SK Asset 3

"I'll say just one thing."

"Say ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it."

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Doing about what?"

"You're asking because you don't know?"

Choi Seonggi's voice climbed, and Cha Jiyeon turned to look at him.

"We aren't actually married. It's a contract marriage. Sooner or later we go back to being strangers, don't we?"

"And?"

"Us. Mom. Dad. My sister. How exactly do you plan to clean up after all of this?"

"So I should turn a cold shoulder and pretend I don't know them? Because I'm Cha Jiyeon, second daughter of Gwangmyeong Group, a chaebol, I'm supposed to fold my arms and act like I'm a different species?"

"That isn't what I meant."

The contract would end someday. When it did, how was he supposed to tell his parents they had split? They adored her so fiercely it wouldn't have hurt them to set her in their eye.

"I give everything I do my best. If what you've gotten is a perfect wife, Mr. Choi, isn't that a good thing?"

"I'm grateful for that. Grateful for the apartment, too—nearly eighteen hundred square feet of it. Thank you for making my mom and dad happy, and my sister with them. But you have to keep the line."

"Why worry already about a future that isn't even clear? A person only has to do their best with what's in front of them."

"This isn't even who you really are."

At that, Cha Jiyeon's face crumpled all at once.

"And how would you know whether this is the real me or not?"

"You're telling me this isn't an act?"

"Act or no act, I'm still me. Isn't that right? You put on an act too, Mr. Choi. Only now do I feel like I'm seeing who you actually are."

"My real self?"

"Most of the time you're all bluster, swaggering around like you're someone important. The moment family gets involved, though, out come the feelings, all in a rush."

"You think this is a face that wouldn't get angry? To you they're people passing through. I have to look after my family until the day I die."

"Why do you insist on seeing it only that way?"

"What?"

You don't know, so you have to ask? You lay a hand on someone else's family and then wash your hands of them—and that's supposed to make sense?

"You're the one who touched my family, Seonggi. You saved my grandfather. You took the inheritance."

"That was... of course I had to save him."

"Either way, you left a mark on my family. Same as I did."

"You think those are the same thing? All I did was what any person would have done."

The tires screamed. In the next instant Cha Jiyeon pulled the car onto the shoulder.

"Yeah. I'm grateful for that, too. And you, right now, Mr. Choi—I like this. Very much."

"Enjoying yourself, provoking me?"

"No. I feel like I'm finally getting to know Choi Seonggi properly."

The eyes she turned on him held not one shred of a lie.

"And once you know ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me, what do you mean to do with that?"

"What did you say?"

"We're late. Let's go!"

She put the car in gear and pulled away again.

He couldn't sleep. What Cha Jiyeon had said kept circling him the whole night.

The face she had shown his mother, his father, and Eunju—his family—had been perfection itself. The trouble was that the bond was a lie, and that was what had set him off. They were two people who would part someday. Pretending to be family until then was not all right. Turn it over as he might, that was the part he could not forgive. On the one hand he was genuinely grateful: she had bought them a house, buried them under gifts, and looked after everyone as a sweet daughter-in-law and a doting sister-in-law. On the other, it felt like something that should never have been done.

Who knows? Maybe we'll end up together?

Why had she said a thing like that? That proud woman who never thought of anyone but herself.

He worried it through and, as he always did, arrived at a single conclusion.

"Right. A man like me has to stay a little devastating. Tsk. I told myself to be careful. Drop your guard and you'll fall right in. I said it plain as day."

Yes. However he turned it, that seemed to be the only answer.

A faint patter of keys drifted in from the next room. Tick. Tick-tick. Tick. That one wasn't normal either. No—he had never been normal to begin with, had he? Choi Seonggi got up and headed next door.

It was two in the morning. Night in Yangpyeong began when the sun dropped around seven, and at this hour the dark out here was fathomless.

He knocked. No answer, of course. He eased the door open.

"It's late. You're not asleep?"

Cha Yohan sat before four monitors, hands flying over the keys.

"Cha Yohan! I asked if you're sleeping."

"Sleeping! Just a little more play."

"You gaming?"

Seonggi stepped in behind him and looked at the screens. Numbers shot up and plunged back down. What filled the windows were Nasdaq stocks: one monitor crowded with tickers, another alive with graphs in a dance, a third packed with news in English, and the last one open on several trading tickets at once.

For a while he simply watched.

Yohan never touched the mouse. Keyboard alone, he whipped across all four screens and fired off trades in a blink—selling one position for a dollar of profit, dumping another even at a ten-dollar loss, buying and selling a handful of names at the same time. Follow it with the eye and you were already lost.

On one of the windows, the words Total Assets.

Five hundred sixty-two thousand dollars. Roughly seven hundred eighty million won. He had put a billion won into the account that morning, which meant two hundred twenty million had gone up in smoke. So the money he'd made on the Korean exchange had been beginner's luck after all. A billion won. So what.

"You lost money? Cha Yohan! That's enough. Go to sleep!"

"Fill one million dollars. Then sleep."

"You don't have to fill it! What if you lose even more? You're already down!"

"Didn't lose. Up four hundred sixty-two thousand, four hundred twenty dollars."

"What are you talking about? I gave you a billion won. The principal ought to be about seven hundred thousand dollars."

"Only put one hundred thousand dollars in the account."

"What?"

Sleep had already refused him, and now it felt as if someone had struck him across the back of the head. So he hadn't started from seven hundred thousand at all. He had put in a hundred thousand and grown it to five hundred sixty-two. A four-hundred-sixty-percent return? In that short a time?

"If you don't sleep, you don't get to play with Moneyball tomorrow!"

"I'm filling one million dollars."

