“The Chuncheon district prosecutors have moved?”

—Yes! Hyungnim.

“Hmm.”

A director’s office in an investment company in Yeoksam-dong.

A middle-aged man in a clean dark blue checked suit is on a call.

The man taking the facts over a second time from the party at the other end is Eom Donggyu.

The moment he heard the name Ha Donghwi, Kang Hongdong had known by instinct that the size of the thing was not to be taken lightly.

The Chuncheon district prosecutors had taken Yang Susan off them.

Kang Hongdong, who had caught the strong scent of some power moving them.

Once his judgement was made he reported it at once to Eom Donggyu, the director of the Nakcheon faction who watches his back.

Kang Hongdong does well enough along the east coast, but he is nowhere near the level at which a man rubs up against the prosecution service.

This matter in particular is one connected to Haryun Group.

A situation in which he has to make himself small however he can.

Kang Hongdong, who has a sharp head on him even doing a thug’s work, went straight up the line for help.

—The boys say bodyguards seem to have been put on them.

“Bodyguards?”

—A driver goes about with Ha Donghwi. The car is a fairly expensive import too. And on top of that Ha Donghwi’s wife is running a Mercedes S-Class.

“Weren’t they poor enough to tear?”

—They were. Until a little while back it was definitely a small car…….

Director Eom Donggyu’s face twisted.

Ha Donghwi, who had been taken under management on a particular request.

He had given that job to Kang Hongdong, who has his ground in Sokcho and works as a local thug.

The work had been going forward so that the tail could be cleaned up neatly whenever they liked.

And in the middle of it an unforeseen variable had come up.

“And nobody has approached them separately?”

—A man and a woman who looked like lawyers sat in with them.

“Lawyers? On what business?”

—That far, I don’t…….

Kang Hongdong answered in a voice that crawled away into nothing.

“All right for now. Keep watching.”

—Yes! Hyungnim. Rest well!

The call, and its unwelcome news, ended.

“Fucking idiot…….”

Eom Donggyu’s right eye twitched.

In his young days, working as a foot soldier, he had taken a knife properly.

He had surgery several times to take the scar off, but the damaged muscle could not be brought back that far.

When his mood turned and he was put out, his face would set and the muscle of his right eye would contract.

“If they’ve hired lawyers and moved the prosecution service as well…….”

Eom Donggyu had built his footing from the bottom, and now holds the director’s chair at NC Investment Finance, the Nakcheon faction’s other self.

It has the form of a sound investment company, but the reality is a registered private moneylender and nothing more.

Mainly it lends out, at heavy interest, the funds needed in the course of corporate mergers and acquisitions.

Sometimes it steps into the process itself, takes a company over at a knock-down price and sells it on.

NC Investment Finance is a company that carries out lawful seizure in the form of M&A.

Being what it is, it is tied in tightly with the political world as well.

Its relations with the large groups are the same.

In the past, when the labour struggles at the big companies were fierce, the Nakcheon faction went in as the company side’s strike-breaking crews.

The relationship is one of mutual aid on both sides.

With the construction side in particular the bond runs deeper.

The main business is working on the residents of redevelopment areas.

There is a link to Haryun Construction too, naturally.

Haryun Construction has a bad name as a company with neither blood nor tears in it.

Naturally it is harsh with the residents of a redevelopment area who will not come to terms.

In the past, the young Eom Donggyu, at the height of his rise, got on well with Ha Donggeon of Haryun Construction.

Setting fire to houses left standing in an area confirmed for redevelopment, and making threats, was no work at all.

They laid on violence, and where the other party was a woman they went so far as unspeakable things without hesitating.

Haryun Construction grew sharply in that period.

The Nakcheon faction, which afterwards came out into the daylight and laundered what it was.

Even now the bond with Haryun Construction goes on.

A relationship of living well together, each helping the other in secret.

The matter of Ha Donghwi, nested in Sokcho, is a job Ha Donggeon put into Eom Donggyu’s hands particularly, too.

“It’s obvious Ha Donggeon will throw a fit if he hears…….”

Only a little while ago the contact had come to bring this business to a close.

The content of it: clear Ha Donghwi away properly.

“And even so. Heh heh heh.”

Eom Donggyu has a plan of his own.

