“Did something happen at school today?”

The Ilseong RF Villa in Daechi-dong, ten minutes on foot from Cheonghwa High School.

Go Mihui, his mother, moved here from the Ilseong Itaewon Town for the sake of her only son.

She stops halfway through peeling a large apple.

Something about her son’s face was off, and she asked it carefully.

She lost her husband when her son was small.

Kang Jaeyun, who went in a road accident abroad while away on business.

Once he was joined to her he went up through promotions at a speed he could never have dreamed of.

And in the end it became the cause of his passing.

If it had not been for a young son at the time, she might have given up her own life as well.

Go Mihui put distance between herself and the main house for her son’s prospects, and moved here to Daechi-dong.

To the outside she is the mistress of Ilseong Hotel, and at home she is an ordinary parent with a boy in his third year.

“…… Aren’t you asking because you already know?”

Her son bit into a piece of the cut apple and asked it back.

Before he came into his teens the two of them got on far better than they do now.

A son who grows more dependable as time passes.

That Go Mihui, on her own, leans on him a great deal is perhaps only natural.

Whatever the blunt exterior, her son is a man who feels things.

He is short of words only because of what the Ilseong house is like.

His mother Go Mihui knew her son’s nature very well.

“That’s why I’m asking. A son of the Haryun Group house?”

“That’s the rumour…… and it may well be true.”

“It may well be true?”

“That’s the feeling of it.”

“Mm……”

Her son, whose instinct has been unusual since he was small.

Go Mihui’s forehead creased slightly at what he said.

She was born a gold spoon into the Ilseong house and spent a girlhood a princess would not have been ashamed of.

She had the full love of her late father, whom the people around him found hard going.

While her father was alive, say Ilseong Go Geonhyo and nobody could meet his eye.

And to his daughters he was warm and gentle without limit.

Her father put her brother Go Junyong through a hard training in management so that he would build up ability, and his daughter alone was spared it.

He handed the hotel over to her early, as her share.

Ilseong Group is a group whose principle is succession through the sons.

However outstanding a daughter’s ability, her children cannot take the surname Go.

Fate was cruel to Go Mihui, who gave the surname up and chose love instead.

After losing her husband in another country, her son became the whole of her.

Which made her want all the more to leave him not the smallest discomfort in anything.

“Don’t worry. I don’t get shaken by that sort of thing.”

Her son Kang Junu put down his fork and looked at Go Mihui.

The eyes had got harder.

The depth in them let Go Mihui feel easy at last.

“Mother.”

“What? Do you want more?”

“No. I was wondering.”

“About what?”

“However cold Haryun Group’s philosophy of education is…… is it possible to put a grandson into a school as a charity case?”

“……”

Go Mihui did not carry it on.

She too had been given the information quickly, by the school’s side.

There is more than one or two of them working as her informants.

Anything to do with her son Junu took priority over everything.

“Is there something I don’t know about?”

Kang Junu, quick to read a room, looked hard at the silent Go Mihui.

“That charity case pupil’s father is named Ha Donghwi.”

“So he is a Haryun Group man, then?”

“Yes, that’s right, but……. He was thrown out a long time ago.”

“What??”

Kang Junu was startled.

Ordinarily he takes no interest in anything but his work.

And his mother Go Mihui, beyond talk about his studies, hardly ever mentioned business matters.

“Chairman Ha Cheolgon’s byname is the pitiless ruler. He was thrown out for not following that man’s will.”

“Ah……”

The world of the chaebol houses, with neither blood nor tears in it.

Kang Junu thought it privately.

When he was small he used to play happily in his grandfather’s arms.

And the people around them feared his grandfather more than a tiger.

The master of a chaebol house sat in that kind of seat.

Cold-blooded men who shut feeling out thoroughly for money and power, and cast out even their own blood.

“Don’t get deeply involved in it. Before long…… the Haryun side will move.”

“…… Yes.”

A bitter taste came suddenly into Kang Junu’s mouth.

The charity case Ha Tae-ung, who did not answer his summons.

They have not met face to face, and he liked the spirit of it.

All through his growing up, near enough everybody has only watched his face for a sign.

Kang Junu, always solitary among worshippers he could not see.

The one single person to have refused an instruction of his, and handsomely.

On that count he came to think of Ha Tae-ung as a sharp hoobae.

“I’ll go to the crammer.”

Kang Junu got up from his seat.

“All right……”

Go Mihui felt as though she had laid a great load on the dependable shoulders turning away from her.

I’m sorry…… Mother is.

The load she cannot bring herself to tell her son to put down. Ilseong!

It is a load her son Junu has to carry as long as he lives as a citizen of this country.

His life too was no different from a star’s.

Doong-doong doo doo-doo-doong~♬

A heavy jazz bass came down.

Jazz built round the bass, which is called the muscle of the chords and the conductor of the rhythm.

