Won't You Call It a Draw? - 5
After roughly five minutes of letting the silence stretch, a man in a suit approached from the distance at a leisurely pace.
He was handsome enough that one might wonder whether looks were the actual hiring standard for staff.
The man who came toward us asked,
“Did you call for me?”
“Mm. We’ve agreed to purchase the artifacts here for three million euros. Handle it, would you? But… did you come yourself?”
“I’m staff as well. Anyway, three million……”
He stared absently at the goods laid out on the stall before shifting his gaze to us. It felt like a soft yet sharply discerning appraisal.
“First of all, thank you sincerely for patronizing our market this evening.”
As though the appraisal had concluded, the man offered a courteous greeting in French, dipping not only his head but his waist a fraction as well.
“Yes, a pleasure.”
When I returned the bow with equal courtesy, a gentle curve touched the man’s lips.
“You’re the first guest who’s ever bowed to me. Judging by that flawless French pronunciation… are you perhaps a Korean living abroad?”
“No. I simply had the good fortune of an opportunity to learn.”
“Oh, I see. You must possess an exceptional ear for language.”
“You’re too kind.”
The man smiled with easy warmth and drew out his phone, apparently conducting business on it—exactly as one would expect of someone living in the twenty-first century, where smartphones were ubiquitous.
“But all of it for three million euros?”
A sidelong glance. His eyes turned on the old man. Looking down from above with narrowed lids, the sharpness of his temper was plain.
Something wrong?
As I watched in silence, the old man’s shoulders gave a little twitch. I asked,
“Is there… something amiss?”
“If there is something wrong, there may well be. Even at a glance these look like precious artifacts, yet the price feels a touch low.”
Artifact values fluctuated wildly; as a non-expert I had no precise way to gauge them. That was precisely why I had simply jacked the figure up without calculation. But cheap? I still had no sense of what “good” even looked like.
“From the age, they appear to be eighteenth-century French pieces. Some of them were used in the palace. Even allowing for corrosion, the coinage isn’t in terribly poor condition. Mozart’s scores… sold well, about a hundred thirty thousand euros a page, and there are ten, so roughly one-point-three million.”
How on earth did he know that? Goosebumps prickled over my entire body, as though I had just met a genuinely famous shaman.
“Plates and tableware aren’t particularly rare, so we can set those aside at a moderate figure. The real issue is the money pouch. The quantity is considerable. Mostly silver, yes? Though quite a few gold pieces as well.”
“What—why are you suddenly taking the customer’s side? Do you… know them?”
The old man stammered in fluster. From his reaction, the young man’s barb had clearly struck true.
“I’ve never met them before today. However, you’re the first person who’s ever greeted a mere employee with such courtesy. I found that pleasing.”
The man twisted the corner of his mouth and gave a little waggle of the hand holding his phone. The atmosphere was charged, yet it was perfectly clear who held the upper hand.
“In any case, elder. Pay a proper price. A man of means shouldn’t be quite so greedy. Put them up at auction and they’d fetch far more, wouldn’t they?”
“It’s only right to save whatever money can be saved.”
“A fair point. Yet what is right has a way of shifting with circumstance. Do you take my meaning?”
When the man drove the wedge home, I too leveled a sharp look at him. Jeanette and Marie did the same. Why was a fellow black-market employee helping us? The natural question rose, but I let it pass unvoiced. Whatever ulterior motive he might harbor, it didn’t seem sinister.
“Hoo…! Five million euros, then. The bulk means plenty of gold and silver, but that itself dilutes scarcity. Corrosion has already eroded some value. The remaining artifacts depend entirely on the buyer’s whim, so their worth swings wildly. And above all—no jewels. Agreed?”
“Yes. That seems a reasonable judgment.”
The old man released a profoundly heavy sigh and shook his head. For some reason the phrase Won’t you call it a draw? floated unbidden into my mind.
Anyway—three million to five million? The leap left me almost speechless. Roughly seven billion won in Korean currency.
