort of boy plays the gigolo at that age, out golfing with a woman professional on his arm. And a sponsor? The state of him……”

Jang Huiae, Lee Seokjong’s wife, poured out her assessment of Ha Tae-ung.

It was envy that he had taken all her father-in-law’s attention ahead of the grandchildren.

She had not made a peep the whole way round, and now she was getting the resentment out with both eyes lit.

“I’ll look into him when I’m at school.”

“Do that. Find out what sort of a bastard he is.”

Son of a bitch. You’re dead.

If the boy is from a house he can handle, Lee Jeongho has a plan to stand on him at once.

Among the ones at Cheonghwa High School who are said to knock about a bit, what Lee Jeongho says carries a certain weight.

Most of them are on sports places.

Every one of them well built, and strong with it.

The hidden school thugs of a school with no school thugs.

Get marked by them and there are few who last at that school.

“Be careful all the same. It looks as though the grandfathers know each other.”

The warning came from Lee Seokjong, who has the largest appetite of the Oyang direct line.

Being youngest in the order, he has to bow his head every time to the eldest brother who will take the chairman’s seat, and he resents it.

He hated a future already settled, and he has lived his life so far working at it until the blood came.

The world is no easy thing, to the man who has and to the man who hasn’t alike.

How fierce the world outside the shade is, he knew better than anybody.

“Don’t worry. I’m not stupid.”

“Th— this is your car, then.”

“You know that’s the third time you’ve asked?”

“Why are you this good at driving? You said you only got the licence a few days ago.”

“Picked up the feel of it on games.”

“Haaah.”

It broke out of Park Jiung in the passenger seat, thick and short.

Late last night a text had come in from Ha Tae-ung.

Ten in the morning. Meet you outside your place.

Ha Tae-ung came to Guryong Village himself.

Park Jiung got a shock at the sight of him turning up in the village.

He knows the boy is two years older.

He had heard about the driving licence too.

But that he would arrive driving a large foreign SUV was not something he had imagined.

Ha Tae-ung is a charity case, in the same position he is.

His circumstances can’t be easy, and a big foreign car?

Not everything, but Park Jiung knows a few things about him, roughly.

One of the charity cases who had survived at that school like a ghost.

Tall, good in the face, and he did well at his work too.

On looks alone he beats a model outright.

But the charity case label had had him quietly frozen out.

The man has changed completely.

The confidence spilling off him is no exaggeration.

He got five hundred million out of Oh Seora’s mother without flinching and handed it over as compensation.

Five hundred million is easy to say. It is money Park Jiung could not have touched in a lifetime.

And that is not all.

He is showing every confidence about the midterm results as well.

And on top of that there is now a foreign car, and the driving is perfect with it.

“Massive respect!!”

The praise came out of Park Jiung in a burst.

The self-respect that had quietly filled him the moment he tipped the tray over Oh Seora’s head.

The world has looked different since.

“You’re my responsibility. So live this life with some style to it.”

Ha Tae-ung throws lines like that out of nowhere, and often.

“Right! I’ll live so I’m not an embarrassment as your friend.”

Vrooom.

The car ran the road heavy and smooth at once.

The engine and the torque are not there for decoration.

Over two tonnes of bulk, and it moves off like a big saloon.

“Tae-ung. Where are we going, though?”

He had not yet said what the meeting was for.

“To look at a place.”

“A place? Are you moving?”

“No. Somewhere for you and your grandmother to live.”

“What??”

“Your grandmother’s getting on. She ought to be kept comfortable.”

“……”

Park Jiung’s mouth closed.

Before any word could come, something went through his heart and cut.

“Thank you……. I’ll repay it.”

They have known each other a matter of days.

And the depth of this friend is another thing entirely.

“Yeah. Repay it.”

Screech.

The car had arrived somewhere without his noticing, and stopped.

“This is…… isn’t this in front of Seoguk University?”

“It is. The school you’ll be going to in two years.”