"One hour! If you don't hit a million inside that, you go straight to sleep. Understood?"

"Logged."

The moment a limit was set, Cha Yohan's keys went faster still. The scroll raced past anything a normal person could read, and even so he was closing two or three trades every ten seconds.

Seonggi shook his head at the sight. The billion won had been money he'd written off from the start. Yohan was someone who could have been handed not one billion but a hundred billion and still have deserved it. He was Chairman Cha Wonseok's son, after all. Seonggi watched him a moment longer, went back to the bedroom, and fell asleep at once.

"How do you find the Yangpyeong mansion?"

"Quiet. A good place to live."

"Is that so? I thought it would be hard on a young man. If anything's inconvenient, you tell me anytime. For your sake I could buy you an officetel in Gangnam—one of those sleek one-room towers—whenever you liked."

"The offer alone is more than enough."

Chairman Cha Jinpyo was smiling exactly as he did on television: the generous, good-natured man from next door. That, more than anything, sharpened Choi Seonggi's focus.

"Now that you're one of the Cha family, it's time you came into the Group and did some work. Wouldn't you say?"

Our business ought to be finished already. Why is he being so kind?

That was why Seonggi sat tense. A man who, the moment someone displeased him, had not hesitated to send people in and have them beaten—suddenly all kindness? That meant something. Laugh, enjoy yourself, and before you knew it you would be at the bottom of the pit. People did not change.

"I'd rather keep my head down and focus on the business I mean to run."

"IT, wasn't it? I hear there's nothing in that. Ah—cryptocurrency, was it?"

"Most of the companies inside the world's top ten right now are IT firms."

"Only when the money and the technology are already piled in one place. Putter along at the level of a corner shop and what kind of living do you expect to make?"

For a moment he had forgotten he was speaking to the chairman of a group. The man had the point exactly. In a market where the trend turned ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over by the hour, there was no chance he didn't know the lay of the industry.

"So. How about working as one of us?"

"I can't shut down what's already underway overnight. That makes it a little difficult."

"Surely a way can be found. If it's the ban on outside work that worries you, put it out of your mind."

Every exit plugged, and still he pushes. Boxed in for good.

"If it won't get in the way of the work I'm already doing, I'll consider it."

"That's the spirit. A man of the Cha family ought to lend a hand to Gwangmyeong. Stands to reason."

Seonggi gave no answer. He looked out the window instead. The chairman's office, the top of the Gwangmyeong Building in Gangnam, thirty-five floors up—the view was handsome enough. Most of the lesser towers below him showed nothing but the flat crowns of their roofs, and far off only Lotte Tower in Jamsil stood up like a mage's spire out of some fantasy.

"Fine view, isn't it?"

"It is."

"Everything in the world lies under my feet. Our Gwangmyeong Group will sweep up the lot of it."

Stay in a room like this long enough and a man could almost believe he had the whole world beneath his heel.

"Ah... time for my outside appointment. I ought to have at least offered you a meal. Secretary Kwon will be in touch."

"Then I'll be going."

Seonggi rose, gave Cha Jinpyo a short bow, and left the room. The moment he was out of the chairman's office, the smile slid off Cha Jinpyo's face and twisted into something grotesque, as if it had never been there.

The Large Enterprise Export Support Bill, the one he had driven forward even to the point of bribing a ruling-party assemblyman, was stuck, unable to clear the standing committee against the opposition. All of it thanks to that damned Assemblyman Lee Sangdong, who flew into a fit the moment anyone so much as said chaebol or conglomerate.

In that instant an extraordinary plan took shape in Cha Jinpyo's head. A plan that could finish, in a single stroke, both the thorn in his eye that was Assemblyman Lee Sangdong and this Choi Seonggi who had come tumbling in out of nowhere.

What he was weighing was whether the name Gwangmyeong would come to light. Even if it did, it hardly seemed to matter. Play the victim well enough and he might walk away with an even greater gain. No—if he meant to drag ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Lee Sangdong down, the Gwangmyeong name would have to surface regardless.

The phone rang. He checked the number. Aide Choi.

He was asking for money. A few days ago Jinpyo had given him two hundred million won, and here he was wanting more. Still, he rather liked a man of this sort. Whatever they swallowed, they coughed back up.

Which meant: send the car to Parking Lot 2 at Gwangmyeong Country Club, the Asan course, Wednesday at two. The Chihuahua was the opposition's fourth-term man, Assemblyman Lee Sangdong.

He hung up, and his face twisted further. They had spoken entirely in cipher, so that even if the call were recorded and made public he had left himself a way out. These days there was no one you could trust. Even an assemblyman's staff lived in a world where they might be standing in front of reporters at any moment.

How much would it take to push the man through for certain? More was better, but give too much and it had a way of turning on you afterward. It needed to slide down the throat just deep enough, and leave no unease once it was swallowed. Something that would fit in a shopping bag—five hundred million won ought to do.

Cha Jinpyo lifted the phone at once and called somewhere else.

Anyone listening would have heard nothing but an ordinary call between a fond uncle and his nephew. Both of them had understood every word.

How much do I give Chief Prosecutor Yoo Byeongheon?

This damned world would not turn unless you greased it. The same anywhere, really. Scatter a little pocket change here and there and, in the end, it came back as a proper sum.

"Should have just done as you were told. Why wouldn't you listen. Tsk, tsk."

He ought to have felt guilt, or at least some sorry twinge. He felt nothing of the kind. The lucky charm had played its part; now it was time to wear the crime and go to prison. A pity, but he would have to spend something like five hundred million won.

"Puhahahaha."

The more he thought about it, the funnier the way of the world became.