“Fuck. What do we do now?”

“Why us?”

“Huh??”

Go Junyeon drew a mouthful of smoke and pulled a face.

Beside him Kim Uju asked why, his eyes full of doubt.

“You idiot. It isn’t us that’s the problem, it’s Oh Gwangjun who’s fucked. Heh heh heh.”

“You’re right. There’s nothing much between us and the charity case.”

“Like the kkondaes say — watch the show and eat the rice cake.”

The PE prep room in the arts and sport building, which stands at a distance from the main building.

Three sports-place boys had skipped the canteen and gathered to get a cigarette down.

They were turning over what they had witnessed that morning and working their heads.

“Still, that charity case bastard was fucking impressive, wasn’t he? Nothing to his name but money, he says……. Heh heh heh.”

“Fuck. That line nearly made me piss myself. How much money have you got to be bragging about money in front of Cheonghwa kids.”

“If he really is a Haryun Group bastard there’ll be something to it. Look at the class of pulling Jo and Jang attorneys into a school, when my own dad finds them hard going……”

“You heard the attorney call him young master?”

“A charity case, and all of a sudden he’s the crown prince of the second year……”

“Now I think about it, that’s fucking rotten.”

“Heh heh. Right then — us, tonight?”

Yang Cheolgyu, smoking off to one side, cocked his wrist and mimed a drink.

“On, obviously! Oooon!”

“Tonight’s on me! Heh heh heh.”

Go Junyeon’s pocket money runs to over ten million won a month.

A small drinks bill he could cover at any time.

All three of them carry a credit card in a parent’s name at all times, in any case.

Sliiide.

The prep room door opened.

“Y— you’re here?”

“You’re a bit late today.”

Oh Gwangjun appeared and the laughter went off the three of them at once, leaving awkward faces.

“Fuck. This is fucked.”

Oh Gwangjun opens his mouth and drives a filthy word in before anything else.

From the morning until this hour the noise everywhere has been the charity case.

Through every lesson the teachers watched Ha Tae-ung’s face too.

A charity case sitting in the very back seat and carrying on like an emperor.

The whole picture turned over in a morning, and it turned Oh Gwangjun’s stomach.

He could not stand the sight of him, and his guts twisted on it.

It was off from that point on……

Until very recently he was a thing that barely breathed in that classroom.

And that thing came in after the holiday and had changed completely.

A boy who could not meet an eye straight on had resisted, and used violence with it.

A beating so brutal it brought the vomit up.

In that moment the trauma of the beatings from his prosecutor father, in which he had no part at all, came back to life.

He was afraid.

And today it came to Oh Gwangjun standing in front of an enormous wall.

When he first came into Cheonghwa he was full of himself.

And before long the reality in front of him broke him down.

At Cheonghwa, a father who is a division chief prosecutor amounts to no more than ordinary commoner level.

Most of the intake are children of the top hundred groups, of Supreme Court justices, of the Prosecutor General, of ministers and of the heads of the large hospitals.

At home his father certainly reigned like a king.

And put him in front of the parents of the other Cheonghwa children and he wagged his tail like a hound.

A father caught up in any number of corrupt dealings and favours asked, all of it picked up around the house.

After Oh Gwangjun came to Cheonghwa the open requests, and the requests to make cases go away, came more often.

And once the favours were granted the air in the house grew comfortable at once.

They moved to a Gangnam flat that no division chief prosecutor’s salary — a hundred million a year after tax, no more — could buy.

One day the car turned into a luxury saloon, and his mother began to dress herself in designer things.

Looking back, it was not a thing that had been going on a day or two.

Which may be why Oh Gwangjun learned the base logic of the world so early.

His father pressed it on him whenever there was a gap.

Getting above people like that is impossible in any case.

So graduate from a good university and go on to law school.

A future settled by what his father had in mind.

Up to middle school a prosecutor father got him treated well.

At Cheonghwa there was nothing doing.

The only easy thing was a charity case.

That was the last line Oh Gwangjun could hold.

Up to the start of May all of it held good, and he was happy.

The stress from home and from school he worked off, to a degree, by grinding a charity case down.

It all came apart only very recently.

The position reversed completely.

He got beaten without warning, and now he watches a charity case’s face.

The stress index is past a lethal dose.

With the pressure closing on him his heart is near bursting.

It was not that there was no way at all of working it off.

The other party is a charity case.

That much he could have settled at his own level, to a plan, ordinarily.

But.

“There’s something there. That bastard……”

Oh Gwangjun reads a room better than most.

The charity case may really be one of the Haryun Group family.

The trouble is that is not all of it.

“Something where?”

“Who? Ha Tae-ung?”

A wicked light came into Oh Gwangjun’s eyes and the three of them asked it.

“You lot dig around behind that bastard. Ha Tae-ung, that bastard…… there’ll be something he’s hiding.”

Until recently the charity case Ha Tae-ung had the empty eyes of a loser.

If he really is Haryun Group blood, there is no way he took all of it without resisting even once.

“Hiding something?”

“You’re saying there’s a secret?”

“I think so too. Since when was he a crown prince!”

“Grrrrk.”

At the word crown prince Oh Gwangjun ground his teeth.

