“All of this…….”

Han Jiyun lost her words at the inside of the flower shop, set out to perfection.

Until she had confirmed it with her own two eyes, the greater part of her had thought it could not be.

Her son is still a high-school pupil.

Of age in years, and plainly a schoolboy in standing.

A son with no experience of the world at all had handled it, so what it would look like was obvious without looking.

Not a household move, either — shifting a place of business is more than Han Jiyun herself can easily take on.

And her son arrived in Sokcho only last night.

She had raised her voice at the landlord, and inside herself the thing had been giving her a headache ever since.

And in one morning a miracle like this has happened.

“Do you like it?”

Her son met her in an apron, like the young man of the flower shop.

It suited him far too well.

The floor inside is twice the size of the old shop and there is not one corner in it that presses on you.

And it sits on the main road.

“You did all of this?”

“Probably.”

“……It isn’t possible.”

Anybody who has done it knows that moving a business is not easy.

And he looked for a shop that same morning and moved the whole of it here straight away?

It was a small flower shop, and it had been fitted out solidly enough in its way.

Not a move one or two people could be put on.

“It was over quickly enough.”

“…….”

Roasting beans over a flash of lightning and eating them. That is the speed of it.

She slept in, and heaven and earth split open.

And the fittings are placed with enough sense in them to go straight into the liking of the flower shop’s own owner.

“Trust me. If you can’t trust your son, who in the world can you trust?”

Her son gave a slow grin.

It is certainly her dependable, good-looking son, and he is very strange to her.

The look in his eye is mature in a way she has never seen.

He gives off hardness and weight at once, like a man who has been out in the world a good while.

It was this same feeling last night when he threw Kang Deuksu out of the shop.

Not any half-formed young spirit.

The force of a man who really would do something.

“Mom. We have to hand the rice cakes round and say hello.”

Red bean steamed rice cake, wrapped a piece at a time, was ready as well.

“You’re my son, aren’t you? My bear, my Tae-ung??”

He has been called by the pet name our bear since he was small.

“Hahaha. Probably, yes.”

Her son laughs with all his old brass, and today there is something strange in the laugh.

It seems there is something he is hiding.

“……Tae-ung-a.”

Han Jiyun’s chest went thick on her.

He is still a schoolboy and she has come to lean on him like this.

“Madam Han, the rice cake’s going cold.”

“A— all right.”

“Old Kang’s unit is cleared out and squared away. I’ve asked the chief at the estate agency here to see to it, so you needn’t give the return of the deposit a thought either.”

There is no gap anywhere in the way her son handles a thing.

Like a veteran of the working world.

“All right…….”

Han Jiyun nodded quietly.

It is like the character of her husband, away on business now.

Blood cannot be lied about.

That was the man who told her that if the sky came down she was only to trust him.

The son of the man she loves is no different.

Screech.

Just then a car’s brakes sounded from the main road in front of the shop.

A large milk-white Bens saloon came to a stop outside.

A model Han Jiyun has ridden in once herself.

An older friend of hers had taken delivery of a new Bens and given her a run in it.

The great big interface in the Bens had made an impression on her then too.

“That was quick.”

Her son said it looking at the car where it had stopped, with a satisfied face.

“What was quick?”

“The delivery.”

“……??”

Han Jiyun could not understand what her son said, as though a goblin had her under a charm.

One moment after another she cannot take in has run on from the instant her son appeared at the shop.

“Custommer, sir!!”

At that moment a sharp-looking man got out of the Bens, came into the shop and made himself known to her son.

And he stopped a moment inside the door and bent from the waist to ninety degrees.

The kind of thing that could easily be mistaken for the greeting of men out of the world of fists.

“You’re here early.”

“When a custommer calls, I run it in one go — Baengnyeongdo out in the West Sea! Marado! Dokdo, even!”

The man’s way of talking looks somewhat light.

But there is heat in the way he handles her son.

Han Jiyun found the sight of the two of them meeting hard to understand.

“She’s a decent one, then?”

“Of course she is! Two twelve-point-three-inch displays in her, no less. Absolutely state of the art! Menus, function settings, the lot of it, all by voice. And the Burmester surround with its thirteen speakers is death itself! I had it up loud the whole way over…… and the gooseflesh came up on me more times than I can say. On top of that, head-up display, display controls for the passengers in the back, and so on and so on! She’s the best.”

The man poured the words out, rattatat.

What is this?

Han Jiyun, listening, went blank in the head.

“And the engine on her is a V8, three thousand nine hundred and eighty-two cc, twin turbo! Five hundred and three horsepower at maximum output, seventy-one point four kilograms of torque at the top! Put your foot down and she flies, every time! Four-wheel drive running off Daimler’s nine-speed automatic box. In Gangwon Province that is an option you absolutely need!”

