“You knew, didn’t you?”

“…… Yes.”

“He really is a charity case? Young Tae-ung?”

“…… That’s right.”

Lee Hyoju, come home after going through one great commotion at school.

Her mother Han Soeun, who had been waiting, asked it as though to confirm.

“Good heavens……”

“You know that isn’t all of it.”

Lee Hyoju was about to drink some water, and turned to look at her mother as she said it.

“Quite. Do you think your mother doesn’t know how hard the Haryun Group people are? And even so, how could——”

Han Soeun met her daughter’s eyes and shook her head.

The Haryun Group family are well known even in upper society.

Near enough everybody knows the manner in which they ordinarily deal with people and form their relations.

And beyond that, the world has changed a great deal and inside that house Chairman Ha Cheolgon’s word is still law.

“I did hear the rumour, before. That Chairman Ha’s youngest son was thrown out for refusing a marriage of convenience……. And who would have thought Tae-ung was that youngest son’s blood——”

Today’s business, which has spread right through the upper-class people who send their children to Cheonghwa.

If it has reached her mother Han Soeun’s ear, the rumour is fully out, in effect.

The pupils gathered in the great hall who saw it live number several hundred.

A rumour spreads faster than anything.

It passes from one pupil’s mother to the next at a gallop.

That the whole Gangnam district was stirred up is as plain as looking at fire.

The party at the centre of it being Ha Tae-ung, it is not the least exaggeration.

“They say Jeongjun was broken by young Tae-ung as well?”

Han Soeun, who is also a daughter-in-law of the Oyang Group family.

She has never taken a good view of Lee Jeongjun, of Doa Ilbo’s direct line, at the best of times.

The power-tripping of Jeongjun’s mother Ju Miju reached as far as Oyang Group.

At the family gatherings that come round now and then, Ju Miju’s nose was always stabbing at the sky.

Ju Miju, of Hanguk Group’s direct line.

By the corporate rankings there is nobody who can avoid watching her face.

And that Ju Miju’s one thing to boast of, her son Lee Jeongjun, has gone through a mortifying situation in front of a great many pupils.

“Are you pleased?”

“Naturally…… I’m pleased! Hohohoho.”

Han Soeun, refined as a rule, gave a wry smile.

All the stress she has taken from Ju Miju over the years felt as though it were going, and it delighted her.

Lee Jeongjun is top of the whole second year at Cheonghwa High School.

Her daughter Lee Hyoju came behind Lee Jeongjun too.

“I gave up first in the class to Tae-ung this time, though?”

“If it’s Tae-ung and nobody else, that’s more than welcome. Think about it. You missed first in the class, and Jeongjun had first in the whole school taken off him. Hohohohoho.”

“Wow! My mother’s wicked. Making somebody else’s pain into a pleasure.”

“He isn’t somebody else. He’s a relative~”

“……”

Lee Hyoju looked at her mother’s delighted face and shook her head.

“It’s going to be noisy from here.”

“Why? The school business is all settled.”

“It isn’t a school problem. Do you think the Haryun Group family will sit still knowing this?”

“……!!”

For an instant Lee Hyoju’s eyes came wide open.

She too is a royal family member, one of the people inside a group’s line of succession.

Money and power are things she comes up against naturally.

“At Haryun Group there’s weight even on the sound of Chairman Ha Cheolgon breathing. …… Hyoju.”

Han Soeun, her excitement settled, called her daughter with a serious look.

Now was exactly a good moment for teaching.

“If it were you, would a cast-out child’s flesh and blood be welcome?”

“Even so…… he’s a grandson?”

“A grandson? And so?”

Han Soeun’s look changed.

She watched her daughter with eyes that seemed rather cold.

“M— Mother……”

At a look so unlike the one a moment before, Lee Hyoju’s voice shook.

“Lee Hyoju. Listen properly. Do you think a problem like this applies to young Tae-ung alone?”

“……”

“Your eldest uncle at least has some human feeling in him, and your youngest uncle is another matter. Your aunt and those cousins won’t be satisfied until they have thrown you out bare-handed. That is why your mother helps your father with his work. I don’t want you…… thrown into the world empty-handed.”

Han Soeun is plainly a chaebol house’s daughter-in-law.

She is holding out on a clever head for now, and the limit of that is plain.

She has no son who could realistically stand as a shield for her!

Hyoju is her one daughter in the world, and the whole of it.

For her daughter’s prospects she must pass something down, whatever it is.

“Watch young Tae-ung carefully. See how that boy deals with this business……. And if by any chance he falls——”

Han Soeun did not carry the rest on and swallowed it.

A slip and the wave of it could reach as far as her daughter Hyoju.

The power a company inside the Korean top ten holds is frightful.

The fate a daughter-in-law and a granddaughter of a mid-sized group at around fiftieth have to bear is not an easy one.

“……”

Lee Hyoju, biting her lip as she listened to her mother.

Several feelings came in on her, tangled together.

The sight of her cousin Lee Hyorin and Kang Ari, the queen of the first year, coming to the classroom just after the business, came back to her.