They have to resell at a margin, and black markets are black markets, so a certain amount of lowballing is understandable… but this was excessive.
Perhaps a black market simply is a black market. Without this stranger’s inexplicable intervention we would have been thoroughly fleeced.
The man asked,
“Add to that the fact that this is a fire sale. You understand that urgency can cut the price. Do you consent, and will you sell?”
“Understood. I’ll sell at that figure.”
I nodded and let the tension leave my eyes. It finally felt as though we had received something close to fair value, and the irritation eased a little. Every point he had made was sound; there was no room for argument.
“Thank you for the help.”
When I bowed, the man waved a light hand and smiled.
“Not at all. A black market is by nature a field of contest over goods, yet there remains a degree of propriety that must be observed.”
“Thanks to you we avoided a serious loss.”
“Leave too sour an impression and you lose a customer. That’s a loss from the market’s standpoint as well.”
Ahem. He cleared his throat briefly, clearly preparing to change the subject.
“As you’ve already been told, we normally deduct a modest commission when goods are sold—the fee for providing the space, the cost of ensuring a secure transaction. Do you agree?”
“Of course.”
I nodded without hesitation. I had already heard as much from the old man, and the explanation was perfectly reasonable.
“However, for this particular matter I will waive the commission. We’ll remit the full transaction amount.”
“Isn’t that kindness a little excessive?”
The question slipped out of my mouth unbidden. Waiving even the commission he was entitled to collect truly felt like generosity gone too far.
The man said,
“Please regard it as an investment made in the hope that you’ll favor us again in the future.”
After Seo Ji-hyuk and the two women had taken the money and departed, the old man wore a sour expression as he packed away the artifacts. He looked as though his wallet had been cleaned out; the sting was plain on his face.
“Why in the world did you interfere? Does that not violate the black market’s code?”
When the old man displayed his displeasure, most people tensed. Like the other stall-keepers, he was a man of considerable wealth and influence. Even so, the younger man merely smiled without so much as a blink.
“Didn’t I say earlier? Codes shift according to circumstance.”
“And this is that circumstance?”
“Yes. I judged it so; kindly let the matter rest this once.”
As if further discussion were unnecessary, he closed the conversation with a smile. The old man pressed no further, finished his tidying, and left. The stall had already returned to its original compact shape. Making a grand issue of it would have served no good purpose; the man was someone with whom one needed to maintain smooth relations for any number of reasons.
He seems thoroughly put out.
Whether because he had been too absorbed in the artifacts or because his eye for people was genuinely lacking, failing to recognize a VIP of that caliber… From the younger man’s perspective it was simply laughable.
To think the Saintess herself would visit a black market.
Even though Elodie had thoroughly veiled her face, the man had seen straight through to her identity. His discernment far outstripped the old man’s. Consequently he could not simply stand by while the elder tried to gouge the Saintess’s party. Had he not known, that would have been one thing. But to permit today’s transaction would, he judged, raise the likelihood of awkward complications later.
The weight of the Saintess’s name. Above all, the prestige of House Ystua of France, which stood behind her. To the power and wealth they already possessed was added the powerful legitimacy of being descendants of Joan of Arc. It was no exaggeration to say they effectively embodied French justice itself—heirs to the blood of the nation’s hero and a canonized saint. To defraud a member of such a house? One never knew what form of retaliation might eventually arrive; intervening had been the correct call.
Still, that man. The fellow who appeared to be traveling with the Saintess also niggled at him. At a glance their relationship was far from ordinary. By contrast, the white-haired woman accompanying them was beautiful yet not especially remarkable—only a faint sense that he might have seen her face in some magazine left lying about.
I’ll have to look into him once.
Discreetly, without being noticed or causing offense. Still wearing that crooked smile, the man walked on. The lights of the black market continued to shine brightly, illuminating its noisy, bustling vitality.
