Hurriedly dressed, Seong-ho went down to the first floor and found Gyeong-eun stamping her feet in the parking lot.

“Gyeong-eun, what’s wrong?”

“There’s a car blocking me and they won’t move it.”

Gyeong-eun pointed at a double-parked car, wearing a face on the verge of tears.

Seong-ho walked around to the front of the car and checked below the right-hand window — a contact number was usually written there. Finding the phone number, he pulled out his phone and asked Gyeong-eun, “Did you try calling?”

“Yes, I called, but…”

Gyeong-eun trailed off, unable to give a clear answer. Seong-ho could roughly guess what had happened from her reaction.

Ring, ring, ring.

After a few rings, the car’s owner picked up.

—Hello.

“Sir, I’m sorry to bother you. Your car’s double-parked and ours can’t get out. Could you come move it?”

Seong-ho’s voice was as courteous as he could make it. But the voice on the other end carried no such courtesy at all.

—Why are you people calling me nonstop this early in the morning? First some woman calls and now the husband too?

The man’s voice dripped with irritation. He shouted into the phone, not bothering to hide his displeasure.

—I came home late and there was nowhere to park, so I double-parked. Is that my fault?

“Sir, I didn’t say it was anyone’s fault. I’m only calling to ask if you could move the car.”

—Why should I move it? Just push mine and pull yours out.

At the man’s words, Seong-ho, keeping himself as calm as he could, looked through the window at the driver’s seat. “Sir, your parking brake is engaged.”

—What do you mean engaged! I released the brake and put it in neutral myself.

“Sir, the brake is engaged. Come down and check for yourself.”

—You little punk. If the brake’s not engaged, you’re going to regret this.

“Whether I regret it or not, that’s for you to decide — for now, come down and check first.”

—You stay right there. I’m going to—

Click.

Before the man could finish, Seong-ho hung up.

He turned to Gyeong-eun, still full of worry, and said with a smile, “Take my car to work for now. Once I’ve moved this one, I’ll drive it to work myself.”

Seong-ho handed her his car key. Gyeong-eun took it, looking at him with worried eyes.

“Will you be all right? That man sounded really angry…”

At her words, Seong-ho let out a short laugh and answered, “So what if he’s angry? Don’t worry, just get to work — you said you needed to be there early today.”

Even at his words, Gyeong-eun couldn’t shake her worry. But work mattered too, so she reluctantly turned to go, offering Seong-ho a final word of caution. “Whatever happens, don’t use force. Understand?”

“Of course. If something like that happened, it’d end up as gossip, and worst case it’d land in the crime section of the paper — I’ll be careful.”

“That’s not what I meant…”

“Hahaha, I’m joking. Go on, now.”

Seong-ho pushed lightly at her back, urging her to go, and waved as she left. Just as Gyeong-eun got into his car and pulled away, the man’s voice — heard earlier only through the phone — came from somewhere nearby.

“Hey, you punk!”

A man in his late forties, wearing a jacket thrown carelessly over pajamas, came storming toward Seong-ho, his face full of anger. Beside him was a security guard trying to hold him back.

“Prosecutor, sir. Please calm down.”

“Do I look calm to you?”

Speaking down to the guard — who looked at least ten years his senior — without a shred of respect, the man jabbed a finger at Seong-ho and shouted. “You punk, what do you do for a living?”

“Does it matter what I do? Just move your car.”

“This punk — when an elder asks a question, you answer it.”

The man in his late forties grabbed Seong-ho by the collar without warning. Park, the guard who’d worked through the night, threw himself desperately between the two men. “Prosecutor, sir. Please calm down.”

Seong-ho pried the man’s hand loose from his collar and looked at him with a sneer. “A prosecutor, is it? A prosecutor living off the taxpayer’s dime, driving a car and living in a house this nice?”

“What business is that of yours?”

The man shouted and jabbed a finger over the shoulder of the guard trying to restrain him. “Some brat calling an elder first thing in the morning, telling him to move his car — where’d you learn manners like that?”

“If you double-park, releasing the brake and putting it in neutral is common sense. And even if you couldn’t manage that, the decent thing would be to apologize and come down to move it yourself. How does someone who doesn’t know even that become a prosecutor?”

“You — you little… what do you do, huh? Did your parents raise you to talk like this?”

