Snip. Snip.

A great house in Seongbuk-dong.

The stretch of the season has gone past spring and arrived at summer’s threshold.

The small branches of a pine bonsai, full of the spring, are cut away.

A slow, fine hand, and an unhesitating one.

The pine that had been reaching out vigorously has held its breath too.

It is a natural thing that cannot resist, though the new-grown branch is cut off without mercy.

Hold out the way a human does and the base itself might come away.

The white-haired old man in his eighties moved his hands with a strength that put the years to shame.

White hair, neatly set.

It is the face of a man who has lived long years, and it is not soft in the least.

The spirit of a man in his middle years, the force in him still ringing, comes off him.

When he has things to put in order he passes the time trimming the bonsai.

Today in particular his mind will not go quiet.

Enough that the bonsai gives a faint tremor where his hand touches it.

“Chairman.”

The chief of the secretariat called him from behind.

A short man in thick horn-rimmed glasses.

He too has come into old age now, and the wrinkles are set all over his face.

He is in a neat navy suit, with both hands brought together respectfully.

“And what is it today?”

The old man, in seclusion since last month’s public apology to the nation, asked it without turning.

This is Ha Cheolgon, the true owner of Haryun Group, which stands among the country’s ten great groups.

From the voice alone of a chief of secretariat who has shared thirty years of hardship and ease with him, he saw at once that something had happened.

“……My apologies.”

An Donghyeon, chief of the secretariat and the Haryun Group chairman’s right arm, bent from the waist.

He came into a bond with Ha Cheolgon in his forties and has kept the place at his side as the right arm ever since.

From Ha Cheolgon’s taking office as chairman, he has attended to almost every matter of the group, great and small.

He is a house retainer, looking after a group family that is now no more than its old name.

Unlike various others, An Donghyeon stands with his lord in life and in death.

Above all, thanks to Chairman Ha Cheolgon he has built wealth enough to feed three generations.

His assets alone come to tens of billions and more.

Not once has he coveted his master’s rice bowl.

Attending to the group family’s affairs, the crumbs that fell here and there were enough.

There are few in the country who know Chairman Ha Cheolgon’s true face.

On no account is one to step out in front of Chairman Ha Cheolgon and make one’s presence felt.

Even among the heads of the country’s leading groups he is a man among men, and the fiercest in character.

A man who put his own blood out of the house for not doing as he was told.

On the order of the king who shut his own crown prince into a rice chest and left him to die in it.

Even so, in front of a retainer he trusts, Chairman Ha Cheolgon opened his mind to some degree.

“The vicious plague has drawn off and one is about to breathe a little……. Tut.”

He was expressing his displeasure at the change of government.

He had provided a fairly large sum as political funds, and in the end had his back shaken out.

The prosecution service, which has come down the ages exercising power almost like a criminal organisation, was the vanguard in it.

Rather than hurry more slush money in and let the thing grow, it was closed off with a public apology to the nation.

Ha Cheolgon was angry.

He was displeased at going up and down on people’s tongues over a matter that ought to have been covered.

“There is still not power enough……. Power!”

A flame rose in Chairman Ha Cheolgon’s eyes.

He is past eighty and has not yet submitted to fate.

There was a time when even this Chairman Ha Cheolgon was called the finest good-natured man under heaven, his generosity was so large.

The Ha people were open-handed and big of measure, generation on generation.

His grandfather, the first chairman, founded MG Group with a friend as partner and put up more of the capital.

And still he split the equity with the partner half and half, exactly.

The group was run jointly across three generations, with the partner’s descendants joining in as well.

The Ha Cheolgon of those days was a very different man from the Ha Cheolgon of now.

With the wife who is dead and gone now he lived like a pair of lovebirds.

After work he played with his children and did his duty by his parents.

With a comfortable life and an open heart he looked after the people around him as well.

Ha Cheolgon’s character changed to what it is in one morning.

He had been posted to the MG Electronics division just before.

It was certainly the growth business of the future, and Ha Cheolgon poured his whole soul into it.

The one way out that could stand against Ojeong!

And then something broke out that nobody had looked for.

His father…… handed that choice business over to MG.

Most of the board explained that the group’s division had been amicable, but it was nothing of the kind.

Haryun lost the MG name itself at the time and gave up the choice business with it.

Ha Cheolgon had been growing MG Electronics with everything in him, looking to the future.

It came to boiling the porridge and giving it to the dog.

The trouble was MG Group’s management, who were not equal to it.

The ones who joined at the start were not equal to it.

On that occasion Ha Cheolgon turned into an entirely different person.

He understood that being nothing but a good man means foolishly handing over your stake as well.

He judged that there is no need to be a good man in order to run a group.

Ha Cheolgon hardened from then.