To be called crown prince at Cheonghwa is to be acknowledged as a presence in a position nobody may touch.

A crown prince in a position the son of some mere prosecutor could not so much as look at!

“Nooooooo! Never!!”

Oh Gwangjun’s anger went to its furthest point and the blood stood up in his eyes.

Oppaaaa?

A girl came over to the table with a bright small smile.

And stood right beside me with her tray in her hands.

The table seats six.

Jiung is on my right and the left is empty.

“Sure.”

“Thank you.”

A cellist who looks timid if you go by her face alone.

And whatever the impression, she has nerve in her and a firm core.

“……”

Across the table Lee Hyoju looks straight at Kang Ari sitting down beside me.

The look is not a kind one.

“Sunbae. I’ll sit here.”

An Aram, Kang Ari’s hanger-on, says it as she takes the seat next to Lee Hyoju.

“What are you two?”

Lee Hyoju asked it, looking from one to the other.

“I wanted to eat with Tae-ung sunbae.”

Kang Ari answered it with a clear, bright smile.

“Me too.”

An Aram answers without holding back, bold as anything.

“Haa.”

A short sigh came out of Lee Hyoju.

The suddenness of the two of them throws me slightly as well.

In the past everybody refused to sit next to me, the charity case.

The feeling is of having suddenly become the centre of every room.

“……”

The air over a table for six with nothing being said at it.

At the other tables the pupils eating and chattering froze where they were.

“What is this, Lee Hyoju wasn’t enough and now Kang Ari?”

“He is Haryun Group blood.”

“I’m jealous……”

The short silence broke and the whispering started up in every direction.

The overwhelming air does not press me down, obviously.

If anything I find myself thinking it goes without saying.

As though the heart of a beast that has been held down has woken up.

The blood of the Ha house, which in the past felt like a thing to be hidden away tight!

This is force of presence.

The strength to overwhelm a man with breathing and a look alone.

The man I used to be could not have imagined a day like this one.

And now it is entirely natural.

So this is the pleasure arrogance gives, I find myself thinking.

The pupils of Cheonghwa High School, who looked down on me thoroughly all that time and put insults on me.

Now every one of them looks like a child who has not finished growing.

The life of a man in his thirties is fitted into me entire.

Which may be why there is not much occasion to collide with them on feeling.

And overwhelming money on top of it!

There is nobody currently enrolled at Cheonghwa holding more cash than I do.

And the coin account is multiplying without limit as we speak, naturally.

“Let’s eat.”

“Yes!!”

“Mm……”

The feeling of being the head of a house with a household to lead.

We ate our lunch together under the stinging looks around us.

“Oppa.”

Kang Ari calls me in the middle of her salad.

“Mm.”

“Why didn’t you get in touch at the weekend?”

“……??”

“I gave you my number……”

Kang Ari smiles, innocent and bright.

Other people go by her face and take her for sweet-natured, and she is nothing of the kind.

To become a cellist of international standing at her age she will have sweated blood, viciously.

Work that means playing a long piece without dropping a single note.

Fingertips bruised with blood, and the feeling melted down out of it to move an audience and a panel of judges.

Taking a prize at an international competition is itself proof of how hard a child Kang Ari is.

“I was busy.”

“T— Tae-ung looked at flats for me on Sunday. For my move.”

Jiung stepped in.

“Ah~ I see.”

Kang Ari accepted it at once.

“And on Saturday he was at the golf course with me.”

Lee Hyoju, who had been counting the grains of rice into her mouth, cut in.

Anybody hearing it would take it the wrong way.

“Oppa. Do you play golf?”

“Yeah.”

“Then come with me next time. My grandfather owns a course in Gangwon and the views are lovely. You can see the sea~”

“……”

Right. You’re not from an easy house either.

I still know nothing exact about what Kang Ari is.

That she belongs to a house out of the ordinary I have heard by rumour, of course.

“All right.”

“Is that a promise?”

I looked round at Kang Ari.

The girl who shared an umbrella on a day when the rain came down in sheets, and got one shoulder wet.

Both eyes are smiling, and deep in them I could see the graze that sorrow had left.

The feeling of standing in front of the man I used to be.

Which may be why, on that day in the rain, Kang Ari came into my eye at all.

“I’m going home this week. Put it in for next month.”

“Yeees~”

Kang Ari smiles wide.

Very different from Lee Hyoju, whose image is composed and intellectual.

There is something attractive in the bouncing, fresh way she is.

She is not the queen of the first year for nothing.

“Do you even play golf?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“Because oppa’s impressive. And he’s got money~”

Kang Ari answered Lee Hyoju’s question without a check in it.

She said the money part straight out, and there is no possibility Kang Ari has any interest in the money.

It is certain her house is not one that money constrains.

Snap.

A small spark jumped over the table for six.

I shook my head at myself.

There were a few times at university in the past that came close to this.

I was living a wretched life at the bottom then, and I made a point of looking away.

If it hadn’t been for my girlfriend I’d have gone my whole life without anybody and ended up a bachelor ghost.

Tramp, tramp.

Somebody came toward our table.

I felt a look aimed exactly at me.

And.

“Ha Tae-ung……”

(End of Chapter 65)