Bidding War - 5
Who would have thought I'd end up buying a printing press offloaded by the government office at half price.
The people at Mangeum Bookstore really went through all that trouble for my benefit.
Jeon Gilsan must have figured his bid could be as outrageous as he pleased—he'd bribed the officials and borrowed the Mangeum Bookstore name to threaten the competition with violence besides.
It was true that a printing press being liquidated by the government was a blind asset. It was an expensive piece of equipment, but even if it sold for a good price, the proceeds would just vanish into the office's budget. Not a single official saw a coin of it.
For an official, the only thing that mattered was whoever filled his own pockets. Whether the press sold for half price or thirty percent, what difference did it make? He was told to keep his mouth shut, so he kept it shut.
Even from my perspective, the Yichang printing press auction was the perfect trophy for an heir-in-training at Mangeum Hall to pad his résumé with. After all, even the owner of a thriving bookstore would have to brace for a devastating blow to his finances just to buy one.
If he'd bought a near-brand-new machine of government-quality at half the market price, it would have been an impressive achievement indeed.
The problem was, there had been one other serious bidder—an insignificant one, set down at barely a hair's price above that.
And I knew he'd throw a fit, but I didn't expect death threats.
Not that it came as a shock. If I were still corporate drone Kang, blowing a single bid would have earned me a thorough dressing-down from my boss and a lecture about doing better next time. I'd have put on an apologetic face and thought to myself, What can you do? I'm clocking out. It's just work—it can wait until tomorrow. I did my best. And that would have been the end of it.
But Jeon Gilsan was a chaebol family's grandson on his mother's side. Worse, this time he'd been thoroughly beaten by the schemes of a black-haired barbarian. A street punk of a young master who felt his face and his opportunity had both been damaged wouldn't back down so easily. That's exactly why I'd arranged a little insurance.
"I asked what you just said."
For a puppy who'd been strutting around on his family's pathetic prestige instead of his own merits, the sight of a tiger appearing right in front of him was quite enough.
Tang Pae advanced on Jeon Gilsan, his face twisted into a scowl, radiating menace with every step.
"D-do you have any idea who I am!"
The puppy still apparently believed he was a tiger—he clutched his borrowed tiger skin and shouted, though he was visibly cowering.
"Great Hero! Young Master Jeon Gilsan is the honored maternal grandson of the Mangeum Lord himself!"
Gilsan's aide hastily bellowed out his master's credentials at Tang Pae, who was bearing down on them with terrifying killing intent.
"Th-that's right! Even now, if you retreat, I'll let this matter pass!"
Gilsan nodded along at his aide's support and forced out a bravado laugh.
Fine. He may not be the youngest son of a chaebol family, but he is the favored grandson of a thriving bank's chairman. Even if Gilsan isn't the heir, Mangeum Hall is not a household the Sichuan Tang Clan can afford to sneer at.
Even for Tang Pae, a member of the Tang Clan with all its fearsome prestige, unless he was of the direct bloodline, he'd normally hesitate to lay hands on such a person without cause.
Under normal circumstances, that is.
"So what of it?"
The person Tang Pae had to protect happened to be the Tang Clan Head's illegitimate son.
Tang Pae approached Gilsan without a flicker of hesitation, despite all the bluster.
"Wh-what?"
It clearly wasn't the scenario Gilsan had predicted. The front he'd worked so hard to maintain was starting to crumble.
"You dare threaten the life of an honored guest of the Sichuan Tang Clan, personally acknowledged by the Tang Clan Head himself?"
"The honored guest of the Sichuan Tang Clan? Some black-haired barbarian?"
Gilsan shot back at Tang Pae with a look of sheer incredulity.
Does that guy have no filter between his brain and his mouth? Did he grow up so pampered there was never any room for a filter to develop?
Tang Pae, however, could not stomach the insult toward me mixed into Gilsan's words.
"You—!"
Insulting a child acknowledged by the Tang Clan Head was the same as insulting the Sichuan Tang Clan itself.
Without a moment's hesitation, Tang Pae seized Gilsan by the collar, his face contorted with rage. He's lifting the guy clean off the ground with one hand.
"Hrk!"
"Young Master Jeon!"
"What are you all standing around for!"
The moment Tang Pae hoisted Gilsan up with a single hand, the Mangeum Bookstore warriors panicked and reached for their blades.
"Any man whose hand moves toward a sword had best be prepared to become a fistful of poison powder!"
At the tiger's roar, the warriors lost their nerve in an instant.
They weren't the only ones watching the situation unfold. As Tang Clan martial artists materialized around the perimeter, the bookstore men could only tremble and glance helplessly at Gilsan.
"A lowlife whelp running some dinky little bookstore dares insult the great Sichuan Tang Clan? Are you tired of living?!"
