“A charity case? Then how was he at the golf course??”

Lee Jeongho had come home.

The moment he was back from school he spilled to his mother, Jang Huiae, what he had found out.

And Jang Huiae could not accept the charity case part of it about Ha Tae-ung.

That watch he had on…… that was tens of millions. And the golf clothes were a designer label.

Jang Huiae, out of an upstart house and sensitive to money.

She had priced the clothes he had on and the things he carried at first sight, on the spot.

And the boy is a charity case?

“Yes. And……”

Lee Jeongho could not readily carry it on, and only worked his lips.

He is spilling the story of what happened at school and the feeling of it is rotten.

The cold look Kang Junu gave him today — Kang Junu, who holds the student council presidency and the Management Studies Society presidency together — is still vivid.

Kang Junu already knew what had passed between Ha Tae-ung and himself.

Lee Jeongho went to make his report and was cut off with one stroke: no need.

Jang Jiyu, the senior he has been carrying a torch for, sneered at him openly.

He felt a pain like a blade going into his chest.

“And? …… What?”

“That bastard…… has the perfect score.”

“P— perfect? At Cheonghwa??”

“Yes. The first since the school opened.”

“That’s mad. A charity case with the perfect score!”

Jang Huiae looked steadily at Lee Jeongho, her eyes complicated.

Her son Lee Jeongho, who rides a horse because the head for anything else is not there.

A son who has been set against his cousin Lee Hyoju, holding far better marks at the same school, day in and day out.

“Teacher Lee Jangyong got thrown out of the school because of that bastard.”

“What? Teacher Lee Jangyong? Why? You said the boy was a charity case!”

The longer the conversation ran the less Jang Huiae could hide her astonishment.

Teacher Lee Jangyong, Cheonghwa’s pride and a star of the mathematics teaching world.

“He got taken apart by the charity case. In the hall…… at mathematics.”

“……”

Jang Huiae lost what she was going to say and closed her mouth.

“Jo and Jang attorneys came as well.”

“J— Jo and Jang attorneys, and why?”

“The charity case called them.”

“He called J— Jo and Jang attorneys? A charity case??”

“The thing is……”

“Get on and say it.”

Lee Jeongho flinched and hesitated, and Jang Huiae shouted at him as though driving him.

“The charity case Ha Tae-ung is…… Haryun Group’s direct line, they say……”

“Whaaat! H— Haryun??”

Jang Huiae was on her feet in an instant, pushing the chair back.

Put every scrap of strength her husband’s house and her own house have together and it does not come near Haryun Group.

“It— it’s what the rumour says, anyway……”

“Lee Jeongho! Is that all you amount to?”

“……??”

“Are the Cheonghwa teachers fools? And the other pupils! How many human beings do you suppose there are who can call Jo and Jang attorneys to a school and be assisted by them?”

“……”

“Those attorneys. They didn’t say anything else?”

Jang Huiae, whose reading of a room is startlingly quick.

“Th— the thing is. They called the charity case young master……”

“Y— young master?”

At one shock after another Jang Huiae began to stammer.

Anybody would call it evidence with no way around it.

Attorneys of Jo and Jang guard their pride like their lives.

Put her son Lee Jeongho right under their noses and young master is a thing he will never hear.

“What do we do now?”

Jang Huiae’s reaction put fear into Lee Jeongho.

His guts had twisted and he had sworn at the man, and now Ha Tae-ung has ascended to crown prince.

The difference in level is large.

The reality came home to him and the fear came in with it.

“What do we do! You get on close terms with him, and no arguing.”

“What?”

“Haryun, they’re saying. Mother will look into it a bit more, so don’t get outside his good books.”

“Mother……”

“Fix that temper that flares. The world isn’t easy.”

“……”

Lee Jeongho closed both fists.

His mother’s advice went into his heart and it hurt.

“Answer me!”

“Yes……”

“You do exactly as Mother tells you. That way…… you get your share.”

The real hidden meaning of a share, which his mother did not bother to put into words.

She meant the inheritance of the old lion Chairman Lee Dojung, who holds Oyang Group in his hand.

Jang Huiae was never going to be satisfied with a resort.

She may not take the whole of Oyang Group, and her plan is to get at least one core affiliate into her hands.

Shff.

Having taken her son in hand, Jang Huiae picked up her phone.

Her fingers moved quickly, found a number, pressed it.