We lingered a few more days before returning home. Seventy-four billion won and change. When a sum that could comfortably support a lifetime of living if managed well landed in my account, my eyes nearly rolled back. It was mine alone—not Jeanette’s. Added to that were the wages I had saved while working as a janitor plus my severance. The joy still refused to cool.
“Want to take a trip?”
Perhaps because of that, the desire to travel rose of its own accord.
“A trip?”
“We made a lot of money, so going once wouldn’t be bad. The France trip was closer to a work assignment than a real vacation.”
We had done some sightseeing, yet it had not been a particularly pleasant experience. Things might have changed, but walking those streets still felt like circling the neighborhood where I had once lived. On top of that lingered the quiet regret that it had never truly been a trip—purpose had dictated everything.
“I’m fine with it. Where are you thinking of going?”
“For something comfortable and relaxing, domestic might be better… not good?”
“I already told you—anywhere is fine. And by my standards Korea is overseas, so there’s a great deal I don’t know.”
Ah. Right. A fact I had forgotten precisely because it felt so natural rose to the surface. Unlike me, Jeanette was a pure French native.
“Then I’ll look into it a little.”
First, somewhere outside the capital region. The infrastructure around Seoul was excellent, yet it never quite conveyed a sense of leisure. Next, which province. The south was already familiar from the scenery of Galdo; I wanted somewhere different.
Gangwon-do?
As I scrolled and searched on my phone, the word Gangwon-do caught my eye. Though considered safe, it still carried an impression of being less developed than the capital. That impression bred a certain anxiety, and that anxiety was reflected in the lower prices. Even so, the infrastructure itself was more than adequate; nothing about it seemed bad. Next came incidents and accidents. When I ran through the news articles, I confirmed there were fewer than expected. If anything, the provinces were more thorough precisely because they were the provinces. A loose surveillance net would only allow the specters condensed there to erupt. From the protectors’ standpoint they could not afford to be careless. That was also why they had built bases on remote islands like Galdo to keep watch.
Safety is settled.
The remaining worry was people who might make a scene upon recognizing Jeanette. That, however, looked solvable through Marie. She disliked mental domination, but a simple “pretend you didn’t see us” was something she would likely accept. Of course that remained a last resort. Under ordinary circumstances, even if it was inconvenient, a bit of disguise kept the chance of discovery low. Even walking around our own neighborhood now, we barely drew notice.
“Then let’s go to Gangwon-do.”
“Where is that?”
When I made the decision, Jeanette tilted her head. Natural enough—she was not familiar with Korean geography. I opened a map on my phone and showed her the screen.
“This is Gangwon-do. There’s a coastline right beside it, so—”
“Like Galdo, where we went before?”
“Similar, but a little different. Galdo was nothing but sea; this region has mountains as well.”
“Just hearing that, I picture countryside scenery.”
I had heard many people said the same. When I nodded in place of an answer, a faint curve touched Jeanette’s lips.
“You really want to go simply to rest, don’t you?”
“How did you know?”
“We’ve lived together a long time. I get a sense of these things to a certain degree.”
She knew me well because we had shared so much time. The words gave me a strange prickle of goosebumps even as they set my heart fluttering—exactly the way I knew her in return.
“Then I don’t need to say anything more.”
“Yes. I’ll ask the others for their opinions on whether to go. Marie is included, of course?”
“Probably?”
It felt a little awkward, yet she was still my subordinate for the time being.
Maybe I should finally get a driver’s license.
While Jeanette sent messages to the rest of the group, the practical need for driving began to creep up on me. The family-unit travel people always talked about; the convenience that kind of movement required. Living alone I had never felt the lack, but now I kept colliding with necessities I had never considered before.
“I’ve finished contacting everyone.”
Jeanette’s voice cut through my wandering thoughts. I had just been standing at the crossroads of whether to pursue a Class 1 or Class 2 license.
“They all say they’ll come. Which part of Gangwon-do are you thinking of?”
Where to go. I turned over a few candidate spots that rose in my mind, then slowly opened my mouth.