Having stared at Seong-ho for a while like a man whose wits had left him, Chung-seop barely got his trembling lips apart.
“How could we…”
Chung-seop lifted his coffee cup with hands as unsteady as his voice. Finding some calm by blowing on the hot coffee, he took a sip or two and opened his mouth again.
“Head. We’re a place that only just set up an advisory. How could a company like ours acquire a securities firm?”
The trembling had subsided considerably from a moment ago, but it still clung to his voice.
Seong-ho looked quietly at him and said,
“Ordinarily, of course, it would be out of the question. And the securities association wouldn’t want to accept it either. But right now is a special situation, isn’t it? At a time like this, even the securities association won’t be able to block Future Advisory from entering.”
At his words, Chung-seop swallowed dryly. To become a securities firm meant entering the institutional fold. It meant no longer standing on the industry’s fringe, matching your steps to the industry’s movements, but taking part in those movements directly, making the current yourself. And so those already inside the institutional fold thoroughly shut out any new competitor. Because it was all the more to their advantage for the privilege to belong to only a select few. On top of that, people who’d started from the bottom of a place like Future Advisory and climbed up in a short span could never, not if they died and were reborn, stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
So Chung-seop had never once imagined becoming a securities firm. Something like a private-fund asset-management company was the largest goal he held, and anything beyond that he’d never expected even in his dreams. Yet the thing he hadn’t dared expect even in dreams was what Seong-ho was speaking of.
“There are seven securities firms up for sale on the market right now, Goguryeo Securities included. And the places set to collapse from here on will only grow more numerous. In this situation, the association won’t be able to block Future Advisory’s acquisition of a securities firm. If anything, put out word that you mean to acquire and they’ll come at it eagerly—so don’t worry, and use this chance.”
“Will it really… turn out that way?”
“It will.”
Seong-ho spoke to Chung-seop in a confident voice. In that former life, the circumstances under which Future Advisory had leapt up into a securities firm had been worse than now. Even so, the securities association had accepted Future Advisory without any particular resistance—Seong-ho remembered it clearly. That was why he could speak with confidence.
Seong-ho looked at his own building, visible beyond the window, and said,
“After you acquire a small securities firm, move in there with me. And once you’ve established yourselves as a securities firm, that’s when you can use the whole building.”
“That whole building… all of it?”
Chung-seop followed Seong-ho’s gaze to the building. It was a fifteen-story building on more than 2,000 pyeong of land. To use all fifteen floors of a place like that meant growing to a level ranked among the top of the securities firms. Imagining growing to a top-ranked securities firm when he hadn’t even begun the acquisition, Chung-seop felt his heart pound.
But Seong-ho’s talk went beyond what Chung-seop imagined.
“That’s where the start is.”
“The start?”
“Yes. Using that whole building is the start of Future Advisory—no, of Future Asset Securities.”
“Future Asset…”
Chung-seop repeated to himself the name of the company elevated to a securities firm. Just repeating that name made him feel something like anticipation.
Seong-ho looked at him and said with a smile,
“Let’s talk about that when the time comes.”
Chung-seop, his head in a tangle and his wits scattered, came to himself at Seong-ho’s words and nodded.
“Yes. It seems I ought to. I… still can’t quite sort out what’s happening, or how.”
Seong-ho smiled quietly and said,
“For now, CEO Jo, your task is to find a suitable securities firm and acquire it. And through it, obtain the securities license and enter the institutional fold. That’s the first thing Future Asset has to do.”
“I’ll bear it in mind.”
Chung-seop bit his lower lip lightly. He was trying, through the pain, to remember Seong-ho’s words clearly.
Seong-ho gave a slight smile at the resolute-looking Chung-seop. Chung-seop and Future Asset were a man and a company that had grown, by their own strength, into Korea’s finest securities firm even without anyone showing them the way. With Seong-ho’s help on top of that, they were certain to grow faster and higher still. Seong-ho pictured Future Asset soaring to the heights and looked at Chung-seop.
Just then, Chung-seop’s secretary came into the office.
“CEO.”
Chung-seop, wearing a face flushed with joy, came to himself at the secretary’s call and turned his head. Standing at the door, the secretary said in a careful voice,
“Chairman Jang has arrived.”
