“What is this bastard? He’s got no brakes on him at all.”

“……You’re not wrong. Is he really a child?”

The back of the response team leader’s head had gone tight.

He had listened in on the adviser’s call from beside her.

Some boy still wet behind the ears had handled it as though he had the workings of a coin exchange threaded through his fingers.

Appbit, whose share price is climbing hard just now.

The timing calls for great whales, not for individuals one at a time.

Their credit standing has risen a fair way lately with the growth of Tether and coin registered on the exchange.

They’re working on Gobit and Batsum, their competitors, and bringing whales across.

And into the middle of that, a young whale that had rolled in of its own accord.

He’d guessed the boy would stash it away and grow, but he hadn’t known he’d be as bold with it as this.

“What do you suppose this oppa is? He had a really lovely voice.”

The word oppa came out of Go Hana’s mouth quite naturally, and she knows perfectly well he’s a child.

There aren’t many people on Appbit’s response team.

Two teams of three are run.

Take out the team leader and that leaves two members.

Up to now the three of them have handled anything reasonable without trouble.

Go Hana, the adviser, in glasses with lenses large for her face.

Her face is slightly flushed and there’s a lift in her voice.

“That boy’s going to be big.”

The team leader felt it strongly.

There are a good many whales in Korea holding coin assets running to hundreds of billions.

He could smell those whales on this.

“If the voice is that good his face must be handsome too, don’t you think?”

Go Hana can’t get clear of the customer she was speaking to a minute ago, and her eyes have gone soft and unfocused.

“Why, are you going to contact him privately?”

“Am I allowed??”

“……Go Hana!”

“Tsk! Understood. I know the company rules perfectly well too, thank you.”

Go Hana genuinely smacked her lips over it.

After finishing a two-year college she hadn’t found work straight away and spent the time unemployed.

Then her uncle put a word in and she joined Appbit.

The uncle is a grade-four aide to a three-term member of the National Assembly.

The work isn’t hard.

Every phone consultation that comes in at night gets a pass.

Her job is mostly managing the chat advisers hired in on part-time contracts.

Occasionally, as today, she handled a call from a customer of a different level herself.

“Team leader, is this going to be all right?”

“Is what?”

“Raising the limit to a billion……”

The timid male member of the team sent him a worried look.

Approving it without a formal order was the kind of handling that earns a dressing-down from above.

“And if it isn’t all right, what are you going to do about it? If the whale swims off, who carries that?”

“Team leader oppa is right. We’ve landed a proper one today.”

“Even so, a billion……. That’s only possible for VIP-grade customers……”

“Cheonsu. That bastard just now — do you think eight hundred thousand Tether is all of it?”

“Sorry?”

“This hyung’s instincts are good, aren’t they. I’m getting a feeling!”

A customer with vast money and no face to put to him.

The team leader, turning over a customer he had handled who is plainly an accident in the making.

He brought back the voice, sloshing about in his head, over and over.

“Ha Tae-ung! That boy…… is going to cause something big before long!”

Barely a day goes by without my ears itching.

It seems I’m being talked about here and there.

“The look on her’s a killer, isn’t it? White? Red? For your age bracket this blue is exactly the fit — young blood. The engine! You hear that?”

Rrrumble, rrrumble.

The man sat in the driver’s seat with the door open and turned the engine over.

“Three-point-three turbo. This same engine goes into the H90. The H70’s frame is small and light, so put your foot down and it flies straight off into space.”

A used-car dealer explaining it with the spit flying.

He looks to be about halfway through his thirties.

Unlike the other dealers in their suits he’s dressed light, torn jeans and a red T-shirt.

His short hair is bleached yellow and stood straight up with mousse.

The quick movements and the loose patter are textbook——

A punk, and a qualified one.

He seems to have chosen dealing as a job because he likes cars.

There’s life all through his eyes as he goes on explaining.

