The Butterfly Settles the Debt
"Why are you coming with us, Mr. Terry?"
"You're the young lady's husband. That makes it my business too."
"You really don't have to come..."
"Planning to hog all the fun for yourself? Don't even start."
Na Dohyung sat behind the wheel, Terry Park in the passenger seat. They were on the road to the Yangpyeong Mansion. Seonggi had meant to ride back with Na Dohyung alone, but Terry had insisted on tagging along and climbed in after them.
"You figured it out?"
"Isn't it obvious? I'd have done the same thing, so of course you did too. Why else pull cash in the middle of all this?"
"You're in your forties now. You ought to look after yourself."
"I'm still in my prime... Body's just a little stiff, that's all."
Seonggi couldn't make heads or tails of the exchange.
"I thought it would be fine if I just went with Secretary Na."
He said it carefully.
"If we were only headed for the Yangpyeong Mansion, I wouldn't have bothered coming. But this Nabi of ours is cooking up something cute."
"A plan? What kind of plan?"
"There's something that needs taking care of."
"May I ask what, exactly, you intend to take care of?"
At the question, Na Dohyung flicked a glance at Seonggi's face in the rearview mirror and went on.
"Starting today, I'm in your service. For the sake of address, I'll call you President Choi. And I can't very well leave an unsavory piece of my employer's past sitting there untouched."
An unsavory past? What was he talking about? Seonggi was still weighing whether to press him when the car rolled to a stop before a shabby three-story building standing alone in the middle of a barren lot.
"This place..."
He knew exactly where they were. Family Love Loans — the loan outfit where he had borrowed a hundred million won.
"Wait here a moment."
Na Dohyung stepped out with a small paper bag in hand.
"Told you I knew the second you withdrew that money."
Terry Park got out after him, and Seonggi followed them both.
"You looked into my background?"
The displeasure in his voice was unmistakable.
"I'm sorry. A background check is standard procedure... You're someone I have to serve now, and I couldn't leave a filthy shackle on you as it was."
"And the money? Why are you the one paying it off, Secretary Na?"
"Because the man I serve—"
"This is different. It's my business. You don't get to pay my debt on your own say-so."
"I checked. Your original debt was a hundred million won, but it's ballooned to two hundred fifty-eight million. These bastards are vicious enough that even if you handed over every last won of that, they'd still swear a hundred million was outstanding and sink their teeth in. So..."
"Come on, man. That sort of thing we handle quietly between ourselves. Why drag President Choi along to watch?"
Terry scolded Secretary Na for stirring this up right in front of Seonggi. It was a spectacle.
Seonggi thought for a moment, then spoke.
"How much are you carrying?"
"A hundred million won."
"The moment we get back, I'll repay you. But will a hundred million even do it? You said they're vicious."
"We'll talk it through and reach a settlement."
"They don't strike me as the settling type."
At that, Secretary Na and Terry Park looked at each other and grinned.
"Don't worry about that. We're specialists in this line of work. Hahaha."
Terry said it with a shameless little smile.
"I'm sorry for starting this without telling you first, President Choi. But from where I stand as your secretary, I couldn't have those men sniffing around you."
"They were sniffing around me?"
"Yes. You wouldn't have known, but you were tailed more than once."
"Haa."
So that was it. He had changed his number and gone to ground for exactly this reason, and somehow they had still found him and put a tail on him.
"It won't take long. Please wait here."
Secretary Na dipped his head and started toward the building.
"I helped you out, so you've got to let me in on it! Trying to hog all the fun?"
"Stay out of this, Mr. Terry. You didn't have to follow me."
Their bickering carried back across the lot.
"If I were going to sit it out, would I have come? Our young lady's husband's business is our young lady's business. That makes me a party to it!"
"For the love of..."
"Same as last time — rock-paper-scissors!"
"Fine! Rock-paper-scissors!"
They glared at each other for a beat, then threw their hands. Settling with loan sharks was fun to them? Seonggi was still trying to wrap his head around it when Terry swore.
"Damn it."
He had lost.
"Five minutes! Five! If you're not out in five, I'm coming in."
"It'll be over before then, so relax. Just wait in the car."
"No. I need to be at the door. That's the only way I go in the second those five minutes are up."
They squabbled a while longer even after the game before Secretary Na finally knocked on the heavy steel door. A moment later it opened, and he stepped inside.
From the parking lot a hundred feet off, Seonggi watched him go. The two of them were, in a sense, his employees, and seeing them handle his mess in his place left him uneasy.
They're so dead serious about it. I can't even tell them to stop.
They had asked him to trust them with it. He had no choice but to do exactly that. Not long after Na Dohyung went in, the sounds of a scuffle drifted out. Distance blurred them, but he thought he caught the faint thud of blows — and maybe a scream.
"They're not fighting in there, are they?"
Alarmed, Seonggi started to get out of the car.
"Ah, don't worry. Things always get a little rowdy. He'll handle it just fine. Haha."
Terry, eyes on his watch, waved him back. And then the door banged open.
"Help! Somebody—"
A man drenched in blood burst out screaming, only to be dragged straight back inside.
"That man who just came out was covered in blood, wasn't he?"
Seonggi asked it, startled.
"Covered in blood? A little nosebleed, and you're making a federal case of it. Sometimes talk doesn't work and fists get involved. That's all."
So this was how it was. Something brutal was clearly unfolding in there, and Terry Park looked utterly at ease. They had asked him to trust them, so barging in felt wrong — even so, Seonggi quietly checked the clock on his phone. Nearly five minutes had passed.
"Heh. Still green, I tell you."
Terry muttered it to himself and was just about to head inside when the door clanged open again. Secretary Na stepped out with a sheaf of documents in his hand.
