"Chief. Word has come from Hanil Fisheries that they want to use the Gangneung cold store."

"And the volume?"

"Around five hundred tonnes a quarter."

"Understood."

The head of sales, his report on the order finished, bowed briefly and went out.

The head office of H.R SF, out on the edge of Sokcho.

The air in the chief's room, on the first floor of the temporary building, has been busy since first thing.

With the investment money in, every debt has been cleared.

Now the finances are clean, the old trading partners who had cut the company off are crowding back.

The rumour has spread through the whole of Gangwon as though it were fact.

Haryun Group has come into the fisheries trade!

There is reason enough for it, since the logo in use is H.R, which stands for Haryun.

It was possible only because there is no Haryun Group affiliate anywhere in Sokcho.

Once the finances were sound, the firms that remember the former Pacific Fisheries queued up.

In the fisheries trade, and along the east coast in particular, there is no power worth the name.

That consumers eat less seafood than they did is a change as well.

Firms could not hold out, and one by one they went, until only small and medium concerns of much the same size were left.

Into a market like that, a dinosaur that had been going down has come back alive.

Teeee.

The interphone sounds. Ha Donghwi presses the answer button.

—Chief, the architects' office is here about the new head office building.

"Send them in."

—Yes.

A good number of staff have been taken on as well.

The specialists in fisheries and refrigeration who took voluntary redundancy when the company was struggling have been called back in.

The mood in the company that Yang Susan wrecked is brightening by the day.

Clunk.

The door opened and a man who looked to be in his middle forties came in.

He wore a narrow-brimmed beret pulled down over his brow, and had grown a moustache and trimmed it neatly.

Ha Donghwi rose…