At the report, Chung-seop pulled himself together. With an important matter right before him, he had to gather his wits and handle the task at hand first.
“Right. Show him to the conference room.”
Instructing the secretary to guide Chairman Jang to the conference room, Chung-seop looked at Seong-ho. Seong-ho gave a quiet smile at his gaze. At the news that Chan-pyeong Jang—Eun-a Jang’s father—had come to visit, a smile had risen to his lips of its own accord.
Seong-ho and Chung-seop entered the conference room where Chairman Chan-pyeong Jang, a heavyweight of the private-lending world, was waiting. The large-framed Chairman Chan-pyeong Jang looked at Seong-ho from his seat and spoke first.
“You must be Head Seong-ho Kim, whose name has been ringing out lately.”
“This is our first meeting. I’m Seong-ho Kim, in charge of the Ilhyeon Group’s Restructuring Headquarters.”
Receiving Seong-ho’s punctilious greeting from his seat, Chan-pyeong Jang nodded with a somewhat softened face.
“No need to stand on such ceremony. When you get down to it, aren’t we family anyway?”
At Chan-pyeong Jang’s words—that they were tied as family through Eun-a Jang—Seong-ho gave a slight smile and sat. When Chung-seop then sat beside him, Chan-pyeong Jang looked back and forth between the two and said,
“Is this place also one the Ilhyeon Group backs?”
“It isn’t.”
“Then is it perhaps a place you own privately?”
“That isn’t so either.”
Seong-ho shook his head at Chan-pyeong Jang’s questions, turned to Chung-seop, and said,
“I merely invested here out of a personal acquaintance. Management and investment alike are all carried out by the decision of CEO Jo here, so I hope you won’t misunderstand, Chairman Jang.”
At his words, Chung-seop thought instead that it was precisely because Seong-ho—who showed him the answers—was there that he could find peace of mind and run with all his strength. To Chung-seop, Seong-ho was no mere investor but something like a teacher. But there was no reason to make that known to Chan-pyeong Jang, so Chung-seop only smiled quietly under Seong-ho’s gaze.
Chan-pyeong Jang looked between Chung-seop and Seong-ho and nodded.
“You call yourself a mere investor, but to my eye it looks like more than that. Well, since you say it isn’t, I’ll take it as such.”
Not having come to pick at such a thing, Chan-pyeong Jang said he understood and asked Seong-ho the reason he’d been called here.
“What is it you wanted to discuss, calling me here?”
Seong-ho straightened himself in his seat and looked at Chan-pyeong Jang. And he slowly began to speak of the reason he’d arranged, through Chung-seop, to meet Chan-pyeong Jang here.
“You’ll have heard the story concerning Ilhyeon, Chairman Jang.”
“Heard? More than heard.”
A sneer hung on Chan-pyeong Jang’s lips.
“It’s a story involving my daughter too, so I know it very well.”
Chan-pyeong Jang paused and wrinkled the tip of his nose.
“It’s a filthy story to put in my mouth, so I won’t go on at length. But there’s one thing you’d do well to know. That my daughter, who refused, was talked into accepting her husband’s out-of-wedlock child.”
Chan-pyeong Jang gripped his chest with a hand. And wearing an anguished expression, he frowned at Seong-ho and said,
“How I must feel—you and the rest of them will never know.”
Believing he had sinned against Eun-a Jang, Chan-pyeong Jang closed his eyes, gripping his chest. And he drew great, heaving breaths, showing his effort to master his emotions.
Chung-seop looked at the sight of Chan-pyeong Jang and turned a worried expression to Seong-ho. He didn’t know the details, but Chung-seop knew the broad strokes from the stories going around. By anyone’s reckoning, Eun-a Jang was the victim, and the Ilhyeon Group and Chang-jong were the perpetrators—beings with nothing to say for themselves though they had ten mouths. Chung-seop worried that Seong-ho might get needlessly tangled up in this and come out the worse.