While his father lived he kept his mouth shut and spared his words, and ground his teeth inwardly.

What he chose was to cut the connection with MG, boldly.

Turned cold-blooded, he drove his staff.

And his children the same.

He brought every means to bear on taking MG Group back.

To take power’s hand and build a line, he married his children off by arrangement as well.

Ha Cheolgon grew the power up by degrees to the level he wanted.

At the end of all that labour a decisive chance came.

That was twenty years ago.

There was a bite from an influential house that had an unusual appetite for his youngest son.

The daughter of that house had studied abroad.

There was a rumour, of course, that she had lived loosely out there, and Ha Cheolgon did not want to make much of it.

Make the marriage tie with them and it was the best possible chance of getting the electronics company back.

The thing broke because of the youngest son he had trusted.

The boy raised a flag against him, going on about some paltry love.

This was a youngest son who had obeyed his parents all the while he was growing.

That time he lifted his head and answered back.

Holding the anger, Ha Cheolgon tried persuasion and warned him several times.

He could not break a son who had taken his own late father’s stubbornness exactly, and in the end the boy chose the woman.

His pride injured, Ha Cheolgon put the son out of the house.

Ha Cheolgon took even a person’s own desires for a means of saving the group.

To such a man, anybody who resisted was of no use, child or not.

After that his wife took an illness inside her.

She never showed it, and a few years later she closed her eyes.

Losing his companion hurt, but he did not regret his choice.

MG Group cannot be taken back without going out hard!

And that chance is coming round again.

And to do the thing, still not power enough!

“What is it, then?”

Ha Cheolgon asked it, settling a quiet anger down.

“It’s…….”

“Speak.”

“A grandson of yours is going up and down on the tongues of the upper class.”

“A grandson? Which one?”

Only then did Ha Cheolgon show interest.

This is a time when there must be no noise on any issue at all.

A time to hold the breath until opinion has quietened further.

With every one of the household ordered to keep their conduct in check, and now the tongues??

“Master Ha Tae-ung.”

“Ha Tae-ung? And who is that?”

Ha Cheolgon was thrown by a name he had never heard.

A strange name, and not among the grandsons he knows.

“Which one of them has a son outside the marriage?”

Ha Cheolgon turned his thinking quickly the other way.

His sons, unlike their father, were complicated in their dealings with women.

“Young Master Donghwi’s…… son.”

“What? D— Donghwi??”

Sweep them away without a trace?

Ah Yura was thrown by the client’s specific requirement.

A grave voice, delivered in a low tone.

His words showed no feeling, and were fierce.

Anger hovered in his eyes.

Not a warning with a joke mixed into it. He means it.

Gulp.

Ah Yura swallowed on a dry throat at the killing intent coming across in the force of him.

The client in front of her is still a pupil.

And the presence coming off him is unbelievably…….

Dangerous!

The warning Attorney Kim Gyeongmin, her senior, had given her came back in that moment.

Get tangled with Haryun Group and she could find herself the vanguard commanding that battle!

Now she has met the substance of that warning.

The client Ha Tae-ung is the son of a deposed crown prince, put out by the Ha family.

And he is dreaming of treason.

Not a company that can be taken lightly.

An order to open war has been given against a company plainly among the country’s ten great groups.

There is no running.

The goblin lord prophesied it.

The moment you make up your mind to board the same boat, there is no running!

“Ten billion at the least will be needed.”

Ah Yura said it straight, with danger money included.

And ten billion is a figure measured at the minimum.

It is a matter of blowing away a rooted provincial official and a private lender.

Above all, the private lender connected to Haryun Group by some relation is the largest problem.

It can only be settled with men out of the courts brought in, and connections at the level of a district chief prosecutor.

And Jo and Jang’s active backing on top of that.

The moment it is opened to the upper line the pie grows past holding.

It is a matter of facing Haryun Group, at which even Jo and Jang can only hesitate.

“A hundred billion! That much is possible inside this month.”

“……!!”

From this moment it is a war of money.

That Haryun Group will not sit still once it catches the shape of this side’s plan is as plain as looking at a fire.

“Bring the press in as well, please.”

“Yes…….”

The client’s requirements are fine-grained and specific.

“The people who run video channels on gossip in particular — bring them over as well. Jo and Jang manages that side too, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Ah Yura answered straight.

By the look of it he knows it all already and is confirming.

“And…….”

The client looked at Ah Yura steadily.

Something unreadable spread in eyes that do not waver.

“Are you ready?”

“Y— yes??”

Ah Yura was thrown by the sudden question.

The client, with a cold look in his eye, laughs.

And Ah Yura felt heat in that cold energy instead.

It is late at night now.

Ah Yura is inside the home where a male client lives alone.

She understood where she was, and her heart went thud, thud, loudly.

And…….

(End of Chapter 94)