“Tae-ung……. Wh— what is this?”

“What?”

“……In this account——”

Friday.

The lesson ended and Jiung was waiting outside the classroom.

His face had gone yellow.

He pushed his phone straight in front of me.

“Five hundred million came into the account?”

“……Did— did you put it in?”

“Me? Hahaha. I’m a charity case. Where would I get money?”

“Then…… who is Jo Huijeong?”

“Oh Seora’s mother.”

“Oh Seora??”

Jiung’s face says he cannot understand this at all.

The regular lessons finished, and five hundred million had gone into my account as well.

I’d secured Jiung’s grandmother’s account details toward the end of lunch, since I could see this coming.

“That’s your grandmother’s, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. She’s old, so I hold it. This phone’s in her name too.”

Attorney Kim Jeongryul works astonishingly fast.

I’d asked him to expedite the payment and it was confirmed the moment class ended.

I’d instructed him to fold the tax question into the agreement and settle it there.

“That’s your fee. For a year of putting up with it.”

“What are you——”

“Oh Seora. She’ll be quiet from here. So once the midterms are done, let’s go and look at places in Sillim.”

“Sillim?”

“You’re going to Seoguk University.”

I said it like something already settled.

“Me?”

“Trust me. Living in front of the campus is best.”

“A— all right.”

“You’ve got banking on that?”

“Yeah. The certificate’s installed.”

“Transfer limit?”

“It’s unlocked…… I can do up to a billion.”

“I’ll send you an account. Lend me that money for a week.”

“Huh??”

The week threw him.

Reasonably enough, since five hundred million had landed in my account too.

Asking to borrow money on top of that must look strange.

“Don’t you trust me?”

Park Jiung looked at me steadily, without expression.

If he refused here, his fortune would be wrapped up at about this point.

Five hundred million is not a small amount.

As capital for becoming a good prosecutor it is nowhere near enough.

An incorruptible prosecutor?

Give that to the dogs.

You need money before you can hold out against everything that comes at you.

And the opportunity to secure that capital is extremely good right now.

His position isn’t the same as mine, and this is a chance to inflate it several times over.

“A— all right. I don’t need money this big anyway.”

Jiung answers trust with trust.

The size of the vessel that goodwill came out of is not small.

No wonder he went on to lead the MZ generation’s gangs.

“Leave five million in it and send the rest. Buy your grandmother beef. Hanwoo.”

“R— really?”

At the word hanwoo, Jiung’s eyes shine.

Looking at him now, he isn’t ordinary.

I’m telling him to keep five million out of five hundred and he’s happy about it.

“Keep trusting your hyung. I’ll put you on a clear road.”

“Mm, I’ll trust you!”

One day.

The time it took to become friends with Jiung.

Neither of us is eligible for early admission, being second years. On the other hand I have every question on the entrance exam memorised.

“But I don’t understand. Why would Oh Seora’s mother send me money like this? I thought she’d file charges.”

Jiung had been worrying about it too.

He’d prepared himself for it to some degree.

Reasonable enough, having emptied a plate over Oh Seora’s head.

“We’re the ones who ought to be filing. Switch off and study.”

“Tae-ung……”

“From here you’re living in a different world. A different life.”

Pat, pat.

I patted his shoulder.

The violent crime that broke across the country just before the regression.

Park Jiung, who led the MZ gangs and put a chill through everyone in it.

Right now he’s the mildest lamb there is.

“All right……. I’ll study and become a prosecutor.”

Jiung’s eyes shone clear.

The wavelength coming off him has definitely changed. Bright with it.

“A prosecutor? A thug like you?”

A voice full of venom cut in from behind us.

Oh Seora.

She’d changed out of her uniform into a tracksuit.

Her eyes look ready to fire lasers.

By the feel of it she hasn’t met her mother yet.

“My mother’s come to the school, you know. Just you wait. Both of you are going to prison.”

Oh Seora grinds her teeth, full of nerve.

The venom isn’t running off her so much as overflowing.

