Want to Learn Ohodanmundo?
The car screeched to a halt, and Lee Se-ah and Kang Hyun stepped out.
"This is a Korean fine-dining restaurant?"
Kang Hyun frowned at the traditional tile-roofed house that didn't even have a signboard.
"Yes." Lee Se-ah shrugged. "It's a Management Bureau partner establishment. They use it for VIP entertainment and top-secret meetings."
"They've got all kinds of places, don't they."
"I only found out about it this time myself. Shall we? The Director should already be inside."
Following Lee Se-ah's lead, they stepped through the entrance into a long corridor of private rooms finished in the finest hinoki cypress. An attendant guided them to a sliding door and slid it open.
"You've arrived. Bl— ah, Professor Kang."
Kim Hyung-seok shot to his feet and bowed at the waist. He was more tense than usual.
Black. That Black.
The monster who had, with a single gesture, blown apart the colossal Leviathan in the East Sea. This was only the second time Kim Hyung-seok had laid eyes on him since that day.
"Haha. How's the professorial life treating you?"
"Well enough, thanks to you."
The moment Kang Hyun answered so casually and their eyes met, Kim Hyung-seok involuntarily sucked in a breath.
Hup!
He had dealt with countless S-rank hunters over the years, but this man was different. It felt as if those eyes could see straight through to the bottom of his soul.
"Please, have a seat."
"Yes."
Kim Hyung-seok swallowed dryly and sat. His gaze drifted naturally toward Lee Se-ah — a rookie agent in a clean hoodie and jeans. The moment she sat down she wiped her hands with a wet towel and started studying the menu.
…What a remarkable kid.
Kim Hyung-seok found himself newly astonished by the young agent sitting across from him. A single meeting of eyes was enough to make his own heart seize with tension — and yet this agent shared living quarters with that monster, and even ground ink for him at a writing desk every single day.
What kind of terrible burden have I dumped on this young rookie?
He finally understood completely why the other agents had been so reluctant.
I'm sorry, Agent Lee. I swear I will see to your advancement…
While Kim Hyung-seok was steeling himself with that silent vow—
"Kang Hyun, sir!"
"Hm?"
"Can I order the Hanwoo course they have here?"
"Why are you asking me?"
"Because if you say yes, the Director will pick up the tab."
"That so? Then go ahead."
"Thank you! Excuse me!"
Watching Lee Se-ah cheerfully press the call button, Kim Hyung-seok's eyes went round.
She treats Black that casually?
Lee Se-ah naturally ordered the most expensive course on the menu and even arranged a whiskey setting.
"Ahem." Kim Hyung-seok cleared his throat and carefully broached the subject. "Kang Hyun, first of all, regarding the way you pointed out the Shadowless Art incident last time, and for giving us the Silver Meridian Heart Art, I sincerely—"
"Skip the old stories that kill the appetite." Kang Hyun cut him off flat. "Let's talk money."
"Pardon?"
"Business. Even if we let the Flying Wind Step and the Silver Meridian Heart Art slide as roughly handled, you weren't seriously planning to just swallow the Gale Step sales revenue too, were you?"
"Ahaha! Of course not!" Kim Hyung-seok waved his hands frantically and straightened his posture. "Naturally we must settle accounts with you. How could the state simply seize a private individual's intellectual property? We've already drawn up internal guidelines for revenue distribution."
"Oh?" Kang Hyun toyed with his whiskey glass, looking intrigued. "Let's hear it, then. Just how much conscience the state has."
"Fifty-fifty."
Fifty?
Whose fifty?
He didn't crack the joke. Because he genuinely thought there was no conscience in it at all. The moment that thought settled, his presence leaked out of its own accord, and Kim Hyung-seok felt a prickling numbness run through his body.
"Of course, I'm well aware that your contribution is absolute, Kang Hyun," the Director hurried on. "But the infrastructure the Management Bureau provides is nothing to sneeze at either. Using the Association's distribution network, we can supply the domestic market with stability — and sell worldwide under the Association's name with real credibility. The scale is simply different from what a private company could manage."
Kang Hyun kept an indifferent face, but inwardly he nodded.
Fair point.
There had been a reason he'd gone into business with the state instead of routing everything through Taejeong Trading.
Anti-piracy enforcement.
The low-cost interpretation market was a war against bootlegs. Chasing them down one by one was a pain — but slap a state nameplate on it and the crackdown took care of itself. Especially with the Management Bureau, which had links to intelligence agencies; enforcement would be far easier.
That said, a rip-off like this is still out of the question.
"Eighty-twenty." Kang Hyun said it short and sharp. "On the condition that I keep writing popular interpretation manuals like this on a regular basis going forward."
"…!"
Kim Hyung-seok's pupils wavered for an instant. Of course the offer was tempting. He had seen the Gale Step interpretation. The more of these that got released, the higher South Korea's overall level would climb — and its standing on the world stage with it.
"Even so, twenty percent is far too little."
"Why?"
"The bigger the business grows, the more personnel we have to run. Considering the Management Bureau's manpower, you should give us at least forty percent. Let's go a clean sixty-forty."
Just as Kim Hyung-seok was about to deliver the line with some steel in it—
"That makes no sense."
Lee Se-ah cut in without warning.
"Director, there's no way you don't understand the value of these interpretation manuals. If we properly generate sales against the entire world, even twenty percent would more than cover the Management Bureau's budget and leave a surplus — never mind forty."
"Agent Lee?"
"Besides, whatever we earn as a state enterprise just gets allocated as taxes or Bureau budget and sits in a warehouse. What's the point of stockpiling it? Better to jack the ratio way up so Kang Hyun actually wants to keep writing more secret manuals for us."