"Oh my, welcome. Come in, come in."
"Welcome, welcome. Heh heh heh."
Two employees were waiting for Choi Seonggi at the Yangpyeong Mansion. One was Go Jinok, sixty-two, known as Madam Go, who ran the entire household — the same woman who had once scolded Cha Wonseok for shouting instead of ringing the bell. The other was Shim Hyeongman, sixty-seven, in charge of odd jobs and the grounds, addressed as Director Shim.
"I'll be in your care."
Seonggi bowed his head to both of them.
"We're the ones who ought to be grateful. We were worried you might sell the place off."
"He will, won't he? How's a young man supposed to live out here?"
"It's old and worn, but where else will you find a house with this much character?"
"Don't get greedy, Madam Go. Ah, President, pay us no mind. We may not have anywhere to go this minute, but in a country as wide as Korea, you think we won't find a place to stretch our legs and sleep?"
They were laying the guilt on thick. What would become of them if the Yangpyeong house were sold? The two elders had been fretting over exactly that.
"I have no plans to sell for the time being, so please make yourselves comfortable."
At Seonggi's words, Madam Go's and Director Shim's eyes went wide.
"Y-you mean it?"
"Aigoo, thank you. We were so worried about how we'd manage out in the world..."
"Didn't I tell you? The new master is a warm, tenderhearted man."
Warm and tenderhearted was about as far from him as it got, but he was curious why she had thought so.
"Why did you think that?"
"Because the last time you met the Chairman, you showed him perfect courtesy. You did lie, of course, but even so — that was something. He was a man with one foot in the grave. And Chairman Cha's temperament is something else, isn't it? He likes to claim he can see straight through a person and then torment them with it. Besides, I heard it from Secretary Na. When the Chairman was dying and everyone else was just waiting for him to go, you were the one who tried to save him..."
"Ah..."
Looking at their moved faces, he couldn't bring himself to deny it. Come to think of it, Madam Go had read the whole situation perfectly.
"Um, but what should we do? We cleared out the room Chairman Cha used and sprayed air freshener, but the smell of the sickroom still hasn't gone. So we prepared the middle room on the second floor — the one Chairman Cha Jinpyo used to stay in when he visited — as your quarters. Will that be all right?"
"Then I'll use the second floor until the smell clears. I'll head up. Nabi, come with me. There's something I want to discuss."
Leaving Madam Go and Director Shim behind, he took Secretary Na up to the second-floor sitting room. Seonggi sat on the sofa and gestured to the one opposite, and Na Dohyung sat as well.
"How old are you, Secretary Na?"
"Thirty this year."
"Then when it's just us, call me hyung. And I'll call you Nabi, the way the late grandfather did. That's all right, isn't it?"
"Yes. Please do."
Chairman Cha Wonseok had called Secretary Na "Nabi," and Seonggi had hesitated for a moment over whether he had any right to use the name so freely.
"Before Chairman Cha Wonseok passed, he asked me to look after you."
"I know. He told me to assist you, President Choi."
What Chairman Cha Wonseok had spoken of wasn't numbers alone. He had left behind the instruction to keep Secretary Na at his side, no matter what.
"Do you happen to know why?"
"Well... there are probably several reasons. For one, once tomorrow's business is finished, there's a place you need to go with me."
"Where?"
"The former Chairman left me a charge. He told me to guide you there."
So Cha Wonseok hadn't told him to keep Secretary Na around for nothing. Seonggi nodded as if he understood. When he lifted his head and looked at Na Dohyung, the man's cheekbone was swollen.
"Does it hurt much?"
At that, Na Dohyung prodded the swollen spot and let out a short laugh.
"Ah, I'm fine."
"Next time, don't go off and do something that dangerous on your own."
"This is nothing. You're the man I serve. Filthy work like that is mine to—"
"It's my business. You should have told me first. Obviously."
"..."
"Am I wrong? You clean up the dirty work however you please, and I'm just supposed to keep my mouth shut?"
"..."
He had wanted to make a good impression, and as he had said, this was a man he was meant to serve — so he had tidied the loose ends cleanly. Thinking about it now, he could see how Seonggi might have found it unpleasant.
"A fist?"
"Sorry?"
"Did a fist do that?"
"A steel pipe grazed me. Barely."
"How many of them were there?"
"Five."
"F-five?"
Ordinary people would never believe one man had put down five in under five minutes. And not with a weapon — with his bare hands. Not ordinary men, either: five vicious loan-shark thugs who stopped at nothing. Should he come clean about his past while he was at it? Na Dohyung hesitated a moment, then spoke again.
"You don't need to be surprised. I can usually finish that much without breaking a sweat. One of the ones I'd already dropped just swung a pipe out of nowhere."
"That's what I'm saying. Five punks, and it took you a whole five minutes? You even got a nosebleed and a bruise on your face."
"What?"
What was this? Why was the conversation going this way? Secretary Na's head spun. He had sensed something slightly off about the man from the first time he saw him, but this...
"What? Do I look like the man you dragged out of the river who's now complaining you didn't save his bag too?"
"That's not what I—"
"So. Next time, don't charge in on your own and call it consideration. I'll handle my own affairs. Anyway. Regardless."
When Seonggi stood, Na Dohyung rose with him.
"Thank you for stepping in to settle my business. Sincerely."
"I only thought I was doing what had to be done... I'll be more careful from now on."
"I'd appreciate that. Then, from here on..."
Seonggi held out his hand.
"I'll be counting on you, Nabi."
"I'm the one who should be counting on you."
Na Dohyung clasped the offered hand and looked at the man before him.
Just who is this man?
He had dug so thoroughly, and still it felt as if a great deal had been left out. The moment he took Seonggi's hand, his heart hammered, and a shiver raced through his entire body.