Reform looks impossible.

The definitive type who stays beyond saving until the day they die.

Click-clack.

“Oh Seora……”

A sharp tread of heels, and a voice I know, calling her name.

Her mother, Jo Huijeong.

Cold comes off her in a sheet as she approaches.

“Mum!”

Oh Seora calls out to her mother happily, smiling wide.

And then.

“Mum, it’s these two. These charity case bastards——”

Craaack!

“Aaagh!”

In the space of an instant Oh Seora’s face went round.

A strike hard enough that the scream broke with it and ran the length of the corridor.

Exactly what you’d expect from a woman with no breeding.

“Wh— what?”

“Isn’t that Oh Seora’s mother?”

Students coming out of lessons crowded into the corridor and murmured to each other over what had happened in front of them.

“Follow me!”

Having spotted me, Oh Seora’s mother slapped her daughter without so much as meeting my eyes.

Then snatched Oh Seora’s arm and turned.

“……. M— Mum……”

Thrown, blank with it, Oh Seora was dragged away.

She was startled enough to forget to cry.

Her pale cheek was already reddening and beginning to swell.

Cola went off in the corridor of the second-year classrooms at Cheonghwa High School.

A single frame I’d have liked to keep as a memento.

“What are you waiting for? Your mother said follow.”

I drifted past Oh Seora, who was more or less being hauled, and helped.

“This is exactly why upbringing matters. Manners that leak at home are naturally going to leak outside it. Tsk.”

I passed on my sincere regret as well.

Oh Seora went on being pulled along without a sound.

“Aaaaaagh! Aaaaaaaaah!”

A moment later a tearing scream came from the far end of the corridor.

What is he?

Lee Hyoju had just packed her bag and come out.

She stopped where she was and watched all of it from the crowded corridor.

That Oh Seora has no manners is a fact every student in the year knows.

There was a rumour her father was successful property money and a gangster besides.

A rumour that went round more than once.

Parents had gone as far as instructing their children not to get tangled with Oh Seora if it could be avoided.

And Ha Tae-ung had gone and caused a problem.

He’d collided head-on with the one girl everybody else avoided.

The Oh house is in a different weight class from the Oh Gwangjun house.

An ordinary division chief prosecutor for a father, against a father who is known property money in Gangnam.

“Huhhhhh……. Huh.”

Oh Seora ran out of the school crying like an infant.

The students watching had no idea what any of it meant.

The charity case Ha Tae-ung has properly lost his mind today.

“Didn’t they say Ha Tae-ung slapped Oh Seora in the canteen?”

“Yes. So why is her mother doing that?”

“It makes no sense……”

Students who’d heard the rumour whispered in threes and fours.

Ordinarily, Oh Seora’s mother slapping Ha Tae-ung would be the normal outcome.

Instead the daughter got hit by her own mother. In a corridor, in front of the students.

“There’s something behind this……”

Lee Hyoju doesn’t understand it any better than the rest of them.

Cheonghwa High School is another playground for upper-class children, wearing a school’s face.

It operates on a different plane from any ordinary high school an ordinary person imagines.

Behind the students stand the parents who handle the distribution of money and power.

They form a parents’ association and exercise the same influence they hold in the world outside, through every manoeuvre and every piece of politics available.

And in a place like that, the charity case Ha Tae-ung has taken the winning position.

Ha Tae-ung, whom every student knows as a charity case, has spent one day on a violent tear.

He has stirred this school into chaos.

He was called out of a lesson by the PE teacher.

The students call that man the parents’ association’s hunting dog.

By the atmosphere it looked like a suspension at the very least.

And Ha Tae-ung came back to his classroom without a scratch.

“Ha Tae-ung……. What are you?”

Lee Hyoju stared blankly after him as he walked off, showing her his back and entirely unbothered about it.

Tall, on the lean side, and the back looked remarkably solid.

The thought went through her, without reason, that he looked like a giant.

“…….”

And school life, which she had thought of as nothing but tedious.