Kim Hyung-seok looked utterly flabbergasted.
"Well, I'll be. Whose side are you on — the state's, or Kang Hyun's?"
"I'm on the state's side, can't you tell? You need to look at the big picture!"
At that brazen outburst, Kang Hyun's mouth curved slightly, and he sent a telepathic message.
You're doing well, chick.
She gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
That's right. Keep chirping from the sidelines. He'd make sure she got her feed money.
Arms folded, Kang Hyun was smiling in satisfaction when—
"Excuse me. We'll begin preparing the Hanwoo course you ordered."
Right on cue, staff entered, lit the grill, and began setting out the finest beef and side dishes. The sizzle of meat cooking softened the taut atmosphere in the room at once.
Kang Hyun gave his whiskey glass a light swirl and shifted the mood.
"Director. One question."
"Yes, please."
"Is it possible to set aside a personal share for Lee Se-ah in this venture?"
"My share?" Lee Se-ah, who had been staring holes through the meat, looked up in shock.
Kang Hyun spoke flatly. "Her face is already out there. I'd like to look after her a bit too."
But Kim Hyung-seok shook his head firmly.
"That is absolutely impossible under public-service ethics. Agent Lee is a civil servant drawing a state salary. Commendations are fine — equity is not."
Well. So looking after her properly would mean she had to quit the agency?
"I'm really fine! What I'm already getting is enormous."
"That so?" Kang Hyun scratched his chin and looked at Kim Hyung-seok. "Then let's go a clean seventy-five to twenty-five."
"Excuse me?"
"I take seventy-five, the state takes twenty-five. And of my seventy-five, five percent gets parked with Taejeong Trading — to be given to Lee Se-ah personally when she eventually leaves the Management Bureau. No problem with that, right?"
At Kang Hyun's blunt end-run of a proposal, Kim Hyung-seok cleared his throat.
"Ahem. Well. As for fund management that takes place inside a private company, I wouldn't know anything about that."
In effect, permission.
"Huh? No, I'm really fine, though…"
"Quit complaining and just eat." Kang Hyun tossed a piece of meat onto her plate and cut her off. "You've got a mountain of work ahead of you. Grinding ink beside me while I produce secret manuals is a given, you'll have to carry out interpreter duties publicly, and you'll be running whatever practical work I throw at you. Not getting even five percent would be absurd."
"…"
Lee Se-ah couldn't refuse any further. She bit down hard on her lip. Something warm swelled in her chest. The way this man grumbled and yet still looked after his own people to the end — it had grown familiar by now, and she was grateful for it.
Meanwhile, Kim Hyung-seok was inwardly reeling from a fresh shock.
Unexpected.
According to the agents' reports, the man was supposed to have neither blood nor tears. He hadn't even trusted Lee Se-ah's observation logs.
He actually has a heart?
Kim Hyung-seok was a bureaucrat who had weathered every storm imaginable. He knew by instinct how to handle a man of this temperament. This was not the moment to be petty about wringing out a little more profit. Yield cleanly now, and the man would repay him even more cleanly down the road.
"Very well." Kim Hyung-seok cheerfully raised his whiskey glass and broke into a broad smile. "Then we'll go a pleasant seventy-five to twenty-five. I look forward to working with you going forward, Kang Hyun."
Clink.
The glasses touched.
After the meal, back at the dormitory, Kang Hyun was just about to change into comfortable clothes when—
Hm?
A presence outside. A solid, straightforward aura with no attempt to conceal itself.
Ma Chul-woong?
Brows faintly drawn, he opened the window and stepped out. In the open ground in front of the faculty building stood a man built like a giant bear.
"Forgive me for calling so late, hyung-nim."
"What is it?"
Ma Chul-woong straightened and got straight to the point.
"It was you, wasn't it?"
"What was."
"No matter how I think about it, it doesn't add up. I figured you intended it that way, so in front of the reporters I went on about how it was all thanks to that interpreter young lady — but." Ma Chul-woong scratched his jaw and continued. "I don't believe a greenhorn interpreter could fully grasp the formulas of a secret manual in the split second it takes to flip through the pages."
"And I could?"
"Hyung-nim has always been an impossible man."
A glint of interest flickered in Kang Hyun's eyes.
Sharp, isn't he?
As he'd said before, martial artists who had reached a certain level were often sharper than most scholars.
Kang Hyun neither confirmed nor denied it, simply standing there in silence, until Ma Chul-woong fished something out of his coat.
"Please take this."
What Ma Chul-woong held out was a stack of crisp checks. Kang Hyun's gaze locked onto the figures written on them.
Ten billion… five of them?
Fifty billion won in total.
"This is a portion of the compensation I extracted from Daeseong Market, thanks to you. Without you, I would have wasted years. I might even have fallen into qi deviation and ruined my life. Please accept it as a token of my sincerity."
Kang Hyun was surprised. Was fifty billion small money? Even for an S-rank hunter, without running a business it was not a sum easily accumulated. And yet the man was offering that fortune without a shred of attachment, calling it repayment?
He's the real deal.
A person's true heart showed not in words but in actions. Especially when money was on the line — that was when a person's true measure was revealed.
Straightforward character, a sense of loyalty, and a big spirit.
A thought rose naturally in Kang Hyun's mind. The condition he had set for the five cadets who had bowed their heads and begged to become his disciples.
Wouldn't this one fit perfectly?
Kang Hyun casually took the fifty-billion-won checks and stuffed them into his pocket. Then he looked Ma Chul-woong straight in the eye, a curve of amusement at the corner of his mouth.
"Ma Chul-woong."
"Yes?"
"Ohodanmundo. Want to learn it?"