“Why does today of all days feel so unsettled?”

Ju Miju had come home on her usual routine — yoga early, then a massage.

She sat down on the sofa with a glass of mineral water.

But the sense of something coming, which she had carried the whole way back, will not go.

Her instinct has been unusually good since she was a girl.

It was confirmed at a well-known shaman’s house she went to with her mother in her twenties.

The shaman marvelled at her, and said the star she was born under was a formidable one.

She was born a descendant in a seat where power is wielded, and that star must never be pressed down.

If it were, the chances were high that the spirits would come down on her.

She had to live wielding power and giving way to nothing, and then no god would descend.

After that day her mother let Ju Miju do exactly as she pleased.

In fact it amounted to the family having given up on her.

She spent her days planted in clubs, and went to a private American university where the money buys the degree.

Whether it was the luck she was born with or not, she met a good man, made a household, and had children with high intelligence.

The people around her envied it, and Ju Miju herself was not satisfied with the marriage at all.

She and her husband grew distant after the second child was born.

For a long time now the marriage has been a lease.

They agreed to allow each other their own lives, and each took a lover.

Neither he nor she has the smallest intention of divorcing.

Their social standing and the honour of both families’ groups were not to be scratched.

The Hanguk Airlines jerky incident!

Ju Miju learned in her own body what the press can do.

It was what made her put down every official title she held and settle in at home as a housewife.

A poor head is the basic characteristic of Hanguk Group’s descendants.

Fortunately, though her son takes after her side, he has a good head on him and keeps his marks excellent.

He is in the second year at Cheonghwa High School, and he has never let go of first place in the school.

Of all the grandchildren on the daughters’ side, he is the one her father, Chairman Ju Dongmyeong, keeps an eye on.

Ju Miju has staked her life on a solid future for her son Lee Jeongjun.

And then a situation broke that nobody had foreseen.

The appearance, with no precedent in Cheonghwa’s history, of a pupil with full marks.

“Damn it! A beggar bastard, and what do marks matter to him!”

For the middle class and below, success means settling into a job as a judge or a prosecutor or a doctor. That is the level that fits them.

However good the head and however excellent the marks, nobody joins the Korean upper class at a stroke.

Wealth and reputation are not got in a morning.

And a charity case dares?

Talk of human rights has loosened the world, that is all — in the old days a charity case’s standing would have been no different from a bondservant’s.

“Is it being dealt with or not? Is this the best they can manage? …… Wasting time on one wretched charity case bastard!”

Ju Miju has lived her whole life in a hurry, and she was thoroughly irritated.

The charity case business should have been closed off before Monday morning lessons began, and the call should have come.

Lasha~♪ roya~♬

Right on cue, the refined ringtone of her phone sounded.

“There it is~”

The head of academic affairs’ number came up on the screen, and a smile spread at Ju Miju’s mouth.

“I’ve been waiting for your call, head of academic——”

—Madam! S— something terrible has happened!!

Wang Jindeok’s first words were not the ones she expected, and every trace of the smile went off Ju Miju’s mouth.

“Wh— what has happened?”

Ju Miju asked it back, holding her composure for the moment.

But her instinct is giving her a warning.

Something genuinely terrible has broken!

—Teacher Lee Jangyong…… has been thrown out of the school!

“What? Teacher Lee?”

News like a bolt out of a clear sky.

Teacher Lee Jangyong is Cheonghwa’s pride.

A talent in mathematics who would not be thrown out for anything ordinary.

Which is exactly why he was the ace put into the charity case business.

—He took the charity case pupil on at mathematics, and he could not solve it.

“What??”

—And there’s another problem——

“What now? What problem!”

—W— well…… young Lee Jeongjun……

Wang Jindeok started to say it and let the end trail off.

“What about my Jeongjun? Has something happened?”

Her son’s name was spoken and Ju Miju’s eyebrows twitched and went up.

Every dream and hope she has hangs on her son Lee Jeongjun.

She lives holding a monstrous appetite in her: Doa Ilbo and Hanguk Group gripped in her hand, and herself at the head of them.

—Young Jeongjun assaulted Teacher Lee Jangyong. And in front of the pupils, at that…… an assault……

“Wh— what?”

Lee Jeongjun is a cold son who ordinarily keeps himself clear-headed and free of feeling.

A clever son, more calculating than his father and quicker in the head. He could not have done it.

—And the decisive thing is, that charity case is not a charity case.

“What nonsense is that now!!”

Ju Miju let the anger she had been holding down go off, and demanded it at the top of her voice.

—That charity case…… is a member of the Haryun Group family, they say.

“Whaaaat? H— Haryun??”

The answer came back and Ju Miju’s head went white and the world went black in front of her.

They had put a hand on the wrong person.

The feeling she had had since the moment she finished her yoga was right.

Hanguk Group is nothing to take lightly either, and on history and tradition it comes second to Haryun.

Haryun is a company that has held on for a hundred years.

Still a chaebol today, unchanged, and into its fifth generation — a true chaebol house.

A company that would stand squarely in the top five if the group had never been split.

And if the charity case is family of that Haryun Group——

“Are you certain?”

