My parents had settled somewhere far off so the young ones could play, and while I was away delivering iced coffee to them, the incident broke out.

A bad tie had shown up.

This is why ties between people are frightening, it seems.

Oh Dong-seong, who in my life before I died had never once been connected to me, had collided with me a second time.

Ye-rin sunbae‘s graduation, and today.

It was confirmed all over again that this is no good tie.

“What’s this? Dong-seong, what’s going on?”

“Hey! Let go of that hand!”

Two of Oh Dong-seong’s friends came over with their faces flushed red.

The smell of drink came off them strong.

Ban Dae-sik and Choe Ji-hyeong? So these bastards were a set from this far back.

They’re the drug offenders who were up and down the internet news at one point.

It was buried without a sound during the Hanguk Freedom Party’s time in power, but it made a lot of noise in the world.

The internet overflowed with voices demanding they be punished, and before anyone noticed the news had disappeared.

That is exactly the power of power and the press.

These are faces I noted at the time.

Ban Dae-sik’s grandfather is the chairman of the Joguk Ilbo. Choe Ji-hyeong is the nephew of Choe Byeong-bak — the man who dug up riverbeds, speculated abroad and threw the national treasury away.

And he’s the late-born son of the multi-term Assembly member who, a year from now, will be called the retired king.

They’re garbage who go well with the playboy Oh Dong-seong.

It’s the bare face of the sons of the Republic of Korea’s upper class.

“Oppa…”

As the mood turned ugly, the twins hid behind me.

“You bastard, how do you know me? What the hell are you! And let go of this hand!!!”

Oh Dong-seong, startled at his name being exposed, demanded.

You bastard. It’d be a shame to just let you go~.

I put more crushing force into the hand I was holding.

“Aaaaagh!”

He screamed.

Only then did I let go.

Oh Dong-seong glared at me hard.

But with the pain he’d felt in his hand, he couldn’t come at me easily.

The more of that kind a man is, the better he knows his own body is precious.

“Dong-seong, is this guy somebody you know?”

True to the grandson of a newspaper owner, Ban Dae-sik looked at me with suspicion.

His eyes looked thoroughly cunning.

“Hey! What the hell are you?”

True to a bloodline pushing its way up to the summit of power, Choe Ji-hyeong called me hey.

You bastard, you’re marked with me for life!

“What’s this? A fight?”

“Looks like an argument.”

There were plenty of young people at Daecheon beach.

The curious ones crept in and surrounded us.

The table is laid~ shall I play a hand.

I can’t be throwing punches in the middle of the day.

There were too many eyes watching, and my standing in the world is still too low.

If I started a legal case for nothing, it was obvious I’d be pushed under by the social background these people have.

For the sake of getting into university, I had to hold it in.

That didn’t mean I’d leave them alone.

At a time like this, using the power of a crowd does the job.

The press play that cleaned up that Hong boy and the gangster bastards is the best there is.

The plan drew itself in my head, step by step.

“Mr. Oh Dong-seong! Apologize. However much you’re a son of the Ana Group, behaving rudely toward my younger sisters cannot be forgiven.”

“He was an Ana Group son?”

“Oh…, Oh Dong-seong? Ah! That’s right. Isn’t that the son who got into the Hanguk University law department?”

“I think I saw it too! It was all over the TV back then. A conglomerate’s son getting into the Hanguk University law school on his studies.”

“Really???”

All kinds of information came pouring fast out of somebody’s mouth.

The murmuring of the people spread around us in an instant.

“What the hell are you? The boss of a badger game!!!”

Choe Ji-hyeong, said to be worse than Oh Dong-seong for a filthy temper, stepped forward.

He’s the one who got famous for turning up in flip-flops at a VIP party when his uncle was mayor of Seoul.

His mother was caught at the airport immigration desk with diamonds on her toes; the family are specialists in illegality and tax evasion.

True to the son of a textbook family of swindlers, everything he does is punk behavior.

