The Variable of Farewell
Buzz.
After James finished his shower and came out, he checked the text message that had arrived.
[Let’s meet and talk. Oppa.]
“...Yeah. Ending it by text would be pretty lousy.”
But James had made up his mind. He was certain nothing would change it. And yet certainty always had a way of meeting a variable.
Buzz. Buzz.
He looked at his phone, thinking it might be Su-ji, but it was someone else.
“Oh. Director Park.”
- James-nim.
It was Park Jin-tae from TY Telecom.
“What is it?”
- The photo taken of you when you entered the country today... has been reported to Choi Jeong-san.
“...I see.”
Normally, he would have reacted sharply to the men shadowing him in secret and the tail on his back, but the shock of facing Su-ji’s parents had left him unable to think about anything else. Even if he had known, he probably would not have had the presence of mind to stop it then and there.
“Then...”
- Chairman Kim Seong-oh of ST Group, his wife, and even their youngest daughter... what on earth is your relationship with them?
The photo of James meeting the ST Group family at the airport had been taken.
“...How much does he know?”
- Choi Jeong-san even knows that Chairman Kim Seong-oh went home with you. It seems you were being tailed from the airport.
He had just decided to end things with Su-ji, and now everything was getting tangled up in the worst possible way.
“...Wasn’t all of this supposed to be under your control? Why is this turning into such a mess?”
He had believed that everything related to him was being handled under Park Jin-tae’s management, and that the trouble could be stopped before it started.
- I kept saying it couldn’t be done lately...
With Choi Jeong-san pressing him again and again, Park Jin-tae had kept putting off the work, saying it could not be carried through.
That included everything from disguising a murder as a traffic accident inside Korea, to breaking into James’s house, to hiring mercenaries overseas. But after Park Jin-tae’s repeated objections and the poor execution, Choi Jeong-san had looked for another way.
- In the end, Choi Jeong-san contacted the former chief of staff.
“...What?”
- It wasn’t reported through my channel, so I only found out after being called into the president’s office.
Through the photos laid out on the desk, Park Jin-tae had realized that James had met the ST Group chairman’s family. It was a connection he had never heard of until now.
But James could tell the situation was better than it looked.
“He must have been pretty surprised.”
- Yes. Choi Jeong-san’s face was a sight. He’d gone pale as a sheet.
Choi Jeong-san, tense as a wire, had shouted for him to get the facts straight. And since the former chief of staff had started this knowing that James was Choi Jeong-san’s illegitimate son, he had even left a warning.
- He said that if it was an illegitimate son who could build ties with ST Group, then he ought to be taken in. And he also said he’d be stepping away from this matter entirely.
“Taken in, my ass...”
James had no intention of being folded into their arms.
- He probably thought there was too much risk. If even Chairman Choi finds out, the whole situation will change completely.
No matter how much they wanted to take him in, James had no intention of accepting.
What? Go under the man who killed my mother? Under the man who was still looking everywhere for a way to kill me right up until recently?
No chance.
- James-nim. No matter how much you hide it from Choi Jeong-san, I need to know. What on earth is your connection to them?
“Ah...”
James answered a question with a question.
“What kind of relationship would I have with ST Group that would make life hardest for Choi Jeong-san?”
- ...
After thinking for a moment at James’s question, Park Jin-tae listed a few possibilities.
- First, simply having a personal friendship with Chairman Kim Seong-oh of ST Group would already put Choi Jeong-san in a bind. None of the methods he planned so far would be possible.
“Anything else?”
- The most difficult would be a blood relationship with Chairman Kim Seong-oh of ST Group. The photo of Chairman Kim’s youngest daughter facing you looked rather... significant.
“That...”
In truth, it had been a deep relationship, so if it had been captured in a photo like that, he had no excuse.
- Of course, the odds are low.
“...Why low? Isn’t it possible that I could end up with her? Chairman Kim and his wife looked at me favorably too.”
He had been in the middle of deciding to break up with Su-ji, but when told it could not happen, a pointless streak of rebellion rose in him. Park Jin-tae, however, saw it differently.
- It is almost unheard of for a chaebol family to take in an ordinary man as a son-in-law. It would be a long shot.
The enormous wall of class that was a chaebol family mattered only in Korea, but the problem was that Korea was exactly where James was.
“So I’d have to be at their level?”
- Even so, it is not impossible. If Chairman Kim already has a favorable impression of you, then however difficult it may be, there are ways.
Park Jin-tae thought James could become part of the TY Group.
“Ways, huh...”
- You become part of the TY Group.
All James had to do was reveal to Choi Tae-yeong that he was his illegitimate grandson.
“...”
- If that happens, then being tied to ST Group will not be a dream. Chairman Kim will surely accept you...
Park Jin-tae thought the method he had come up with was the best one, but James wanted more than that.
“I’m not going under them. Couldn’t I just swallow the TY Group whole?”
- !
“TY Telecom, the holding company for TY Group, has dropped to a market cap of about six trillion won lately, so if I acquire fifty percent, I only need to invest three trillion, right?”
- That would... require you to have three trillion first, wouldn’t it?
“There’s forty billion dollars in Arthur Chris’s account. That’s well over four trillion won.”
- That money is...
Park Jin-tae was dead certain that Arthur Chris’s account would become his own.
“Ah. If it’s under a borrowed name, maybe that’s difficult? Then I’ll just buy it with my own money.”