Take Haryun Group for your backing and your ordinary run of law-firm lawyers pull their tails in.

Add the organisation’s strength on top of that, and.

“A hard house, truly. As if money and pride were anything at all…….”

Eom Donggyu mocked the people of the Ha house, who are harder than he is.

And for that he liked them as well.

Settle this Ha Donghwi business properly and the worry about work disappears for a few years at least.

—Will you REINFORCE?

R— REINFORCE??

An alert carried suddenly through my consciousness.

Right after I put my hand out for a handshake, to take the measure of Isabella’s ability.

An unforeseen offer of a trade has gone off.

It isn’t even a game.

Prickling sparks jumped in my hand.

It is not an unpleasant feeling.

Isabella has not declared her house herself, but that she is of a noble family is certain.

A noble presence comes off her.

It is a presence separate and particular from the light she gives off that is visible to the eye.

The trace of a childhood in a house of refinement, of something high in her, was there to be caught.

The line asking about a REINFORCE, going off the moment I shook hands with an Isabella whose standing still needed confirming.

Accepting looks as though it would do no harm.

“Reinforce.”

“……??”

At the one word out of nowhere Isabella opens her eyes round.

Doubt and confusion settle in the wide blue eyes.

Flash!

In an instant light burst.

A wavelength of light visible only to my eye.

“……!!”

Astonishingly, a deeper gold came pouring out of Isabella.

It is a buff.

“Do you believe in fate?”

“Sorry?”

“At this moment, your fate and mine have been reinforced.”

“……??”

Her hand still held, she has fallen to thinking.

Slowly her face coloured red.

“Ha…….”

A short sigh breaking out of her.

A sweet scent was to be caught in the breath.

Thump, thump.

A heart that has started up along with it.

Isabella’s full red lips, with the heat risen in them, took hold of my eye.

The clean line of her nose, as though a carving knife had finished it; eyes shining like starlight with a blue forest held inside them.

Through the eye they came in and filled my head.

The alcohol of the wine drunk a moment before mixed thickly into the blood.

She and I, meeting for the first time.

The snug private space has changed itself into a more secret one.

Hands held and nothing more, and by that alone the feeling and the air of it turn.

Isabella Hales is a person I absolutely need.

The large American firms come behind the English ones where history and tradition are concerned.

England, once the centre of world finance.

And in such a place, a boutique firm that has managed the assets, the trusts, the inheritances and the taxes of the high-net-worth for hundreds of years and provided a fine-worked expertise with it.

Isabella used the surname of the house at the core of it.

She is exactly right to manage and be trusted with my assets, which will shortly be crossing the borders of the world.

A thousand bitcoin?

It looks excessive, but it is a value that comes to little.

If Isabella becomes an agent for me alone, the work can be pushed through without a check, and safety guaranteed with it.

“I— I’ll accept.”

Isabella, declaring her acceptance softly and exactly after a short sigh.

It is not because of the bitcoin.

By the feel of it she, like me, is in a state of shared feeling.

Each of us has felt a binding of fate in which one is subject to the other.

This deal is not to my profit alone.

What Isabella will take out of it hereafter is not small either.

“…….”

Isabella and I let an awkward moment go by with our hands still held.

Holding in the chest a heated feeling that will not easily subside.

Isabella avoided my eye and let her head drop.

By the reddened face it looks as though she has almost no experience of love.

It is not the bearing of the confident Englishwoman she showed at the first meeting.

More than that, Isabella is an attorney with the Hales firm.

And yet what she looks like is a girl in her teens.

On top of which she has still not taken her hand out of the handshake.

Outside the window the moonlight lays the shadow of cloud down.

A moment like magic.

Swallow.

A dry swallow goes down of itself.

“…….”

Shff.

My left arm moves slowly, by instinct.

A first meeting and a first sight of each other, and time with Isabella that is not awkward in the least.

A faint tremor.

Her trembling is felt at my fingertips.

Isabella, who does not refuse my touch…….

She and I have both wet our throats with wine.

The still space filled with tension and with curiosity about the future to be laid out for each of us.

An unspoken trust has built between her and me.

The moment my left arm, feeling its way unconsciously, was about to go round Isabella’s waist!

Ding-dong~♬

(End of Chapter 104)