“Out on the motorway with a pretty thing in the seat beside you, throw the panoramic sunroof right open and you die! On the new Yangyang expressway especially, the one that’s just opened up — running that is art. Stars, sea, and DJ music thumping out of the Roxicon audio. With a face like yours, sir, it’s all over. Heh heh heh heh.”

This is a man who enjoys his life.

There’s something leering in the laugh, but the enthusiasm shows.

I wonder how many people have actually bought a car from this dealer.

It’s been a while since I heard a salesman’s patter this light and this weightless.

Even so, there’s an odd charm to a dealer with this much life in him.

The voice of a man a breezy trot medley would suit down to the ground.

“And then a car comes down to safety, doesn’t it. The latest Active Safety Control 2 is in there as an added option — smart cruise control, forward collision avoidance assist, high beam assist, highway driving assist, vibration warning steering wheel, lane departure prevention assist, and the rest! Full options. Fully loaded!”

He knows a great deal about cars, too.

I’d come out to a used-car complex that boasts about its size for the capital region.

There isn’t the time to buy new.

I need a car now.

The licence was issued on the spot at the centre where I sat the test.

I’ve no history of owning a car of my own.

I drove company cars from time to time.

Even then, if I ever had money spare, the first thing I wanted was a car.

A used complex, where the range of choice is wide.

Which is why I came here.

I looked into it, but a new car takes time to be released.

The dealers stood about together at the entrance to the complex and waited to be picked by customers.

And out of them I picked this man.

There’s no chance of my knowing a dealer.

There were plenty of them there and not one paid me any attention.

Ha Jinseong, dealer.

This was the only one whose eyes met mine.

A young lad buying a car comes to nothing much!

Dealers with a fine eye for it, who reached their conclusion off the outside of me alone.

Ha Jinseong’s used-car explanation overflowed with enthusiasm.

The car he showed me I liked.

Back in those days that feel like a dream now, a senior of mine at university drove this car about.

A car I’d wanted to take out once.

But now the feeling didn’t come.

“You know Brembo brakes? When you want to stop, stand on it and it stops right there. Away and away and stop on the tick, and permanent four-wheel drive so it’s safe in rain and safe in snow…… gah! There isn’t another car like it in this country.”

He can’t have been drinking at midday, and still he goes into raptures on his own account, one after another.

Ha Jinseong, explaining with everything in him, as though the car were his own.

“And here’s the heart of it! Look at the mileage here. One thousand and four kilometres! This one’s an angel, that’s what she is. Polished and glass-coated the minute it came off the line. The previous owner put it up as such an urgent sale that some of the plastic film is still on. It’s a used car but it’s a new car — no, it’s a virgin! Heh heh heh.”

His way of talking really is cheap.

It looks as though he’s putting the punk on deliberately.

I took a careful look at him.

A clear gold light!

The dealer who had caught my eye from the front gate of the complex.

Out of all of them standing there, this man was the only one whose colour was different.

The rest of the dealers were giving off a dingy grey and a dark aura.

It doesn’t yet produce exact data on the light people carry.

But it’s certainly not an ability to be taken lightly.

“I’m ten years in this trade. I’ve never once deceived a customer. Ha Jinseong, dealer! I introduce nothing but conscience cars to my customers, on a foundation of trust and love!”

There’s something sincere inside a patter light enough to be taken the wrong way.

The way he puts his weight on his own name makes me trust him.

“This is a brokered vehicle, isn’t it?”

“……Yes, sir! I haven’t the capital yet, so I can’t buy a car at this price in my own name.”

Ha Jinseong opens his circumstances up honestly.

For a dealer to make real money he needs his own capital and his own stock as a basis.

But the law that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer rules this trade as well.

A slide of the eyes.

I had a look around me.

And one solid-looking thing caught my eye.

A satisfied smile spread over my mouth of its own accord.

Before the regression the H70 was a dream.

Which it obviously isn’t now.

I’m holding enough money.

