“Who in God’s name have you been marked by?”

“Sorry?”

“You’re properly wound up in it…….”

“Sunbae-nim, save me! Just get me out and I’ll repay the kindness properly!”

The holding cells at Sokcho police station.

Against the hearing on the detention warrant, set for late in the afternoon, Yang Susan had retained an attorney.

It is Gi Dongchan, out of Yeonguk University’s law faculty, retired as head of the criminal division of the Gangneung branch prosecutors.

The two are men who have kept close, the one serving the other as a sunbae.

Yang Susan pleaded with his sunbae Gi Dongchan.

Gi Dongchan’s head has gone barer over the last few years.

With only a few strands of hair left, he is bald and makes no secret of it.

He is an ordinary middle-aged man of about a hundred and seventy centimetres, made to look slow by abdominal obesity.

He has a great deal of heat in him, so the muscles of his face sit unevenly and the grease runs on it in a sheen.

The look in the eyes beyond the unusually glittering gold-rimmed spectacles is far from just.

A Gangwon Province man, an attorney out of the courts, retired as a branch division head at Gangneung.

In that region he is called the Jo and Jang of the criminal bar.

An ordinary sort of case has its sentence cut sharply by one massage from Gi Dongchan.

He is the operator who, a year ago in Sokcho, got the son of an influential house — a man who had killed a couple outright driving drunk — out of the high court with a suspended sentence.

The man had already lost his licence for drink-driving once before, and even so Gi Dongchan turned three years at first instance into a suspended sentence on appeal.

The victims’ side raged, but in the end it went up to the Supreme Court and came back confirmed.

That is how far Gi Dongchan’s ability, taken on its own, is worth acknowledging.

There is a reason his nickname is Gi Ddongchan.

And this time Attorney Gi Dongchan wore a look of difficulty.

Who in hell has this little shit touched?

This time Gi Dongchan’s standing out of the courts did not take.

On the contrary, an instruction had come down from the head of the branch office to handle the case properly.

There are few people who can move a branch head.

If there are, it is prosecutors on the central side, or politicians, and about that far.

And even so there is no chance of them moving to catch one gambler playing about in the provinces.

Gi Dongchan pressed Yang Susan with his eyes.

He has taken the retainer, but he knows Yang Susan is hiding something.

A considerable number of criminal offenders do not state the facts that go against them in the first place.

“Who is the other party, I said. A gangster?”

Gi Dongchan, who knows Yang Susan’s usual conduct to some degree, pressed him hard.

Being the provinces, even a small rumour went round quickly.

Yang Susan, about whom the rumour that he had swallowed his father’s business in gambling runs and runs.

Lately it is known that he has put a hand to private lending as well.

“N— no.”

“Then who? You have to tell me exactly or I can’t lay the board out.”

Yang Susan is a Yeonguk University hoobae as well, and privately the two stand as elder brother and younger.

At this point the force of a former division head prosecutor burst out of Gi Dongchan properly.

“That is…….”

Yang Susan too could not easily open his mouth.

In the course of being investigated inside the detention centre his mind had gone from him entirely.

The police who took the investigation were in a state of having built the snare around him perfectly.

And on top of that a friend’s warning, seeming to ring in his ear still, was squeezing his throat.

“What is it?”

Gi Dongchan put his ear close to Yang Susan.

“H— Haryun.”

“Haryun? What nonsense is this? Why does Haryun suddenly come out?”

Gi Dongchan went blank for a moment at Yang Susan’s pointless remark.

A statement of Yang Susan’s that does not match up at all.

“The fellow who made me like this. I think he’s Haryun Group’s youngest son.”

“Whaaaat? H— Haryun Group’s youngest son??”

Gi Dongchan, kicking his chair back and getting to his feet in an instant.

His face had already gone white.

“H— hyungnim. Jo and Jang as well…….”

“Hey! You fucking son of a bitch! If you’re going to croak, croak on your own! Shit!”

Gi Dongchan, pouring abuse over Yang Susan the moment the swearing burst out of him.

He gathered his bag up in a hurry.

“The retainer’s cancelled! My dreams were unsettled last night, and there it is.”

Without looking back he moved his steps toward the interview room door.

“S— sunbae! Hyu-u-ung!!”

“Shut up! From this hour our bond is finished. You gambler bastard!”

Gi Dongchan closed the door just as he was and disappeared.

“Kh-h-h…….”

Yang Susan, sinking down where he stood in front of a reality with no way out.

“Is the visit over?”

A policeman opened the interview room door and came in.

