“Uughh…….”

Han Jiyun let a groan out at the throbbing in her head and opened her eyes.

Through the slits of them she saw a ceiling she knew.

“How much did I drink?”

She looked at the clock. Two in the afternoon.

Properly drunk, and by the look of it she had gone down more or less unconscious.

Her son had come without warning and been made to see what he should never have seen.

To turn the mood as much as anything, the two of them had soju with hot, spicy sundaeguk.

Her son being with her, she drank with her mind at rest for the first time in a long while, and that played its part in how far it went.

Half a bottle of soju is what she can ordinarily take.

Yesterday she emptied more than one.

Last night there was no possible way not to drink.

Kang Deuksu had been pawing at her the moment a gap opened.

Lately it had got worse in degree and she had been carrying a great deal of strain over it.

And then her dependable son had thrown Kang Deuksu out of the shop, and handsomely.

“The shop…… I’ll have to look for one.”

After a scene like that she cannot stay in the present premises any longer.

In any case the term on that flower shop is nearly up.

Take a lower deposit somewhere and the cost of moving is covered easily enough.

Click.

Han Jiyun finished getting ready to go out and came through the front door.

The cool sea spread itself out in front of her.

Through the corridor window Sokcho beach lay open below.

Even the throbbing inside her head went cool.

A small floor area in an aging block, and it is the one nest she has.

Two rooms, a living room, and one bathroom.

The oldest building anywhere near, and the sea view alone is the best there is.

“Dad, Mom. Hello again today.”

Her parents sleep in the blue water that runs up against Sokcho beach.

The two of them died in a road accident caused by a drunk driver, travelling in Gangwon Province.

As they had wished while they lived, their ashes were scattered in the sea off Sokcho.

Han Jiyun, working in Seoul, came to Sokcho beach each year on the anniversary.

That was when she met her husband.

A man who seemed to have been sent as a present by her parents, for the daughter they had left on her own.

She felt at first sight that it was a bond, and she loves him now no differently.

“Out early, then.”

Her son’s shoes are gone.

Gone out to walk the beach, by the look of it.

“Did he really win the lottery?”

Her son’s great big SUV.

And the declaration about being a chaebol, traded like a joke on the phone not long ago.

Seen with her own eyes, it does not look like a joke.

“Surely not……. It has nothing to do with the Ha family business, does it?”

Her husband’s people are a chaebol house in fact.

In all her relation with her husband’s people she has never once been treated as family.

Seeing her father-in-law on a television screen is the whole of it.

Haryun Group, one of the ten great chaebol firms, which everybody in the country knows.

A moment of humiliation her son may or may not remember came suddenly back to her.

Tae-ung was small, and after it happened he lay ill for days.

The wretched sight the three of them made in front of her husband’s family’s gate, on the day the rain came down in sheets.

Not once since then have the three of them put it out of their mouths.

“Please. Just leave the three of us alone.”

Han Jiyun thought of her husband’s people and shuddered.

Chairman Ha Cheolgon, her father-in-law, and the rest of them had put her husband out of the house and then barred him from the family home altogether.

Only her mother-in-law had been in touch, a few times.

A father-in-law with no feeling in him had put a chaebol house’s promise first and cut through even the warmth between a mother and her son.

Han Jiyun has had as much of the Ha family people as a person can have.

Her son at least, she hoped, would never get tangled up with people of that house.

A woman’s instinct went off in her: tangled up with them, nothing good could ever come of it.

Tee-ree doo-roo-roo~♬

The smartphone’s default ringtone sounded.

It is her son Tae-ung calling.

She pressed answer straight away.

—Mom.

Her son’s voice, and good to hear.

“Son! Where are you? Out walking?”

When he comes to Sokcho her son likes to walk the beach.

—The flower shop’s moved. Come and hand the opening rice cakes round.

“Th— the flower shop’s moved? Opening?”

What her son said would not go in at once.

Ping.

At that moment photographs came through onto the screen, mid-call.

The vases and the pot plants from her flower shop, and the trees and all the different flowers, set out in a space she did not know.

—You know that ice cream place you like, down below the terminal? It’s the unit right beside it. I’ve done the display roughly, and the flowers are asking for you.

Han Jiyun cannot make out the situation at all.

She had been listening blankly, and for a moment she was lost.

She woke a bare few minutes ago and is only now gathering herself to go out.

And the flower shop has already been moved!

“Son! I don’t understand what you’re saying to me. D-did you really move it??”

