Clink!

“Grandfather, nice!!”

“Chairman. Nice.”

“Father. Perfect!”

“Grandfather, you’re the best!”

The last hole, the eighteenth.

A par four, four hundred and thirty-three metres from the white tee, and Chairman Lee Dojung had just taken the final putt on it.

He got his birdie.

The ball had been meeting the club particularly well today.

He gets out onto a field regularly enough, but there is no ignoring the years.

He goes round in the middle eighties on average.

Today, for the first time in a long while, he put down a seventy-seven.

That boy carries something with him, and it puts a man in oddly good spirits.

Lee Dojung glanced sideways at Ha Tae-ung, a few steps behind him.

The boy has been playing with them since the tenth.

Ordinarily the thing is not possible.

But the club is Chairman Lee Dojung’s, and on his authority the six of them went round together.

Ha Tae-ung’s group had been playing the time directly behind.

They had been getting round so fast that joining Lee Dojung left the time more than sufficient.

“The accuracy of your putting is remarkable. I’m in awe of it.”

Ha Tae-ung has a knack for putting an older man in good humour.

A hasty sort might have judged it flattery. To Lee Dojung’s eye it did not look like that.

A small man would call the lightness of it flattery. It is not that kind of flattery.

He had said this was his first time out, but Ha Tae-ung’s game is considerable.

He is playing courtesy golf, coming in one stroke short over the nine.

Chairman Lee Dojung has the years on him, and he saw straight through every side of the boy.

He knew a stroke was being held back, and it did not put him out.

His sons, playing beside him, generally read the room and play accordingly.

Not one of them ever lets a wish to beat his father show.

Their usual round is not a place where ability is weighed. It takes the form of a social gathering.

Today is no different.

And with a woman professional along, the round had come alive.

“Pro An Hyeonju, was it?”

Chairman Lee Dojung handed the putter to the caddie and asked it gently.

“Yes. Chairman.”

“Isn’t it the tour season now?”

It is the important stretch of the year for a golfer working as a professional.

He had meant nothing by the question, and it threw An Hyeonju slightly.

He had asked it out of plain curiosity.

“Ah, yes. I’m resting for personal reasons. I’m teaching the children at Cheonghwa High School instead.”

“Are you? Your game is considerable…… Is it that you have no sponsor, perhaps?”

A doubt had come to Chairman Lee Dojung.

By the look of it Pro An Hyeonju is playing at the courtesy level too.

A swing cannot be hidden, and neither can an approach, nor a stance over a putt. She is a complete professional.

And she teaches children at a school?

“Father. Pro An Hyeonju here is——”

Lee Seokjong, the third son, knows the state of the golf world well, and he began, and then shut his mouth.

It was not the place to bring up the business with the chairman of Sinyang Financial Group.

It is why Pro An Hyeonju cannot get onto the tour.

Naming it here outright could only be a discourtesy.

“Why? Do you know it? What business?”

Lee Dojung looked his third son straight in both eyes and asked.

What was in his mind was simple.

This is a bond too, if you care to call it one.

If she has no sponsor, he was willing to put one behind her at group level.

“I’ll say it. The chairman of Sinyang Financial Group made an unreasonable demand of Pro An Hyeonju. That’s where the friction came from.”

Ha Tae-ung had read the position Lee Seokjong was in, and stepped in.

“An unreasonable demand? …… Surely not?”

Something had come to him, and the lines drew deep between the chairman’s brows.

“That’s it.”

“Mm……”

Chairman Lee Dojung went into his own thoughts and said nothing.

Sinyang Financial Group is an awkward company even for Oyang to handle.

A great landholder of the financial sector, and not one to be disregarded.

Its chairman holds the seat by election rather than by ownership, and even so his breath carries a very long way.

“Chairman. You needn’t concern yourself over a sponsor for Pro An Hyeonju. I expect support will be coming from my house before long.”

The answer that came out of Ha Tae-ung’s mouth was not one anybody had expected.

That settles it. He’s of the Ha family.

From his house? What in the world is this boy?

And what house is Tae-ung’s?

Tae-ung. What are you, really!

He’s going to sponsor me??

Every one of them standing round had his own thought, and every head was complicated by it.

And of them all, the face that brightened most was Chairman Lee Dojung’s.

It is the moment the question he had already formed at the halfway house gets a clean answer.

The chairman’s face opened right up.

“I see. And is your grandfather well?”

The answer had given Lee Dojung his certainty, and he asked after him straight away.

“He’s rather busy, with what’s blown up lately……”

“Ah! Of course. Quite so.”

Hyoju knows how to look at a person.

His granddaughter does not ordinarily let anybody near her.

Lee Dojung was quietly pleased with her eye.

Chairman Ha Cheolgon of Haryun Group is at present under investigation by the prosecution service for embezzlement and breach of trust.

But there is no prospect of Chairman Ha going to prison.

He is bound in tightly with the incoming administration as well.

For the heads of the top ten groups, the ranking itself works as power.

Administrations change. Korea’s nobility does not.

“Tae-ung.”

Lee Dojung said the name with a good deal more affection in his voice than before.

“Yes, sir.”

“Come round with Hyoju one of these days. We’ll eat, and have a drink together.”

“Call for me and I’ll come, whenever it is.”

The boy answered openly every time, and it satisfied Lee Dojung.

An obligingness hard to find in his own children.

Quick to read a room and sure of himself, as a great group’s descendant ought to be.

Son of a bitch!!

