“I’ve read the report. Jo and Jang, as one would expect.”

“Thank you!”

The chief’s room at Pacific Fisheries, after the company’s chief had been taken away by the police.

Ha Donghwi sat on the sofa in the chief’s room, facing Attorneys Kim Gyeongmin and Ah Yura.

His manner was composed.

Not the male lion of a moment ago, eyes wide, talking of hell to Yang Susan.

His eyes, deep as a well, showed not a stir of feeling anywhere.

This is why chaebol blood is a different thing.

Kim Gyeongmin confirmed it once again.

The several chaebol sons he has handled as clients in the course of practising.

Ordinary citizens curse them, and Kim Gyeongmin does not curse them out of hand.

The ones who sink into money and power and carry on without any iron in them are weeded out in the end, naturally.

The members of a chaebol who carry the line on face life with an attitude beyond ordinary people’s.

Fall behind inside the market’s competition and you are cut out of the power structure in an instant and vanish down the back lane of history.

The blood of the Haryun Group chairman, facing him now.

He is a crown prince deposed.

His father, the Haryun Group chairman, put him out of the house.

And a man who had been living hidden in a provincial city is preparing to come out into the world again.

A movement like this will reach the Haryun house before long.

Who on earth…… is the real money man?

The client who engaged the two attorneys first is Ha Tae-ung.

He does not think a boy of high-school standing designed the whole of this.

It is likelier by far that the father, Ha Donghwi, was working Ha Tae-ung from behind.

“What becomes of Yang Susan?”

“He’ll find it hard to get out. With the information we’ve gathered, and once the ledgers taken in the search and seizure are confirmed……. It will come to over ten billion at the least.”

“Five years at the least, then.”

“If it is proved that the funds siphoned off by embezzlement and breach of trust went on gambling, ten years and more is possible.”

“Please. More than that.”

“Yes sir!”

Two men who were friends until yesterday.

Ha Donghwi has no thought of forgiving the traitor Yang Susan.

There was no plan to go this far from the start.

The manner Yang Susan showed to his face, past every line and a long way past, turned Ha Donghwi’s thinking over.

I was Ha blood too.

The anger writhing in him stood a blue edge up.

Toward a man who had used him from the beginning, no mercy of any kind came out.

Had he been used and brought down like this, the wash of it would have reached his wife and his son.

The traitor bastard who meant to smash three lives to pieces.

“What should be done from here?”

Ha Donghwi knows Jo and Jang’s power well enough.

“There was an instruction to take the acquisition of Pacific Fisheries through.”

“That instruction. Was it Tae-ung?”

“Yes sir!”

“…….”

Ha Donghwi closed both eyes and held them shut.

It is not that anything like pride was hurt.

His one son, who has taken Haryun’s genes down from him.

I’m sorry. Son.

He had not wanted to show his son a sight like this.

And heaven opened a different road.

With the billion won his mother left as she went, his son hit it enormous.

The course his son is showing is out of every frame.

He moved Jo and Jang and struck Yang Susan.

Without ever consulting his own father.

A few days later and Yang Susan would have been lost.

And now at last an instruction to acquire Pacific Fisheries as well.

“The funds…….”

Ha Donghwi, being sales director, did not know the company’s financial state clearly.

The finance director and Yang Susan in particular hid it thoroughly and never once opened it.

“The official debt alone comes to about a hundred billion.”

“A hundred billion??”

Ha Donghwi started and asked it back.

Pacific Fisheries’ net assets were once on the scale of a hundred billion.

The frozen and chilled stores and the land under them took up a high proportion of the assets.

“Against the maximum secured on the charges, the land price is considerable. Counting asset value alone it is on the order of two hundred billion at the least. Acquiring is positive enough.”

Kim Gyeongmin gave his personal opinion.

An acquisition the client Ha Tae-ung has said to push.

Jo and Jang’s information team moved and looked over Pacific Fisheries’ debts.

Mad bastard. He handed the whole of a choice thing like this over at a knockdown price.

Kim Gyeongmin swallowed a curse several times going through the financial state.

Yang Susan, the company’s chief, was a madman.

A man who borrowed money with no thread to it, however it came, in every direction at once.

Business ability zero.

He ate up every venture he started outside the main trade.

He raised on the first tier, and the second tier, and private lending on top.

Interest grew interest.

The banks in first rank are no problem.

Adjusting the interest with the second-rank lenders is possible to a degree as well.

The problem is the private lending!

It is not an official debt, and still they will come to recover the money regardless of anything.

