The stink of a corpse?

Kang Deuksu’s mind swam at the shout, with all that assurance rubbed through it.

In seventy years of living he has never once heard talk like it.

Since his days in the service nobody had ever brushed him aside.

Something isn’t right.

The rage came up past bearing, and with it a wrongness he could not put a name to.

He has lived a life trained up on flattery, and never once tasted danger like this inside it.

That young one, planted there in front of him…….

There is something in him!

“You dog of a fatherless bastard——”

Kang Deuksu let the end of it trail off, and his heart shook in him.

The implant he had put in a month ago began to throb where it sat.

He was angry, with no way to let the temper out, and his blood pressure came up on it.

But this is a moment in which, somehow, he cannot do as the temper wants.

That one has killing intent in his eyes…….

Madam Han’s son is still a high-school pupil, he had been told.

And that look!

Whether the boy runs with gangsters or not, the killing intent in both eyes is thick and strong and altogether cutting.

It is like looking at the young Special Forces men who used to be put in, over and over, on infiltration exercises into the North.

“O-out tomorrow, then! Madam Han’s clever son said it, so keep to it!!”

Bang!

Kang Deuksu turned back on Han Jiyun and threw it at her to work the anger off, then went out of the flower shop as though he were running.

A cold force followed at his back as he put his feet down in long strides.

One black bear, glaring at the back of his head.

Tonight the bed looked set to be an uneasy one.

“Tae-ung-a…….”

A storm had gone right through the flower shop.

Han Jiyun’s voice shook.

By the look of it he had heard every filthy word old Kang Deuksu had thrown at her in that short while.

“Mom.”

Her son, who had been glaring down the alley sunk in dark, calls her.

“I’m sorry, I——”

“Let’s eat.”

“……??”

The look in her bear of a son’s eye, which a moment ago had driven Kang Deuksu as though it meant to kill him, had come back.

The eyes looking at her are warm.

Thank goodness.

A son who had seemed ready to do something terrible at any second.

And this is her own son’s own look, back as though the other had been a lie.

“Hot sundaeguk and soju. Deal?”

Her son bent his wrist over, making the motion of drinking soju.

The eyes full of mischief are clear.

And that made Han Jiyun sadder still.

“Deal!!”

Han Jiyun smiled wide and bright.

A flower shop is this much of a thing.

It weighed nothing against the pride of her only son.

Shut it tomorrow and it would not matter.

This moment today was worth more.

“Shall we, Madam Han! Your son will see you through the full course.”

Time with her son, and nothing in it but good cheer.

The warm comfort of the son she loves seemed to pay back the whole of what had just happened.

That alone was happiness.

“S— son! What is this car?”

We shut the flower shop up and came out.

Mom was brave enough on her own.

The vile old landlord has told her to clear out of the shop and she is not greatly troubled by it.

Mom came out briskly, and is thrown at the sight of the car that chirped.

“My car.”

“Your car? You’re telling me this foreign car is yours?”

Mom asks again to be sure.

Her pupils have gone as wide as they go and she can’t hide her astonishment.

Our household scrapes along at the very bottom of the ordinary people.

An imported SUV is not remotely fitting.

“I bought it used, to come home in.”

“…….”

Mom stares right through me.

I can see a great many thoughts mixing in her eyes.

“What, worried I’ve been running a con? Phone scams, that sort of thing? Madam Han, try being a bit more creative.”

“……The lottery?”

“Heh.”

The limit of my innocent mother’s imagination got a laugh out of me.

“Winner! The lottery.”

I put it off lightly.

I am of age too, and parents cannot interfere in how a man’s property grows.

“R-really? Waaaaaah! Ha Tae-ung, are you rich now?”

Mom believes it straight off. She is innocent, as ever.

She clapped her hands and was truly delighted.

“Yeah. I’m rich now. So put your shoulders back.”

I can’t tell her I’m a son who came back from the future.

An unreal fact that is mine alone, and that nobody would believe.

“So that’s why you were talking about chaebols?”

“Probably.”

“Right! It could only be the lottery. Swell the money right up with it and be a chaebol. My son, you got the clever from your dad.”

“Then the looks are from Mom?”

“Hoho. That’s your dad as well.”

“Then what did I get from you?”

“Probably…….”

Mom lets it hang.

“No brakes!”

“No brakes!!”

The two of us said it at the same moment.

“Puhahahahaha.”

“Hohohohot.”

The laughing broke out together too.

In the past, when Dad was alive, the two of us were like this.

“I’ve gone soft lately. Body like this, and I had guts on me that would kill you.”

“I heard the first kiss with Dad was you going in first?”

“Do you know how hard it is to meet a good man in this world? When the chance comes you make him yours, all at once.”

There was the mother who used to have no shadow on her.

“Mom! Get in.”

I clicked the passenger door open.

“Thank you. Thanks to my clever son I get to ride in an expensive BNW.”

She sat down, touched the leather seat, ran her eye over the inside of the car and made a sound of wonder.