"P-please, spare me—"
"I'll tear out your throat and deliver news of your death to the Mangeum Lord myself! I'll tell him his thunder-blustering grandson dared insult an honored guest of the Sichuan Tang Clan, plotted against my life, and forfeited it with his own hands!"
Tang Pae, are you actually furious right now? I can feel the killing intent radiating off him from where I'm standing.
It sounded like a threat, but it wasn't an impossible one. The Sichuan Tang Clan was the hegemon of Sichuan. Even the Nine Great Sects, the most powerful factions in the Central Plains, had to bow their heads to the Tang Clan on Sichuan soil.
"Hrk! Kghk!"
He's going to suffocate. Gilsan's face has gone past red—it's turning blue under the pressure of that killing intent.
The Mangeum Bookstore people clearly had no idea how to handle the situation. They could only stand there, at a complete loss, watching.
What should I do here?
"Put him down."
Once the bad cop had done his job scaring everyone half to death, it was time for the good cop to step in and smooth things over.
At my single word, Tang Pae relaxed his grip.
"Brother Jeon."
I called out to the street punk, who was sprawled on the ground desperately trying to catch his breath, wearing the friendly smile of a good policeman.
Stamping him flat and pulling him up root and stem was one option. But when running a business going forward, making enemies was something best avoided where possible.
First, I needed to demonstrate my strength. I opened my mouth.
"You already tried to kill me once before."
"What?"
My words sent a stir through the Tang Clan warriors.
"Is this true! Please step aside, Young Master Kang. We will settle this here and now!"
"Yeeek! Please, spare me!"
"Enough, Young Master Jeon. I did not enter this bidding out of any personal grudge against you, no matter what you may have done."
The truth is, unknown to you, I had power. I was never someone you could afford to underestimate.
Having made that absolutely clear, I pressed on.
"You probably saw me as a rabbit you could devour whenever you pleased. But I treated you simply as a competitor in my business. There was no personal animosity in it whatsoever. That is precisely why I never reported this matter to the Tang Clan."
I was never prey for you to toy with. And on top of that, unbeknownst to you, I even showed you mercy.
The opponent the punk had dismissed as an easy mark had, in truth, been a rival leagues above his station. I raised my standing in one stroke.
"Yes, I won this time. But I made no move against your life, nor did I take anything that was yours. I simply won a fair contest."
"Yes. You didn't plot anything, of course."
Well, look who's suddenly so respectful.
"And yet, if you truly insist on coming at me out of personal spite, then I too will have no choice but to show you my personal spite."
As I slowly lowered the hand I'd been holding up, the Tang Clan warriors surged forward in unison.
"Young Master Jeon!"
"Please, don't!"
"Yeeek!"
The Mangeum Bookstore people went pale with terror, but not one of them was willing to lay down his life for a lowlife.
I surveyed the scene, then looked at Jeon Gilsan once more and offered him an easy, unhurried smile.
"Young Master Jeon. Right now, I can send you home quietly. But this is the only time."
Strength answered with strength. Prestige answered with prestige.
For a street punk who raged without knowing his place, nothing taught the lesson like a gap so vast that revenge wasn't even a fantasy.
I dusted off Gilsan's clothes and helped him to his feet.
You saw how the Tang Clan moved at my gesture, didn't you? This time, I'll show you mercy. But there won't be a next time. Understood?
"I'll... go home quietly, then."
The punk, having finally grasped that he was a puppy and not a tiger, tucked his tail between his legs like a chastened dog, retreated backward with his face drained of all color—and soon vanished from sight.
By evening, word arrived that the Mangeum Bookstore people had hastily boarded a boat back to Wuhan. That night, at the Baek Family Manor—the estate now reborn as the Seocheon Escort Agency—I sat down to drinks with the Tang Clan members and the Yichang branch manager.
I was supposedly the guest of honor today, yet they'd insisted on seating me at the very head of the table. It felt a little heavy on my shoulders, honestly.
"We are sorry to see you go, Young Master Kang."
Tang Pae poured my drink, his voice dripping with genuine reluctance.
"I'm the one who caused you trouble."
I took the brimming cup in both hands and bowed to the assembled company.
Seeing my gesture, Tang Pae's eyes went wide and he waved both hands frantically.
"Trouble! How could clearing away a piece of garbage ever be called trouble! What grieves us is only that you faced such a grave danger and never once thought to call upon us."
"A man who runs a business leaning on his family's name and prestige for protection—it's a bad habit. Especially for a man who bears the surname Kang, not Tang."
The Sichuan Tang Clan should remain, above all, my final card.
I was a man of the Kang family, not a son of the Sichuan Tang Clan.