- Huh!
“And if that still isn’t enough, I could always get help from some rich friends. So it’s not impossible.”
- Friends? You mean...
“Let’s check the share structure first. How many shares do Chairman Choi and his family hold altogether?”
- ...
It was hard to believe that James was talking about buying TY Telecom outright, but Park Jin-tae recited the share structure he had always kept in mind.
- Founder Choi Tae-yeong holds about twenty percent, President Choi Jeong-san seven percent, and the two young masters each received 1.5 percent as gifts from the chairman when they became adults. Altogether, that makes thirty percent.
“If I acquire thirty percent now...”
Given the market cap of six trillion won, it was not hard to calculate how much money would be needed to acquire the same thirty percent.
“Is that about 1.8 trillion? Cheaper than I expected.”
- The acquisition process will not go smoothly. Once an announcement goes out that shares are being bought due to a management control dispute, the stock price will swing wildly. And even just to protect control of the company... there is a 120 percent chance that the share buying will turn into a competition.
“Tch. Why one hundred and twenty percent instead of one hundred?”
- If a share war breaks out, even relatives connected to the group by blood will join in. Other conglomerates will also step in, claiming they want to help. That is why it is 120 percent. To be safe, you’d need to secure forty percent.
To acquire forty percent, the figure came to 2.4 trillion won at current prices, and if he factored in the possibility of the stock price rising as Park Jin-tae suggested, the conclusion was that he would need at least three trillion won.
“There are a lot of mountains to climb.”
- That is why a fight over TY Telecom shares will never be easy. No matter how much money you have, acquiring a large block of shares in a conglomerate is...
“That’s something I’ll only know once I try.”
James had a hidden weapon besides money: magic.
If he made up his mind and used magic, he could make TY Group dance to his tune right this instant. It would also be no great matter to send Choi Jeong-san and Park Jin-tae to the bottom of the East Sea.
True revenge only comes when you’re all dragged all the way down to hell. But direct revenge with magic would be far too easy.
James intended to tighten the noose until the very moment Choi Jeong-san’s life was cut off. Of course, he would end up using magic repeatedly along the way, but he did not want Choi Jeong-san’s final end to be brought about by magic.
Until the day you walk into the sea yourselves...
Park Jin-tae was already calculating the possibilities if James entered the fight to secure TY Telecom shares.
...
Assuming James-nim succeeds in securing the shares...
Even just looking at his own state now, with not even a shred of rebellion rising against James, it was harder to imagine him failing.
The profit I stand to gain is the forty billion dollars in the slush fund account, and that’s before the bonus!
Not only would he get the slush fund James had promised to hand over in full, but he could also remain in Korea after putting that slush fund into his own hands. Even with a great deal of money, leaving the life and environment one had grown up in to go live overseas was exhausting.
What if he fails to secure the shares?
Even if he failed, there was not much for him to lose. No matter how the share acquisition turned out, James would still exact revenge on Choi Jeong-san by any means necessary, and in the process Park Jin-tae could obtain the slush fund account. Nothing would change about being able to stay in Korea afterward.
Then what is there to worry about?
The conclusion was the same, so there was no reason to agonize over it. In any case, if he was not using the slush fund account for the acquisition, there was no need to stop James.
- Please go ahead and try it. I’ll help you.
“Oh. Now you’ve done the math?”
- Ahem. I have nothing to lose.
“Tch. Right. Director Park loses nothing. I’m the one taking on all the risk.”
James’s enormous fortune, amassed until now, had been placed on one side of the scale, and on the other sat the lives of Choi Jeong-san and Park Jin-tae.
I’m putting up my fortune. You’re putting up your lives.
But there was still one more thing James had not considered, and Park Jin-tae brought it up.
- Then may I assume your connection to ST Group will continue?
“...”
Su-ji and his own problem rose back to the surface of his mind. And Su-ji could not be placed on either side of the scale with the assets James had set there, or with the lives of Choi Jeong-san and Park Jin-tae. But ST Group could be useful in securing shares in TY Telecom, so if he had to place it anywhere, it belonged on the side of the enormous assets.
...Is it all right to use Su-ji?
Up until the call with Park Jin-tae, he had been set on breaking up with Su-ji, but now it was James who felt reluctant to let go.
Is it really all right?
If his feelings for Su-ji had vanished in an instant and only the desire to use her remained, he would not have been thinking like this. James still believed he would bring misfortune to her, and he worried that using ST Group in his revenge might also bring misery to her happiness.
- If you are not actually that deeply involved with ST Group, then even now...
“Tell Choi Jeong-san that ST Group’s youngest daughter, Kim Su-ji, and I met through an introduction from Hwang Ji-hye, the president of EST/ST Fashion.”
- !!
It was the truth, with not the slightest trace of a lie.
“I’m going to build a deeper connection with her. So... there shouldn’t be any more annoying problems from now on, right?”
For the sake of achieving his own objective, James intended to continue his relationship with Su-ji a little longer.
- I’ll do my best to block the information from spreading. And we should proceed with the share purchase at the same time. I’ll draft a scenario.
“Call me. Once the scenario’s ready, report back. We’ll add flesh to it together.”
After ending the call with Park Jin-tae, James looked at his phone with a hardened expression and sent a short message.
[Yeah. Let’s meet and talk.]
He had to redefine what his relationship with Su-ji meant.
...