The people of today were blinded by the real-estate frenzy and made this one’s father a multi-term National Assembly member and his uncle a president, and I pitied them for it.

The press was still leading the people astray.

The time when smartphones spread in force and people stop being swung around by the newspapers is still more than ten years off.

Until then the people become blind fools and are fooled and fooled again.

“Mr. Choe Ji-hyeong! That’s going too far! Your uncle, who’s running for the presidency, will be delighted if he hears about this. A badger game! Aren’t you the problem, coming at schoolgirls who aren’t even in their first year of high school with drink on you!”

“First year of high school? Whoa…, are those bastards insane?”

“They put drink away and then bothered minors?”

“They say he’s candidate Choe Byeong-bak’s nephew!”

“Damn it! No wonder his face looks like a rat’s!”

The mood turned violently bad.

Most of the young people respected President An Mu-hyeok as a human being.

They were sorry about his and his officials’ political mistakes.

Against that, the view of Choe Byeong-bak is poor.

“Take photos! Let’s put them on the internet!”

The mood is good~.

If it had been the dead of night I’d have knocked their jaws in.

I’m not that nice a man.

But revenge in this style wasn’t bad either.

“I don’t know who you are, but if you come at us like this it’ll go hard for you.”

Ban Dae-sik glared at me quietly and threatened.

The petty methods he learned at home showed exactly as they were.

Yes! That’s the reason I earn money by the mountain.

I mean to smash every one of you beggarly bastards, so wait just a little!

“Mr. Ban Dae-sik! Isn’t your grandfather the chairman of the Joguk Ilbo? The direct descendant of a newspaperman shouldn’t be taking part in sexual harassment of minors and in violence!”

“!!!”

Hearing his own name and the Joguk Ilbo chairman in one breath, Ban Dae-sik went pale.

He seems not to have imagined I would know even his name.

“Whoaaa…, the complete set of garbage is here?”

“Even the grandson of the Joguk Ilbo that sold the country? Is Daecheon a collection point for garbage?”

Normally the three of them couldn’t have been touched, and the crowd came at them roughly.

This is exactly the power of a crowd.

The Joguk Ilbo’s reputation is hardly good either.

As the mood around them turned ugly, the three watched for a way out.

The alarm on their faces was plain.

Flash! Flash-flash-flash!

Cell phones with cameras in them, old models but working, threw out their light.

“Fuck! Don’t take pictures! You beggar bastards!”

“You think we’ll leave you alone! Get lost, all of you!!!”

Oh Dong-seong and Choe Ji-hyeong went into a raving fit.

They called the citizens around them beggars.

The masks came all the way off the garbage they are underneath.

Today’s incident will probably grab them by the ankle later.

Once the rumors pile up one by one, the material stays on the internet forever.

A man like that got into the Hanguk University law department? Good grief, it lowers the school’s class.

The anger toward Oh Dong-seong in particular was large.

He’s a senior at the school and in the department I’ll be entering.

Without looking I can tell his strict father put a crowd of tutoring aces on him.

The interview is finished by quietly applying pressure through a side channel.

If only the entrance exam score, which can’t be forged, comes out well, there’s no school a conglomerate can’t get into.

“I will make a formal protest about this incident to the Ana Group chairman’s office!”

Just then Clara, whose eyes had been blazing, stepped forward.

“Who are you to protest to my father!”

Oh Dong-seong could see nothing in front of him.

He glared at Clara.

“I am an employee of the secretariat at HSBC Bank’s Hong Kong head office. I intend to report this sexual harassment incident and this insult to the company’s legal team in detail.”

“…”

At Clara’s words, Oh Dong-seong’s face rotted further.

The Ana Group is a conglomerate at home, and abroad it is only a middling Republic of Korea company.

Back in 2007 it wasn’t that large a corporation.

Oh Dong-seong will know there’s nothing good in colliding with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.

There was nothing at all good about being marked by HSBC, a global bank. And the secretariat at that.

Reputation connects straight to the value of a corporation.

“Boys…, let’s go.”

Quick-witted Ban Dae-sik tucked his tail first.

