Confiscation
“Does that make any sense at all?”
With a wild swing of Jo Taekyung’s golf club, a priceless celadon vase shattered with a deafening crash.
Fragments flew in every direction, but the retainers lined up in the study did not even dare to breathe.
He was, in name and reputation, one of the men vying for the top position among the Gyeonghwa Noble Families, yet now he was being rendered powerless. And even Kim Yang-han of the Kim family was no different.
Until now, they had intermarried with the imperial family and built ties that stretched across generations.
As much as they respected the imperial house, the imperial house had respected them in return.
Of course, there had been those in between who abandoned their imperial-affiliated bloodline and married commoners, discarding the shield that had protected them for so long.
So of course many of them—including Jo Taekyung and Kim Yang-han—had pleaded illness and stayed away from the state wedding.
They didn’t particularly care that the Crown Prince had died. Once he had chosen to go that far, moving to depose him had become inevitable anyway.
The problem was—
In the middle of all this, someone who had no blood ties or vested interests with the old noble houses had taken the throne.
So the Gyeonghwa Noble Families had no choice but to bind themselves together and reestablish their relationship with the imperial house.
But look at the situation now.
Instead of bringing the emperor back into the web they had spun for him, the old families were being torn apart at the seams.
“Did the Kim family betray us?”
Jo Taekyung’s voice came out trembling.
“I knew something was off the moment Kim Yang-han started acting like he was in bed with the emperor! Right after His Majesty ascended the throne, he was wagging his tail all by himself and dancing to the beat, and in the end he sold us out as sacrificial lambs so he could leave a way out for his own people!”
It was like being struck hard from behind.
Betrayal.
The Kim family had betrayed them!
He had long since seen through Kim Yang-han’s hypocrisy and pretense.
Even so, he had trusted in the man’s pride as a great aristocratic house, and in the enormous damage that family would suffer if things ever came to this.
Had the old bastard, with death already at his door, latched onto the emperor because of some pathetic hunger for honor?
And dragged the other Gyeonghwa Noble Families down to hell while he was at it?
But the ones below him could see the situation even more clearly.
“It seems Grandfather isn’t in a position to judge things properly.”
“That’s right.”
“From the way things are going, our own family won’t be able to avoid being dragged off to the Joint Investigation Headquarters either.”
The world had changed.
The massive laundering of slush funds tied to the Gyeonghwa Noble Families had already been flagged by the Joint Investigation Headquarters as an offense bordering on insurrection.
And if it came out that they had also pocketed some of the public donations gathered by ordinary citizens—however small that portion might be—where, exactly, would the public fury turn?
It had once been an era when they didn’t have to care what the common people said. The problem now was that the emperor had been given an environment in which he could swing a knife as wildly as he pleased.
In truth, what the Gyeonghwa Noble Families were experiencing now was no different from a natural disaster they had never had to face before.
No one thinks about standing up to a typhoon or a tsunami.
They either crouch low and wait for the storm to pass—
Or I step in first and shove the other bastards under the bus!
“It looks like Kim A-ra has, in effect, taken over JD.”
“A woman of low birth, and yet such a standout. Perhaps we should also—”
Kim A-ra had taken JD Group and gone independent. Those who wanted to imitate the survivor were already rising to their feet.
The ones thinking, If I just get rid of that bastard, I can eat this whole family by myself?
The ones who had always been sick of the sight of those who strutted around as if mere legitimate birth made them special.
The ones with so much guilt gnawing at them that, if they were only spared, they would happily sell anyone out.
For one reason or another, there was no shortage of people charging toward the Joint Investigation Headquarters with the ledgers they had carefully hoarded.
It was the so-called war of all against all.
Cousins and illegitimate children from the neglected branches, company presidents who had spent their lives as number twos, even retainers—people who had been held down for decades all began to bare their teeth. They coughed politely, made a show of clearing their throats, and plunged into the vacuum.
Well, wasn’t this exactly a case of first come, first served?
A blood-soaked, muddy free-for-all had erupted as everyone fought to carve up the choicest assets of companies and conglomerates.
Their one and only purpose was simple.
To find a lifeline in this chaos and hook themselves to the emperor.
“Who is close to His Majesty? I’ll sacrifice my entire fortune if I have to—just get me connected!”
“Seo Yu-jin! And who else was it... the Marine? Find a way to get a line into that side!”
“Dump lobbying funds into the Joint Investigation Headquarters! Anything, anything at all—just let them spare me!”
It was utter pandemonium.
They were being ripped apart with perfect completeness.
* * *
After the implementation of the Financial Real-Name System.
Fortunately, the government’s forceful stance not only stabilized the market quickly but pushed it into an even stronger upward trend.
The public reaction, naturally, was explosive.
And once that was combined with the fury toward the forces that had been manipulating the stock market for so long, the results were inevitable.
The reaction was, in a word, explosive.
Among them, the title of the post that received the overwhelming number of upvotes was simple and to the point.
Beneath the screenshot showing returns in the thousands of percent, thousands of comments poured in in real time, each one feeding the frenzy.