In this country, if you do not graduate from SKY it is hard to expect success.

And of the three, Seoguk is the top!

At Seoguk your life level changes from the day you enrol.

And after graduating, naturally, saying it twice is nagging.

“Get out. This is it.”

Seoguk University, with Gwanaksan for a folding screen behind it.

They passed the buildings standing up tall and got out in front of an estate agency.

There is nothing in Ha Tae-ung’s way.

“Uh……”

“Let’s go in.”

Seoguk Estates.

They went in through a wide automatic door of toughened glass.

“Welcome in~”

A comfortable-looking woman in her late forties, with a high, obliging tone to her voice, got up from her seat.

“We’ve come about a listing.”

“Hoho. Sit down first. Coffee? Or tea?”

The woman who offers them seats first, and is practised at it, is Manager Lee Gyeongja.

She had made a rough guess at her visitors’ ages and dropped naturally into the familiar.

“Water is fine. Jiung, you?”

“Water for me too, please.”

Tae-ung…… how is all of this so natural to him?

This is the first time Park Jiung has walked into an estate agency.

Right after his parents died he took his grandmother’s hand and settled in Guryong Village.

So there was no way for him to have the experience.

But everything Ha Tae-ung did was natural, as though he had done it many times.

There was a presence off him like a man with ten years and more out in the world.

The type they have started calling all testosterone lately, exactly.

“Drink up.”

“Thank you.”

Manager Lee Gyeongja drew water from the cooler into paper cups and handed them over.

What are these two? Students?

Seoguk students come in here often enough.

Mostly looking for a cheap jeonse or a monthly let.

That car they came in……

Lee Gyeongja’s instinct caught the thick smell of money before anything else.

A large imported SUV.

Not a vehicle children of that age get into easily.

The insurance alone, before the running costs, is not something you take on lightly.

“You have a jeonse listing at Seoguk Hyundo Phase Two?”

“Jeonse? Of course I have. But you know jeonse listings are scarce these days?”

Lee Gyeongja’s mind turned over fast.

The customers in front of her are students, and students are still green as a rule.

One bad listing went across her mind in a flash.

A landlord who owns dozens of units is at present on the edge of bankruptcy.

The rumour is thick that he put the whole of his rental income into coin and got smashed.

The jeonse on the tenant at Seoguk Hyundo Phase Two is close to expiry.

And the landlord has no money to give back.

Only days ago he had quietly suggested a piece of work.

Find him a new tenant and he would cut her ten per cent of the deposit.

So long as he doesn’t go under straight away……

Students generally prefer the fixed date to a registered leasehold, which is complicated.

And the fixed date, once stamped, only takes effect from the following day in any case.

Give the tenant his fixed date, and if the landlord draws his loan on the day of the contract, he has the money twice over.

At that moment the tenant drops behind in the order.

It can be mistaken for jeonse fraud, but the landlord acts alone and the agency carries no liability.

Her part is only to give him the tip-off.

So long as the landlord keeps his mouth shut, she does not become an accomplice.

The landlord is on the edge of ruin anyway, so it is do or die for him.

Draw the loans, secure the full amount against every unit he owns, then wipe his mouth and that is the end of it.

And if it does blow up, it mostly ends in the civil courts rather than the criminal ones, so nothing gets punished.

Even when it goes to auction the tenant does not find out at once.

If I take the fee on this one, shall I change the car?

Lee Gyeongja was in conflict with herself.

Shut her eyes once and tens of millions come into her hand.

And today she is on the Sunday rota, working alone.

And at that exact moment.

Ding.

The automatic door opened and a woman came in.

“Welcome——”

Lee Gyeongja was greeting her without attention, and when she raised her head she froze where she stood.

A woman had come into view whose beauty was dazzling enough to brighten the air in front of her.

The woman’s eyes went to the customers who had come in before her.

Then they met Ha Tae-ung’s, and a bright smile spread across her face.

(End of Chapter 47)