The Hwaan Group’s Brat (2)
For a moment, I wondered if I’d misheard him.
What the hell had this guy just said?
As if to reassure me that I hadn’t, Han Miru leaned back against the sofa as casually as if he owned the place.
“Ah! That’s fine. I’d be happy if you’d just be comfortable. I’ll stop being formal, too.”
……
What was this supposed to mean?
Being able to speak and act casually was a privilege only people with power could afford. I could drop the honorifics if I wanted, depending on who I was dealing with, but I could never accept the other person doing it to me.
“You right now—”
I was about to shout, incredulous, when Han Miru continued in the same calm tone.
“Actually, Chairman Yoo Jae-ho has been treating me with such courtesy and speaking so formally that I’ve been a little uncomfortable. Especially since he’s a good deal older than I am.”
……
In other words, even the older Yoo Jae-ho didn’t speak casually to me, so who the hell did he think he was?
Han Miru even loosened his tie and crossed his legs.
“I thought people from chaebol families all acted that way, so I’m really glad you don’t, Heo Min-woong.”
“What? ‘Mr.’?”
“Yes. We’re close enough to speak casually, so calling you by your title feels too stiff. But calling you brother feels a little too soon.”
……
At that point, I was almost speechless.
What the hell is this guy?
A chaebol wasn’t just someone with a lot of money.
It meant actual control over major corporations, and influence that reached into politics, academia, the courts, the press, and the rest of Korean society.
He was the second son of Heo Seong-hun, chairman of Hwaan Group, one of South Korea’s top ten conglomerates.
Whatever his age or status, people usually treated him with deference. Of course, he wasn’t the kind of man who’d never encountered a cocky bastard before.
If the other person outranked him, there was nothing he could do. But he would never tolerate someone beneath him acting rude.
Under normal circumstances, I would’ve thrown a punch before I bothered with words.
The problem was that the one who had introduced this bastard to me was Yoo Jae-ho. Treating someone who’d made the introduction carelessly was the same as insulting the person who’d vouchsafed him.
And because he was being this arrogantly brazen about it, it somehow made it harder to put my hands on him.
Heo Min-woong swallowed his boiling anger and said, “Then tell me why you came.”
I had no interest in talking at length with some idiot who couldn’t even read the room. I planned to hear his business, send him off, and be done with it.
But the words that came out of his mouth were completely unexpected.
“I came to save you, Heo Min-woong.”
“……What?”
I looked at the man in front of me.
He was thirty-one years old and unmarried.
About 180 centimeters tall, with a solid build and a handsome face. As far as I knew, he’d graduated from Duke University in North Carolina, one of the more prestigious schools in the States.
He was Heo Min-woong, the second son of Hwaan Group chairman Heo Seong-hun.
He spoke English well and, having spent enough time abroad, handled most of the overseas business. At the moment, he was serving as the head of the Hwaan Energy overseas investment team.
The Thomas Motors deal had been his project, too.
He glared at me with those sharp, ferocious eyes.
If this had been my first life, he would’ve been the kind of person I couldn’t even meet in the eye. How often did someone like me ever get to face a conglomerate heir in person?
And yet I didn’t feel much tension.
Maybe it was because I’d been through so much already.
Besides, I’d already met Yoo Jae-ho. Why would I get nervous over the son of the chairman of Hwaan Group?
Even though I had made sure to project a domineering air, I just sat there calmly, so Heo Min-woong had no choice but to speak first.
“You came here to save me?”
“Yes.”
“You’re saying I’m about to die or something?”
“That’s right.”
Looking stunned, Heo Min-woong got to his feet and walked over to the bar lined with liquor bottles. He grabbed a glass, poured himself a Macallan, and downed it in one go.
One bottle of that stuff cost about as much as most office workers made in a month.
“I don’t think I’m exactly the most polite person either, but don’t you think you’re being a little too rude?”
The way his face and voice tightened made it obvious he was forcing himself to hold back his temper.
Where in the world had the chairman’s son of Hwaan Group ever been treated like this? Because it was me, he was getting this sort of treatment.
If I hadn’t come under Yoo Jae-ho’s introduction, I would’ve been thrown out long ago.
Since I had already set the tone, I decided to keep going with it.
“Pour me a drink too.”
“Do you think you’ve earned the right to drink this?”
“If I weren’t worth even the price of the liquor, would Yoo Jae-ho have bothered introducing me to you?”
He stared at my face for a moment, then poured half a glass of whisky into a rocks glass and set it on the table. I didn’t particularly like alcohol, but I had no intention of passing up an excuse to drink something expensive.
I took my time sipping the whisky.
“The day after tomorrow, Pure Cell Day will be held at Thomas Motors. I understand the hydrogen infrastructure MOU is scheduled to happen before the event. Once the announcement goes out, not only Thomas Motors stock but also Hwaan Energy and Hwaan Solution will jump sharply.”
“Forget things everybody already knows. If you have something to say, say it and get out.”
I nodded.
“Then let’s start with the best-case scenario. If the hydrogen infrastructure investment goes well and looks like it’ll deliver results, Hwaan Solution will end up taking it anyway.”