Their visit to the classroom today had been the catalyst that heated Lee Hyoju’s heart.

The crown prince is being called young Ha.

Ah Yura, listening to the two of them, dropped her eyes.

Somehow she cannot lift her head and look straight at the bartender — at the god possessing him.

A being who calls himself a goblin.

She does not know much about it, and even so it seems to be right.

The voice has changed.

Something mysterious and something heavy carry across in that unfamiliar voice.

Unlike the tone of ordinary people, a wave can be felt in it.

He told them to act, and sent out a blessing and a curse.

A blessing and a curse.

It is driven into her mind and will not go.

Attorney Ah Yura sat with her mind gone hazy, as though caught in a goblin god’s spell.

“Draw.”

“Yes.”

The crown prince picked out a card as though it were nothing.

The bartender laid the card the crown prince had chosen face down on the surface.

What is this? The Day of Judgement, out of Revelation?

A picture of an angel in the heavens blowing a golden trumpet, and naked people on the earth spreading both arms in welcome.

On the card the letters JUDGEMENT are written.

“What happened in the past has flowed away down the river of time. Do not labour to call it back. The past is not pain but a sea of endurance for the sake of understanding……”

The goblin’s reading, which sounded like a poem being recited, came out mysterious.

She had thought a few people leaving work might come in, and there is still nobody at all.

A whisky bar with exactly three people holding the whole of it and talking.

“Do you know it?”

The goblin god asks the crown prince.

“Yes……”

“The moment of noticing, this present moment, is itself the moment of awakening! You…… are one who has understood.”

Knows what? Understood what?

Over one card, a monk’s riddle passed between the two of them.

It is the goblin god’s cant and figures, and Ah Yura cannot follow it at all.

“When fate comes before you again…… you need only stand firm as the you of the present, not of the past.”

The voice changed to something considerably gentler.

“I understand.”

“At the moment you face it, no excuse is needed and no regret. It is only a time of cleansing the gods have arranged to heal your pain……”

What on earth is he talking about??

Ah Yura the intellectual is at the point of her head bursting over a conversation she cannot follow.

It is like an oracle handed down to human beings by the gods of long ago.

“Thank you.”

He understood that?

Ah Yura folded up her will to understand.

It is not a message being passed to her, in any case.

“Young Ha.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“What is to appear will certainly appear. Do not worry ahead of it and shut yourself in a hell. Build instead the strength of mind to meet the situation. That strength is……”

Swallow.

The goblin lord, cutting off a moment.

His throat seemed very dry; he filled the glass and threw it back in one.

“The muscle of the inner self. Hard and tough and strong in life, that strength! Not money and not power — the strength truly permitted to you!”

The goblin lord, mentioning strength with emphasis several times over.

“Do not labour to be perfect. Where you can…… go at it! You are the law! And the truth! And the judge, so there is nobody whose face you need watch! This is…… a god’s command!”

Thuuuuud!

For a moment it seemed as though the whole space of the bar hall rang.

Swallow.

Ah Yura, who had been rigid with her shoulders drawn in, swallowed on a dry throat without knowing she had.

“To the two of you I say.”

This time the goblin lord met each of their eyes straight on, one at a time.

Golden pupils that are not a person’s.

A blazing light can be seen in them.

Ah Yura closed both hands to keep the look on her.

“It is a bond of a former life and this one.”

“……!!”

The goblin god’s easiest line to follow of anything she has heard so far.

However it is taken, it is a line that hits the heart.

Ah Yura’s mind went blank.

“Do not be tied. Be free. Only then will there be peace……”

The goblin lord looked straight into Ah Yura’s eyes and delivered the message, clearly and one word at a time.

Not tied, but free……

She thought she knew this line’s meaning to some degree.

The crown prince sitting beside her.

It is a table she came out to because he called her.

She felt it during the time she sat here with them.

She cannot understand and take in the whole of the crown prince.

“The choice is yours. Miss it and the chance does not come again.”

Through the bartender’s face, the goblin lord declared it and gazed into both her eyes.

And.

“Aigo……! My head.”

The way of speaking changed suddenly.

The goblin — the bartender.

“Really, this fellow could say he was coming……. If he uses my strength right up, the trade’s a bust for today.”

The bartender put a hand to each side of his head.

“You both heard all that?”

“Yes……”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have things to say to each other, I imagine. I’ll go in first.”

“What??”

“The consultation fee goes over there……”

The two of them turned to look where the bartender was indicating with his eyes.

A laughing-Buddha figure with a swollen belly stood by the way out.

Even at a glance the top of its head is open.

“Have your talk.”

His head seeming to hurt a good deal, he wrapped a palm over his forehead and went in through a gap beside the whisky cabinet.

The building’s owner, bartender and shaman, absurdly leaving nobody but his customers behind him.

“Haa……”

Only then did Ah Yura let out the breath she had been holding.

“Attorney.”

“Yes?”

The crown prince’s call brought her sharply awake.

“I need help.”

“……??”

The crown prince’s request, direct and provoking, with nothing before or after it.

“Be my broker.”

“A b— broker??”

(End of Chapter 74)