One slip and blood could be seen.

“I’m against it.”

Ah Yura, who had been quietly listening, opened her mouth then.

“If you’re against it…….”

Ha Donghwi read business, and he has no experience of the practical side.

Busy making a living, he dug only at the selling.

“I think it would be better to let it default and take the properties through auction, which washes them clean. The maximum secured by the second-tier lenders is considerable. Let word of an acquisition get about and they’ll make a pretext of something and try to recover the lot.”

Ah Yura putting a finger squarely and objectively on the part the two of them were overlooking.

“…….”

Ha Donghwi sank into thought.

Before his son left for Seoul yesterday he gave him one tip.

Drag it out one month and it is done.

“Has the provisional attachment on Yang Susan’s property gone ahead?”

“The only clean thing was the burial mountain. The papers, here. The chief directorship is vacant at present, so a director with a vote need only give authority.”

Kim Gyeongmin, who had prepared the whole run of necessary papers before coming here.

“Push the attachment forward, please. And send tax and accounting specialists, people who can be trusted.”

“Yes sir!”

Work. Heh heh!

Kim Gyeongmin cheered inwardly.

The matter is one whose word came through Ah Yura from the client Ha Tae-ung.

Never mind what it costs — wreck him!

The prosecution line and the police line moved at once.

There are several men out of the courts connected to Jo and Jang.

Given payment enough they knock up crimes that do not exist.

And in this matter the offence is a bad one!

Judging that they need not throw justice over, everybody who decided to take part is delighted.

Work that takes a considerable fee and realises justice at the same time!

Kim Gyeongmin, running as partner attorney with Ah Yura and short of work lately, has taken hold of a proper seam.

Handle this well and…….

Ha Donghwi, direct line of the present Haryun Group chairman Ha Cheolgon, stepping onto the field.

The larger the board a case is on, the more work and the more cost.

“I’ll be trusting the two of you.”

“Don’t worry! From personal protection to settling everything round about, we’ll handle it perfectly!”

Attorney Kim Gyeongmin, put through his own paces automatically by the size of the work.

He too is a Jo and Jang attorney.

If there is money in it…… he can gladly take even a devil’s hand.

I looked closely at Kang Junu once again.

Not a good-looking face.

The spread shoulders and the physical condition are the equal of a sportsman’s.

He did not take after a mother of outstanding looks.

Kang Junu, with a high proportion from his father’s side, by the look of it.

He has thrown a test question at me.

The remark about dropping the formal speech means making an alliance as friends.

Not a simple decision.

He is at present the idol of every pupil at Cheonghwa High School.

Friends with me, an official charity case?

“You know my situation?”

“I know. The rumour’s gone all round. One of the Haryun Group family, and…….”

Kang Junu not carrying the rest on, and swallowing it.

“And knowing that, it’s all right?”

Coming to find me himself, sharing out even his own half of a sandwich, and trying to make an alliance — I do not know Kang Junu’s real mind.

Look only at him and me and it is a children’s business.

Bring the groups into it and it becomes a fight among the adults on the ground.

Which is why it needs confirming.

A matter between Kang Junu and me can become a matter between Haryun and Ilseong.

“I don’t know about all that, and I like you.”

“…….”

“In all my life I’ve never seen anybody my own age carry himself the way you do. And the eyes are good.”

Kang Junu’s voice and his eyes are full of liking.

And so are mine.

The wave of force coming off the whole of Kang Junu is clear and pure.

What the future holds I do not know, and what can be confirmed now is positive enough.

“You don’t know I’ve got no friends, do you?”

Kang Junu disclosed something private.

“I want to live ordinarily too, and the people round me are no help. There’s nothing to be done about it, and sometimes it’s sad.”

I nodded, meaning that I understood.

“And you draw me, somewhat. You’re a year older than me as well, aren’t you?”

A nod.

“And I’m a school year above you. So we each take one off and be friends. How’s that?”

Kang Junu’s proposal, his laughing eyes full of expectation.

I still do not know his real mind.

And it is not a bad proposal.

“Deal!”

I answered briefly and accepted.

“Puhahaha! I do like you! Ha Tae-ung!”

I took the hand Kang Junu put out.

A tingling current.

A hot wave of force came across.

Kang Junu’s words and his actions are not a joke.

“From now you’re the society’s vice president.”

“……??”

Vice president??

“By the president’s authority I appoint you…… vice president of the Management Studies Society. Friend! Hahahahaha.”

“…….”

This bodes ill.

I think…… I’ve been caught in something.

(End of Chapter 98)