Heo Min-woong, the vice president of Hwaan Solution, was the eldest son of Chairman Heo.
“My brother would take it? How?”
“By merging Hwaan Energy and Hwaan Solution.”
He looked at me with open displeasure.
“Who decides that?”
“The management and the shareholders do. If the group pushes for a merger, do you think you can stop it?”
The reason I knew that was because the merger actually happened. It took place for different reasons, but in the end Hwaan Energy was absorbed into Hwaan Solution and disappeared.
Even if he held a lot of shares, the controlling shareholder was Hwaan, the group’s holding company.
And...
“Does Hwaan Energy really have the capital and capability to carry the business on its own without support from the group? Building out hydrogen infrastructure will require massive investment at the group level. Even if they pour everything into laying the groundwork, it’ll probably take at least three years before it turns a profit. In the end, if the business is going to move forward properly, they’ll have to go begging to the top.”
Heo Min-woong said irritably, “Why don’t you stay out of other people’s family business?”
He would already know all of this and likely had some kind of plan in place. Of course, no matter what countermeasures he put together, there were limits to how much defense could help.
In any case, as he said, I had no reason to meddle in another family’s affairs.
“Fair enough.”
I nodded and fell silent.
A moment later, Heo Min-woong asked cautiously, “So?”
“So what?”
“If you came here to irritate me by bringing up things I already know, then you ought to have a solution.”
I said it as if it were obvious.
“Why are you asking me? You should be the one thinking about your own family’s business.”
“……What?”
Now he looked so stunned that he didn’t even seem angry anymore.
Wanting to keep him from overthinking it, I kindly explained.
“Actually, you don’t need to worry about that at all.”
“Why not?”
“Because this project is going to fail, and you’re going to get thrown out of the group.”
……
Silence settled between us.
Heo Min-woong stared at me and said, “Cut the crap and get lost.”
“It isn’t crap. The hydrogen infrastructure partnership will crash and burn, and you’ll be the one taking the blame.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a fraud.”
“What is?”
“Thomas Motors.”
“……You keep getting shorter with your answers.”
“Should I make them longer?”
Apparently that wasn’t the important part, because he went back to the main point.
“What exactly is fraudulent about Thomas Motors?”
“Everything.”
Heo Min-woong laughed in disbelief.
“Ha!”
“What’s so funny?”
“You expect me to believe that?”
I laughed right along with him.
“Ha!”
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because I heard the exact same thing when I first pointed out the problems with the Primus Fund at DA Securities. And what happened in the end?”
……
There was no need to say more.
My warning had been right, and Executive Director Yang Jeong-uk had gotten the axe.
This time would be no different.
Because of David’s report, Thomas Motors was eventually exposed as a fraud, and eighty percent of its stock price vanished. Its market capitalization, which had stood at $40 billion, shrank to $8 billion.
Hwaan Energy and Hwaan Solution had both bought in low enough that the investment didn’t go negative on paper, but most of their paper profits still disappeared.
The bigger problem was that this completely wrecked Hwaan Group’s energy roadmap.
Heo Min-woong ended up taking the blame for all of it.
He resigned from his post as team leader at Hwaan Energy. After that, he had almost no influence left inside the group and had to watch his brother swallow the company whole.
His face had gone rigid.
It couldn’t have felt good to hear that the business he was pushing was a fraud.
“Can you back up what you just said?”
“What would it matter if I said I could? In the end, you’re the one who has to make the judgment.”
He gripped his glass so hard it looked like he might shatter it.
“Then explain it properly.”
“Let’s start with the hydrogen production plan. Thomas said it would produce 3,000 tons of hydrogen a year using solar power. They claimed technological innovation had cut production costs to less than a third of the old level, but what exactly is that technology? Are all the other companies idiots, producing hydrogen at three times Thomas’s cost? I heard Hwaan Energy even covered the headquarters with solar panels for them, so are they actually producing hydrogen now?”
“Delayed production is common. What’s the problem with that?”
“Then let’s talk about the hydrogen truck. A lot of people compare Thomas to Tisla, but at least Tisla has been rolling out vehicles consistently since its startup days. Opinions are divided on whether Tisla will ever turn a profit, but nobody doubts its cutting-edge technology in electric vehicles and autonomous driving. What about Thomas, though? Have they built even one vehicle? Forget mass production—have you ever ridden in one of the hydrogen trucks they supposedly made?”
……
Heo Min-woong had no answer. Of course he didn’t.
He said defensively, “They unveiled the T1 FCV last year.”
“Ah, that prototype?”
“They’ve already completed test driving, and they’re planning an official launch in the second half of next year.”
“Test driving? Says who?”
Thinking I was mocking him, he frowned.
“They tested it on the road. Didn’t you see it?”
I played the video on my phone.
“You mean this video?”
He nodded.
“Yeah.”
“They just rolled it down a hill.”
“……What?”
“Think about it. CEO Brad Button only said the truck moved. He never said it drove.”
He raised his voice.
“Are you messing with me right now?”
“Surprisingly, once the truth came out later, that was exactly the excuse they gave. Even I thought it was a pun when I first heard it.”