“Looking at you, there can’t be much of an age gap between us — why bring up parents? Does being a prosecutor mean you get to treat people like this? Where exactly do you work, and who are you?”

“This punk. Really itching to eat prison rice, aren’t you. And what do you do, huh!”

As the man kept shouting, unable to rein in his temper, the guard worked to calm him down. “Prosecutor, sir, please settle down. Give me your car key and I’ll move it and park it properly in front of your building.”

The guard wrapped his arms around the man, trying to calm him. The man looked down at the guard holding him and turned his anger on him too. “Isn’t it because you don’t do your job properly that some woman calls first thing in the morning? And now some brat — her husband or whatever — has the nerve to shout at me…”

“Yes, it’s all my fault, sir. Prosecutor, please settle down.”

As the commotion continued, people heading out to work that morning began gathering near Seong-ho and the man. Uncomfortable under the growing crowd’s gaze, the man handed the car key to the guard. Straightening his coat, he looked Seong-ho up and down.

“I don’t know how a punk like you got into our building, but if someone like you’s moving in, this place must be going downhill. Ugh, what rotten luck…”

Not wanting to hear whatever Seong-ho might say back, the man turned and walked off first. Then he shouted at the guard, who was carefully taking the key in both hands. “Park it properly and bring the key to my place. You know where it is, right?”

“Yes, I know, sir. Prosecutor, get up safely.”

The guard bowed so deeply his back folded nearly in half toward the man’s departing figure.

Once the man had gone, the crowd that had gathered scattered to head to work themselves, and Seong-ho looked between the guard and the departing man with a sigh. Straightening from his bow, the guard turned to Seong-ho.

“I’ll move your car right away — just wait a bit.”

“Sir, is that man really a prosecutor?”

Seong-ho jerked his chin toward the man and asked.

Confirming the man had gone inside through the building entrance, the guard came over to Seong-ho and spoke in a low voice. “You live on the 11th floor, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“He lives on the 8th floor of that line. He used to be a deputy chief prosecutor, but now he’s running his own law practice.”

“Then he’s a lawyer, not a prosecutor — why do you call him ‘Prosecutor’?”

“He likes being called that.”

The guard smiled awkwardly and held up the key. “I’ll go move your car now, then.”

“Thank you.”

Seong-ho gave the guard a light bow and looked up at the 8th floor.

“A lawyer who likes being called ‘Prosecutor’ — business must not be going well. Missing his deputy-chief-prosecutor days, is he.”

Finding the shouting lawyer thoroughly ridiculous, Seong-ho got into his car.

“There’s a real uproar going on right now.”

Byeong-jin Jo came over to Seong-ho once he’d arrived at work. He handed him a breaking news bulletin that had come in noisily since dawn.

“It looks like Southeast Asia’s thrown in the towel. Thailand especially — they say there’s no way forward, so they’ve applied to the IMF for a bailout.”

“Thailand applied for a bailout?”

Seong-ho took the bulletin and asked Byeong-jin.

Walking beside him toward his office, Byeong-jin nodded. “Yeah. And the bigger problem is…”

He glanced around and lowered his voice. “There’s a rumor going around that Taiwan’s giving up on defending its currency.”

Having delivered the startling news, Byeong-jin checked his surroundings again. What he was telling Seong-ho now was top-secret information — even among fellow Restructuring Headquarters staff, it was something to handle with care. Confirming no one was nearby, Byeong-jin went on with the news that had come in.

“There’s a rumor spreading fast that all of Asia could go down together at this rate.”

“That would make sense.”

Seong-ho nodded as if he understood the situation and went into his office. Byeong-jin followed him in and asked, curious, “You’re not surprised, hearing this?”

“No, I’m surprised.”

Seong-ho said it in a calm voice and closed the office door. Byeong-jin looked at him strangely, hearing him claim surprise.

“You don’t look surprised at all.”

“I am surprised. But since I expected this, I’m just not as surprised as you are.”

“You expected it?”

Byeong-jin looked at Seong-ho with an expression as startled as when he’d first heard about Asia’s potential collapse.

Seong-ho smiled lightly at his look and sat on the sofa. “Isn’t that exactly why our Restructuring Headquarters has been moving the way it has?”

Hearing this, Byeong-jin, flustered but startled, sat down across from him. “I suppose that’s true. Everything we’ve been doing has been anticipating this. If we hadn’t expected it, we couldn’t have positioned ourselves ahead of time like this.”