"Haah. I know even the Tang Clan Head could not bend your will on this. But whether you carry the name Kang or the name Tang, the blood in your veins does not change. The Tang Clan will stand behind you whenever you need us—that is only natural. We'll be sending a separate warning to Mangeum Hall about today as well."
Which is exactly the problem.
As long as the Tang Clan Head had acknowledged me and the verification was complete, then to them I was merely a stubborn illegitimate child still throwing his tantrum. My political position and the twisted relationship between father and son meant I had to be a little careful about the treatment I received—but with the Clan Head himself having endorsed me, there was no reason for them to ignore my requests.
In the spirit of repaying their devotion, I poured drinks for the Tang Clan men and spoke up.
"Once the printing press is delivered, I'll begin printing a complete collected edition of Tangga Pungun to send to the clan."
The Tang Clan escorts who'd come with me had two original missions: see me safely home, and carry back the next volume of Tangga Pungun. The time to part ways with them was drawing near.
"And how do you intend to live from here on, Young Master?"
"Born a man, shouldn't I carve my name into the world for all to see?"
Playing the part of a man with grand ambitions, I raised my cup one-handed and gazed out the window at the distant sky.
"And what might that mean?"
"I intend to expand the business."
I began laying out my business vision for the Tang Clan men and the Seocheon Escort staff.
Starting from the print shop, I would open Daseogak branches all along the Yangtze basin, and make a runaway success of Tangga Pungun and countless other novels besides. I would make my name as the businessman Kang Yunho, and as the writer Hopil.
Thus I unfurled my grand ambitions before them all.
"Extraordinary just to hear it. Truly, a tiger's blood can only make a tiger."
The Tang Clan warriors gazed at me with broad, contented smiles. The look on their faces said: Our eldest young master is destined for greatness. The next generation of the clan is in fine hands.
Sorry. I'm actually a son of the Kang family. Needless to say, that wasn't a fact I could bring myself to share.
The warm atmosphere was starting to weigh on me.
Hoping to lighten the mood, I ducked my head slightly away from their adoring gazes and opened my mouth for a joke.
"And that's exactly why I have to work this hard—so that someday, instead of being called the Poison Human's man, people will be saying Hwarin is Kang Yunho's woman."
With a show of embarrassment, I gave my nose a light flick with one finger.
"Hahaha!"
"I never dreamed Young Master Kang labored under such a burden!"
"Quite right! A matter of the gravest importance!"
"Then Young Master Kang truly has no choice but to work himself to the bone!"
My all-too-human troubles set off a round of roaring laughter across the table.
With the tension broken, the drinking party grew merrier still. Compared to the scheming, plot-riddled business banquets I was used to, I found myself relaxing and passing the cup in genuine comfort.
"Will you be securing a building for the print shop first?"
Once the drinks had flowed a while, the Seocheon Escort Agency's Yichang branch manager asked me in a deliberately raised voice, loud enough for everyone to hear.
"I don't have a fortune on hand just now. It'll be cramped, but I'll set the press up in Daseogak's printing room, and once I've earned more, I'll purchase a proper building and establish a full-scale print shop."
If I was going to run a print shop, I'd need a type-casting room at minimum, and a paper-making room too, if circumstances allowed.
I now had two brand-new presses on my hands—maintain the old ones well, and I could run three in total.
"If you're establishing a print shop, you've naturally got the Yichang port in mind, I take it?"
"Of course. Location-wise, the port is the best there is."
If you're churning out hundreds of books, water transport is the obvious way to move them. That was the same reason I planned to set up bookstores along the Yangtze.
"It won't be as expensive as Daseogak sitting on Yichang's busiest thoroughfare, but even a modest building near the port will cost you many times more than any press."
"I'd like the print shop near the port, certainly, but it doesn't need to happen right away. No sense being too greedy out of the gate."
I wasn't some magnate with hundreds of franchises to my name. Better to scout out whatever building my current means could manage.
"Still, if you mean to expand the business, wouldn't it be wiser to keep the print shop on the Yangtze?"
"You're not wrong, but..."
As if it worked that way. Who doesn't buy the river-view apartment because they don't want it?
When I let my answer trail off with a hint of disappointment, the branch manager fixed me with a purposeful look, as if he'd been waiting for exactly this opening.
"And what if I told you a building on the banks of the Yangtze could be had for a bargain?"
"A building on the Yangtze? Even at a bargain, that's hardly realistic."
Bargain or not, I'd just dropped a fortune on printing presses—now he wanted me to buy property on top of it?
It was like buying a work truck for the business and having someone ask, "While we're at it, how about picking up a discounted river-view apartment as well?"
There was no way that was possible.
And yet the Seocheon Escort branch manager pulled out a listing I could never have imagined.
"The building the Seocheon Escort Agency used before it moved to the Baek Family Manor. Might you have any interest in purchasing it, at a fair discount?"