Noona?

In a situation where she could hardly breathe, An Hyeonju heard the word noona and turned her head.

A face she knew, there in front of her all at once.

“Tae-ung……”

The name came out of her mouth before she was aware of it.

“What’s going on?”

Ha Tae-ung came right up beside her.

It was one line, and there was the unhesitating presence of a grown man behind it.

“Hh……”

At that one line from Ha Tae-ung the grief in her broke open.

She went straight into the shelter of his chest, tall as he is.

It was the reaction of a woman who had been shaking with fear, and it came without her deciding on it.

People at large treated her as a grown professional and praised her for it, but from where she stood things were different.

She’s barely more than a newcomer to working life, still in her early twenties.

And she hasn’t more experience of the world than others her age.

For the sake of succeeding at something, she had only ever played golf.

Now she’s being turned out into the cold by a world she never knew well.

The world was not what she had believed it to be. It was cold and it was dangerous.

See a beautiful flower and they come to break it off.

Leave it where it is and the flies swarm it from every direction anyway.

Today has been no different.

She’d taken a driving licence, but it had been rotting in a drawer, never used.

This weekend something has come up that means she has to drive a car herself.

If she still had a sponsor putting a driver at her disposal, the way she did before the business happened, she would have no need of lessons at all.

But her circumstances now are different.

At least she has a car of her own, so she’d resolved to try driving it.

She’s poor at it, and the lessons were genuinely necessary.

She had registered for the course without trouble and was on her way back out.

She should have turned away from him at the start.

A man who had run his eyes openly down her body and fixed them on her, red and swollen with blood.

It isn’t the first time she has met a look like that, or the second.

The chairman of Sinyang Financial Group, the son of a bitch who drove her into the pit she’s in now!

This man is the same breed as that chairman.

There are some among Cheonghwa High School’s fathers and its teachers too.

Among the golf galleries such men existed as well.

Men who take any woman, professional or amateur, for goods laid out for the eyes.

If somebody tells her that’s a mountain every woman golfer has to climb, she has no answer to give them.

Even so, this is not one of those cases.

They treat her as a wildflower gone up carelessly wherever it liked, and they insult her, and then they come at her to break her off.

Slapping his face was a mistake.

She should have held it in, but the insult he handed her could not possibly be held in.

And then this filthy bastard, moving to turn even that to his own use.

He isn’t the breed you can reason with.

The eyes watching from around her had stoked her anger too.

There was nobody there but people standing by another person’s suffering out of curiosity.

The worst moment of the whole crisis!

And like a lie, Ha Tae-ung appeared in front of her.

A schoolboy she had met exactly once, who had left a strong impression behind him.

“Noona, are you all right?”

The voice was soft and it was warm, and it went in through her ear.

Rustle.

The moment he put one arm around her, naturally, and drew her in.

A protector heaven had sent for her.

“You— you! Who are you!!”

The man who had been driving her into the corner without a check on him shouted it.

“Are you deaf? Tae-ung. Hyeonju-noona’s dongsaeng.”

“Where does this bastard get off talking down to an adult! Plain as day you’re a high school kid, and no manners on you with it!”

A kkondae.

The grown-up sort of kkondae whose one thing to boast of is having got older.

It seems that turning time forward or back doesn’t change them.

“An adult? Where? All I can see is a dog in heat harassing a woman with no power behind her.”

“Dog— dog? Did you just call me a dog? This dick-sized little bastard, flapping his jaw just because he’s got a hole in his face! Do you know who I am?”

He was howling like an animal off a chain.

The voice rang and rang around the lounge.

An Hyeonju was too frightened to lift her head.

An arrogance this far past reasoning with was the first she had met in her life.

“And you, do you know who I am?”

Ha Tae-ung’s question came back at him bold and heavy, straight down the middle.

“That— isn’t that the Cheonghwa High School uniform?”

“It is. He’s a Cheonghwa High School student.”

“Oh dear, oh dear…… that man’s stepped in it. Picking a fight with a Cheonghwa High School student, with no fear in him at all……”

They were Gangnam women, so they were quick.

They muttered about Cheonghwa High School according to what they knew of it.

Cheonghwa High School, which is attended mostly by the sons and daughters of families with a card worth handing over in this country.

Living in Gangnam does not get everybody in. It’s the finest school in Korea.

“Cheo— Cheonghwa?”

The man was not ignorant of Cheonghwa High School either.

Most of the parents of the students there are Korea’s mainstream upper class.

And this boy is a student at that Cheonghwa High School?

Swallow.

The man understood where he was and swallowed on a dry throat.

He had been talking big, but set against Cheonghwa High School’s parents he had nothing to say.

The man runs a golf sports shop in Gangnam.

A few billion won in ordinary assets counts for nothing next to a Cheonghwa High School parent.

If a rumour so much as goes round, his shop could be finished.

The man’s face came up a sallow yellow, and then cold sweat ran the length of his back.

A year ago he had been caught drink-driving and his licence was revoked.

He’s serving out the disqualification and taking the classes to get it back.

And in the middle of that, today, he’d run into An Hyeonju.

The man runs a golf shop, so he takes more interest in golf than ordinary people do.

