“Pacific Fisheries? What’s this one, then?”

An office on the seventh floor of the Jo and Jang building.

Kim Gyeongmin asks it of Attorney Ah Yura, sitting opposite him.

“Quite. Why would he suddenly want us looking into a fisheries company in Sokcho?”

“On the face of it…… it looks like an unremarkable seafood outfit……”

A special instruction from the young master.

The instruction came by text message.

The Cheonghwa teacher Lee Jangyong has been dealt with cleanly.

Charges brought on several counts.

He will take damage enough to make coming back into society difficult.

Straight after that the young master commissioned an investigation into Pacific Fisheries in Sokcho.

Not a difficult job.

The capability of Jo and Jang’s information team is at National Intelligence Service level.

Former investigators, police officers and career intelligence staff, all with their ability acknowledged, work there.

Guarantee the fee and they can account for the very spoons on the table of a household under investigation.

“There’ll be a reason.”

“There will indeed. The young master will have a plan for all of it! Heh heh.”

“Attorney……”

“What?”

“That form of address, young master……”

The word coming out of Kim Gyeongmin’s mouth grated on Ah Yura.

She does not deny that she joined Jo and Jang expecting social success.

But there is still a pride she wants to keep as a lawyer.

The client is a client who is still a schoolboy.

The manner of the senior who trains her, hanging young master on the end of every sentence about him, made Ah Yura uncomfortable.

“Attorney Ah.”

Kim Gyeongmin raised his head and called her.

“Yes, Attorney.”

“You don’t know the world yet, do you?”

A question from her senior, coming in with a hook on it.

“……”

Ah Yura only widened her eyes and closed her mouth.

She did not know it before, certainly.

And since joining Jo and Jang she has got a rough sense of how Korean society actually turns.

The lives of upper-class people, which the general public can never know.

The concept itself is different from the rich as people ordinarily think of them.

They take hold of money and power and shake them about as they please, as though it were nothing at all.

They do not project force directly the way they did in the distant past, and they remove a man by more vicious methods than that.

The behaviour of the top ten groups in particular——

“Remember that chairman who threw money down and beat people?”

“Yes.”

“That’s nothing. When I first joined Jo and Jang——”

Kim Gyeongmin did not carry the sentence on, and sank into thinking.

Jo and Jang has kept up an acquaintance with the large organisations since the day the firm opened.

Managed thoroughly on a cell structure, so that no damage travels up to the higher lines.

Everybody who knows, knows that when trouble comes only the lowest cell is cut away.

“What’s the use of talking. …… That’s how the world is. A bit of pride? What’s wrong with calling the young master young master. It comes out as my wife’s designer bags and expensive tutors for my children. I’d lick the young master’s shoes.”

Kim Gyeongmin said it laughing, as though it were a joke, and he meant it.

“……”

It felt like the fate of a married man, and Ah Yura lost what she was going to say.

Jo and Jang, which has never once let go of the top of the Korean legal profession.

Advice from a senior working as a senior attorney in a place like that was not a light thing.

“Attorney Ah doesn’t know yet, that’s all……. Work long enough and you’ll see worse sights than that. And at that moment, you know, you have to choose.”

“……??”

“Success, or pride. I mean you have to take one of them.”

There was bone in what Kim Gyeongmin said.

Throw the pride away for the success.

Or keep the pride and give the success up.

Even now, several of the clients she handles show her their ugly appetites.

Jo and Jang, where the starting salary runs past a hundred million.

And inside it a fierce war goes on every day.

“And as it stands, the young master has a ring through my nose.”

He says that, and Kim Gyeongmin is a clever man.

He had come back to the office and confirmed the essential information.

The young master was without doubt the son of the blood that Haryun Group cast out long ago.

“He spends a hundred million a month on legal advice. You saw it. The young master boasting about having money, in the great Cheonghwa…… it was odd. Which means we got taken as well, and there was nothing to be done about it.”

Kim Gyeongmin’s eyes shone as he said they had been taken.

“He’s a man who knows the strength of money. Which is to say he is no greenhorn with the sap still on him.”

The thing growling quietly on that platform in the great hall was a lion cub, plainly.

He put down every last one of Korea’s foremost upper-class children by force of presence alone.

“Attorney Ah heard it too, didn’t you?”

“Sorry?”

“The pupils whispering, I mean.”

“About what……”

“Crown prince!”

“Ah!”

That is right.

Ah Yura heard it too.

And she does not know exactly what it means yet.

She went through an ordinary school career, like ordinary people.

“Crown prince. A form of address permitted only to the children of Korea’s top ten groups.”

“……”

“Doesn’t look as though it means much?”

“No……”

“Attorney Ah. Those people are going to be worth trillions at the very least. Which is to say they are the crown princes of chaebol houses, and if it goes well they will hold a group worth tens of trillions in their hands.”

Trillions!

Tens of trillions?

There is no taking the measure of it at all.

Ah Yura blinked at a unit of money she cannot feel in her body.

“You can kill a man with money like that. Using…… hands like ours……”

Kim Gyeongmin brought out an honest feeling, got from experience, in an even voice.