······Somehow, the community really wasn’t all that different from the old world after all.
As I was looking over the reactions compiled and submitted by the secretariat, Seo Yu-jin continued.
“There are voices expressing concern over the sudden weakening of the Gyeonghwa Noble Families’ influence, but they remain limited to a minority view.”
Kim A-ra had taken over JD Group.
Even Kim Mun, the head of what could be called the spearhead of the Gyeonghwa Noble Families, had bent the knee.
Compared to the Kim side, which Kim A-ra had effectively swallowed whole, the situation of the other noble families was little short of a disaster.
“A bit of traffic control should be enough.”
“By traffic control, do you mean—?”
“If we leave them alone, the corporations will be torn apart in the sky and countless citizens will lose their jobs.”
We’d cut off the rotten head, so now it was time to pick up the still-useful limbs and put them to work for the national economy.
While we were at it, we could also kick out the flies buzzing around, trying to gorge themselves on the choicest companies.
Seo Yu-jin nodded at my words and held out a new file folder.
“This is the list Kim A-ra Chairwoman submitted as an apology and compensation on behalf of the family after bringing Kim Mun under control.”
The other Gyeonghwa Noble Families, or what remained of them, would likely respond in much the same way.
Seo Yu-jin went on.
“I had a rough idea, but even so, the scale and actual contents are beyond anything I imagined.”
“How bad are we talking?”
I opened the folder.
And then I understood clearly enough why the old men of the Gyeonghwa Noble Families had been able to play kingmaker in this country.
Why the government had been forced to watch their every move and never dared touch them recklessly.
Because, having no interest in commerce—or rather, because even when they were interested, they ordered the illegitimate children and retainers to handle it in public—the Gyeonghwa Noble Families had instead accumulated land in their own names.
Ownership of export-import port land along the western coast. Stakes in the core privately funded highways and transport terminals connecting the country. Major logistics centers, real estate in prime metropolitan areas, and private school foundations.
And even operating rights to three privately funded power plants tied into the national electricity grid.
You could hardly call it anything other than a modern-day right to collect rent.
“······And this is only some of it?”
“Yes. We’ll need to investigate further, but sorting through assets on this scale is taking time. For now, these are the first assets slated for confiscation.”
I followed Seo Yu-jin’s words and sharply tapped one page of the dossier with my finger.
“Kim A-ra kept her promise without fail.”
The woman had no doubt decided that if she couldn’t keep certain things for herself, she might as well hand them over cleanly and drain the remaining Kim faction of all its strength.
“Jangdong is moving relatively quickly because of Chairwoman Kim A-ra’s cooperation. As for the other aristocratic families—”
“Similar measures will be necessary.”
The Kim family had already been absorbed quickly by Kim A-ra, so they were closer to someone crawling before the fact, trying to get on the right side of things early.
As for the other Gyeonghwa Noble Families still locked in open bloodshed, I wasn’t sure whether they simply hadn’t noticed, or had decided it wasn’t worth paying attention to.
There was still compensation due to the victims who had been lured into the gold-hoarding campaign.
Even if the monetary amount was not especially large, the problem was public opinion and the charges attached to it. If they did not step forward and “contribute” in advance, they would be gouged for it later in the form of fines and additional levies.
Those who had already been detained would inevitably have no choice but to grovel in order to receive reduced criminal penalties.
When Kim A-ra’s information on the other families was combined with the intelligence being gathered by the imperial household, the outline of how much of the bastards’ limbs needed to be cut off would soon come into view.
“Prepare administrative orders to nationalize these key facilities in sequence, and to substantially lighten the burden on citizens’ household finances.”
I’m not one of those who thinks nationalization is the answer to everything, but once the original owner has the Gyeonghwa Noble Families’ stamp on it, that’s a different story.
Because they controlled this kind of critical infrastructure, they had always been able to jerk politicians around no matter which party was in power or which emperor sat the throne, and even, as in the present case, deliberately stir up an economic crisis.
If the situation had dragged on, they might even have engineered a logistics disaster on purpose.
So yes—cutting off their heads quickly had been the right move.
If I hadn’t, they would have tried to reach into my own government too.
But that part had, more or less, been brought under control.
What remained was simply to decide which weakened nobles deserved to die and which deserved to live.
“One important matter remains.”
Seo Yu-jin bowed her head as she spoke.
“You must prepare for the enthronement ceremony.”
“The enthronement ceremony.”
It hadn’t been an option before, and I’d been postponing it because there were more urgent matters at hand.
But now there was no reason to hold it back. If anything, it would make a fitting declaration of victory over the Gyeonghwa Noble Families.
I nodded at Seo Yu-jin, and she replied with perfect deference.
“I will prepare everything without fail. Ah, and—”
I could already tell what Seo Yu-jin was about to say next.
I spoke first.
“It seems the time has come to bring this state of emergency to an end.”
With the Gyeonghwa Noble Families all swept away, there was no longer any justification for maintaining a de facto direct rule.
It would be better to begin returning the country to normal.
······If there was any such thing as “normal” left in this country, that is.
I said,
“I should appoint a prime minister.”