Chapter 10
Chapter 10
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 10
Chapter Title: Kim Won-cheol (3)
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Pretty nail art painted on her fingers, two legs trembling under the desk.
Kim Seong-hye kept putting her nails in her mouth, then stopping, standing up from her seat, then sitting back down, repeating the cycle.
Her mind was filled entirely with thoughts of her son.
“Whew, our Seo-jun. What should we do…. He’ll do well, right?”
She had already heard the news that her own son had gained recognition from the company executives following Seo Taehu.
However, the person she was meeting today was a little special. Kim Won-cheol, the man with top-tier abilities serving as her son’s guardian.
It was hard to believe he was someone her mother-in-law—who always went on about bloodlines—had assigned.
-Clink!
Her stomach burned from tension. She was already on her fifth glass of cold water.
As Cheongju-ssi cleared away the empty glass, she glanced at Kim Seong-hye and casually spoke up.
“Little Madam, if you’re feeling unwell, should I call a doctor?”
“A doctor? Auntie, what are you talking about? I’m not sick.”
Even so, it seemed she had grown fond of the maid over the years, with all sorts of affections mixed in. Kim Seong-hye thought Cheongju-ssi was the only one who truly cared for her.
As if responding to her innocent expectation, Cheongju-ssi scratched her head and replied.
“You keep groaning like that—maybe it’s severe constipation. They say if you let it build up too long, it rots….”
“Auntie! Cheongju-ssi, you’re a natural at getting under my skin, really!”
Unlike the frustrated Kim Seong-hye venting her anger, Cheongju-ssi remained utterly emotionless, like a rock on some mountainside.
“Or maybe not…. Why get mad? You’ll get wrinkles on your forehead.”
“Fine! I’m the fool for expecting anything.”
Throwing a tantrum while sitting wouldn’t change a thing. Their years together had already proven that.
Kim Seong-hye fanned her face with her hand to cool the heat rising there. Venting her emotions like this actually made her feel much clearer.
“Were you doing it on purpose, or just to tease me? I don’t even know who’s the boss around here anymore.”
With her emotions settled, Kim Seong-hye calmly reviewed the situation again.
Kim Won-cheol, clearly a trusted aide of her late husband who had passed not long ago.
He had been her husband’s friend since childhood, with a somewhat slick playboy vibe, but his abilities were outstanding.
He was the one praised for rebuilding the Ammunition Group’s backbone from the shadows.
“If Kim Won-cheol, that man, helps our Seo-jun, then what I can do is probably….”
Kim Seong-hye poked her head into the hallway after opening the door. Confirming no one was on the second floor, she locked the door.
Then, toward the photo frame opposite the bed—showing her husband smiling brightly and herself pregnant with a swollen belly—she carefully approached.
-Beep beep beep beep
Gently pushing the wallpaper behind the frame revealed a safe. She entered the password and took out the contents.
“Let’s see….”
A few apartment registry copies, a USB with financial transaction certificates.
The apartment was worth just over 1 billion won, nothing to fuss over, but the USB was different.
Kim Seong-hye quickly turned on her laptop. Plugging in the USB and checking her account balance on the securities firm’s HTS, it showed a considerable amount.
-[Ammunition Securities] Ms. Kim Seong-hye’s current stock evaluation amount is 11.85 billion 650 million won.
“It’s definitely grown a lot. Not nearly enough, but it could still help a little, right?”
After moving into the Pyeongchang-dong mansion, she had received about 500 million won from her mother-in-law as if it were charity. Now, 20 years later, it had grown this much.
The result of her own investment instincts plus the help of the capable PB she’d recently met.
“Even if Seo-jun won favor with that old hag and took his dad’s shares, it might still fall short.”
Kim Seong-hye didn’t know much about the Ammunition Group’s complex circular investment structure. Or how much money needed to go into which affiliates to secure control.
She simply hoped this money, just over 10 billion won, would help her son.
As a mother.
* * * *
A fine day for a dog to fall asleep in the sun.
The chaebol family at the top of a massive corporation with a market cap of hundreds of trillions turned out to be surprisingly threadbare.
They held barely a handful of shares across the entire group.
There’s an easy way for such chaebol families to seize control.
A circular investment structure where affiliates hold each other’s shares in a daisy chain.
That’s what Kim Won-cheol had asked me about—the method chaebol families use to hold power.
“This Ammunition Group. Where’s the weakest link in its circular investment chain?”
“Circular investments…. Straight to the point with your question, huh?”
Kim Won-cheol had brought up the Ammunition Group’s most sensitive area.
Unfazed by my retort, he just shrugged once and continued.
“This fortress called the Ammunition Group—you need to know its weakest point to attack or defend, right?”
His gaze still saw me as a greenhorn. Like an interviewer at an exam, waiting to hear what this young guy would say.
This… stings my pride a bit.
“Could you pass me that black pen over there? And some scrap paper too.”
“Huh? This?”
The Ammunition Group’s circular investment structure? No way I don’t know it.
If I got burned so badly in my past life and didn’t analyze why I lost, I’d be less than a rookie—I’d be trash not worth recycling.
Taking the pen and paper from Kim Won-cheol, I quickly scribbled something down.
-Scribble scribble
Dozens of circles appeared on the white paper, each labeled with names.