He looked coldly at Yang Susan, cuffed at the wrists and out of his wits.

Yang Susan, a criminal shut in a holding cell for embezzlement and habitual gambling.

“Haaa…….”

His long sigh, hope lost, rang out through the interview room.

“……!!”

“Ah…….”

“Whaaaat…….”

Gasps of astonishment burst out here and there.

Who is Lee Jeongjun.

He is the paternal grandson of Doa Ilbo’s honorary chairman.

His mother is direct line to Hanguk Group’s present chairman.

He is a maternal grandson, true, but his influence at Cheonghwa cannot be disregarded.

And somebody has asked a Lee Jeongjun like that whether he is anything?

There are exactly two people in this room who can spit words like that out.

Kang Junu, Ilseong Group on his mother’s side, and Jang Jiyu, Sindo Group’s eldest daughter, and about that far.

The remaining club members are at a level similar to Lee Jeongjun’s or below it.

Even the Lee family members related to him do not open their mouths carelessly.

And yet Ha Tae-ung…….

“Y— you, are you anything!! Are you, I said!”

“Yeah, I’m something.”

Ha Tae-ung, hitting back in a firm voice, unlike Lee Jeongjun’s shaking one.

“What are you, then? A thrown-out outcast line, of all things!”

An excited Lee Jeongjun crossed the line hard.

Kang Junu’s expression twisted at hearing it.

Lee Hyoju too shot a cold look at Lee Jeongjun, her relation.

Jang Jiyu wore a look that said this was interesting.

The rest of the children watching held their breath as they saw fit.

“And so?”

“……??”

“Does that stop me being Chairman Ha Cheolgon’s grandson?”

“……!!”

“When my grandfather dies my father can get the reserved portion at the least, can’t he. And you?”

“…….”

“How much is Doa Ilbo worth? More than that, wasn’t your mother thrown out by Hanguk Group? For the power-tripping.”

Ha Tae-ung, pouring the attack out without a gap for a counter.

An easy, self-possessed smile hangs at his mouth.

“Sh— shut up!!”

At Ha Tae-ung’s provocation Lee Jeongjun let his feeling explode, unlike his usual self.

He has never in his life taken an insult like this.

Nobody had ever criticised his mother this openly in particular.

To Lee Jeongjun too his parents, and his mother especially, were a shameful thing.

All his mother’s power-tripping, seen right through his growing years.

As her child he has turned his face from it, but the last speck of conscience left in him screamed.

And Ha Tae-ung had come in and stabbed at exactly that, without mercy.

“Must I?”

“Fuck! Where does a bastard with fuck all get the front!”

Lee Jeongjun, calling to mind the information heard from his mother at home, browbeat Ha Tae-ung.

Ha Tae-ung’s family are not acknowledged as kin by Chairman Ha Cheolgon.

The reserved portion?

Try to take a thing like that and you can die of it.

The figure with a settled reputation for cruelty across the business world is Haryun Group’s Chairman Ha Cheolgon.

“Is emotional intelligence low? At a glance the emotional resilience looks lacking too…….”

Watching an angry Lee Jeongjun, Ha Tae-ung threw out words close to insults.

“Y— you…….”

Unable to hold his anger, Lee Jeongjun ground his teeth.

He looks ready to rush in at once and throw a fist.

But the rumour that Ha Tae-ung’s fist is fierce had spread long before.

And on top of that the president Kang Junu and Jang Jiyu, whom he loves on one side, are watching.

He gripped his fist tight, ground his teeth and glared at Ha Tae-ung.

“With emotional staying power that weak, will you last? Doa Ilbo you can’t expect much from, being the second son, and your mother’s house will be eldest-son inheritance too, so that’s gone. You — how much of anything great are you holding?”

In the end Ha Tae-ung fired off a cruel truth, arriving without warning.

“Sh— shut up! There’s nothing special about you either!”

At an assessment coldly given that he cannot deny, Lee Jeongjun bit into Ha Tae-ung in turn.

“Me? I told you I have a lot of money.”

Ha Tae-ung’s declaration in the great hall.

“How much have you got? A hundred billion?”

Jang Jiyu, watching, asked it showing her curiosity.

“Up.”

“Oh! Three hundred billion, then?”

“Up.”

“……Five hundred billion?”

Jang Jiyu’s two eyes grew steadily wider as she raised the unit.

In the end a sum to make anybody start burst out of her mouth.

“Up.”

Ha Tae-ung, saying up once more without hesitating at all.

“Then…… a trillion?”

(End of Chapter 111)