“Here’s the corporation registration certificate.”

“Thank you, Attorney Jo.”

“I’m the one who’s grateful, getting hired as part-time help at my rates. Registering a corporation isn’t difficult work either.”

“I’m glad we’ll be seeing each other often from now on, Auditor Jo.”

“You… you’ve got nerve. Haha.”

I met Attorney Jo at a coffee shop in Gangnam, Seoul.

We had gotten a lot closer over this stretch.

Attorney Jo had dropped into casual speech with me.

The corporation registration is done.

The corporation registration was finished.

Even a minor can be an incorporator of a corporation.

Except that the work isn’t easy and there are plenty of frustrations in it.

Because I’m a minor, even getting the certificate of seal impression issued needed my parents’ consent.

With a family relation certificate attached on top of that, I made a corporation with a billion won in capital.

A corporation with capital above five hundred million must include three or more directors and one auditor.

In the past there had to be seven or more incorporators, but when the Commercial Act was revised in 2001, one became possible.

I had business cards made for my parents saying director.

For the auditor I asked Attorney Jo.

Attorney Jo agreed readily.

The law firm he belongs to allowed it because he is a former prosecutor of senior civil-service grade.

Three million a month is paid to him.

At that level it’s pocket money.

But the effect against the cost was enormous.

Under the name of auditor, a bond with Attorney Jo, a former Deputy Chief Prosecutor of a district office, was now formed in earnest.

Everything from here is my meal!

From now on I intend to hide behind the corporation.

I mean to use the advantages of a corporation to the fullest.

An individual investor is easy to expose; a corporation isn’t.

“But the corporation’s name is unusual. Is there a particular reason for it? I’m curious what L.O.R. Investment Corporation stands for.”

“Nothing much. It means Legend Of Royal.”

“Legend of a royal house? Isn’t the name a little grand? Are you royalty?”

“Come on, don’t be like that. Trace our people back and everybody came from royalty, didn’t they. It doesn’t mean anything.”

The real thing it stands for is Legend Of Return!

Legend of Return!

I was a regressor who could tell nobody.

I wanted to become a legend.

Exactly as the old man wished when he was shouting and raging in my dream, I will become a legend who lifts the world and sets it down.

“Yes. If it’s you, you seem to have qualification enough for it. A high schooler setting up a corporation with a billion won in capital… at that age I couldn’t have imagined it.”

“I’m counting on you, Auditor Jo.”

“You know that if you skim the corporation’s funds, that’s embezzlement or breach of trust on the spot~.”

“You shouldn’t say that between us, Auditor Jo~. You have to let some things slide. Am I not the employer~?”

“Puhahahahahaha.”

Attorney Jo laughed cleanly.

That man is remarkable too.

He didn’t turn down a young punk’s request.

He didn’t get to the end of the road as a prosecutor, and I like him better for it.

You can feel a purity in him.

I’ve seen his sense of justice with my own eyes, so I’m easy about it.

“Please look into an accountant too. I’ve opened an office in Gangnam for now, but there’s no resident staff. If you know someone trustworthy I could hire as an employee, I’d be grateful for a recommendation.”

“Really? Then there’s a woman who retired from our firm — may I recommend her?”

“Of course. On condition that you vouch for her, it’s an immediate yes!”

“Are you really a high schooler? Why are you this exacting and this thorough?”

“That’s how I eat. Below me there are young twin sisters, and parents who know nothing of how the world works. If I go wrong it’s a disaster.”

“Don’t worry. She’s a young woman who quit because she couldn’t stand filthy lawyers pawing at her, but her ability alone is out of this world. She came out of business administration, but her legal instincts are outstanding and her talent as a secretary is exceptional. If I’d had the means, I’d have hired her when I opened my own practice.”

“Can she commute to Gangnam?”

“She lives in Gangdong-gu, so no problem.”

“Good. I’ll hire her right away.”

“What? Without even an interview?”

“I trust your eye, Auditor Jo.”

“Thank you. For trusting me.”

The conversation went back and forth warmly.

Living among people has to have this flavor in it too.

Being too exacting only makes you tired.

“Still, you have the time, so meet her once and decide. She may be good in my eyes and still not be a fit that works for you. Live long enough and you learn that human relations are the first thing and the last.”

“Yes! Understood.”

“Is your evening free? I’ll give you her number.”

“Yes. I’m planning to stay in Seoul for a while.”

“Do you have somewhere to sleep?”

“I’m staying at the Park Hyatt Chosun Hotel.”

“That’s an expensive place… it isn’t a suite, is it?”

“It is, though.”

“…At any rate, an enviable youth.”

Preparing a business is not simple.

I put the corporation’s business address in Gangnam.

Whatever anybody says, the business center of this country is Gangnam.

“Don’t your parents try to stop you? Tell you to study, I mean.”

“I was first in the whole school and I got a perfect score on the mock exam.”

“Remarkable…”

Attorney Jo was startled a lot today.

He doesn’t know my real stake yet, and this was already the reaction.

I’m curious what expression he’d make if he knew the capital I have laid out in stocks runs to hundreds of billions.

“I’m counting on you. Whatever else I am, I’m a high schooler, a sprout still growing. I have particular need of the care of fine adults like you, Attorney Jo.”

“That’s enough. Your flattery outstripped mine long ago. At that level you’ll have no trouble putting food on the table.”

“How can a man live on food alone? Now and then you have to cut into a steak, eat yukhoe, have some giant grouper sashimi. (TL Note: 육회, yukhoe — raw beef, hand-cut and dressed with sesame oil, pear and egg yolk. An expensive dish, and a delicacy rather than an everyday one.) Auditor Jo. Let’s eat together~.”

At my words, Attorney Jo looked at me steadily.

Looking won’t do you any good.

