“Coin?”

“Yes sir! There is a considerable amount of coin in the domestic account.”

“Mother gave him a billion, I heard?”

“It appears he put it into overseas coin futures.”

“So. This nephew of mine, whose face I don’t even know, took the billion Mother gave him and traded overseas coin futures with it. Is that it?”

“Yes sir!”

“And it hit it enormous?”

“Yes sir!”

“The return?”

“……The overseas account could not be verified.”

“The domestic account, then?”

“Somewhere around…… ten billion.”

“What? Ten billion??”

Ha Donggeon had played his golf and was resting a while in the VIP lounge.

He was badly startled by the report his secretary slid in.

He had given the instruction to look into Ha Tae-ung, the nephew said to have caused trouble at Cheonghwa High School.

What the secretary brought was not to be believed.

“Interesting……. Very interesting. Heh heh.”

Ha Donggeon heard the circumstances out and his eyes shone hard and bright.

Ten billion in cash is a sum even he would find hard to get into his hands.

The slush fund he has barely managed to build, out of the sight of his father and his elder brothers, stops even now at the tens of billions.

He gathered it with no ease at all, leading a few close friends in manipulating share prices.

Let his father catch him at it and he could be put out of the house that same day.

He took part only in safe operations, as far out of sight as could be managed.

Coin?

It is a field Ha Donggeon could not have dared even to dream of.

Overseas futures too he has taken to be beyond what he can do.

And a nephew still at high school has jumped into a market like that?

And blown the billion his mother is said to have left him up ten times over!

On coin futures, which Ha Donggeon has never laid a hand on.

Something inside him began to ache, softly.

“He is converting a billion a day.”

“Then the contract with the Jo and Jang lawyers is that money as well?”

“Yes sir! The deposit and rent at the Latte Signiel, and the purchase of a used BNW SUV, and the rest of it, are the same.”

“A monthly let and a BNW SUV? Wow. Our nephew has some style. Not a sports car — an SUV?”

This little bastard…… what is he?

At that age, when money turns up, most of them fix on a sports car first.

The sort of car that gets treated as a boy racer’s.

Out of keeping with his years, the nephew bought an SUV.

The feel of it, on the skin, is not good.

And he cleverly drew the Jo and Jang lawyers in.

These are not things that come about at the level of a high-school pupil.

This is going to become a headache.

He is declaring himself a direct descendant of Haryun Group, and boldly.

The rumour has already spread wide through the upper class.

There is no dealing with him openly, the way it was done in the past.

Even a light accident and Haryun Group would be suspected at once, as a matter of course.

Ha Donggeon’s face twisted as the thinking piled up.

Something isn’t right.

The colour of Ha Donggeon’s face darkened by degrees.

“That thing.”

“Sir?”

“The thing I told you to prepare.”

“Ah, yes— yes sir! It’s ready!”

The secretary who gathered the information is Ha Donggeon’s hands and feet.

Ha Donggeon has kept him beside him and grown him, from his first day in to his present standing at department-head level.

“Begin. When a child does wrong, the parents answer for it. Heh heh.”

Ha Donggeon made a rank smile.

He brought back his younger brother’s undertaking — that if only they let his son live, he would live as though dead until the moment he died.

If he had his way he would cut the shoot off this minute, but he remembered what his mother had warned, with her eyes wide open, while she lived.

The late Han Okja knew her sons’ characters well.

“I’ll proceed at once!”

“Make it certain.”

“Yes sir!”

Ha Donggeon judged the situation with his reason.

And he did not know.

That his nephew is not the easy sort of man his younger brother was!

It is the first time I have heard a curse with anger in it burst out of my father’s mouth.

Which means the shock he has taken is that large.

I understand it.

He trusted a friend and built the nest this far out in Sokcho, so the shock would be that much greater.

And with the years coming on, he must have wanted to see the last contest of his life through.

But he would not have known that the friend he trusted was sending him down into the pit over gambling.

“Do they still take a surety these days?”

“……If it isn’t ordinary money, yes.”

Wow. My father had some nerve on him.

He has stood surety on private lending, for that friend.

