What is this boy?

Kim Gyeongmin, senior attorney, feels as though he has been struck once across the back of the head.

The Jo and Jang Law Office, where the competition is fiercer than in any other organisation.

The thousand-odd lawyers are smiling, and every day they hold each other in check and compete.

The lawyers who run at Jo and Jang contract one to one with Jang Muyeol, the representative attorney.

The difference in signing fee and performance payment by ability is large, and the moment your ability is proved your pockets fill out.

Conversely, produce no results and the contract is terminated at once.

A situation where judges, prosecutors and lawyers waiting to join Jo and Jang lie about all year round.

At Jo and Jang, individual results alone are the measure of every ability.

Human rights? Justice?

At Jo and Jang that’s bullshit.

In a legal fight, winning unconditionally is the whole of human rights and the whole of justice.

Only then does a thick bonus drop for the attorney handling it.

The differential in pay according to results doesn’t bear imagining.

The people in this country who have power and money trust Jo and Jang.

To win their legal fights, the whole organisation of Jo and Jang cooperates as one body.

Clients increase if they do anything, and they absolutely never decrease.

They come of their own accord.

Whether a thing is right or wrong by society’s common notions is not important.

The posture in which a case is approached is extremely complicated.

Clients whose position has legitimacy secured are a tiny minority.

The bigger the case, the more it is a client on the illegal side, and the more it guarantees profit on that scale.

The rubbish at the centre of society’s evils are the big clients.

They know that if they get caught up in illegal business, Jo and Jang will resolve it simply.

The attorneys’ code lightens the load a legal representative in the position of having sold his conscience has to carry.

In exchange for keeping the duty of confidence for life, they are provided with a comfortable one.

The stress they have to bear in return is hard to put into words.

Here you cannot survive at all without selling your conscience.

It’s a place where the wild’s weak-as-meat, strong-as-eaters plays out live, wearing a human mask.

And onto that board, an instruction has come in that is far too easy.

Getting on well with the women at the reception desk all this time is what handed him an opportunity like this.

Hours in which he had done no more than pass over a cup of coffee had produced an encounter with a big-fish client.

A simple comprehensive legal service at 1.2 billion won a year.

Instructions like this do come in, though not often.

Most of them are from outfits of mid-sized company scale and up.

It’s a service used by companies that find running their own legal team a burden, and by wealthy individuals.

Measured even against the standard for such contracts, 1.2 billion a year is a considerable figure.

It’s the equal of Kim Gyeongmin’s annual salary.

And on top of that, the condition that he will pay a retainer per case as well.

Kim Gyeongmin stared at the young fellow in front of him.

Rate him as high as you like and he’s in his early twenties.

The looks, like a young man from the entertainment world, are enough to draw admiration.

The presence that governs the air of the consultation room is out of the ordinary too.

He has interviewed countless clients over the years.

Among them there was a class of client who felt like this one.

They are the people of the group families that carry the main frame of Korea’s economy.

If the surname is Ha……

He can’t wipe the question out.

Because of the client’s surname, Haryun Group had come to mind.

But there’s no fellow this young among the members of the Haryun Group family.

“Would you point out specifically what it is you’re saying.”

A client saying that he has a condition.

“The condition is simple. My request is that where there is a legal dispute concerning me or my direct lineal ascendants, Jo and Jang be prohibited from dual representation. In a word, all you need do is not act as sub-agent.”

That is a matter of course for a client.

Dual representation prohibited!

It’s a matter that became a large internal problem only a few years ago and was cleared up.

“There will absolutely never be such a thing.”

“Put it in writing in the contract. The penalty for breach at ten times the total for the contract term, and jurisdiction — specify that the choice between Korea and the United States rests with me, as Party A.”

“The— the United States?”

“I’m due to acquire permanent residency shortly.”

“……”

An unexpectedly exacting client.

Some ominous current passed cold across the back of Attorney Kim Gyeongmin’s head.

But a hundred million comes in every month.

It is by no means a small sum of money.

“The contract term is ten years from now. Put that in writing as well.”

Ten years makes 12 billion!

The equal of a large civil suit.

“……!!”

