“Ha— Chairman Cheolgon’s youngest grandson?”

“Ah——!”

“Mm.”

An Jongwuk, principal of Cheonghwa High School, was the most badly shaken of them.

He asked again with disbelief in his eyes.

Both parents and both teachers had their eyes just as wide.

Haryun Group is a solid concern, one of the ten great groups of this country.

Before the group split it stood among the top five.

Deep enough in history as a chaebol enterprise to have reached a fifth generation.

The marriages and the connections it has tangled through politics and business are beyond what ordinary people can picture.

And nothing a company at Cheonghwa Group’s level would ever take on.

And a grandson of that group enrolled here as a charity case?

It doesn’t sound like a lie. Not remotely.

The bearing that comes off Ha Tae-ung, and the arrogance in it.

It isn’t different from what the children of extraordinary houses give off.

And short of madness, nobody talks his way out of trouble in front of a school principal with a lie that stupid.

“A li— a lie. You came in on the charity-case intake——”

Jo Huijeong is half out of her senses.

She did not want to believe something that might well be true.

If Ha Tae-ung really is a Haryun Group grandson——

The world went dark in front of her and her mind swam.

Our house. Our daughter——

Her husband’s business could go wrong.

Something could go wrong with the future of a daughter she has raised and supported so carefully.

“You’ll all have heard my grandfather is an extremely cold man? My cousins went abroad to study and every one of them washed dishes.”

They found themselves nodding along without meaning to.

Chairman Ha Cheolgon’s business philosophy is famous enough that nobody doesn’t know it.

Famous enough that he gets called a cold-blooded man with no blood in him at all.

He is notorious for running his own children through the production floor before letting them near an executive post.

“You still don’t believe me? I can pull a family certificate and a residence abstract if you’d like.”

Ha Tae-ung was confident from beginning to end. No further evidence was needed.

Checking the guardian’s name on the enrolment papers held by the school would settle it.

“……Tae— Tae-ung. Today’s unpleasantness — we’ll treat it as though it never happened. Go back to your classroom now.”

The principal, growing urgent, hurried to get him out of the room.

If all of it gets confirmed, one wrong move and his neck goes.

His head was already full of the ominous sense that something was about to break.

He is a salaried man himself, and there’s nothing to be done about that.

A year still remains until retirement.

He does not want to be cut before it.

Hold on well enough and a foundation directorship comes after retirement.

The natural sequence for anyone who passes through Cheonghwa.

It’s also the reason he has kept himself as small as possible all this time.

“As though it never happened?”

Ha Tae-ung asked it back. And then.

Click, click.

He photographs his own left cheek, the one Jo Huijeong hit, with the phone turned around.

“Ma’am, you have a solid hand on you. I do wonder what my grandfather will say. A parent calling a student out of a lesson to the principal’s office and slapping him……. Hahahaha.”

There was madness in a laugh nobody could get a read on.

Everyone in the office shut their mouths against the chill of it.

The ominous sense of having put a hand on a mad dog belonging to a chaebol house.

“Tae-ung. Today was a misunderstanding between——”

Lee Gyeongja, treasurer of the parents’ association, forced a smile onto a stiff face and opened her mouth.

The one thing she can feel clearly at this moment.

We are finished.

Even among chaebol there is an unspoken ranking.

A house inside the ten great groups is past reach.

As long as you intend to keep your feet on the ground in this country, you do not touch them.

Do it, and the days of stretching out and sleeping easy are gone for good.

Not that anybody is fool enough to create a problem like that in the first place.

“No, thank you.”

“…….”

Ha Tae-ung’s gaze swept over all of them.

“I’ve been slapped repeatedly at this school since I arrived this morning. And I’m to swallow it? For whose sake, exactly? Do I still look like a charity case to you?”

Ha Tae-ung puts a finger straight on it.

The principal, Park Donggeun, Jo Huijeong and Lee Gyeongja all went pale at once.

Lee Gyeongja in particular glared coldly at Jo Huijeong.

Ill-bred new-money wife.

Mixed with the wrong woman and stepped in something.

If her husband’s business falls out of favour with Haryun Group it could come apart entirely.

Sweat gathered damp in her palms.

If her husband learns about today she could be thrown out on the spot. It has to be contained as fast as it possibly can be.

“Then— then what is it you’d like, Tae-ung?”

Lee Gyeongja asked it while working hard at appearing unstrained.

Not dropping into casual speech had been the right decision.

This is not a room in which one deals with a second-year high school student.

It felt like dealing with an heir a chaebol house had educated properly and then hidden among ordinary people.

This was why his arrogance had bothered her from the moment he walked in.

A swallow.

She worked at composure and her throat went dry regardless.

The principal and Park Donggeun, whose nerve has already gone, are mice in front of a cat.

“And who are you, ma’am?”

Lee Gyeongja found the bluntness of the address hard to take.

She did not let a flicker of it show.

She absorbed it as naturally as she was able.

“……Ojeong Accounting——”

“You’re the managing partner’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“And a woman like that, why would you——”

“Sorry? What——”

“No, I mean, keeping company with a vulgar new-money woman like that one. It lowers you.”