But this whole situation was exactly what Seong-ho wanted. The more Chan-pyeong Jang’s heart ached, the more the one it troubled was not Seong-ho but the Ilhyeon Group—and that was the very situation Seong-ho hoped for. Seong-ho patted Chung-seop’s thigh to say it was fine, and said to the eyes-closed Chan-pyeong Jang,
“I’m aware that recently you’ve been facing financial difficulty, Chairman.”
At his words, Chan-pyeong Jang’s eyes flew open. Taking the hand from his chest, he glared at Seong-ho and shouted.
“What is it you’re trying to say?”
Even at Chan-pyeong Jang’s shout, Seong-ho showed no reaction at all and went on.
“I understand that owing to the liquidity crunch blowing through the market lately, you’ve taken a heavy blow too, Chairman. I’m told there are many places that borrowed money from you and haven’t repaid it… am I mistaken?”
Bang!
Chan-pyeong Jang brought the hand that had gripped his chest down on the desk and shouted.
“I asked what it is you’re trying to say!”
“Persuade your daughter once more.”
“What?”
“Ilhyeon is preparing a press conference. Persuade your daughter to say, at that press conference, that the child is one she herself gave birth to.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Chan-pyeong Jang, his hands shaking, shot to his feet. Chung-seop rose after him with a startled face, bracing for anything. But Seong-ho, still seated, looked up at Chan-pyeong Jang and said,
“Then Ilhyeon will help you.”
“…What?”
“Ilhyeon will help with the funds troubling you, Chairman. If not for us, you’d be in a situation where you’d have to throw in your hand, wouldn’t you?”
“You…”
Chan-pyeong Jang looked at Seong-ho and jabbed a finger at him. Just then the conference room door opened and Sang-jong came in.
“Aigo. You’ve already started, have you?”
Sang-jong looked back and forth between the trembling, standing Chan-pyeong Jang, the seated Seong-ho, and Chung-seop, who stood between the two.
“How far have you gotten?”
Sang-jong went to Seong-ho’s side and sat.
“Have you told him we’ll support our in-law’s company?”
Chan-pyeong Jang knit his brow at Sang-jong’s sudden appearance and looked at him. Sang-jong gave him a light smile at the corner of his mouth.
In Future Asset’s conference room, after the storm had swept through, only Seong-ho and Sang-jong remained.
“What exactly is this place? Your company?”
Looking around the room, Sang-jong stopped his swiveling chair in front of Seong-ho.
Seong-ho looked at him, smiled, and shook his head.
“No. It’s not my company.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m acquainted with the CEO here. Using this place, we can erase the strange misunderstanding that Ilhyeon is directly backing Chairman Jang.”
“Well, that’s true. If we backed him directly, there might be fellows who’d doubt the sincerity of the press conference. Going through a layer in between is better.”
Sang-jong nodded at Seong-ho’s words and patted the desk with his palm.
“Whatever the case, well done. Thanks to you, the thing’s been made easy. And…”
Sang-jong tapped the desk lightly and smiled.
“Thanks to you, I’ve gotten a leg into this affair too…”
“How about you become the man at the center of carrying this affair through, Brother?”
“The one at the center?”
The corner of Sang-jong’s mouth twitched.
Confirming from his expression that Sang-jong wasn’t displeased but, on the contrary, full of anticipation, Seong-ho smiled broadly and said,
“Wasn’t it you who persuaded Chairman Jang? And you who conducted the negotiation over the support funds. So naturally you ought to be the one at the center, shouldn’t you?”
“Would that really be all right?”
He was asking whether it would be all right, but the smile at the corner of his mouth was as good as consent already given.
Seong-ho took Sang-jong’s hand.
“It’ll look better that you finished the affair than that I ran it and finished it, so I’m fine. And you’re not the sort to pretend you don’t know me afterward.”
“That’s right.”
Sang-jong gripped the hand Seong-ho held tightly.
“Well thought. Rather than me helping you and persuading Chairman Jang, that you helped me and I did the persuading will look better to others too. Hahaha. Don’t worry—I’ll look after you for certain.”
Sang-jong nodded with a satisfied expression. And gripping Seong-ho’s hand, he shook it up and down, not hiding his joy.
But Sang-jong didn’t know that what Seong-ho had handed him was not the seat of the man who’d resolved this affair, but a poisoned chalice holding the seed of discord.
(End of Chapter 139)