“However far a crown prince has been driven out, the strength he holds still works. As the two of us witnessed today.”

Only then did the feeling come to Ah Yura, and it came cold.

Ha Tae-ung, a client who had put out an overwhelming aura against several hundred pupils of Cheonghwa High School.

“Crown prince……”

Ah Yura chewed the words over without meaning to.

What she had seen of Ha Tae-ung today was really——

The crown prince of a chaebol house.

“……!!”

The power struggle has started already!

Wars over the crown prince went on among the Cheonghwa seniors who graduated in the past too.

The usual thing when a batch of children from the higher-ranked chaebol come in at the same time.

And where the groups’ affiliates stand in competition, the fighting is fiercer still.

At the present moment the only rival at crown prince level is Kang Junu.

Jang Jiyu of Sindo Group does not stand at a level worth counting as a rival.

Doa Ilbo and Oyang Group have the most family enrolled.

Their children are somewhere around the middle rank.

But the direct descendant of Haryun Group is another matter.

Kang Junu is Ilseong Group family right enough, and the blood comes from his mother.

It is his mother Go Mihui who is the true Ilseong blood.

So Ha Tae-ung’s appearance cannot help but bring a great change to the power structure inside Cheonghwa High School.

The appearance of a real crown prince fit to be set against Kang Junu!

Kang Junu’s summons, sent with Lee Jeongho, is the signal flare of a power struggle.

If Ha Tae-ung went along after Lee Jeongho meekly here, it would be admitting a lower level of himself.

And Ha Tae-ung provoked him head on.

If you have something to say, come yourself!

An arrogant declaration that nobody could have thought possible.

“Th— that’s a summons from the president……”

“He’s mad……”

“That’s asking for a fight, isn’t it?”

A quiet upheaval got up.

A lion cub that has reigned as master of the safari, and another lion cub appearing just before he leaves.

There cannot be two suns!

“You……”

Lee Jeongho’s face went pale.

He grasped that he was, himself, in a fucked position now.

Fuck!

He reigns like a wolf elsewhere, and in front of a lion the spirit goes out of him.

Only when Kang Junu, president of the Management Society, graduates would his own standing rise.

Lee Jeongjun, his second cousin at the sixth degree, does not interfere in Lee Jeongho’s business.

The two grandfathers are on good terms.

They will not forgive discord between the brothers, let alone the grandsons.

Once Kang Junu leaves and Lee Jeongjun takes over behind him, it is all finished.

And in a situation like that, the appearance of a new male lion——

“Mind your manners. Your hyung is eating.”

Ha Tae-ung picked up the chopsticks he had put down and looked at Lee Jeongho.

This bastard’s eyes……

Much the same as when he looks at Kang Junu.

The force of presence that comes off the ones you cannot stand against.

“I…… passed the message on. You carry…… the responsibility.”

Lee Jeongho dropped his eyes and put his tail down.

The children are sharing the scene live on their phones as this happens.

“……”

Lee Jeongho took a step back and the canteen was peaceful again.

And not one person picked up a spoon and went on with the meal.

People who had witnessed the opening of a storm on its way to Cheonghwa.

“Your food’s going cold.”

Only Ha Tae-ung carried on eating calmly, as a crown prince should.

“Tastes better than usual today, somehow. Heh heh.”

Park Jiung, the charity case friend, laughed with his teeth showing.

“Are you…… all right?”

Lee Hyoju looks at Ha Tae-ung and asks it with worry in her eyes.

“About what?”

“Kang Junu sunbae. He’s no joke.”

“And?”

“Haaa……. Let’s not talk about it.”

Lee Hyoju shook her head at Ha Tae-ung’s reaction.

Things having come to this, it is not at a level she can handle.

Lee Hyoju is a member of the Management Studies Society as well.

Lee Jeongho will have passed the news on by about now——

And the society will be in uproar.

“Bwahahahahahahahaha.”

The officers of the Management Studies Society, waiting for news.

The moment the DM came in Jang Jiyu let out a laugh fit to lift the rest area off its floor.

A laugh genuinely hard enough to squeeze the tears out.

“What is it?”

“Has something happened?”

The officers with no informant in the second year asked it.

“Kang Junu. What are you going to do — you’re humiliated.”

“……??”

Kang Junu, who had been waiting for Lee Jeongho without a word.

He looked at Jang Jiyu when she spoke.

“You’re to go to him.”

“Subject and object.”

Kang Junu’s eyes were cold, and he shot the look at Jang Jiyu.

He was taught this way at home, always.

Being swung about by feeling is no help whatever in running a business.

“Haryun Group’s young master…… said if you have something to say, come yourself. Says he’s the hyung~ Bwahahahahahahaha.”

Jang Jiyu delivered it and went off into a great clapping laugh, as though her breath would go.

“Hoo.”

Kang Junu let out a short breath and brought the feeling under control.

He took hold of himself and shut both eyes quietly.

And.

“If that’s what he wants……”

(End of Chapter 67)