Appearing to lift Lee Gyeongja up, Ha Tae-ung stamped hard on Jo Huijeong in the same breath.

Standing right there listening, Jo Huijeong couldn’t make a sound.

Her face went white and her teeth ground together.

Every foul word and every curse she has thrown since walking into this office, and every word since, being recorded by a chaebol house’s grandson.

If he releases that file it is genuinely the bottom.

“I’m regretting it myself.”

Lee Gyeongja said it short and glared quietly at Jo Huijeong.

After today she intends to make certain the woman never shows her face at an ordinary social gathering, let alone as an association officer.

Every upper-class circle will be closed to her.

“I……. If there’s something you want……”

Jo Huijeong dropped her eyes, clenched both hands, and asked it in a voice going into the ground.

The temper still surges up in her and she knows how to read a situation.

Handle herself wrongly here and everything she has worked toward, and ten thousand other things besides, come apart.

“Something I want……. Heh.”

Ha Tae-ung has taken every scrap of the initiative. Sitting, he leaned back at his leisure and put on a cold expression.

“Say it. Whatever conditions you want, Tae-ung, we’ll accept them.”

Lee Gyeongja quickly found a thin piece of hope in it.

Chaebol grandson or not, the reality is that he is still in his second year of high school.

Socially he is a very young person.

She wanted it finished before anyone on the Haryun side heard about it.

“What can I say. It’s already out of my hands.”

“……??”

“What does that——”

While all of them exchanged looks, thrown by it——

Step. Tock. Step. Tock.

The sound of dress shoes, and the regular strike of a cane with it. The door of the office was still open behind Teacher Kim.

Every nerve in the room drew tight as the steps came closer. And then.

Shff.

A middle-aged gentleman with a cold face came into the principal’s office.

“Oh! M— Managing Partner Kim……”

Lee Gyeongja recognised the man first and was startled by it.

The head of a law firm she’d met a few times at gatherings she’d attended with her husband.

A man out of the senior ranks of the prosecution service, with a settled reputation for handling matters exactingly.

A great many juniors follow him, his standing is high, and there are a great many places that want him.

And he has appeared somewhere she would never have expected.

The lawyer stood at the door and looked once around the office.

His gaze stopped at Ha Tae-ung.

And then.

“Young master. You sent for me.”

The moment their eyes met he bowed his head and gave a courteous greeting.

Young master?

Attorney Kim Jeongryul answered my call.

And leads with young master, the moment he sees me.

I nearly laughed out loud at it.

The man can act.

I’d expected this afternoon’s business to break.

I’m back at this school, so I want it closed quietly.

And since it’s broken anyway, I intend to finish it without letting the day pass.

It’s something I learned in special forces tactical doctrine.

Once you’ve decided to eliminate an enemy, attack until he’s dead.

A half-hearted attack, or sympathy, hands him grounds for a counterattack and you can be the one who dies.

So I sent for him.

A prosecution-trained lawyer who specialises in violence cases.

One look at the man’s eyes and a gangster would lose his nerve.

I sent the recording across. And told him the time and the place, a short while ago.

The answer came back that he’d naturally come. The lawyer of honour my grandmother put in my way.

I hadn’t expected to see him again this quickly.

“Attorney. You’ve been through everything I sent?”

“Yes, young master.”

“I’d like a proportionate settlement, please.”

“Understood.”

There’s no need for a long conversation. Everything necessary was covered by message.

I asked for financial treatment at the maximum available.

“I’ll be looking forward to the price of the cheek I took today.”

Shff.

I left the rest to my legal representative and stood up.

What follows requires legal technique.

There’s no particular need for me to stay sitting in it.

The fox borrows the tiger’s fearsomeness.

My grandfather. This time round, I intend to draw some benefit from him. Today is only the start of it. Going forward, I have high expectations.

“And include the fact that they’ve been tormenting my friend with school violence for a year, not only me. I wonder what the damages come to.”

I let a little concern show, looking at a trembling Oh Seora’s mother.

The handle is entirely in my grip.

And having got hold of it, I intend to swing it properly.

“Attorney.”

“Yes, young master.”

“If the settlement doesn’t go smoothly……. Please take it to the press. Something along the lines of school violence against a charity case at Korea’s luxury private high school would do for a headline.”

I nailed that down to block any clever business anybody might try halfway through.

“They’ll come at it from every direction. And the world is changing——”

I stopped there.

At the word press the principal’s colour went dark at once. The Cheonghwa foundation values its reputation above everything.

If an article about school violence runs, the principal’s neck comes off where he stands.

“I’ll handle it thoroughly.”

“…….”

Silence hung heavy over the office. I looked at Park Donggeun.

He avoided my eyes like something supernatural.

“A man short on the basic character and decency an educator ought to have — a few months of rest would probably be good for the students.”

I marked Park Donggeun with a look. His head went straight down.

The brave man who had been raising his voice and showing me his fist a few minutes ago was gone.

“All of you, watch what you say. If my grandfather finds out——”

I cut it off and left the rest to their imaginations.

“Well then.”

I bent slightly at the waist and gave them a well-mannered student.

Trudge, trudge.

And walked lightly out of the principal’s office, feeling clean.

“Heh heh.”

(End of Chapter 17)