Inside me the sly old snake is growing fast, up to serpent grade!

“It never sleeps…”

Night came to Gangnam in Seoul.

I parted from Attorney Jo and came back to the hotel.

As befits a five-star hotel, it is a clean space overflowing with class.

I made a reservation at the buffet.

Because I was a long-stay suite guest they gave me a window seat.

And for free!

I didn’t book an Italian or a Japanese restaurant to put on a show.

For me, a minor who can’t drink so much as a glass, that kind of space was pretension.

Food with no glass of wine is no different from a steamed bun with no filling.

And the night view of Seoul came into my eyes.

Being winter, the day was short and the night was long.

I waited for my interviewee.

The timing was awkward, so I set it at the hotel.

I didn’t want to wander the night streets for the sake of one dinner.

The buffet didn’t have many people in it.

The Gangnam people using a hotel buffet dressed in a way that was somehow different.

Different — very different — from the people in the city I lived in.

The same Korean sky and people under it, and the air they gave off was different.

The buffets in our city are chaos with weddings and first-birthday parties.

But the hotel buffet, unlike a hectic event hall, was quiet.

A pleasant, comfortable piano and violin concerto sounded through high-grade speakers.

Click, click.

I heard the precise sound of high heels coming straight toward me.

I turned my eyes from the window.

A woman came toward me like a picture.

To start with, she was slender.

One look said she had to be over a hundred and seventy centimeters.

A gray two-piece suit, the skirt ten centimeters above the knee.

Under the jacket I could see a black blouse.

In her hand was a large clutch with a shining silver pattern on it.

On her left wrist she wore a slim metal watch.

Her face was…

Amazing!

Suddenly I felt I could see the black inside of Attorney Jo’s heart.

She was a beauty rare even in the thirty years of life I had lived.

I could feel the eyes around us turning to her.

I got tense without meaning to.

She was different from Ye-rin sunbae and Seo-ryeon, who haven’t flowered yet.

She’s at an age that knows how to dress herself with makeup.

You could see the confidence of somebody who has lived through a rough world with her head up.

There was nothing to fault in the way she walked either.

Sometimes there are women with beautiful faces whose walk is a disaster.

I remembered a psychologist saying that a woman’s walk speaks for the posture of her mind.

Her brown hair, falling calmly past her shoulders, held a wave.

“Mr. Jang Tae-san? The CEO?”

“Yes. I’m Jang Tae-san.”

I rose from my seat.

She was courteous, and not the least bit rude.

“I’m Yu Se-ra. I’m here for the interview, on Attorney Jo Yun-tae’s recommendation.”

“Pleased to meet you. Please sit.”

We shook hands lightly.

I offered her the seat naturally.

“Then.”

With a short bow of the head, she sat.

A faint perfume reached me pleasantly.

Not excessive and not cheap either, a pleasant scent.

“You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you. You have a young face and you’re handsome yourself, sir.”

It isn’t a young face, it’s just young.

Attorney Jo doesn’t seem to have told her much about me.

She looked at me with her curiosity showing.

“I get told a lot that I look younger than I am.”

I smiled.

My impression of her was a hundred percent pass.

If Attorney Jo would go so far as to vouch for her, the matter is closed.

“The interview setting seems unusual. This is my first interview at a hotel buffet.”

“From now on all the interviews at my company will be held at hotel buffets. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to get to know somebody over a meal. I think the method of sitting a candidate stiffly in front of an interviewer, trading businesslike answers and grading them, is inhumane.”

“That’s radical.”

“The fourth revolution is close, so people have to change too.”

“Yes? The fourth revolution?”

Whoops!

In January of 2007 the smartphone hasn’t even been released yet.

It’s far too early to be discussing the fourth revolution.

The comments from this period suddenly came to mind.

Somebody posted a prediction that cell phone screens would go over four inches and there would be an MP3 function on the camera, a language dictionary and tens of gigabytes of built-in memory.

The comments then were something to see.

Might as well put a laptop in your phone, they said; nonsense that could only happen in a future society a hundred years off, they said, and that reaction was everywhere.

But everybody shut their mouths at the revolutionary cell phone Steven Matthew put out.

“In an IT society developing at this speed, musty methods are a relic of the past that has to disappear. It doesn’t match the philosophy my company pursues.”

“Ah…”

Yu Se-ra nodded at my words.

“Shall we eat?”

“Yes… if that’s your interview method, sir, I have to follow it.”

Yu Se-ra smiled.

Even to me this interview was strange.

But what could I do.

This was comfortable for me.

And so Yu Se-ra and I ate.

In an awkward mood, we started with a vegetable salad.

But soon, with the thought of getting our money’s worth, we enjoyed the food generously, from wagyu steak all the way to snow crab.

It was a top-class hotel, as expected.

The food deserved ninety out of a hundred.

“Thank you for the meal.”

We even had coffee for dessert.

Yu Se-ra had a better appetite than she looked.

She wasn’t picky about meat, and she ate raw fish especially well.

“I’m glad you were satisfied.”

Ah… this greasy line that doesn’t suit a high schooler.

But I held up with the mental age of a man in his thirties.

I could hear other people murmuring as they looked at us.

By anyone’s eye we were a fantastic couple.

“So does the interview start now?”

She asked.

“No.”

“Yes?”

“You’ve passed. Start work tomorrow.”

“But you haven’t even looked at my résumé?”

“The clever executives at the firm you retired from will all have checked it, won’t they? Is there any need for me to look at a résumé on top of that?”

“…”

Yu Se-ra’s large eyes looked at me.

It would be strange if she didn’t suspect something.

“Sir… what is it you do?”

Yu Se-ra’s question.

I sent her one broad smile~.

“I’m a thief who will steal the world.”

(End of Chapter 35)