Byeong-jin nodded in agreement with Seong-ho’s words. But he still couldn’t shake how astonishing it was that anyone could have foreseen something like this.

Knock, knock.

Just then, a headquarters staffer knocked and came in.

“The lawyer joining the headquarters has arrived.”

“A lawyer?”

Seong-ho cocked his head and looked at Byeong-jin.

Byeong-jin, who’d just sat down, rose and explained. “We’re going to be handling a lot of mergers and acquisitions going forward. I thought we’d need someone for the legal analysis, so I hired a lawyer.”

Rising along with him, Seong-ho tilted his head and asked, “The group already has a legal team and retained counsel — do we really need to bring someone in from outside? And we’ve been using outside law firms too, haven’t we?”

Byeong-jin gestured for the staffer to bring the lawyer in and explained to Seong-ho, “We’ll keep using outside firms going forward too, but I felt we needed a point of contact for dealing with them right here inside our headquarters. Just meet him once — if you don’t like him, we can send him back. Let’s just meet him.”

Hearing Byeong-jin’s explanation, Seong-ho nodded. He agreed that a point of contact for outside firms was needed, just as Byeong-jin had said.

“Head. I’ve brought him in.”

The staffer opened the door and stepped aside, and the lawyer who’d come in with him bowed at the waist in greeting.

“Nice to meet you. Until recently I served as deputy chief prosecutor at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office…”

As he finished his greeting and lifted his head, the lawyer caught sight of Seong-ho and froze stiff.

“Well, look who it is. Fancy seeing you here. Prosecutor, sir.”

Byeong-jin looked back and forth between the lawyer and Seong-ho and asked, “You two know each other?”

“Oh, we know each other quite well. We only met for the first time today.”

“You know each other well, but you only met today?”

Byeong-jin, finding Seong-ho’s answer strange, turned to look at the lawyer instead.

The lawyer’s face had gone white, cold sweat beading on it. As the morning’s events with Seong-ho came rushing back to him, his ashen face gradually began to darken.

Watching the lawyer go from white to dark, Seong-ho wore an amused expression. “The way the world works is really funny, isn’t it? Who’d have thought we’d meet again like this? Don’t you agree?”

“Ha… ha. I suppose so.”

The lawyer spoke to Seong-ho with an awkward expression. “This might be awkward for both of us — perhaps we should call off this contract…”

“Awkward? I’m fine with it.”

“Sorry? You’re fine with it? After what happened this morning, you’re still going to hire me?”

Seong-ho walked over to the lawyer and laid a hand on his shoulder. Smiling broadly, he said, “You’re the one who’s not fine. I’m perfectly fine, naturally — I’m going to be your boss, after all. And in case you weren’t aware, the salary you’ll be drawing comes straight out of my father-in-law’s pocket. The father of the woman who called you this morning and got called ‘rotten luck’ for it. You know who that is, don’t you? The chairman of our group.”

Seong-ho patted his shoulder and pulled the car key from his pocket, pressing it into the lawyer’s hand.

“Because of you, I got to work late and had to park in the basement, level 3. So while you’re working, go down every so often and check if there’s an open spot on B1, and if there is, move my car up there. Ah — and since we live in the same building, why don’t you drive me home after work too? And maybe commute together while we’re at it? Gas prices are so high these days, carpooling’s great, isn’t it? Hahaha.”

Patting the now thoroughly red-faced lawyer’s shoulder a couple more times, Seong-ho walked out of the office, laughing as though he found the whole thing delightful.

The lawyer stood there with the car key in his hand, unable to say a word.

Having had poor relationships during his prosecutor days, he’d never managed to land a spot at a top law firm, and had been scraping by on his own practice, twiddling his thumbs. It was through the one remaining thread of connections he had left that he’d managed to get into Ilhyeon Group. Living in a house and driving a car far beyond what his earnings could support, he desperately needed to make real money — and Ilhyeon Group was practically his only hope.

The lawyer wore an expression on the verge of tears at his own predicament, unable to simply quit and walk away with any confidence. And as he pictured what lay ahead, darkness settled fully over his mind.

But a darkness even deeper than what settled over the lawyer’s mind was also settling outside the office.

The won-dollar exchange rate had spiked so violently that trading was suspended just forty minutes after the market opened — an unprecedented event.

(End of Chapter 94)