“Haaah……”

“Hh.”

With Ha Tae-ung gone from the room, the people left in it let their breath out, all of them, without anyone going first.

One high school boy had made it hard to breathe.

Damn her. Who is she trying to get killed?

An Jongwuk, the principal, looked coldly at Jo Huijeong, the new-money wife.

A woman thrashing like a duck to get herself into the upper-class current.

She’d scattered bribes in every direction over a single association officer’s seat.

The principal himself had taken department store vouchers and dinners off her more than once.

She spent like the property money she came from, and he’d had expectations of her.

And now this.

A rotten rope, and covered in filth on top of it.

“Teacher Park.”

“Yes? Yes, Principal.”

Park Donggeun, half out of his senses, jolted at being called.

“Did anything else occur before you came to this office?”

“That is……. Nothing in particular……”

“Filthy little bastard. You hear a teacher speak and it’s dog slop to you?”

“I told you it’s recording.”

“Recording? And what exactly can somebody like you do with that?”

“I’ll try anything, shall I?”

“Where does a charity case get the nerve to bluff?”

“Heh.”

“Did you just laugh at me?”

“It isn’t something to cry about.”

“You little bastard!”

Whip.

“What— you! You dodged?”

“I’m warning you. Throw another one and I will strike back, as self-defence.”

Before Park Donggeun had finished speaking, a recording began playing in the principal’s office.

Teacher Park’s voice, cursing and evidently throwing a punch, and Ha Tae-ung’s answering it, came out of the phone with everything intact.

“……!!”

Park Donggeun’s face rotted through, hideously.

Whereas——

“Teacher Park!”

A shout came out of the principal that nobody would ordinarily hear from him.

Evidence with no way around it, playing from a phone in a lawyer’s hand.

Evidence that had passed from Ha Tae-ung’s hand into the lawyer’s. And if it goes to the press the way the boy said——

Every one of us dies.

The principal’s face went yellow. His stomach turned over hard.

They had put a lion’s cub in a cage and tormented it, and it was the one animal they should never have touched.

“Principal. What do you intend to do?”

Cold came off Lee Gyeongja in waves.

She, at least, is on the side Ha Tae-ung granted an opening to.

Everything from here has to be handled in the direction least likely to draw his anger.

“I’ll convene the staff disciplinary committee.”

“If it were up to me……”

Lee Gyeongja’s gaze went to Park Donggeun. Her mind worked fast, shifting the whole weight of it onto him.

“Six months’ suspension at the very least, I’d have thought.”

“It will be handled that way.”

“Hh……”

A groan got out of Park Donggeun. He shut both eyes.

Ha Tae-ung had been a charity case.

Which was exactly why he’d disregarded him without any restraint, and there had never been a problem before.

Complacency, and it has cost him properly.

The promotion he’d been counting on is gone.

Six months’ suspension. Unpaid, so the salary goes with it.

“The essential question is the criminal settlement. How do you all intend to proceed?”

Shff.

Kim Jeongryul asked it as he sat down on the sofa. He took a card from his wallet and set it down in the centre of the table.

His attention was on Jo Huijeong.

Jo Huijeong, who had been crumpled quietly in place, looked back at him.

“Today’s business was accidental. It’s hardly a criminal matter, is it? And Ha Tae-ung struck my daughter’s face——”

“You’re given an opening and you come back with that. Are you able to handle what follows?”

Kim Jeongryul’s cold voice carried no feeling in it at all.

“Madam Jo, what do you think you are doing? Because of you this has splashed onto the principal and now onto me!”

Lee Gyeongja finally reddened and raised her voice.

Jeongryul Law is a mid-sized firm and its name carries a good way in Seocho.

Almost everyone in it is a former prosecutor out of the criminal division.

On criminal matters, retaining them is no lesser thing than retaining one of the giants.

And the firm handles legal advisory work for a foundation Haryun Group endowed.

The moment Kim Jeongryul called Ha Tae-ung young master, the entire situation was finished.

This has to be closed as fast as it possibly can be.

And Jo Huijeong is still running her mouth without any grasp of where she stands.

“I’m— I’m sorry. But——”

“Be quiet!”

Lee Gyeongja shrieked it at a Jo Huijeong trying to explain herself.

There’s no room left for face or for breeding when the situation is this urgent.

“…….”

Jo Huijeong bit down on her own lip hard enough to bring blood to the surface of it.

“Sunbae-nim.”

“This is an official setting.”

“Yes……. Attorney.”

Kim Jeongryul’s principles had come out. Lee Gyeongja had lost sight of it for a moment, and he is well known in this world for exactly that.

She’d had a sense of it from meeting him privately a few times.

Lee Gyeongja is a Seoguk graduate herself. Her husband came out of the law faculty and holds both bar and accountancy qualifications.

And her husband had introduced Kim Jeongryul, privately, as his sunbae.

Personally, her husband found the man difficult.

A senior from his university society with a fiery temper, who would swing a prosecutor’s sword at a president’s son if the thing wasn’t just.

What happened in this room today must never reach her husband.

“We’re all busy. Let’s handle this simply.”

Kim Jeongryul made the opening proposal with his usual expressionless face. It has the form of a settlement and the atmosphere of a notification.

“The settlement for the assault on young master Ha Tae-ung is five hundred million won.”

“……!!”

Jo Huijeong’s eyes went round. Not tens of millions. Hundreds.

“And…… the settlement for your daughter’s sustained school violence against another student is a further five hundred million.”

“Five hundred million?”

Jo Huijeong doubted her hearing. Property money or not, there is no possibility of her husband holding cash on that scale.

“That figure is net of tax.”