And.

“Madam Jo~ Keeping well?”

She put her source, who has Gangnam information gripped tight, straight into full operation.

“Crown prince……. Heh.”

School finished and I came home.

To my own place, looking down on central Seoul under my feet.

“That was dynamic.”

A great many things went off at once today, all in the one day.

Revenge for the knot built up in the past, and a rise in the profile of my second run, both achieved.

The fine pupils of Cheonghwa called me crown prince.

I know what the word means, too.

A thing I could not so much as look at in the past.

“Kang Junu.”

Son of Ilseong Hotel’s chief executive, and the current president of the Cheonghwa student council.

If no butterfly effect turns up, he will go to Seoguk University to read business administration.

Kang Junu lost his father in a traffic accident and lived with his mother.

He grew up under a mother alone and he was a model pupil.

Even back then I saw him only a handful of times, in passing.

A charity case has no vote in the student council elections.

And we were in different years, so unless a man set out to meet him there was no occasion to collide at all.

At that time I went about with my head down, looking at the toes of my shoes.

Kang Junu was near enough impossible to run into. Like picking a star out of the sky.

And that crown prince has summoned me.

“He’ll be furious, I expect.”

But I have no particular wish to make an enemy of him.

Even in the past Kang Junu had a different grain to the other groups’ children.

A man who made himself top of the year on his own, all three years at Cheonghwa.

He lived with his mother, the two of them, with no father.

He is Ilseong Group right enough, and there was never a case of his putting on airs or making trouble at school by holding his house up.

It was the half-formed ones from the middle-ranking groups who enjoyed playing the punk more.

“If he comes himself…… I’ll grant him he’s a man of stature.”

The children have marked me down as the new crown prince.

I have no wish to be drawn in by their provoking forms of address and the lines they use to work up a will to win.

Nor do I wish to be the first to bow my head.

Bring it back and the colour of my own aura in the past was a poor grey.

And now it is a brilliant gold!

However well off a house Kang Junu comes from, he cannot get past the assets I hold now.

Reputation?

My grandfather is the chairman of Haryun Group.

And I am his direct line.

Haryun is a company of a hundred years’ history that stands shoulder to shoulder with Ilseong.

My grandfather may deny me, and even so the tie of blood does not get cut.

That is the law in Korea.

“My ears are itching like hell.”

Both ear holes itch enough to drive a man mad.

The upper-class houses with children at Cheonghwa are evidently loud with talk of me.

“And what will you do when you know?”

That the Ha house drove my father out is a fact.

And it makes no difference.

Where is that house’s blood going to go?

And they are bound to start doubting whether it is true.

I declared out of my own mouth that money is running over.

Every group runs money of its own in secret.

They will guess the size of my assets and judge it at their own level.

The ones who know the fact are very few.

And even if the size of what I hold got out——

“Next month I become a capitalist in the trillions.”

The enormous return, confirmed in real time through my phone.

To avoid the backdraught of the butterfly effect I set the futures multiple lower than I did in the past.

The sell point on the futures is a fantasy.

“A fortnight or so should do it?”

I badly need a futures account in America.

Turning a large sum out of a coin account into cash is difficult here.

It has to be remitted and handled in America.

Next month’s investment plan, which will put in several hundred million dollars at the least.

I need an operator in on it, and a management account for the returns on a corporation in a tax haven.

“The people I can trust right now are……”

The pool of connections I can use at present is small.

It is territory I never went into in the past.

There is no earthly reason a plain salaryman would have needed an account in a tax haven.

A connection I have put real care into lately, against a moment that may never come.

Tick tick.

I found the number and pressed the call button.

The hour deepening, and Seoul’s night view is the more alluring for being like goblin fire.

I drew the curtains wide and my heart went hot at the sight of it.

Brrrrr. Brrrr.

An ordinary ringing tone.

And.

—Hello.

A voice with a little tiredness on it.

“It’s me.”

—Yes……

“Could I see you now?”

“N— now?”

The other party asks it in a thrown voice.

“I know a whisky bar with a good atmosphere.”

I put a little mischief into it.

—A whisky bar? You’re still a stud— ah!

The other party seems to have called up my date of birth at once.

“If it’s awkward, another time——”

—It isn’t! I’ll come out. I’ve plenty of time!!

I am too decent and attractive a piece of bait for the other party to refuse a meeting.

(End of Chapter 68)