The Hunting Plan
“Haha. If you’re already this close with Chairman Kim, I can practically see the shape of it taking form.”
“Chief Park, you should keep Choi Jeong-san in line instead. That bastard’s like a rugby ball—you never know where he’ll bounce off to….”
If they’d been speaking in ordinary terms, it would have been an old parent worrying over hot-blooded children, but the situation had been reversed now.
“We’ve spent thirty years together. How could I not know Choi Jeong-san? His abnormal brain has always dragged the worst possible outcome out of everything, and I’ve spent my whole life cleaning up after the messes he made. It’s practically routine for me.”
“...You’ve had a rough time, Chief Park.”
“I appreciate your concern, James.”
James flipped the report back to the first page and picked up his glass again.
“I’ve skimmed the outline. Now let’s go through the details.”
“…….”
Park Jin-tae was deeply impressed by James’s meticulous nature and the gentle authority he carried without effort.
If Choi Jeong-san had even half of Young Master James’s qualities, he never would have ended up like this….
Telling Choi Jeong-san to resemble his son James was a contradiction in itself.
“Let’s start with the media. You said you’ve gathered evidence related to it, right?”
“...Yes. We plan to release it one by one around the end of next year, when the real battle over shares begins. He’s caused so many problems that there’s more than enough to bury Choi Jeong-san in Korean society.”
As James sifted through the old incidents tied to Choi Jeong-san, one familiar name caught his eye.
“...Hold on. Choi Jeong-san’s two sons…”
“The eldest is Tae-jin, and the second—and youngest—is Young-jin.”
“Tae-jin... where is he now?”
From the name alone, James couldn’t immediately tell whether it was the same man.
“He’s studying in LA and is scheduled to come back to Korea early next year.”
James remembered the Tae-jin he had met when he first encountered Su-ji.
The Tae-jin he’d met in LA had been the idiot who tried to make a move on Su-ji and ended up magically castrated for it.
“What’s his type?”
“As you’d expect from Choi Jeong-san’s son, he’s absolutely obsessed with women.”
“What?”
James didn’t want to admit it, but he was also Choi Jeong-san’s son. Park Jin-tae apparently realized he’d misspoken and hurried to correct himself.
“Ah... I mean, excluding you, James.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m asking because you said the bastard’s obsessed with women.”
The name matched. He was studying abroad. He was in LA. And now the thing about women matched too. It was enough to make James suspect they might be the same person.
“There were several incidents involving women domestically. The chief of staff was called in more than once over similar matters, and on one occasion they even brought in a separate crew to settle the score.”
“So Tae-jin got into it with some big guys over drinks, and then they dragged people off to retaliate?”
That was one of the episodes listed in Park Jin-tae’s report. Tae-jin had picked a fight at a drinking party with some ordinary men built like tanks and got beaten badly on the spot. He told Choi Jeong-san about it, and Choi responded by hiring a gang to get revenge. The incident had been serious enough to make the news for a short while, but TY Telecom’s legal team had handled it by negotiating settlements with the victims in advance.
“Show me that bastard’s face.”
“Right here.”
On the phone screen Park Jin-tae held out, James saw a face he remembered all too well.
“…….”
It was definitely the same bastard James had met in LA.
“He takes after his mother’s side in looks, but his personality is pure Choi Jeong-san. The second son’s no different.”
“Still... shouldn’t chaebol children at least have basic discipline?”
“He was spoiled wrong from an early age. And Chairman Choi indulged him far too much.”
It was a creation born from Choi Tae-yeong’s grotesquely possessive love for his own blood and Choi Jeong-san’s satisfaction at watching his sons—who resembled him—cause trouble out in the world.
“A family made of rotten scraps?”
“I have no excuse for it.”
“Then I suppose the network of connections you’ve built with the press to keep things like this from blowing up is pretty substantial too?”
Park Jin-tae nodded at James’s accurate guess.
“Yes. Thanks to that, I’ve become close enough to call the newspaper reporters by their first names.”
That intimacy was about to come back at them like a dagger.
“The reason the eldest, Tae-jin, went abroad for school so late was because of the things he’d done here too.”
“…….”
James realized that his castration spell might actually end up improving the bastard’s public image. If left alone, he might have gone on causing more problems.
Did I castrate him for nothing?
Of course, he could only think that because he had no idea what had happened after he left the United States.
“...But recently, the situation has become a little more serious.”
“Something your bastard of a son did?”
“Yes. The eldest, Tae-jin.”
James tilted his head. A magical castration couldn’t be escaped by anyone unless he released it himself.
And yet he’s back to chasing women?
“It’s not about women, then….”
Park Jin-tae agreed with James’s muttered deduction.
“No. This time it’s not a woman issue.”
“Then what is it?”
“According to an employee who recently met the eldest young master and came back... it seems he may have started using drugs.”
“Drugs? Narcotics?”
“Yes. I heard he kept looking over his shoulder like he was nervous and couldn’t stay still for even a moment. He had dark circles under his eyes, his body had gone frighteningly thin, and he demanded a lot more money on top of that…”
“...Ah.”
Only then did James begin to picture what had happened after he left.
After losing his sex drive…
People always sought a substitute, and the same was true for him. With most of the appetite that had once consumed him gone, he had looked for something else—and that something had been narcotics, a stimulus said to outstrip sexual pleasure many times over.
“...I suppressed that employee’s report at my level. Choi Jeong-san still doesn’t know his eldest is using drugs.”
“It’s not confirmed yet, right?”