“Show me that one.”

“Sorry? That one, do you mean……. Ha!”

The dealer checks where my eyes have settled and is startled by it.

“Can’t I?”

“You— you can! You absolutely can!!”

Ha Jinseong headed for the vehicle I’d marked out, quick on his feet.

“Aha! Our young hyung, you know your business! BNW’s SUV, the X7!! The dads’ dream — no, the hyungs’ hope, that is. You see the build on her? This friend you’re looking at now is a twin-turbo V8, petrol, five hundred and thirty horsepower at maximum output, and the torque on it is insane! Enough power to pull a tank!”

Ha Jinseong, blazing away over the top of it, explains again with the spit flying.

This man is sincere about cars.

“Top speed two hundred and fifty, nought to a hundred in four point seven! Gah, she’s a killer!! Full-time four-wheel drive, so snow, rain, the road of life — you go straight on down all of them safely!”

“How much is it?”

A white SUV, BNW’s X7.

It went right into me.

“This is the model that was facelifted last month, and…… there’s almost no depreciation on it. To do it on instalments……”

Ha Jinseong breaks off the happy explaining and keeps looking between me and the car.

“So how much is it?”

“……A hundred and seventy million. No discount.”

The strength goes out of Ha Jinseong’s voice.

The look on him says plainly that today is a wash.

Anyone looking at me right now sees an ordinary young fellow.

For clothes I’ve got jeans and a cotton T-shirt on me.

Young as well, and not looking wealthy enough to buy a hundred-and-seventy-million-won car, which is only natural.

“Ha Jinseong’s getting properly stiffed again today.”

“Heh heh heh. What’s he being that keen about, with a kid in tow?”

“Go easy, the bastard. If Ha Jinseong shifts that thing I’ll buy lunch today.”

“I’ll do coffee!”

Three of them, watching me and Ha Jinseong from that far off, snigger among themselves.

“That’s the dealership’s asking price, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I think I could get about a million off it in a negotiation……”

“A hundred and seventy-two million. Let’s settle it.”

“Sorry?”

“The two million is a tip. Get off early, and if you’ve got a girlfriend, have a good time with her.”

“C— custommer, sir!!”

Custommer. A word that sits close to the one for a mug ripe for fleecing.

Ha Jinseong’s face flushes red at once, his eyes on the point of bursting into tears.

A trickle.

The tears actually came.

“Gah! I’ve sold a great many cars across these last ten years, but a custommer who pays over the price of the car — you are the first custommer to do it! Ha Jinseong here will think of a custommer overflowing with love for humanity whenever there’s hard going ahead of him, and he’ll live his life hard at it!!”

This man is slightly frightening.

The behaviour of somebody just out through the prison gates at the end of a sentence.

Love for humanity and other peaceable flourishes come out of his mouth without a check on them.

Ha Jinseong bent from the waist to ninety degrees right in front of my face.

Embarrassed, I bent from the waist along with him.

“What can I do for you as an extra? She’s as good as new, the warranty’s all still live, and the car accessories are in the boot as they came.”

“No extras needed. Once we contract, I can drive it away straight off?”

“Of course! Take out the insurance, fill in the transfer papers, and out she goes!”

“Then let’s write up the contract.”

“Thank you! Thank you again!”

Ha Jinseong folds from the waist to ninety degrees again.

I’ll be the easiest customer to sell a car to that his life has produced.

“So then, for payment……”

And again a complicated calculation shows in both of his eyes.

“Card is fine?”

“Card? It’s— it’s fine. But a card with a limit over a hundred million, in this country……”

If such a thing exists, something like a black card is the possibility.

“It’s fine.”

“Sorry??”

Ha Jinseong blinks both eyes helplessly.

I gave him a slow grin.

And.

I took my wallet out of my pocket, drew out a card and held it out.

“Debit card, and I’ll pay it in one.”

“Ah!! Debit!!”

(End of Chapter 28)