Piano, drums and saxophone make their harmony on the mild sound of it.

So there was a place like this?

Ah Yura, who has spent her university years and then her years as a lawyer in and around Seoul.

Since joining Jo and Jang she has been to nearly every reasonably fine place there is.

The senior attorneys are that hard to suit.

Most client meetings, too, happen at the well-known spots in Gangnam.

And even Ah Yura is visiting this whisky bar for the first time.

The basement of a building down a Cheongdam back street.

The sign hung at the entrance does not much catch the eye either.

Ordinarily it is exactly the sort of place a person walks straight past unless they are looking with interest.

The name on the sign is J&W.

The inside was dark all through.

The air of it is like walking into a secret room.

Sofas of a brown close to black, halogen lamps set into a boarded ceiling, and chandeliers giving a soft light.

The lighting is low throughout and the darkness makes an impression.

The bartender catches the eye too.

An elderly gentleman with a stylishly grown moustache serving in a clean shirt and a bow tie.

He gave a light nod of greeting to Ah Yura as she came in.

Ah Yura naturally inclined her head in return.

Photographs of the great jazz players decorate the walls all round.

The care in it is not far short of a museum, and through it you catch something of an owner who is serious about jazz.

Not here yet?

Ah Yura had had a good deal to think about since the phone call.

The sudden request for a meeting late at night was disconcerting.

Her phone had rung just as she got to the front of her block, having left the office late.

Attorney Kim Gyeongmin had gone home early today, as it happened, with something on at his house.

Jo and Jang’s office runs on results, so coming and going has no great meaning there.

Ah Yura had been worn down by odd jobs and was going home when Ha Tae-ung’s direct call came, and her heart went mad.

He is younger than she is and he is nothing like a naive boy.

The charisma of a grown man he put out on that platform in the great hall at Cheonghwa High School, where the upper-class children she had only heard about study.

From that hour on the pupils treated him as a crown prince.

Clack. Clack.

The serviced-apartment block near the office.

She went in quickly and changed out of the work clothes she had been in all day.

She chose a double trench long dress that suited a pretty pair of heels, fresh and giving off a strong sense of the feminine.

A designer piece bought specially to wear to a friend’s wedding in a few weeks’ time.

She had been keeping it carefully for that day.

And the thought came on her strongly that this dress was the one she had to wear.

A dress code that would not be permitted as office wear at Jo and Jang.

There are unseen and pressing looks a woman has to bear.

Nobody is carrying a blade or a gun, and the inside of Jo and Jang is a battlefield twenty-four hours a day.

Get marked for a conspicuous outfit and, ability aside, you are out.

Shff.

Ah Yura sat down in the corner seat to the bartender’s right with a smooth movement.

The lighting is low and it does not show her features.

“Are you on your own?”

The bartender asks it with a smile.

“No. One more is coming.”

“Your first time here?”

“Sorry? Yes……”

“Thank you for coming. My eyes are doing well tonight.”

The bartender said it on the subtle line between good manners and making a pass.

By his manner he seems to be the owner of the bar.

It was not the lip-service patter of a hired employee. There was an ease about him worn in over long years.

A hobby.

He does not look like a man short of money either, of course.

If anything he gives the impression of running the place as a playground.

Reading a person this way is an ability she came by naturally while working at Jo and Jang.

She is that sensitive to the mixed scents a first-time client gives off.

Money, power, reputation, and the rest.

Upper-class people in particular give off a scent of their own.

Trickle.

The bartender filled a clear rocks glass with water and handed it over.

Ah Yura, thoroughly on edge, had a dry throat.

“Thank you.”

The bartender put a smile at his mouth instead of an answer.

The kind of face that will have drawn a fair few tears out of women’s eyes when he was young.

Doo-doong~ doom-chi~ doom~♪

There is not a single other customer in the bar.

The jazz line running through the quiet brought Ah Yura’s tension down.

The music’s to my taste as well……

The atmosphere of the place was not what she had expected and Ah Yura was pleased inside.

When she gets home to her flat after work she puts on jazz or classical, out of habit.

She changes to the calm, slow music and has a light glass of wine.

And today of all days Ah Yura had wanted alcohol absolutely.

Nor can she deny that Ha Tae-ung saying a whisky bar had charmed her slightly.

A young thing like that…… going about whisky bars, old-fashioned as that?

Ha Tae-ung is a man of question marks.

He is of age, and he is still enrolled at a high school.

The children in whom you can see the shoot early forged an identity card long ago and get into the clubs that are hot.

A whisky bar like this is a place a man has to be into his thirties before it looks natural.

Tramp, tramp.

Then came the quiet sound of leather shoes.

“A fine-looking boyfriend has arrived.”

“……??”

Ah Yura turned her head toward the entrance, following the bartender’s eyes.

“……!!”

Her body, twisted round, froze exactly where it was.

(End of Chapter 69)