Starting from Ammunition Heavy Industries to securities, electronics, trading companies. Affiliate names filled in without a single error.
On one sheet, the stars of the Ammunition Group night sky sparkled.
Now, I connect these stars.
“The weak link in the circular investments…. Explaining it verbally would probably be too complicated for you to follow.”
“Do it however’s easiest.”
The pen tip touched one round star.
A black line pushed through the rough texture.
The line reached another star, looped back, then set sail to yet another.
And the traces left behind—the numbers engraved on the lines. Each affiliate’s ownership percentage in the others formed one story.
The tale of the Ammunition Group, woven into the constellation called circular investments.
“A rotten tree in the forest stands out only when you draw the whole picture. I’ve painted a lush landscape—does this answer your question?”
The diagram drawn without a single discrepancy. With relationships marked down to the decimal, I deliberately didn’t specify the weak link.
I wasn’t giving Kim Won-cheol—who tested me— just the answer.
“Huh…. This is….”
“With this level of detail, it should suffice as an answer to your question.”
I gave him the correct answer but didn’t spell it out explicitly.
If Kim Won-cheol truly had what it takes to be my right-hand man… he’d find the key part in what I provided.
Kim Won-cheol sat there, mouth agape, unable to continue. It was beyond his expectations.
Sweeping back his thinning hair, he asked me earnestly.
“Dozens of lawyers from Kim & Jeong Law Firm put this together…. How did you…?”
“Because it’s mine. The Ammunition Group.”
Kim Won-cheol let out a hollow laugh. Another unexpected response, apparently.
No need to rattle off legal or accounting knowledge here. Having drawn that diagram, all that remained was to show the will to claim the crown.
“But there’s a slight problem.”
“A problem? You just gave me a perfect 100, and now there’s a problem?”
* * * *
Now it was my turn.
Time to gauge if the man before me was a usable card. Or if he could become a true partner in fate.
Nodding, I replied to him calmly.
“Even if I receive the Ammunition Group’s seal from Seo Taehu, if the family council changes its mind, that’d be trouble.”
“Hmm….”
The grandmother who controlled the board, the Han family council that controlled the shareholders’ meeting.
Unless something extraordinary happened, decisions from the board wouldn’t be dragged to the shareholders’ meeting. Generally speaking.
“Taking the chairman’s seat isn’t ordinary. You climb the mountain with effort, only for someone to push you off the back—total failure.”
“As you know, I’m a bastard son. Plenty will see a legitimacy-lacking me planting a flag atop the mountain as a bad thing.”
Bastard son.
My biggest Achilles’ heel.
For now, only some in the family council knew I was born out of wedlock.
With Han Hwa-gi losing the succession race, he’d definitely play that card in the council.
Since regressing, I still hadn’t found a counter to it.
Kim Won-cheol… can you find a way?
The man my father trusted as his right-hand, my mother relied on, and grandmother assigned as guardian—what answer would he give me?
“There’s a way.”
The tense moment didn’t last long.
Kim Won-cheol showed no sign of agonizing. He spoke up.
“Crush them with force. In a capitalist world, force means money, and money means shares.”
A somewhat disappointing answer.
Securing shares with money to overpower the family council was the straightforward approach.
The problem was the money.
The funds I could freely mobilize fell short of 10 billion won.
A pittance, not even one percent of what was needed for control.
“Pfft!”
Did he read my darkening expression?
Chuckling lightly, Kim Won-cheol continued.
“That meeting transcript from before. I read it closely. You said a financial crisis is coming soon, right?”
“I see it as inevitable within the year.”
“I had a hunch too. Those American bankers—did they all eat rat poison or something? Anyway.”
Returning to a serious face, Kim Won-cheol pulled two ballpoint pens from the desk organizer, handing one to me.
“Does our Strategy Director like Romance of the Three Kingdoms?”
“I used to, but the elevator incident earlier made me hate it.”
He couldn’t hold back laughter as I recounted the story with my uncle.
“Heh heh heh… Then no Liu Bei or Cao Cao play. Let’s do Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang impressions. I’ll be Zhuge Liang?”
Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang… clearly referencing the Red Cliffs ploy.
Writing strategies on palms and revealing them simultaneously.
“Timing. Let’s match when we think the world economy’s bomb will go off.”
“Sounds fun. Then show me what our Shu prime minister’s got.”
-Click!
The sound of pen caps opening and scribbling filled the office.
Clenched left hands. Exchanged glances. No need for a countdown.
Without prompting, we opened our hands simultaneously—both bearing the same number.
* * * *
“Whew…. This is something. In a way, the son takes after the father more.”
Two completely different hands.
One so pale it might be called porcelain, the other wrinkled deeply, but the numbers on both palms matched.
As if facing a mirror.
-September
-September
Kim Won-cheol suddenly slapped his thigh. I responded with a grin.
No further explanation needed.
“2 trillion won. The minimum to suppress the family council’s influence in the circular structure. Ride the September wave well, and….”
“10 times. Factoring in safety margins, higher returns are tough. So the seed money needed is 200 billion won.”
The calculation for the required funds was done.
The only issue left: where to get that money.
Kim Won-cheol, folding and unfolding his fingers as if tallying, finally spoke his result.
“200 billion. 200 billion… Not sure about the rest, but I can cover at least half for now.”