“You’ve been reusing wreaths, haven’t you?”

“Sorry? Reusing wreaths?”

Tae-ung’s Flower Shop, next to the Sokcho intercity bus stop.

Han Jiyun, who had come in in a fresh mood and was trimming the flowers bought at the market before dawn, was thrown.

Right on opening time a man in his late forties with a belly on him had burst in.

“A tip-off’s come in. You’d do better to admit it straight.”

The man had a notebook out, and drove at her one way as though he were questioning a suspect.

His eyes seemed more interested in Han Jiyun herself than in the business he had come on.

She is a woman with looks rarely seen in Sokcho.

Heh heh. This missus is a tidy one.

“Who are you?”

“Me? This is who I am.”

The man took something out from his breast pocket.

—PUBLIC OFFICIAL’S CARD

—Officer, Jang Gwanyong

—Sokcho City

A public official’s card, briefly filled in, with an identity photograph.

“And so?”

“And so? Missus!!”

Jang Gwanyong roared it out with neither bottom nor end to it.

“Did you display the reusing seller’s trade name?”

“…….”

Han Jiyun shut her mouth at Jang Gwanyong’s pressing.

Feeling it now? Caught you nicely!

Most retail flower shops reuse their wreaths.

It was a thing allowed by custom to begin with, and under pressure applied from the flower-growing farms a penalty law came in for it.

“Haa.”

A sigh escaped Han Jiyun’s mouth.

A glance is enough — she is plainly at a loss.

“You know the fine is ten million won?”

Jang Gwanyong judged he had a proper case in hand, and made a queer smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Mister.”

“……??”

And the look the flower shop’s mistress turns on him is a strange one.

It is an eye that looks at Jang Gwanyong as though he were pitiful.

“An official is in the execution of his duties here——”

“We don’t sell them.”

“……??”

“Our shop doesn’t handle wreaths at all.”

“……!!”

Jang Gwanyong’s face went pale on the instant.

Flower shops as a rule handle a tidy amount of money on the large-size wreaths.

And she doesn’t sell them?

“Who put you up to it?”

“…….”

“Kang Deuksu. Was it him?”

“…….”

“Old Kang Deuksu’s son, Kang Hongcheol. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“……!!”

Jang Gwanyong’s face got to the point of rotting inward.

Has it leaked? How does this missus know the whole of it?

Jang Gwanyong had drink bought for him by Kang Hongcheol yesterday.

Kang Hongcheol had unloaded his complaint about a flower shop that had been a tenant in his father’s building and gone.

On the narrow Sokcho patch, handling a request like that is no work at all.

The power a provincial official exercises in particular is a different power from the central bodies’.

The age changed and it still works.

Fall out with provincial officials for nothing and even settling somewhere and living becomes uncomfortable.

And the flower shop’s mistress is coming out with an unexpected firmness.

“Officer Jang.”

Han Jiyun named the title exactly.

“This business. Can you carry it?”

“……??”

“My husband is Haryun Group’s youngest son. You’re doing this knowing that, are you?”

“Whaaaaat??”

“Dahui-ya~ Dahui-ya~ Dahui-ya~”

Yang Docheol called the name three times over in a row.

This is the director’s office at DMC Entertainment.

Yang Docheol sat crooked with one leg over the other, looking at Seo Dahui.

“Yes……. Director.”

She could not hide the shaking, and there was a strength in Seo Dahui’s eyes that had not been there before.

Look at this, now.

Yang Docheol has handled better than several hundred trainees and signed entertainers by now.

To a man who reads the state of another’s mind off the eyes alone, the young lamb in front of him is pushing back hard.

Still all right even with the years on her?

Yang Docheol is exactly the base sort who has never once been caught by MeToo and has dodged it well.

He stretched the filthy hand out more concentratedly at trainees who wanted to be stars.

With Seo Dahui too he worked at it a few times to get her into his grip, and did not get so much as a grain in.

Seo Dahui has had a higher education and graduated top of her year.

She could not be handled roughly without thinking.

Holding a woman singer-songwriter with a born gift for composition on top of it is not a simple matter.

Even so, it is time now for a settling with Seo Dahui.

If the renewal does not come off, she cannot be left to turn her back on the house that raised her and do well.

A beautiful parting from the agency?

All nonsense.

And Seo Dahui is a signed singer with good future value.

For a product like that to refuse renewal, the release conditions are more exacting.

They come to the same as a new signing’s terms.