A faint smile she couldn’t account for spread at the corner of Lee Hyoju’s mouth.

“Perfect.”

The hour when the whole school empties out at once.

The grounds are very beautiful with spring coming on.

Thick old trees, as old as the school itself, add to the mood of it.

Ginkgo and cherry among them, and a range of other broadleaf species.

Hard to believe a space this close to nature exists in the middle of Seoul.

Soft steps.

For the first time I walked the grounds without hurrying.

In the past I had to escape the school the moment lessons ended, as though running.

Even the benefits of abundant nature weren’t permitted to a charity case.

If anything, an atmosphere like this school’s was something to shrink under.

Today at least I opened my shoulders and took in every piece of the beauty I’d never been allowed.

Jiung went home ahead of me.

“Nobody’s going to come at me now.”

A historic day, and one that raised a considerable storm.

The one who disregarded me on the strength of what stood behind him got the fist. The ones who disregarded me as a charity case on the strength of money and power got a bit of my grandfather.

“I don’t swallow anything from here. Block me…… and I’ll go through all of it.”

The years I spent enduring while the propertied mainstream toyed with me went past like a panorama.

I don’t want to live that way any longer.

“Total ownership. Everything.”

I’m going to own everything I want to own.

A life satisfied with fried chicken and a can of beer on payday is one I refuse now.

Ping!

The clean sound of a golf ball being struck reached me.

“Golf’s good.”

It brings back joining the company.

I got needled a long while over golf.

Executives, department heads, managers, and the assistant managers too — all of them could play.

They had golf outings every weekend, and on weekdays they built their bonds on the screen ranges after work.

Whereas I, without so much as a cheap set of clubs, became a topic of their conversation.

“A driving range at a school. Does that make any sense?”

Golf is compulsory in Cheonghwa’s PE curriculum.

After hours the range is used enthusiastically by teachers and parents.

Twenty bays, small, and one of very few outdoor ranges in Gangnam.

There’s an indoor screen range downstairs as well, of course.

Cheonghwa Group put it in as a talent development initiative.

I turned my steps toward the range. Next week is exam week, which is presumably why no students are about.

Instead——

Ping!

A tall, slim woman had swung and put that clean sound into the air.

The force of the swing lifted the skirt of her golf wear, moderately.

Beautiful.

“Pro An Hyeonju……”

Once expected to make the LPGA tour outright, and one of Korea’s representative beauties in professional golf.

An unfortunate scandal broke and she went down with it.

Afterward she came to Cheonghwa as a golf instructor.

Which is this year.

Piiing!

She looks to be swinging lightly and there’s anger banked in it.

The aura coming off her is a deep red.

The colour of anger accumulated inside, I think.

“Miss!”

I called to her.

“……??”

Pro An Hyeonju turned from setting up her swing to look at me.

Her eyes went wide, startled.

“……!!”

Looking at her again……. She is an extraordinary beauty of a golfer.

In a sport judged on ability, her face is top tier as well.

Well past a hundred and seventy, with a body made hard and quick by the work.

A small face, a fine straight nose, large eyes——

A ponytail down to about her shoulders.

Standing there she’s a finished piece of work.

A drop.

Sweat runs from her forehead down her cheek and off below the jaw.

“Who is it?”

“Ha Tae-ung, second year.”

I answered briskly and walked toward her.

“What is it you want?”

A voice with a maturity to it entirely unlike the girls’.

It seems to clear the ears out on its own.

“I’m a great admirer of yours.”

I mean it.

A few years from now she overcomes the slump and conquers the LPGA.

Her face unchanged, her ability recognised, her comeback successful, and she becomes a top celebrity.

I put out both hands, respectfully, and asked for a handshake.

“Ah— all right.”

Slightly thrown, Pro An Hyeonju removed her glove and took it.

A bare-handed handshake with her.

The softness of the hand was simply——

—Will you ACQUIRE the golf talent? Or EXPLOIT it?

Hm??

Acquire? Exploit??

(End of Chapter 19)