“And safety?”

“Say Bens and you’ve said safety, haven’t you! PRE-SAFE Impulse Side, active brake assist, better than ten airbags, and the state-of-the-art driving assistance package — the owner’s safety is guaranteed absolutely!”

Only then did Han Jiyun catch on that the man explaining with the spit flying was a car dealer.

Why he was making the explanation to her son, she did not know.

“The car key is here.”

The dealer handed the key to her son courteously, with both hands.

“S— son, what is all this?”

“A car. I bought one.”

“A car? You mean that car?”

Han Jiyun pointed a finger at the Bens with its handsome milk-white gloss.

“Take it.”

Her son held the key out to Han Jiyun.

She took it before she knew what she was doing.

“……??”

“It’s the opening present for the flower shop’s move.”

“……!!”

Han Jiyun lost her words.

A Bens S-Class as a moving present?

And at that moment.

“Don’t be surprised, Mom. Because it starts from here!”

“A used-car centre dealing only in high-end vehicles?”

“Yes.”

“Custommer— no, Chief. A used-car centre is easy to say and a truly difficult business. You could be putting in tens of billions in start-up capital alone.”

Ha Jinseong was too astonished, and asked again to be sure.

The customer he has met is a remarkable person.

So much so that he used the word Chief without meaning to.

The gracious custommer who put a million won into his hand as a tip had got in touch yesterday afternoon.

A call asking him to buy in a new-model Bens S-Class, used.

As it happened, a car taken in off a car-poor had just come through.

A new Bens run on instalments and thrown onto the market by a man who needed money in a hurry.

Used, and she would still go out at the price of a new one.

The custommer heard him out and paid the money for the car straight in.

Close on two hundred million won, cash, head-on.

Ha Jinseong praised Allah, the Buddha and God!

On a brokered listing his own commission alone comes to millions of won.

He set off before dawn and drove the delivery to Sokcho himself.

Thanks to the gracious custommer he has closed two large pieces of business.

A month ago, a great shaman he had gone to some trouble to book a sitting with had said this to him.

Guard the gate of the sales centre, whatever else you do!

A great person of fortune will come to you soon.

The rule is that the centre’s front gate is watched in turns.

It is the private fishing spot of the staff with the fewest years in.

He is senior enough not to have to stand at the gate.

And even so he held the front gate for a month.

The first time he saw the young customer Ha Tae-ung, he was certain this was the great person of fortune he had been waiting for.

“Can you open by the end of August?”

“C— Chief.”

“You take it and run it, Mr Ha Jinseong.”

“……!!”

“The buying rule is simple. Imported high-end cars only, within a year of leaving the factory. Under ten thousand kilometres on the clock, and never in an accident, obviously.”

“Gah!!”

Ha Jinseong’s breath stopped in his throat.

Used-car dealers divide too, into the imported side and the domestic side.

The commission on a single sale differs between them.

The problem is capital.

On imports in particular the buying price per unit runs to hundreds of millions and above.

“One per cent of the equity and a base salary of two hundred million a year. We’ll set the sales incentive separately.”

“Ah-ha-ha-hah! T— two hundred million?”

Ha Jinseong’s income in a month, in a good month for selling, is around seven million.

In the Korean used-car market the large sales sites hold a monopoly on half the thing.

The half that is left, thousands of dealers divide up and eat.

In a market as poor as that, two hundred million guaranteed, and an incentive on top of it?

I have to hold on to this, whatever happens!

Ha Jinseong felt it come.

Lose this chance today and he will regret it his whole life.

“Can you do it?”

The gracious custommer asked it again.

The man in front of him is a young fellow of twenty or thereabouts.

And he has a harder eye in him than Ha Jinseong’s own.

It is an eye grave and deep and seeing, which Ha Jinseong, who has lived a hard enough life in his own way, could not imitate.

There even rose in him the illusion that a golden radiance was pouring off the whole of the man.

Tee-ree-ree-ree-ree-ree.

Just then the customer’s phone rang.

“Hello.”

—…….

Not a sound of the caller’s voice comes across.

And at that moment.

“Four billion? You can contract today, you say? Understood. I’ll take it.”

Four billion!

The custommer, naming a sum like that the way a man calls the next-door puppy!

Gulp.

Ha Jinseong swallowed on a dry throat.

A young lad in ordinary-looking jeans and a shirt.

Shff.

Ha Jinseong brought both hands together and went into the most courteous mode of his life.

A person of great fortune, who means to set him — one used-car dealer and nothing more — up as the head of the whole thing.

(End of Chapter 85)