—Yes ma’am!

“Tae-ung-a…….”

—Come quickly. A customer’s already been and gone.

Her son says it as though it were a game.

But it is real.

“I’ll— I’ll come! Right this minute!”

Han Jiyun answered loudly, without knowing she had.

Her heart went thump, thump by instinct, madly.

She looked again at the inside of the flower shop, in the photographs sent through.

It was the perfect flower shop she had dreamed of all along.

“President Song, it’s Daeu Estates.”

—President Kim? What brings a busy woman to me?

Kim Juhui of Daeu Estates was in a hurry inside herself.

Sokcho property has come into a boom lately.

On the good news about the motorway, a market that had been flat came alive.

Seoul’s cash rich are flowing into Sokcho and a second house boom is blowing.

Sokcho beach and what surrounds it will stand against anywhere in the country.

Different from the Gangneung market, which has reached saturation.

Linked up with Yangyang, the town is overflowing with life.

On that count Kim Juhui belongs among those who have picked none of the fruit going spare.

She has few listings.

She is a native of the district, and on a coast like this the limit on a woman agent is a clear one.

Jeonse and monthly lets on flats, and that is the whole of it.

With the big listings — commercial units, land — she has had no bond at all.

And it is that kind of property that makes money.

Deals that can bring in anything from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of won apiece.

The big board every agent wants.

And today the luck was very good.

It is a weekend she would ordinarily take off.

And from the morning she met a big player.

Don’t lose him! Whatever happens!

The wanting in a cowed agent stirred and moved.

Land one of the big deals that are so hard to get hold of, and you can work a year at play.

And she has been handed not one large property but two!

Kim Juhui set her mind to going at the deal as though her life were on it.

“Keeping well?”

—An old man’s keeping well if he’s breathing.

President Song is the licensed agent with the widest connections in Sokcho.

A native, the real thing, and he went through primary, middle and high school in the district.

He has been in the trade a long time, and he holds the chairmanship of the Sokcho Lions besides.

To begin with, President Song’s father was a wealthy man doing well in Sokcho, and a senior police officer with it.

A man of standing in the district since his father’s generation, so the size of the clients he deals with cannot help being another thing altogether.

“If you’re not busy, might I come to you now?”

—Today?

“Yes! Now.”

—……President Kim’s voice is up. By the sound of it…… you’ve landed a money man.

Uncanny, as ever.

Kim Juhui put the excitement down and bit lightly at her lip.

Hesitate at the wrong moment and the money man could be lost.

“President Song, I’ll be straight with you.”

—…….

“The unit beside the Hanjin Apartments, the one there was a fire in. That’s come onto the market, hasn’t it?”

—It has……. Why?

It is the kind of listing that does not go up in an ordinary agency.

A property hard to get hold of at Kim Juhui’s level.

“Take it jointly with me. I’ll give you seven parts.”

The trade’s rule on a listing brought in through a middleman is that the fee splits down the middle.

But Kim Juhui, who is the one in need, cut her own share boldly.

—How’s that, the money man’s got a lot of it?

“Yes.

—It’s a commercial unit, but remodel it and open a coffee shop and it’s a spot that will feed a few generations of descendants. You know there’s a big serviced-residence development going in beside it, on top of the beach?

The future value is large, exactly as President Song said.

There is a great deal of room for it to become the next coffee district after Gangneung’s.

“I know it well. Which is why my client wants it.”

—It’s out at four billion. Can you swallow that?

“F— four billion?”

A figure on a scale rarely seen in Sokcho.

A market where flats over five hundred million are still uncommon.

—What’s the surprise. It’s a thing you’ll be selling on at ten billion later.

He isn’t wrong, either. The future value is there!

It is only this much because it is Sokcho.

On Gangneung’s coffee street a commercial building that size asks ten billion.

“I’ll take it.”

The client had told her not to mind the purchase price.

She met him for the first time today, and there is no doubt he is a remarkable young man.

The smell of money off him went right up her nose.

Easy and assured, with a presence she has never seen in Sokcho.

—Heh heh. Suits me well enough. What does the money man do, though?

President Song asked it quietly.

He would honestly want to know.

Stirring as the market is, it is still provincial property.

People with the nerve to burn billions without any adjusting are not thick on the ground.

“Keep this to yourself…….”

Kim Juhui put the phone close in against her mouth and said it almost in a whisper.

“I think he’s a chaebol…… heir.”

—Whaat? A chaebol heir?

(End of Chapter 84)