Old Grudges Don't Fade Easily
On the eighth day after buying the copper futures, the price broke through the twenty-seven-thousand-dollar line.
From that moment on, it felt like standing on the lip of a knife-edged cliff.
One slip, and the enormous profits would vanish into thin air.
The price swung from twenty-five thousand dollars on the low end all the way up to twenty-eight thousand on the high. Uncertainty was swelling by the hour. Any country, any corporation, might slam the brakes on construction already underway.
Russia was already beginning to waver.
There was no reason to force a power-grid construction through when copper was this expensive. If a project could be postponed, postponing it was the right call.
And so the copper futures price surged and plunged by as much as ten percent in a single day.
Anyone who had gone in with five-times leverage — borrowing on credit — would have either become filthy rich or been utterly ruined in the blink of an eye. Either way, the price was leaping all over the place.
Jung Jinwoo had closed out at the thirty-one-thousand-dollar line.
Even holding on that long had taken superhuman nerve. He had been tempted to sell several times the moment the price crossed twenty-seven thousand, just as planned.
But even after he sold, the next day the price climbed as high as thirty-three thousand. It even tagged thirty-four thousand.
The Russian government had postponed the entire East Siberian Power Network project, and several African nations had shut down their solar energy programs.
Immediately after that:
The world's largest copper mine, in Chile, had started digging again.
The price began to fall just as steeply as it had soared. The cancellation of Russia's power-network project seemed to have been the decisive blow. A power grid had been slated to be laid densely across that vast territory — and now the project had been delayed.
Copper was now drifting between twenty-one thousand and twenty thousand dollars a ton. And as time passed, the price would only keep sinking.
A text had arrived. It was from Oh Se-eun.
"Haaah… this woman's a complete lunatic…."
He couldn't help but be stunned when he read the message.
For the briefest instant — less than a minute, a flash of time so short it barely existed — the price had tagged thirty-five thousand dollars. That was when Oh Se-eun had dumped the copper futures she'd bought.
He had thought selling at thirty-one thousand was impressive. He had believed it was an art form.
Oh Se-eun was a monster.
The fact that she had held on all the way to thirty-five thousand was astonishing. And that she had sold with ghostly precision at the absolute peak.
She was clearly born with an investor's blood in her veins.
Eight frantic days had passed.
In that time, Jung Jinwoo had raked in nearly two hundred trillion won. Jerome, Aziz, and Number Five had all pocketed handsome profits of their own.
Aziz, in particular:
Apparently he had sold the copper futures he'd bought directly to Saudi Arabia.
Well, if they got along that well, all the better.
Even in the midst of all this, the Munpia workout and the JW Dive In business were racing ahead. Do Ye-rip and several JW Dive In employees had formed an acquisition team and been dispatched to Munpia.
On the website-development front, fifty-two affiliated companies had reached out in addition to JW Corporation's twelve subsidiaries. Jung Jinwoo, already swamped, only had to show up and sign the contracts, so there was no real work stress to speak of. The terms were essentially already settled, and he even felt a little sorry that the people in charge seemed to be walking on eggshells around him.
The Running Dog prototype Team Leader Yoon Jong-seok had built had come out quite well. It felt like it could be a solid mid-tier success even released as-is.
And yet something about it was still lacking. His standards had risen, it seemed — he couldn't be satisfied with this anymore.
The dramas and films had already finished testing anyway, and they needed to test the game side too. Who was going to just hand over a game source they'd poured their soul into developing? It wasn't as if he could walk up to some random studio and ask. This had actually worked out well all around.
He had just finished sending the texts to Oh Gong-tae when—
"Manager… a call just came in. Someone wants to meet you."
It was Team Leader Ji Jeong-eun.
"Then tell them to come here."
"That's the thing — they said they're at the cafe in front of the office, and they want you to come out."
"Who is it?"