Lee Jeongho had been listening to the two of them go on, and his guts twisted on it.

The more of it piled up, the harder his teeth ground.

The interest his grandfather was showing a boy he had never met was excessive.

Ha Tae-ung, and nobody even knows what sort of household he came out of.

His grandfather seems to know something, and to be well disposed toward him for it.

His father and his uncles were watching the old man’s face and being careful.

But that vixen Lee Hyoju!

Unlike the rest of the family, she cannot keep the uneasiness out of her eyes.

There’s something in this.

Lee Jeonghun, the youngest of the house, had been observing all of it.

By instinct he had picked up something odd coming off Lee Hyoju.

His idiot brother, sure enough, had a face gone visibly stiff.

He couldn’t keep what was inside him down, and it was all over him.

“Pro An. Thank you for today as well.”

“It was an enjoyable round.”

“Seokjong.”

“Yes, Father.”

“See the Pro gets something for her journey.”

“Chairman, that isn’t necessary.”

An Hyeonju was thrown, and waved both hands at him quickly.

“Turning down pocket money from an elder isn’t manners either.”

“…… Thank you.”

The round wound up more smoothly than anybody had looked for.

Ha Tae-ung and Pro An Hyeonju, who had joined a family round out of nowhere.

It amounts to an unlooked-for and warm meeting with Chairman Lee Dojung.

“Tae-ung-gun. Until next time.”

“Yes, sir! Go safely.”

Ha Tae-ung’s manner was courteous to the last.

Nothing in him came loose even at the parting, and Chairman Lee Dojung was satisfied with that.

Next in the diary is a dinner for the family alone.

A bond has been made with the two of them, but bringing them to the table as well would be too much.

“Tae-ung-gun. See you again.”

“Yes! Mother.”

Han Soeun’s face was full of an easy smile as well.

With the rest of the family, awkward on a first meeting, there was nothing but a nod exchanged before they went.

“Ha Tae-ung……”

Her mind was as complicated as her eyes were uneasy, and she could hide neither.

What Ha Tae-ung is has become spilled water now, which can never be gathered up again.

Her grandfather, and the rest of the family with him, would dig into his background with everything they had. That much was plain.

Within a few days at most, Ha Tae-ung’s standing as a charity case will be out.

Imagining it alone was nearly enough to burst her head.

“Hyoju. See you at school.”

His voice was bright, and he seemed to have no thought at all for where any of this was going.

What in the world are you!

Ha Tae-ung’s grandfather, after whom her own had asked in earnest.

Now that she came to think of it, Lee Hyoju knew nothing about Ha Tae-ung at all.

“Haaah.”

The long breath went out of her before she knew she was letting it.

“You little bastard……”

Lee Jeongho had come up beside her, and he let it out through his teeth, almost to himself.

Rage burned in the eyes he had fixed on Ha Tae-ung.

“Off you go! Friend.”

Ha Tae-ung did not give an inch under the look, and grinned.

“Friend? Fuck. Cut the bullshit, you little shit!”

The people of the Oyang house scattered in threes and fives.

They divided themselves between the carts and drew away.

“Tae-ung……”

An Hyeonju looked at him with something complicated in her eyes.

The look spoke for a mind she had no words for.

Ha Tae-ung had told her plainly that he was a charity case.

But having walked into a situation like this one, she cannot believe what he said.

What charity case builds an acquaintance with a man like the chairman of Oyang Group?

Shhweeee.

A cart came up then toward the place the two of them were standing.

A man in a clean suit got out of it.

“You are Pro An Hyeonju?”

“Yes.”

“This is an honorarium the chairman asked me to hand to you.”

The man, who looked to be the chairman’s secretary, held out a white envelope.

“Please tell him thank you.”

“Yes.”

He made a clean, silent bow, turned and went.

“Open it.”

At his word An Hyeonju drew out the single sheet of paper inside.

A cheque.

“……!!”

“How much?”

“Ta— Tae-ung. Can I take this? It’s ten million won.”

For nine holes of courtesy play, the figure was frankly a large one.

But.

“That’s about right.”

“What?”

“It’s the price of a round with a future LPGA star…… It’s about right. Spend it on yourself.”

“……”

A cheque for ten million won, and Ha Tae-ung calls it pocket money at about the right level.

An Hyeonju looked at him blankly.

His own eyes were on the wide, empty course.

The afternoon light had begun on it at some point, and it was dazzling.

“The next round, I’ll have you at a course of my own.”

“……”

He hands a joke over as though it were the plain truth.

But there is too much sincerity in his eyes to put it down as a joke and leave it at that.

Something he had said once came back to An Hyeonju.

The promise to send her to the LPGA tour.

Perhaps…… it might not…… be a joke.

A hot flame opened in a chest that had gone cold.

One line from Ha Tae-ung, and it had caught again, all at once.

With a vague expectation and an excitement in her, An Hyeonju looked at the man standing beside her.

He felt like a giant.

A man who had stood squarely in front of the chairman of Oyang Group and all that family, and never done anything else.

And he is beside her now.

Ha Tae-ung’s broad shoulders, turned toward the empty green, were nothing but solid.

He is young in years, and there is a weight to him there is no approaching.

She wanted to lean on the hard line of that shoulder.

Thump, thump.

The beat that had lurched in her more times than she had noticed.

An Hyeonju laid a hand quietly over her heart.

“Haaaah.”

A short breath leaked out of her.

(End of Chapter 45)