—The principal confirmed it himself. Jo and Jang attorneys came to the school. And I heard him called young master, quite clearly.

“Ah……”

A groan came out between Ju Miju’s parted lips.

The charity case’s hidden standing was Haryun’s chairman’s grandson?

If that is true, every part of the situation comes apart.

“So what was the conclusion——”

—It has been recorded as full marks.

“Aaaaaargh!”

Ju Miju screamed, one hand gripping her hair.

SMASH.

It came to her hurling the phone in her hand at the marble floor, and the pieces sprayed in every direction.

“Haryun, of all of them! Haryuuuuun!!”

Chairman Ha Cheolgon of Haryun Group is known even in the industry for cold blood.

The benevolent face is one thing; catch his eye the wrong way and he clears you out of his sight with neither blood nor tears in him.

Even her father, Chairman Ju Dongmyeong, is afraid of Chairman Ha.

“Fuck. What a fucking shit world!! Aaargh! Aaaaargh!!”

CRAAASH!

Ju Miju lost her reason and threw whatever came to hand at the floor, shrieking.

She had to get the stress out somehow, right then, even like this.

One slip in the control of her feelings and it seemed she would kill somebody.

“Heh heh heh heh heh……. Hohohohoho.”

A little time passed like that.

“I’m not finishing it here! My son…… I will make him first in Cheonghwa, without fail!! So he’s Haryun blood, what of it……? I’ll break him!!”

A prickle.

A ghastly force came out of nowhere and put a shudder through me.

It feels like somebody cursing me, powerfully.

Fair enough, too.

The business this morning was something the man I used to be could not have imagined.

Most of the first and second years were there, and every teacher in the place, and the board was laid out on a grand scale.

It started because Maths Thug Lee Jangyong forced the thing and picked the fight.

And in the end he was the one on his knees.

He was expelled from the school on the spot, for damage to the Cheonghwa Foundation’s reputation.

He got himself properly marked by the principal.

And he made a large mistake with me and with the Cheonghwa pupils besides.

In his own mind he judged that he could make a good living outside, and he was wrong.

The talent was plundered out of him through the handshake, and he cannot solve so much as high school mathematics now.

A middle school tutor at the very best.

And this is Gangnam.

Once word of what happened at the school gets round, nowhere will take him.

It will be spreading right now, in fact.

On top of which Jo and Jang will be dealing with Teacher Lee Jangyong.

An evildoer with no sign of reflection in him, who does not repent, should not be given a chance to come back into the world.

The noisy business of the morning is settled for now.

“……”

Except that if there is another problem——

Everybody is watching my face!

The pupils, obviously, and the teachers are careful around me too.

Direct line of Haryun!

Nothing has been established for certain yet, and every one of them has sense enough to read that much.

Which is what I was after.

No dragging it out in a mess. Settled in one blow.

I set Haryun Group and the existence of my grandfather the chairman up behind me, perfectly.

In the life before I wouldn’t have pissed in Haryun Group’s direction. Not now.

I mean to use the standing and the background I was born with, and show what I can do.

Haryun is a formidable company.

Money is piling up in the coin account as it is and I am growing larger with it, and it is not enough.

This business has done its part in making my position inside Cheonghwa solid.

Nobody will pick a fight with me carelessly now.

They will not want to acknowledge it, but my blood is the line of the Ha house.

Get stronger or I’m the one who takes it!

What is certain is that Haryun wrecked my family.

They could not stand the sight of us even living ordinary lives.

Had they left us to get along however we could, I would not be carrying a grudge either.

There would have been no reason to start a second run with venom in me like this.

Ding-dong-dang~♬

Fourth period ended.

A fairly large event, and Cheonghwa rolled on without trouble.

“Enjoy your lunch.”

“Thank you!”

The history teacher said it briefly and hurried out of the room and away.

I looked straight at him the whole lesson and he never once met my eyes.

That is what the standing of Haryun Group’s crown prince amounts to.

The invisible difference between the levels, which ordinary people know nothing about at all.

Nowhere shows it more plainly than Cheonghwa.

Clatter. Clack.

The class slipped out of the room, without making a noise of it.

Oh Gwangjun, with something complicated in his eyes, went off without much of a reaction either.

“……”

I never asked for it, and an enforced peace had come to the classroom.

“Ha Tae-ung……”

It was Lee Hyoju, who had stayed behind in the room.

“What?”

Lee Hyoju turned her head and looked at me straight on.

“Are you really one of the Ha house?”

She asked it as though she needed it confirmed.

“Probably.”

“Probably? What kind of answer is that.”

An answer you would have to know the Ha family’s history to understand.

A member of the Ha house right enough, and of an outcast line that cannot use the house’s strength in the open.

I am not yet in a position to call my grandfather Grandfather.

“It gets complicated if you know.”

“What?”

A few meetings and Lee Hyoju had got easy to be around.

There is nothing in her that puts a person off, and she raised her eyes at me, fresh with it.

Her eyes were a blessing today as well.

And at that moment.

“Tae-ung sunbae~”

A voice with real warmth in it called me.

(End of Chapter 62)