“You’re going to invest in coin?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Snack time, once the private tutoring was over.
Go Mihui, home late from a long day at the office, was peeling an apple, and the question came out startled.
This is a son who has never shown interest in anything but his studies.
A place in Seoguk’s business school is the goal.
He has not once let go of the top place in all his years at Cheonghwa High School.
Privately she had been proud of a son like that.
The son who is the very image of the husband an accident took from her.
He was the apple of her eye.
For a son like that she had prepared the succession early.
The Ilseong Hotel shares her dad left her as her own portion have been made over to him already, and the Ilseong Electronics shares with them.
He takes several billion won and better out of the year’s performance dividend, after tax.
Out of the dividend she had set an amount aside and put a considerable sum into his pocket-money account.
There is nothing he lacks.
And coin, of all things?
“A friend recommended it.”
“F-friend? Who?”
Go Mihui was badly thrown.
Her son’s relations with his schoolfellows have never run smooth.
Most of them called him the crown prince and saw nothing in him but a celebrity.
They were on their guard against the unspoken weight the name Ilseong carries.
That had always grieved her, and now, all at once, a friend?
“Heh…….”
Kang Junu, taking a slice of apple into his mouth and grinning at nothing.
It is not the blunt face her son usually wears.
Who on earth…… which friend?
Go Mihui has had no report yet of what happened around her son today.
Even Go Mihui had been run off her feet today, over an event to bring VIPs in.
“It’s all right, isn’t it?”
“It’s your own pocket money you’re spending, so…….”
“I’m going to use leverage.”
“Leverage? On coin?”
Go Mihui knows about the coin crash as well as anybody.
In the wake of Luna the rest of the coins are melting with it.
And a leveraged investment in a market like that?
“Yes. Three times seems about right.”
“…….”
Go Mihui closed her mouth and swallowed her breath.
Thankfully it is not a high multiple.
“A friend recommended it, you said? What sort of friend?”
“Ha Tae-ung.”
“H-Ha Tae-ung? Haryun’s Ha Tae-ung?”
“Yes.”
“He’s your hoobae, isn’t he?”
“He’s older than me. So we each took one off.”
“…….”
Her son wore a smile at his mouth as he said Ha Tae-ung’s name.
“He set the timing for you as well?”
“Yes. He said sometime next week would do.”
“Really — will it be all right?”
“I have a good feeling.”
“About the coin?”
“No. About Tae-ung.”
“As much as that?”
“The truth is, it was like looking at Grandfather.”
“……!!”
Her father, the former chairman of Ilseong Group, whom her son had been fond enough of to follow about.
Like looking at the grandfather who stood first in this country’s corporate rankings?
“Mom.”
“Hm? Yes, Junu.”
“Can I invite Tae-ung over sometime?”
“Th-that friend of yours?”
“Yes! I told him I’d have him to the house.”
To Go Mihui’s eye her son Kang Junu looked thoroughly delighted.
All right. See him myself, and judge then.
Go Mihui trusted her son above anybody.
If he felt his grandfather in this friend called Ha Tae-ung, then the boy is no ordinary boy.
And if he falls short of what is expected, cutting it off then will do no harm.
Haryun Group is one of the ten great groups, and one Go Mihui herself would rather not take on.
With power like theirs they could block the road she has taken such pains to lay for her son, and do it easily.
“All right. Tell me once you’ve fixed the day.”
“Yes. Mom, I love you~”
It has been a long time since she heard her son say he loved her.
A smile spread at Go Mihui’s mouth.
At the sight of her son happy, she was grateful that Ha Tae-ung existed.
And there, for a start, the affinity rating went up by one.
The Korean man, thrown by her proposal.
The name is Ha Tae-ung.
She does not even know his age.
A contact number is the whole of the information passed to her.
He had commissioned a firm in London that specialises in overseas legal services for high-net-worth clients.
It is not among the five great English firms that go by the name of the Magic Circle.
Among the boutique firms, though, Hales stands at the top.
The British Virgin Islands, the Caymans, Bermuda and the rest of them.
They support the discreet growth and investment of large private fortunes.
Isabella went out on this Korean VIP client’s commission herself.
She is a woman who fell into K-POP, K-FOOD and K-CULTURE from childhood.
The youngest of her family, Isabella spread her life out in the direction she wanted it, for all her house’s objections.
Unlike her brothers, tied to the family business, she lived a life that was entirely her own.
Then, as luck had it, a client’s commission came in from Korea.
He wanted a private equity fund entity in a tax haven, able to trade futures and options and to invest in coin.
She went looking for goods available for immediate purchase.
In 2023, under pressure from governments the world over, the tax havens begin restricting entities set up for coin investment.
Stock has grown that much scarcer.
A client who ordered his goods at exactly that moment.
He wanted five, new entities and existing ones together.
They were on another level from the shoddy listings bought and sold in online trades.
The ones on offer are sound entities held under the firm’s own management.
A contract of half a million pounds at the least.
Payment in coin.
Isabella, who had wanted to run a holiday alongside the work, took the job gladly.
She came into Korea in good spirits.
She fixed an appointment to make contact with the client.
The place, a supertall tower known for housing most of Korea’s upper class.
Isabella was drawn at first sight to the young man who received her.
The night view of Seoul that came into her eye, and the glass of wine he held out.
The client Ha Tae-ung, who broke over her harder than any idol that had ever set her fan’s heart going.
There was no obstacle in the conversation either.
His manners were a gentleman’s as well.
So she had thrown the bait out.
She wanted to be an investment partner, not a broker who performs a one-off role and stops there.
Isabella has inherited her family’s particular gift.
A third eye, for knowing the people who carry luck.
Measured on that, the Korean man who had put in the commission stood level with any of the world’s great fortunes she had met.
“That is an unexpected proposal.”
Thrown, but only for a moment.
The VIP client looked into Isabella’s eyes with a level gaze.
A look the beauty trap does not work on.
“My instincts are good.”
“Oh? Korean, from you…….”
“I’m a mad fan of Korean dramas.”
The truth is that Isabella is fluent in Korean.
Her interest in Korean culture had been strong enough that she had a high command of the language from childhood.
“Hahaha.”
The client Ha Tae-ung laughed lightly.
“My way of investing is extreme. I don’t guarantee the principal.”
“Which makes me all the more curious?”
Isabella said it holding her empty glass out.
Trickle, trickle.
Ha Tae-ung, taking the glass and filling it again.
Two people meeting for the first time, and both of them as natural in it as if they had known each other from the start.
“Leave it at curiosity.”
“I’ve a fair amount of my own to invest.”
If the man opposite is a swindler, this is where he takes it.
But.
“There’s no need.”
Ha Tae-ung, refusing flat.
What is this? An iron wall — isn’t that what they call this?
Isabella, who knows Korean culture through and through, looked at Ha Tae-ung again.
There is a bearing in his refusal.
Off him she felt the strangeness that comes off people out of the English noble houses.
Which means the mechanism belonging to the upper class alone has soaked into the blood, into the manner, down into the smallest movement.
“A shame…….”
Once a client refuses, investment is hard to raise again.
It only makes the situation awkward.
“But.”
“……??”
Instead the client Ha Tae-ung looked at Isabella and made a queer smile.
“I’d like to make a proposal to you personally.”
“Sorry?”
“You…….”
(End of Chapter 101)