“A crown prince of an outcast line?”

—Miju. You really don’t know?

“What?”

—Donghwi oppa. You’ve seen him yourself.

“Donghwi? You don’t mean Ha Donghwi oppa??”

—That’s the one. The oppa who looked like Seol Dohyeon, the actor.

“Th— then you’re saying Ha Tae-ung is that Donghwi oppa’s son?”

—Yes, that’s right. Banished to Sokcho, as I understand it, and the son seems to have been enrolled at Cheonghwa.

That bastard……. He was Donghwi oppa’s son?

More than twenty years ago now.

At the time, among the upper-class children and among the women in particular, the name Ha Donghwi was passed round like a legend.

The youngest son of Chairman Ha Cheolgon of Haryun Group.

He was low in the order of succession for the group from the start.

And on account of his handsome face the hearts of the women who wanted him ran close to lovesickness.

His schooling was fairly good on top of it.

He was at a level that could comfortably have got into Seoguk, and he chose Yeonguk.

A scholarship student in business administration at Yeonguk.

It became enough of an issue at the time that a piece about him ran in the papers.

Ju Miju too had seen him a few times, at certain upper-class gatherings.

They never got more than a few words exchanged, and the impression stayed with her strongly.

“It’s true, then?”

—Miju. I’m Oh Hyesuk.

Oh Hyesuk, known as a collector of information on all sides about the upper-class people living in Gangnam.

Her own house too was once settled at twentieth in the corporate rankings, on construction.

They took on great works in Saudi Arabia and Libya and any number of state civil-engineering projects.

Dongryu Construction, buried in history now with its old glory.

Oh Hyesuk is the eldest daughter of that Dongryu Construction chairman.

A house that is a name and nothing else now, and in its day its influence was considerable.

With a gift of her own for getting on with people, Oh Hyesuk works busily as a marriage-broker and an information line for the Gangnam districts.

Her husband is a former senior official of the National Intelligence Service.

The overseas slush funds her father worked up while he was chairman run to hundreds of billions of won.

It is the largest reason her word still carries.

“Sorry.”

—Never mind. Don’t forget me when it’s time for the children to marry.

Oh Hyesuk, who carries items of interest about in her mouth and manages her connections with them.

It is her method of involving herself, directly and indirectly, in the marriages of upper-class children.

Bring a match off properly and the fee taken from the two houses alone is several hundred million at the least.

Oh Hyesuk has an astonishing nose for money, and the story goes about that she has had a foot in share-price manipulation as well.

“Of course~ Naturally. Who would I ask but Madam Oh?”

Marriages between the children of the groups do not have love at the centre of them.

Most of them are trades passed back and forth between companies.

That Ha Donghwi chose love and was cast out of the house was also because he refused a trade.

—It must really have been a big business, though?

“Why?”

—The Gangnam upper-class people are in an uproar over it.

“An uproar?”

—You know exactly who the Cheonghwa parents are~ You think the children didn’t go home and tell them everything? My phone’s been on fire. Oh — and by about now…… it will have got through to the Haryun side as well, I should think.

“Has it?”

The rumour has got into the Ha house!

In that instant a light came into Ju Miju’s eyes.

An oppa she had carried a secret one-sided love for.

It means nothing much now, and there was a time when he made her heart go.

And now her son is everything to her!

—Whatever happens…… I think something big is going to go off soon. What sort of house is the Ha house? Famous for being hard.

Chairman Ha Cheolgon, who cast out his own blood for the reason that the man would not follow his will.

The children who remain are not much different in nature.

And now the child of the blood that was thrown out is selling that fearsome Ha house name?

A slow grin.

A smile whose meaning could not be read spread at Ju Miju’s mouth.

Ha Tae-ung is a charity case, plainly.

A way of sending the thorn in her eye off for good, this time for certain, had come to her.

Yes. There’s no need to dirty my own hands over it, is there?

Teacher Lee Jangyong went down over this business.

And the head of academic affairs has gone small in front of the Haryun Group name.

“Madam Oh, thank you. I’ll buy you dinner before long~”

—Make it a generous one. Hohoho.

“Expect it. I’m Ju Miju.”

Ju Miju, in a considerably better mood.

Stories beyond anything imaginable put themselves together neatly inside her head.

A faint tremor.

The gooseflesh came up on Ah Yura and her body shook.

It was strange from the first time I saw him……

A bartender whose eyes looked at a customer as a matter of interest rather than a means of making money.

A bar with a good deal of space in it, done out in a heavy and handsome interior.

And no customers even so.

The reason for it has been made clear, in effect.

An elderly gentleman bartender who owns the building and runs the bar at the same time.

The owner’s identity is a shaman.

No wonder that gaze, which seems to go clean through the inside of a person, was uncomfortable——

What she felt in it was the gaze of a god.