He pulled at his friends’ clothes.

They were becoming a spectacle on every side, like monkeys in a zoo.

“Damn it!”

“Son of a bitch, this is…”

Oh Dong-seong and Choe Ji-hyeong showed no sign of reflection at all.

They poured foul abuse at the people around them.

Their faces had turned like evil spirits.

“You just wait!”

Choe Ji-hyeong glared at me as if he’d tear me apart and pointed at me with his finger.

And so they swallowed their anger and turned their backs.

Heh~ ending it like that? Who says you can~.

My business wasn’t finished yet.

“You three there, apologize before you go! Do children of the leading class of society put drink away in broad daylight, sexually harass minors, use violence and then simply walk off!!!”

I threw it at their backs in a voice that rang.

The ones fleeing stopped in their tracks.

Pride that had known no limit is going to take a terrible wound.

Unlike me, who had lived my thirties, they’re men in their twenties with nothing in the world to fear.

“You son of a bitch…, I’ll tear you apart and kill you!”

Oh Dong-seong turned his head and glared at me.

It was the face of a malevolent spirit and nothing else.

Yes! That expression is exactly the one I wanted!

“Mr. Oh Dong-seong~.”

I said his name with a snort of a smile.

In my head I could see, clearly, the stock graph of Ana Incorporated, the Ana Group’s core holding company, a year from now.

This autumn the share price is due to peak at ninety-two thousand won.

But next year, in 2008, the price crashes to twelve thousand won.

The greedy chairman of the Ana Group became the preferred bidder to acquire a large shipbuilder.

It’s the decisive moment that could turn the business rankings upside down in one stroke.

But that is Ana’s pipe dream.

With the global financial crisis that breaks then, they end up unable to raise trillions of won in acquisition funds.

They lost the three-hundred-billion-won deposit.

That is the most dangerous time in the Ana Group’s history.

The stock and the real estate the company meant to sell to cover it crashed together.

The group itself fell into a liquidity crisis and was shaken to the roots.

We’ll see about this in a year!

I mean to prepare a hot money cudgel to let Oh Dong-seong taste.

He thinks it’s just one argument with me, but I don’t.

It was a decision I had made about a family with deep roots in throwing money around.

Oh Dong-seong’s father won’t know.

What he is going to suffer a year from now because of the bad tie between me and his son today.

“Let me make one prediction.”

“???”

At the sudden word prediction, everybody looked at me.

“Exactly one year from now, the Ana Group…, comes apart beautifully in mid-air. And you will become a beggar.”

“Crazy bastard…”

Oh Dong-seong looked at me with disbelieving eyes.

Yes, you’ll be thinking it makes no sense.

But know this much: I’m not an easy man who talks stale nonsense.

You’re marked by me. You son of a bitch!

“Let’s go. This has soured my mood…, hock, pah!”

Choe Ji-hyeong spat phlegm onto the sand and left.

Oh Dong-seong and Ban Dae-sik glared at me and left too.

It’s a tie fierce enough to make me want to wave them off.

And so they pulled out fast.

All three of them knew that staying any longer could become a liability for Choe Byeong-bak, the presidential candidate.

Laugh and enjoy yourselves. Slowly, I’ll smash all of it and take it away from you!

Thinking of the people of the Republic of Korea who will suffer because of those families, my chest already ached.

They’re the descendants of the pro-Japanese collaborators, selling off the nation’s wealth so that only they live well. (TL Note: 친일파 — Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese colonial government from 1910 to 1945; in Korea the word still carries into the present, as an accusation against families whose wealth and power are held to date from that period.)

I didn’t want to see a world where men like that eat well and live well any longer.

Old man! Before the neighbors’ dogs who sneer at us, I’ll beat down the greedy mutts in our own house first!!!

I looked at the sky and sent my resolve up to him.

The old man is certainly of the same mind as me, heart reaching heart.

— Karma points have been… richly bestowed upon you.

What, bestowed? And what is that supposed to be?

(End of Chapter 59)