The trust he had in the man must have been that great.

A friend who put a hand out into a life that even his own family had turned their backs on — I understand how my father felt.

They were closer at university than brothers who share blood, so there is nothing more to be said.

In the hard days of my parents’ first married life he readily put a large sum in as well.

And that same Chief Yang Susan of Pacific Fisheries has caused a great deal of trouble in the end.

Knowing the whole of it, I have no thought of forgiving him.

Before the regression he pushed the responsibility for a collapsing company onto my father and fled abroad.

A traitor, who scraped up the company’s property and its funds and ran with them.

Our house was ruined because of that man’s gambling money.

My father was worried at by private lenders until the moment he died.

A man who threw even his soul in to save the company!

That too is something I learned after my father’s death.

When I knew nothing there was nothing I could do for him. Now there is.

He is a man I am grateful for simply because he is here in front of me, alive.

The solidity of a fence is a thing I learned from my father’s absence, and I understood it to the bone.

“But this material…….”

“I obtained it through Jo and Jang.”

“Jo and Jang? How would you?”

My father was once one of the candidates for Haryun’s succession.

A brilliant man, he read business at Yeonguk University.

Seoguk University was entirely within reach, and he chose Yeonguk in search of romance.

“Money does everything.”

“Money? Did you really win the lottery?”

By the look of it he has heard from Mom where the money came from.

“No.”

“Then what went into all of it?”

My father put a finger on the heart of it, with worry all through his eyes.

He did not believe it plainly, as Mom did.

“Grandmother gave it to me.”

“G— grandmother, meaning…… my mother?”

“Yes.”

“……!!”

My father started.

“A month ago Attorney Kim Jeongryul, who is executing Grandmother’s will, came to see me.”

“Attorney Kim did?”

My father knew Attorney Kim Jeongryul too.

“He gave me a billion won.”

“A billion?”

Doubt showed in my father’s eyes.

The cars alone, my parents’ and mine, come to hundreds of millions.

The look of a man who knows that dealing with Jo and Jang takes no small money either.

“I bet a short on coin futures and made a return.”

“A short on coin futures??”

My father’s eyes went round, astonished as though he could not believe it.

A futures short is a thing the phrase the heart of a beast falls short of describing.

And on coin at that!

I did not disclose the specific figure of the return.

Even between father and son a secret needs a line kept round it.

“…….”

My father looked at me with a deep gaze.

In an instant the look in his eyes changed several times.

Regret, astonishment, and then trust!

“My son…… has some ability, hasn’t he?”

And he smiled broadly.

This expression of my father’s, which I lived a long time having forgotten!

A deep love that cannot be converted into money.

“This son of yours is going to make you a chairman, Father!”

“Chairman? Puhahahaha! So that wasn’t a joke, then?”

My father broke into a laugh, clean and wide open.

He will be thinking that a billion as seed, swelled as far as it goes, comes to a few billion.

He is no layman about coin, so he will be making a rough guess.

My father does not know the curve my money is climbing.

That even at this moment it is multiplying by the second.

Tip-ti-tick. Tip-ti-tick.

Just then came the sound of the front door keypad being pressed.

Mom is home, and she will have been busy all day with the sudden move of the shop.

Click.

The front door opened and Mom came in.

A plastic bag in each hand.

“Welcome home.”

I took the bags she was carrying first.

A sweet and spicy smell came off them in a rush.

“Dakgangjeong, the way my son likes it~”

“Isn’t it Dad who likes it?”

“Between father and son it’s the same thing. Hohoho.”

Mom said it in a good-humoured voice.

“Somaek. Deal?”

My father bent his wrist over and made the shape of taking a drink.

“Deal!”

“Deal from me as well!!”

It is the first time since the regression that the three of us have been together.

Like people who have never once been parted.

A warmth of people caring for one another filled the house.

Looks passed between us with nobody first.

And.

“Hohohohoho.”

“Hahahahahaha.”

The sound of my family laughing, which I had not been able to hear for a long time.

The Sokcho night deepened, as tenderly as that.

(End of Chapter 91)