No — she is put on worse ones.

On that count Seo Dahui stands very badly.

No money put by, and no sponsor’s power to exert itself for her.

“Well, then. You’ll renew?”

Yang Docheol asked it straight in.

This is the point at which it is settled.

“……I’ll think about it.”

Seo Dahui bit her lip briefly and does not give a firm answer.

Playing hard to the end, is it? Heh heh.

“Clear the flat.”

“Director! The costs are being paid out of my own track revenue!”

“You’re not running events these days, are you? Revenue? How much do you suppose is left once it’s all taken off? Do you think we’re some sort of charity?”

A sneer at the corner of his mouth, Yang Docheol scratched quietly at Seo Dahui.

“And you’re refusing the agency’s instructions as well, aren’t you? I hear you’re not keeping to the diet and you said you didn’t want a manager? Then it’s the flat cleared, the car returned, and the manager off.”

Seo Dahui closed a fist at Yang Docheol’s words.

Son of a bitch!

A vicious contract she would have a good chance of winning against in a suit is what has her by the ankle now.

And Seo Dahui has not even the cost of a suit.

The money she barely gets settled now comes to no more than holding out through a day.

“You’ll want today to pack, so return it tomorrow morning.”

Yang Docheol closed the interview off with a one-sided notice.

“And as to the breaches of contract…… you’ll be notified of the particulars shortly.”

“Breaches of contract? What have I……?”

“Ah! You’ll know when you get it! Off you go.”

The flow has changed.

I went in to school for the first time in a while.

7 June 2022.

Yesterday I took reports of one kind and another from Attorney Ah Yura and gave instructions off them.

An interview with a Jo and Jang attorney is available at any hour, on a contracted client’s proper request.

Yesterday’s meeting with the attorney was a great help.

It is a size I cannot settle alone, and I am weak on manpower and on time.

It is a piece of wisdom I came by in the course of a poor working life.

This is not a thing within the range of one man.

If the money is there, the right thing is to give specialist work to professionals.

Not power enough! Power!

It is only just after the regression, and a bare step has been taken.

What has been settled amounts to the trauma school life gave me.

In the past I was a shadow hidden in the shade inside this school.

Now I have come out into the sun and become a real person, with his presence sharply shown.

Nobody picks any quarrel with me.

Oh Gwangjun, who used to torment me, is busy keeping his eyes away.

The children who were haughty and impudent watch for my mood too.

And the staff the same, of course.

Being of the Haryun Group family is itself a calling card in this country.

My grandad will have heard the rumour by now.

What happened at Cheonghwa after the regression — every action of mine was deliberate.

I could have lived as though dead, the way I did before, but I do not want a tiring life any longer.

With a Jo and Jang attorney for a helper, I made my name known exactly.

Starting from that, I will tighten on my grandad and on the members of Haryun Group with him.

It is my turn to feel the real weight of a revenge taken on people who know it is being done to them.

In exchange I will keep the tension up.

The moment it goes slack, what was done before could be done again.

They are people with more than enough in them for it!

They endangered a nephew of their own blood by way of a warning.

My grandad will have known, and there was never one apology.

And in the end they drove my father into his death!

Grrrrk.

Think of it again and the teeth grind.

Their filthy hand toward my parents was ready long before.

The thug bastards who would connect with Yang Susan.

And behind them Haryun Group’s trace, hovering.

My father was removed inside their plan.

Bring back what Mom and I had to take afterwards and I cannot forgive it, not ever.

“Tae-ung-a…….”

A voice called me carefully.

I came to with a start.

“Mm? What?”

I came out of the thinking I had sunk into and gathered the force back in.

Right beside me Lee Hyoju was looking at me with her big eyes gone round.

“Just then, you were frightening…….”

Lee Hyoju’s colour is white.

Because of the killing intent I was giving off just now.

The force writhing inside me to wake is a black flame dragon.

“Ah. Sorry.”

“I— it’s all right……. Well, these things happen.”

The breadth of Lee Hyoju’s understanding is out of the ordinary.

She is blood of a distinguished group herself, so she seems to understand me.

“Shall we go and eat?”

“Yes.”

Lee Hyoju is a fixed member of the canteen party.

Jiung will have gone ahead and be waiting in front of the canteen.

Rrrattle.

I lifted myself out of the chair.

And just then.

“You’re Ha Tae-ung?”

“……??”

Somebody asked it, coming up.

(End of Chapter 95)