"Well, they wouldn't say… they said it's related to Do Ye-rip. Do Ye-rip is the Dive In employee on the twenty-fourth floor, right?"
He felt oddly sorry toward Ji Jeong-eun.
"Team Leader Ji! From now on, just transfer calls like this straight to me. Don't put yourself in an awkward position in the middle."
He said it because she seemed to be shrinking into herself just from passing along a message, even though she'd done nothing wrong.
"I'd like to, believe me. But you're always so busy…"
"I'm sorry. It's just that you do important work, Team Leader Ji. I feel bad treating valuable talent like my personal secretary."
"Good that you know. I'm fine, so if you feel that bad, just buy me a drink sometime?"
"Sure, let's do that. Later…"
Jung Jinwoo was grabbing his coat and standing up when she spoke again.
"But Manager… that person's voice sounded really agitated. Be careful."
"Agitated?"
He almost asked, Why would they be agitated? — then stopped. Ji Jeong-eun wouldn't know the reason anyway, and he already felt bad enough treating her like a secretary.
"So you're Jung Jinwoo?"
The moment they met, the man went straight to talking down to him.
He was a handsome young guy who looked a year or two younger than Jung Jinwoo.
"I am."
"You…"
His face was flushed, his eyebrows were hiked up, and even the fists clenched at his sides were trembling. The atmosphere was so charged it wouldn't have been strange if something exploded at any second.
"What's your relationship with Do Ye-rip?"
When the other person was worked up, getting worked up yourself only led to a fistfight. Jung Jinwoo deliberately put on a leisurely expression and looked the man over.
"Shouldn't you start by explaining your own relationship with Ms. Do Ye-rip?"
"Me?"
His lips twisted, and he spat the words out like he was chewing them.
"The man who's going to marry Do Ye-rip."
"Hoo…"
Jung Jinwoo let out a sigh. He was sick of this.
Hadn't he already been threatened by that Ham Ho-seok character over Choi Jieun — even receiving terror threats through a private investigator? Why did he keep getting dragged into other people's love fights…
No — he hadn't even gotten involved. Why were they stuffing him into it on their own?
"If I have to define my relationship with Ms. Do Ye-rip, we're a senior and a junior at work? Something like that."
"I came here knowing everything, Jung Jinwoo. Be honest."
"Honest about what, exactly?"
"You… you and Do Ye-rip… you had that kind of relationship. Before you got divorced…"
At the man's words, Jung Jinwoo's eyes sharpened.
The only person who could say something like that was Noh Mira. The only people who knew about that incident were Noh Mira and the divorce lawyer.
"That's a baseless rumor."
"Liar… I saw a photo of the two of you together at a motel."
Noh Mira, then. If there was anyone who would spread a photo like that, it was definitely Noh Mira.
"If you're going to believe whatever you want to believe, why bother asking me? I already told you it isn't true. And you've been talking down to me since the moment we met… you look a year or two younger than I am…"
"What does that matter?"
"And… as far as I know, Do Ye-rip doesn't have a boyfriend. You're the man she's going to marry? Who the hell are you? Should I call Ms. Do Ye-rip right now and ask?"
"You little shit…"
"Watch your mouth. We're not at an age where we curse at each other during a conversation."
Strangely, the more the man got worked up, the calmer Jung Jinwoo became.
"A guy who just works at some IT company… who doesn't know his place… do you even know who Do Ye-rip is?"
The only daughter of Il Sung Pharmaceutical, wasn't it?
"She's the only daughter of Il Sung Pharmaceutical."
"Oh, so you knew? Now I see — you approached her on purpose, knowing all of that… Do Ye-rip… do you know what kind of woman Do Ye-rip is? How kind and pure she is."
"And she can be a bit of a scatterbrain at times, too."
"What?"
"You might not know that. Doesn't seem like you've been watching her from up close. Did you two actually date?"
"W-we've known each other since we were kids. We're promised to each other. We're getting married."