Nothing had been verified in practice, but James was certain his guess would prove true.
“Yes. I’m only making an educated guess myself. We’d need a hospital for a proper examination to be certain.”
James thought this eldest son might also be useful material for the press.
“What if we wait until the bastard comes back next year, and then start working the media angle?”
“...Deliberately exposing the eldest young master’s drug use carries a serious risk.”
You couldn’t casually brand a chaebol heir a junkie. Even if he really were addicted, they could delay the drug tests for months and scrub away any traces of the substance from his body. If they pushed hard enough on the prosecution side, something like that wasn’t difficult.
“What if the bastard brings the drugs in himself?”
“!”
“Would a guy who’s hooked really come in empty-handed? Sure, drugs are easier to get in Korea now, but he doesn’t know the routes. There’s no way he wouldn’t bring in enough to satisfy the craving in the meantime.”
And then James realistically predicted how Tae-jin would move afterward. He would wander around Itaewon looking for drugs, meet other rich kids who were already hooked, and naturally become close to them. It was an open secret that plenty of chaebol children dabbled in narcotics.
“...All we have to do is gather information on them and expose it to the press.”
“If that happens, the entire chaebol class will be dragged onto the media chopping block. Not just the chaebol families, but the entertainment industry as well.”
Park Jin-tae meant that other conglomerates and entertainment insiders might move to control the press, but James was focused on the effect the scandal would produce.
“If the fallout spills onto other chaebol families, what do you think they’ll make of TY Group?”
“If their own children get dragged into it because of Tae-jin….”
“Then TY Group becomes the villain. He’s not only smuggled drugs in from overseas, but handed them directly to his own child too. If it were me, I wouldn’t let that slide.”
It could become a small but powerful reason for business circles that were friendly with TY Group to turn their backs on it.
“If it goes badly, there could even be a consumer boycott. That would be a major blow to TY Group….”
“Wouldn’t that be good for us too? The stock price would plunge even further.”
“!”
For James, who needed to buy up TY Telecom shares, it was a perfect opportunity. No matter how hard a boycott hit, it wasn’t easy to destroy a company outright. There had been similar cases before, but boycotts never lasted more than a few weeks, and the media never even mentioned the consumers’ lack of firepower. It was the result of companies quietly pulling strings in the hope that the whole thing would blow over.
Of course, some companies kept feeding the fire with fresh fuel—fresh scandals—to sustain the boycott’s momentum. But even then, all that happened was that sales and stock prices were cut in half, while the company itself remained standing. In TY Telecom’s case, there was more than enough fuel to keep the explosion going.
“Good. Let’s leave the possibility open for now. It’s a plan that won’t work unless the eldest keeps using drugs.”
“Ah... then I suppose we’ll have to leave that to chance.”
Getting the bastard to smuggle drugs in was clearly a trickier matter than it sounded. He’d have enough sense to consider the possibility of being exposed during immigration, so it wasn’t something he could bring himself to do lightly. But James thought of the container’s worth of drugs stored in his inventory.
Never thought I’d have a use for this too….
At this point, Tae-jin’s domestic drug distribution was no longer a matter of chance but a foregone conclusion. Letting it “be left to chance” referred only to whether he’d get caught sneaking the drugs in.
“Let’s move on. Next is Choi Jeong-san’s mistresses?”
If this plan is going to work, I’ll have to lift Choi Jeong-san’s castration too.
While James was thinking grimly, Park Jin-tae was simply staring at him.
“…….”
He felt a strange, almost emotional warmth at the sight of someone taking the plan he’d painstakingly built and examining it so seriously.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“...Normally, when I submitted briefing materials to people above me, it was never like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“It would end with a summary concise enough to grasp at a glance and a clear solution, not detailed discussion….”
And, of course, there was always the threat that they’d be held responsible for the result. But James was nothing like the Choi Jeong-sans Park Jin-tae had dealt with until now. He wasn’t just skimming the report and ending it there; he was going through the material together with him, suggesting better directions, shaping a more detailed plan, and working in actual partnership. More than anything, he didn’t seem the least bit interested in shifting blame if things went wrong.
“You’ve probably spent too long around abnormal people. This is what normal looks like, Chief Park.”
“Then let me pour you another drink.”
Even as James accepted the liquor Park Jin-tae poured for him, he knew he had to keep making an effort not to forget what the man had done in the past.
...No matter how much you follow me now, you’re still one of the bastards who killed my mother.
The reason was that he kept finding himself wanting to forgive Park Jin-tae.
I’d still like to send you off as cleanly as possible….
To James, forgiveness didn’t mean sparing him. It meant sending him off without pain.
Still... maybe I’ll cut the suffering he feels when he dies in half.
That was the best James was willing to allow him.
“Bottoms up!”
“Cheers.”
The two of them drained their glasses and resumed the discussion.
With the permission of Kim Seong-oh and Hwang Ji-hye of EST Group, James had officially begun dating Su-ji, and he went on living just as he always had.
When he had time, he went on dates with Su-ji and continued his swordsmanship training with Colt. If he heard there was a gathering at the Las Vegas VIP club, he would teleport there in an instant and come right back.
That day, too, he had made a long-range teleport trip to Las Vegas.
Faaat.
“Hup.”
James arrived home in a single breath and checked the time, then hurried to get ready to go out.
“Damn. It’s already this late... Colt! I’m here!”
He had another appointment with Colt today.
Colt had been waiting anxiously for James to arrive, and now he ran up and shouted, “Hey! What took you so long? We’re going to be late at this rate.”