“Take me out in it a lot, before you get a girlfriend.”

“Loyalty!”

“Hoho. At ease.”

The talk came as naturally as if it had been going on yesterday and today.

Vrooom.

For the first time I drive with Mom in a car of my own.

The body of the car pushing off the ground, smooth and heavy at once.

“Waa! What is this ride?”

Sorry came over me in a wave.

In the past I never once owned a good car.

Swoooosh.

The sea wind came in at the open window.

I am laughing in front of Mom, and inside me an anger like a volcano is boiling.

That old pervert of a grandad, making his scene at my mother!

In the past I never knew Mom had circumstances like these at all.

I had thought only that the money had got worse and she had moved the flower shop somewhere shabbier.

I did not know she had gone through something this shameful, and had to hide it from Dad as well.

Only today did I learn what was hidden.

Chairman of the Jungang-dong Merchants’ Association, Kang Deuksu!

An old man coated over his whole body in a black aura that looks as though it would smell foul.

One look and it is a soul beyond saving.

You are…… out!

I’ll break your house’s three generations right through!!

“The position is good.”

“Isn’t it? Being close to the express bus terminal is the greatest advantage of it.”

“The greatest advantage?”

“You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”

The truth, arriving without warning.

Half right, and half wrong.

In the past I had a girlfriend.

“…….”

“Sokcho here gets a lot of couples coming to confess their feelings. They order a bouquet for it and put on a whole occasion. Go about three hundred metres from the bus terminal and there’s Sokcho beach. For couples it’s the best route there is.”

“Ah!”

One love affair, and one only.

Gu Hyejin did not like flowers.

She preferred good restaurants and luxury goods to flowers that wither straight away.

“The floor area’s all right, isn’t it? For a flower shop it’s exactly right. On the main road, so it pulls people in too.”

Last night I drank soju with Mom at a good sundaeguk place with a view of Sokcho beach.

Mom cannot ordinarily take much.

She had several glasses one after another and was drunk.

She kept showing me a smiling face, and the shock of it must have been considerable for all that.

She could not get up, right through the morning.

Today is Saturday.

Early in the morning I looked into the estate agencies nearby.

After a few calls I met this person.

Kim Juhui, chief of Daeu Estates.

A woman in her middle forties with a generous look about her recommended one of the empty units.

“The rent is high, mind. Since the motorway went through, property prices everywhere have been in uproar.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“For me it is. Only, the ones who liked it quiet have mostly gone up toward Goseong.”

In the future Sokcho hits it enormous.

The good news about the KTX lands on top of it.

Sokcho, two hours out of Gangnam.

It pushed past Jeju Island and came up as the place to be.

“I’ll take it.”

“Will you? It’s thirty million won deposit and two and a half million a month. Are you really all right with that?”

“Yes.”

“……Making it balance out of selling flowers won’t be easy.”

She does not finish at showing the property; she has a heart that worries about the tenant’s circumstances as well.

A decent person.

The aura coming off her when I first saw her carried a clear sky blue too.

“You know some removal firms, don’t you?”

“You really mean to move today?”

“Call them now, please. I’ll go ahead with the contract now as well.”

I cannot leave Mom in that filthy old man’s premises one more day.

“You can do the contract with me. The owner’s abroad on a trip. He left the whole of it to me.”

“To be trusted with all of it — you must have remarkable standing with your clients.”

“Of course. I’m a native here. Sokcho looks wide, and it’s surprisingly small.”

A good bond.

And not only because of Mom’s business — Sokcho’s future investment value is certain.

“You know the Hanjin Apartments in Joyang-dong?”

“Of course. Sokcho beach is right on the doorstep, so it’s a property a lot of people are after these days.”

“The three-storey building in front of it, beside the galbi place. Has that come onto the market?”

“Ah, you mean the unit that’s stood empty since the fire took it?”

“Yes. What sort of price would it sell at?”

“Why? You’re surely not thinking of buying it…….”

Kim Juhui, the licensed agent, let the end trail off and searched me over busily.

A face in two minds about it.

“Never mind the price. Would you push the deal forward for me?”

This flow too is a bond that comes in its season.

The luck of meeting an estate agent who carries a clear force is a line heaven hands you as well.

“It looks the way it does because of the fire, but the unit’s on a good corner and they’ll be asking billions…….”

“It doesn’t matter. And push for the vacant lot in front of the Hanjin Apartments as well, along with it.”

I have seen with my own eyes how Sokcho’s development runs from here.

One year.

Inside it, coffee shops without number and high-end guesthouses go in, and the whole area hits it enormous.

“You wouldn’t happen to be a chaebol house’s grandson?”

The words came with a joke mixed into them, and the licensed agent’s eyes on me were full of astonishment.

A slow grin, and no denying it — the smile spread at the corner of my mouth.

“How did you know? I am, in fact, a chaebol house’s grandson.”

(End of Chapter 83)