He was particularly fond of monitoring the beautiful women golfers closely.

But in practical terms there was never a chance of meeting one.

A round with the beauties playing at the top level is a privilege reserved for men who have succeeded in the world.

He’d carried a large envy about that even in the normal way of things.

And then, today, An Hyeonju caught square in a man like that’s eye!

The unlucky golfer who vanished out of the professional game when the scandal with the chairman of Sinyang Financial Group broke.

The scandal with the married man had spread through the industry until it was everywhere.

Among the glamorous women golfers An Hyeonju was on the strict side about her own conduct.

But the man went at her with the gossip.

It wasn’t as though he’d invented the story, so he went as far as defamation without flinching.

He wanted to provoke her.

A rising golf star he wouldn’t brush past twice if he let today go.

A faint tremor.

When the reaction he had steered her toward arrived, he felt the pleasure of it.

Watching her respond instantly to a few well-chosen words was enjoyable in itself.

A little more provocation and it looked as though he might get to see her cry.

The destroying instinct of a man who wants to wreck what he can’t own stirred in him.

The high ground was in front of him, and then a male high school student cut in out of nowhere.

His luck had gone rotten, for a start.

Tall — well over a hundred and eighty.

For a second he took him for some actor.

Disgustingly good-looking.

Short hair and a cold air about him.

It’s plainly a high school uniform, and yet the force on him is so far from a student’s that he could have mistaken it for a suit.

But then……

“What are you, mister? Family of a big group, are you? Or division-chief prosecutor at the Central District office? Failing that, at least the owner of a Gangnam building?”

The options came out one after another and woke him up to where he stood.

Not one of them applies to him.

“Then— then what are you!!”

The man’s pride had taken a scratch and he pushed back at it.

There’s no rule that says every Cheonghwa High School parent is rich.

The children of one or two people he knows are enrolled at Cheonghwa.

Among the regulars at his shop there’s the occasional junior prosecutor and senior civil servant.

“Mister……. You don’t want to live in Korea any more, do you?”

“……what— what are you……”

“Ha! Tae! Ung! Nothing coming? Ha, the family name! No feel for it?”

“It can’t be……. Ha— Haryun Group?”

“Oh my. That’s right, Ha is an unusual surname, isn’t it.”

“A Cheonghwa High School student, so it’s Haryun all right……”

“Heavens…… fancy seeing a young master of Haryun Group here of all places.”

The women worked it out first and made a great deal of noise about it.

“Ha— Haryun……. Ugh.”

Only then did the man’s eyes shake badly.

The expression crossing from suspicion into fear is quite the sight.

Anyone who lives in Gangnam knows the reach of a few of the group families’ power.

One word from them can end a small Gangnam trader’s living.

“Getting a feel for it now?”

“You— you and Pro An Hyeonju……”

“Pro An Hyeonju-nim!”

Ha Tae-ung corrects the man’s phrasing.

“What relation are you to Pro An Hyeonju-nim……”

“My school’s golf teacher. Privately, my noonim. Okay?”

“……”

The man was struck dumb.

He had picked entirely the wrong fight.

A golf teacher at Cheonghwa High School is not a level you can handle lightly.

“Apologise. On your knees, now!”

The order came out cold beyond anything.

The man looked around him fast, at a loss.

The women’s eyes, full of curiosity, are all pointed at him.

And mixed in among them was one madam whose face he knew.

If he goes down on his knees here…… it’s an absolute fucking humiliation.

And yet!

“Shall I call my own lawyer? Mister, you know you’ve already crossed the line into sexual harassment and criminal insult, don’t you?”

He was well versed in the law too, as a member of a group family would be.

Not just anyone can keep a lawyer of his own.

That alone puts it beyond doubt that he’s of Haryun Group’s blood.

Flump.

The man went down on his knees.

To hold on to his pride he’d be taking on somebody far too strong.

He judged that shutting his eyes tight and begging forgiveness at this point was the better move.

“Pro An Hyeonju……. I’m sorry. Please forgive me……”

The voice came out crawling along the floor.

The manner of a man who still has some pride he wants to keep.

“Be specific! Put enough sincerity in it to move the victim!”

The schoolboy’s voice rang through the space like a stern judge’s.

“Why the shyness? Shout the way you were shouting a minute ago! Right now!!”

“I’m— I’m sorry! I flapped my mouth without knowing anything! Be generous enough to show me some mercy!!”

Thunk!

The man drove his head into the floor.

He knew by instinct that it was his last chance.

A moment where guarding a pride not worth a thing could get him socially buried.

“Noona, will you take the apology?”

Ha Tae-ung asked it of An Hyeonju, leaning against his chest.

An Hyeonju turned her head slightly to the side and looked at the man with his head driven into the floor.

“……Yes. It isn’t enough, but……”

Having taken the apology, An Hyeonju’s face coloured quietly.

A moment ago the situation had been humiliating, and she had felt fear on top of it.

Only now did she register that she had been held against Ha Tae-ung’s chest.

But she wanted to stay like this a little longer.

For a short moment An Hyeonju thought it.

Ha Tae-ung — this schoolboy’s arms are……

Far too warm.

(End of Chapter 24)