“If you can’t accept it, then to another office——”

“Attorney Ah! Add it to the contract, please.”

“Yes.”

Let a client like this go and you’re admitting incompetence.

It’s a contract so easy that any colleague who heard of it would be envious.

A smooth motion.

“My address.”

The client held out a resident registration abstract.

Today…… he transferred this address today.

The address on a resident registration abstract, which is the modern person’s other identity card.

The address registered as moved in on today’s date is the Latte Signiel.

A single-person household? What is this! Nineteen?

The household moving in is one person.

He’s an adult under civil law, right enough, but the residence is the Latte Signiel.

Living alone isn’t the odd thing.

But there’s almost no case in Korea of a young man of barely nineteen living in something on that scale.

A group family…… a son born outside the marriage? ……Or else.

Kim Gyeongmin was confused by clues of this kind and that.

“I’m engaged in the financial investment business.”

“Sorry? In what——”

“The financial investment business that’s hot at the moment……”

“……”

Kim Gyeongmin stared at the young client as though he were under a spell.

“Coin, is it?”

Ah Yura opened both eyes wide and let it out like a single cry.

She has a sense for it.

It’s a light that was out of the ordinary from the moment I first saw it.

A gold light, strong and deep, of a kind I’ve never seen until now!

Deeper than Lee Hyoju’s, and she’s a member of a group family.

If Lee Hyoju’s light is eighteen carat, then Attorney Ah Yura’s is twenty-four carat, pure gold.

That one strong word of hers was full of curiosity.

“C— coin?”

Attorney Kim Gyeongmin asked it in a confirming tone, as though he hadn’t guessed.

The older lawyer has the air of a man without a shred of interest in coin investment.

He seems not to know the taste of it.

“Yes.”

There’s no reason to hide it.

I’ll need these people’s help before long in any case.

“Ah……. I see.”

Attorney Kim Gyeongmin lets a short sound out and nods roughly.

His eyes, on the other hand, show a complicated calculation.

Coin investment is still understood among the vested-interest set as a moth-to-the-flame way of investing.

“I’ve made rather more than the two of you are imagining.”

I boasted about it squarely.

What I absolutely cannot disclose is the rate of return in any detail.

For a boast with nothing behind it, coin investment is the correct answer.

An institutional passbook or a share account can be looked into by the state.

But coin on an overseas exchange——

“……”

Attorney Kim Gyeongmin and Attorney Ah Yura give no particular answer.

They have the air of people calculating busily inside their heads.

A client who says he’ll pay a full 1.2 billion a year to receive legal services!

No — an honoured mug, rolled in on his own two feet!

“We will provide the service with everything we have!”

Attorney Kim Gyeongmin’s voice had changed.

It’s a world where money is power and money is justice.

Coin or fraud, from Jo and Jang’s position all that matters is receiving plenty of money.

“I’ll be counting on you. From here on I’d like to receive advice on mergers and acquisitions, on e-business, and on financial management of various kinds.”

To their eyes it will be a young client’s future vision with no foundation under it.

I understand.

It’s absolutely not something that comes out of the mouth of a child my age.

“We will provide a service that answers to Ha Tae-ung-nim’s intentions.”

The voice had changed to something a degree more courteous.

Unlike at the start, the look in Attorney Kim Gyeongmin’s eyes had gone firm as well.

“Whenever you need us, call us at any time that suits you!”

He appears to have settled his line for certain.

“On that subject——”

My eyes went toward Attorney Ah Yura.

The owner of a golden aura I’ve no wish to let go of.

“Designate Attorney Ah Yura as being exclusively assigned to me, please.”

“Understood.”

Kim Gyeongmin looked at Attorney Ah Yura.

“I’ll attend on you with everything I have.”

Attorney Ah Yura smiled brightly.

The space of the consultation room lightened in a moment.

A lawyer who, her looks aside, possesses a golden talent as well.

“I’ll be counting on you from here.”

I put my hand out and asked for a handshake.

She put her own soft hand out in front of her too.

Crackle.

The moment my eyes met Attorney Ah Yura’s, sparks jumped.

An apple blossom, fresh and crisp, bloomed at her mouth.

(End of Chapter 35)