“Net of— Attorney, a settlement like this——”

“Shall I report it to the chairman?”

Kim Jeongryul looked at her over the top of his glasses.

“Hic.“

Jo Huijeong had no idea what to do. The shock brought hiccups up out of her on its own.

However grandly she carries herself, the level underneath is ordinary.

“If you’d prefer a trial, that’s perfectly acceptable. Although once the press is involved, money won’t be the problem.”

The threat carried real weight.

Her husband’s business runs along the boundary between what is legal and what isn’t, and it could be endangered.

These days the video channels are active as well, and people of the upper class have learned to keep themselves small.

Get stripped bare at a moment like this and you take the full weight of public opinion.

“You know Chairman Ha’s character. If he decides a man is an enemy, he leaves nothing behind.”

Kim Jeongryul applied the last of the pressure.

“I’ll— I’ll do it! I’ll settle!”

Jo Huijeong waved both hands and answered in a hurry.

Turn it over and it’s cheap.

It’s the price of slapping the face of a chaebol house’s youngest grandson. A billion won is cheap for that, whatever else is true.

“Then I’ll draw up the agreement now. Those present may sign as witnesses.”

Kim Jeongryul took out settlement papers he had prepared in advance.

“…….”

The people who had been watching in silence came back to themselves at that.

A moment they had plainly spent under some kind of spell.

Scratch, scratch.

The lawyer drew up a billion-won settlement in front of them.

A tiger’s cub, then.

Drawing up the agreement, Kim Jeongryul thought about his client.

The youngest grandson of Madam Han Okja, to whom he owed everything.

Madam Han Okja’s youngest son had defied the marriage the Ha family arranged for him and been thrown out without a won.

The only one of that vicious Haryun household who resembled a human being.

Madam Han Okja had inherited a scholarship foundation early from her father-in-law and built it into something solid.

She gave unstinting support to students who studied well and couldn’t reach an education because of what their households could afford.

It was her support that put Kim Jeongryul into Seoguk’s law faculty and made him a prosecutor.

He swung the sword for justice and lived as a real one.

There was a ceiling on promotion in exchange.

Haryun Group’s backing or not, he was never going to reach the head of the service. It doesn’t matter.

He built and runs a firm with junior prosecutors who believed in something and followed him. Applying what force he has, however slight, on the world’s behalf.

Madam Han Okja passed recently. She was as good as the mother who opened the second act of his life.

He executed the will of a woman like that, calmly.

And confirmed again what the people of the Ha household are. Vicious, as expected.

They obstructed the execution of a will over money that to a chaebol group amounts to nothing at all.

They used methods no human being ought to use. And Kim Jeongryul came back from the dead because of it.

A traffic accident, caused deliberately.

The group’s secretariat will have moved on it. The reason being that he hadn’t done as the Ha household said.

There is no physical evidence. Long experience and conviction alone are enough to be certain.

He kept his life and came away with a disability.

Had he lost it outright, this moment today wouldn’t exist either.

He was afraid, and he pulled himself together and completed Madam Han Okja’s will.

Which was yesterday.

And at the time he had not expected to see Ha Tae-ung again this quickly.

The Ha Tae-ung he’d understood was a boy of a timid disposition.

Meeting him directly turned out to be nothing like the reports.

He understands how work is done. His handling of a matter is meticulous and fine-grained in a way that doesn’t match his age.

He reads people, and he manages the strength of a push and a pull with real skill.

He smells like a veteran of ten years and more out in the world, a man who knows exactly what the pushing and pulling is for.

He has a gift for reversing an unfavourable position, too.

He tied himself cleverly to a Haryun Group and a grandfather he has had no contact with whatsoever.

Around midday he sent a video, instructed him on the matter, and retained him as counsel in the same motion.

If I ask, please come to the school immediately.

A courteous instruction. The firm’s office isn’t far from Cheonghwa.

The settlement figures put forward were amounts Ha Tae-ung set himself.

It became interesting. He’d used a form of address they hadn’t agreed on, and the boy took it without a flicker.

And then extracted a billion won far too easily.

The upper class of this country hold more money than they can spend and covet more of it.

Mad for money, and correspondingly mean with any human feeling — and he had frightened them by entirely legitimate means and taken a settlement out of them.

This is going to be entertaining.

Kim Jeongryul felt a charge go through him.

The people sitting demurely in front of him are people even he cannot handle roughly.

And Ha Tae-ung had set them on a board he built himself, as pieces, and moved them exactly as he wanted.

“Read the agreement, write your name in full in block letters, and sign.”

He filled in the necessary parts and pushed it across.

“The settlement is payable immediately.”

“Imm— immediately?”

“You have that much capacity, surely.”

“…….”

“You don’t? And you raised a hand to the young master regardless?”

Jo Huijeong was badly thrown.

How many people in this country are holding a billion won in cash?

And fewer still could raise a sum that size in cash inside a day.

“If you’re short…… I’ll make it up.”

Lee Gyeongja wants this over quickly just as much.

“And.”

Kim Jeongryul looked slowly across the principal and the teachers, and spoke.

“If today’s unpleasantness passes anyone’s lips……. You will all bear whatever follows from it.”

He didn’t forget the final threat, dressed as a request.

It was the instruction Ha Tae-ung had left him at the last moment, telling him to make certain of it.

He’s clever.

His field of view is far wider than any high school student’s could believably be.

If this business gets out, the issue of the Ha household’s youngest son, thrown out long ago, comes out with it.

The son of a discarded son. Every piece of the story behind it would be exposed.

Sealing mouths is part of handling a matter thoroughly.

The prospect of becoming entangled with Ha Tae-ung from here is one he finds very much worth looking forward to.

(End of Chapter 18)