Naturally people whose connections are improper do not come into this whisky bar.

The bartender picks out the customers whose connections are dirty, like a gatekeeper, and blocks them himself.

Which is to say it is a place only those a god has permitted may come to.

How long has he been coming here? They seem to be meeting for the first time……

Ha Tae-ung and the owner plainly have no acquaintance.

And even so the way they deal with each other is far too natural.

“Here you are.”

The bartender picked two whisky bottles out of the cabinet and showed them.

And set a glass down in front of each of them.

A cognac glass in front of Ah Yura; in front of the crown prince, a nosing glass that gathers the aroma up.

Meeting clients now and then, she finds the subject turning to wine whether she means it to or not.

Which is why Ah Yura has studied wine and glasses as well.

She could not afford a mistake.

Most of the clients are of the Korean upper class or its elite.

On a short exchange of ordinary talk alone, they take the measure of a person, analyse them and reach a judgement.

You have to know the basic wine information before you can be somebody to talk to.

“And to go with it, here. Ulleungdo chilso jerky. I have it brought in and I make it myself.”

Chilso?

A kind of jerky ordinary people do not easily get to taste.

The brindled chilso pastured on Ulleungdo is a different thing even from Korean beef.

The jerky, a deep dark red, was different from Korean beef jerky to look at.

“Shall we have a glass.”

Ha Tae-ung, lifting his filled glass and asking for the toast.

“Yes……”

The sweetness particular to cognac, distilled out of wine, brought the taste of the drink right up.

Ah Yura wanted to settle a heart that would not stay still.

She only made a pretence of touching the glasses.

The crown prince sitting right beside her, giving off a scent sweeter than anything rising off the cognac.

Drunker on his scent than on the drink, she felt her face burn hot under the low lighting.

What is the matter with me today?

Ah Yura made an effort to look composed, settled herself, and drank the cognac.

She held a mouthful and rolled it gently over the tip of her tongue.

“……”

The airing seemed to have been judged right, and the fruit spread through her mouth all at once.

At a smoothness and depth beyond what she had expected her eyes closed of themselves.

A good cognac tasted in a bar with an atmosphere, and a long while since.

Dark chocolate and real vanilla spread through her mouth and filled it.

“How is it?”

The shaman — the bartender — met her eyes and asked it with a smile on his face.

“It’s as though a fully ripened vineyard had melted down into it. And it’s smooth.”

Ah Yura put the taste she was getting honestly into words.

“And for you, sir?”

“I understand the Dalmore to be love itself.”

“Hahaha! A true fan of the Dalmore. I think so as well.”

The bartender broke into an open laugh at Ha Tae-ung’s answer.

The whisky bar is not a cramped one, and only these three are sitting in it at present.

Jazz still settling heavily through it, and drink between the two of them.

This is interesting.

Ah Yura did not dislike the strangeness of the atmosphere.

A few swallows of a high-proof cognac and she felt the tension go out of her body.

“With a comrade one ought to share the fellowship of the trenches.”

The bartender, going back to the cabinet with that curious remark.

He put out an arm at once and came back holding an impressive bottle with silver stag’s antlers standing out on it.

“A thirty-year.”

“This one’s free.”

“Thank you.”

That looks fairly expensive…… and it’s free?

Ah Yura was thrown by the way things were running in front of her.

He owns the building, and even allowing for that, a whisky which looks well past several million a bottle does not get given away for nothing.

The bartender took out another fresh glass and set it in front of them.

“There’s no need to think about it too hard. I am simply offering the first glass to a gentleman whose fortune in wealth overflows so far it would fill the Pacific.”

The bartender read what was in Ah Yura’s mind, apparently, and explained his reason to her in the manner of a shaman.

“Yes……”

Ah Yura found the spirit going out of her for no good reason.

What is this, how much money do you need to fill the Pacific?

Her client Ha Tae-ung is still of the standing of a high school pupil.

However much a hidden chaebol chairman’s grandson he may be, an estate can only be grown so far.

“You flatter me.”

“I consider the words inadequate.”

The bartender’s way of speaking to Ha Tae-ung is considerably respectful.

Markedly different from his manner toward Ah Yura.

Trickle, trickle.

A thirty-year Dalmore filled the glass.

“Oh!”

Ah Yura let out a sound of wonder before she knew she had.

“A glass for the lady as well?”

“Yes!”

At the scent spreading into the air as the glass filled, the admiration came out of itself.

Cinnamon drops, cinnamon sugar, nuts and citrus all mixed together in a complication that got the soul drunk as well.

Ah Yura, setting foot in a new world of whisky.

Her glass too was filled with a drink carrying a dark red ruby light.

“Before you lift your glasses…… now, would you each draw one?”

The bartender bending down and taking something out from under the home bar.

“This is……”

(End of Chapter 71)