"You promised to marry Ms. Do Ye-rip? Did Ms. Do Ye-rip agree to that?"
It was an unbelievable claim.
"Th-that's not exactly…"
"Haa… what's your name?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"I figure I should at least know the name of whatever idiot this is."
"You bastard!"
The man shot to his feet.
"Sit. Sit down. Don't get excited… if you pick a fight with me, you'll die. So sit."
A Shadow would be watching from somewhere, after all.
"Die? Do you know I have a jiu-jitsu purple belt?"
"Got it. Jiu-jitsu purple belt. Handsome, stupid mister. Sit down."
The man hesitated for a moment, then slowly sat back down.
"Listen carefully, you pathetic nameless human. Ms. Do Ye-rip and I have no relationship whatsoever. That photo is complicated to explain, but Ms. Do Ye-rip came there to handle the handover when I was leaving the company. And Ms. Do Ye-rip is a kind, clean person. Even if I were as filthy as you seem to think, she's not the kind of person who'd fall for some cheap stunt like that. If you like Do Ye-rip, you should already know that."
If he liked Do Ye-rip, he should have had faith in her, shouldn't he? Even if you assumed Jung Jinwoo had tried something dirty, you shouldn't think of Do Ye-rip as that kind of woman.
"I heard it from Ye-rip herself! She said she likes you. You! She said she likes Jung Jinwoo!"
What on earth was this scatterbrain Do Ye-rip going around telling people?
He'd seen the suspicious photo, and on top of that he'd heard from the woman herself that she liked Jung Jinwoo — no matter how much truth and explanation Jinwoo offered, none of it was going to land.
"You don't know who I am, do you? You probably don't know what kind of family I come from, either."
"I don't even know your name, so how would I know that… and why would I need to know about your family?"
Why were all these kids with a little money and a little power like this?
No — not all of them. There were plenty of decent ones. Like Lee Jinho, or Do Ye-rip.
Was Oh Se-eun decent too? Ah, let's put Oh Se-eun on hold. Her brand of crazy was beyond imagination.
"I'll make you beg on your hands and knees… you'll find out, shivering, what happens when you dare to loiter in front of me."
He almost spat out, Aigoo, I'm so scared!
This was Jung Jinwoo, who had educated gangsters and buried Jo Dong-jo, the power broker who had the judiciary in the palm of his hand. He was forcibly holding back the laughter that kept trying to escape at the words of the man in front of him.
"I'd rather you didn't. I get that there's a misunderstanding… if you like Ms. Do Ye-rip that much, show her your sincerity. Don't drag in people who have nothing to do with it and make everyone's lives exhausting."
"Just you wait, you bastard… you asked for my name, right? I'm Jung Tae-jun. Jung Tae-jun of Samkwang Enterprises… the kids who know me start shaking just hearing my name. Wait and see what happens to you!"
"Hoooo…"
A long sigh spilled out.
Jung Tae-jun stormed off, huffing, and Jung Jinwoo clutched his head.
Looking at him, for all the vicious talk, he didn't actually seem like a truly bad person… Why did everything have to get so tangled…
If they were genuinely bad people, he could have delivered a thoroughly brutal punishment and still had room to spare. Dare to threaten Jung Jinwoo? Real criminals overflowing with malice were nothing special. He could crush them with a single finger.
The real problem was clumsy kids like this, who misunderstood everything and let their imaginations run wild.
"Aah, what am I supposed to do with a guy like that?"
It would be easier to tell someone to clean up the gangs, or to acquire a major corporation. What were you supposed to do with a fool who couldn't understand even when you spelled it out?
Clutching his head, Jung Jinwoo lifted his gaze, his eyes gleaming.
He had remembered that Noh Mira was standing behind Jung Tae-jun.
A dirty connection clung like industrial-strength glue — you could want to cut it off all you liked, and it still wouldn't let go.
It was about time it simply vanished into the past. Instead it bit down and hung on with everything it had.