Chapter 31: You Seem to Have Everything in Your Hands, Don’t You?

The hulking men turned out to be the same thugs who had attacked Chairman Cha Sang-woo not long ago.

Even though they hadn’t flinched at Park Jeong-ho’s shouting, one look from me made them recoil in terror, stumbling backward.

“Didn’t I warn you clearly?”

I brushed past Park Jeong-ho and slowly began walking toward the thugs.

With every step I took, they retreated even more desperately.

“I told you never to show up in front of me again. I said if I ever saw you again, that would really be the end for you, didn’t I?”

I didn’t stop.

The thugs, who had nowhere else to back away, collapsed to their knees.

“H-hiiik!”

“We’re sorry! Please, spare us!”

The thugs, faces crumpled in fear, dropped flat to the floor and began to beg.

The pain they’d once felt seemed to come flooding back in vivid memory.

I could understand why they were trembling like frightened insects.

Once fear is carved into the body, it doesn’t fade easily.

“What the hell is wrong with you idiots…? Have you all gone mad? What are you doing! Get up right now and grab that bastard!”

Unable to comprehend what was happening before him, Park Jeong-ho pointed and shouted furiously at the thugs.

I turned my head slowly to look at him.

Seeing the faint smirk curling my lips, Park Jeong-ho’s face twisted in anger.

I ignored it and spoke.

“President Park, was it truly you who ordered the attack on Chairman Cha Sang-woo?”

“W-what? What are you talking about…!”

His face turned pale in an instant.

“I happened to save the chairman back then by chance. These men were the ones who attacked him. And yet, here they are now—by your side.”

“What ridiculous nonsense! I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

He denied it desperately, but his eyes were already trembling violently.

I smirked and stepped closer to the kneeling thugs.

I stopped before the man who had been the last to suffer at my hands.

He clutched his chest—the very spot where I’d struck him before—shaking like a leaf.

“Say it yourself. Are you claiming it wasn’t President Park who ordered you?”

I asked in a cold, emotionless tone, and the man gasped for breath.

“It was all… all President Park’s orders! He sent us to harm the chairman! I swear! Please, please spare me!”

“That’s right! It was all President Park’s doing!”

“You idiot! Shut your mouth! I said shut up right now!”

Park Jeong-ho pointed at them and roared, but it was already too late.

The terrified thugs only continued to blame him, prostrating themselves before me and begging.

The law was far, but the fist was close.

These thugs, who lived without any principles, were pitifully small before overwhelming strength.

“We were only following orders! We did as we were told! Please… please forgive us!”

There was no longer any trace of will or fight in them—only the stench of cowardice.

I slowly turned my gaze back to Park Jeong-ho.

At the cold glint in my eyes, he flinched.

“You heard them, didn’t you, President?”

“Y-you bastard…! Do you think you’ll get away with this?”

Even as he yelled, he took a step back. Anyone could see he’d already lost his nerve.

I approached him slowly, my presence growing heavier and more threatening.

“Doesn’t it strike you as strange? Chairman Cha Sang-woo came back perfectly fine, yet he resigned without saying a word. I actually helped you. I stopped your entire plan from collapsing. And yet, you call me a backstabber, a damn bastard. That’s disappointing.”

A chill spread across Park Jeong-ho’s pale face.

A man who’d spent decades crawling through the underbelly of the world couldn’t be intimidated by someone like him—a deskbound stock dealer.

“Y-you…”

“If this truth were to come out, you wouldn’t be safe either. Attacking a chairman personally appointed by the chairman of the board—KCIA wouldn’t be able to protect you.”

I had struck exactly where he was most afraid. His last bit of color drained away.

“You think you’ve got everything in your hands, don’t you? You believe the market moves as you wish, so you think you can do anything you want.”

I stared straight into his eyes as I continued.

“But in the end, you’re nothing more than someone’s pawn. And what happens when a pawn starts moving on its own?”

As I exposed his true nature without hesitation, his face twisted in humiliation and rage.

“You’re no different! You’re Yang Sobo’s pawn too!”

“That’s right. So what? What’s the point of pawns fighting each other? Do you want to see which of us is more valuable?”

My mocking tone made his face flush red with anger.

“There are no secrets in this world. Anyway, you’d better keep these thugs under control. What makes you trust people like this? They’ll be your downfall.”

Sometimes, calmly spoken truth could sting worse than insults.

With humiliation thick on his face, Park Jeong-ho clenched his jaw shut.

“Either way, thanks to your operation, I earned a great profit. I appreciate it.”

My words must have been salt on his wounds—he shouted, veins bulging in his neck.

“You bastard…! Are you trying to make a fool out of me?!”

“Take it however you want. But don’t provoke me too much. Unlike you, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

At that, he looked me in the eye. Realizing I meant every word, he drew a sharp breath.

I stepped closer, brought my lips to his ear, and whispered softly.

“Wouldn’t it be fun if the KCIA learned you were having second thoughts? Say… that you’ve been keeping double ledgers?”

“Y-you…”

He couldn’t even finish the sentence. His eyes widened in horror and disbelief.

I smiled faintly and stepped back, brushing the dust off his collar.

“President Park Jeong-ho, I look forward to working with you.”

There was nothing more to say.

Leaving only a cold smile behind, I walked past the dazed man and continued on my way.

After arriving home and washing up, I was ready to rest, the day’s tension and fatigue finally washing away.

Then, a cautious voice came from beyond the door.

“Hyung…”

It was Min-soo’s voice.

I stopped what I was doing and quickly opened the door.

There he was, standing with his head bowed low.

Fiddling with his small fingers and fidgeting his toes, he looked just like a child who had done something wrong.

“What’s this? Did you commit a crime or something? Why are you standing there like that? You’ll catch a cold. Come in.”

Hesitating, Min-soo stepped shyly into the room.

He still kept glancing up at me, silent and uneasy.

I poured him a glass of water and handed it over.

“I’m not going to scold you. Drink this first.”

He took it without a word and emptied it in one gulp. Then, setting the cup down, he lifted his head and looked straight at me.

His eyes were filled with guilt and hesitation.

It seemed he still felt bad about yelling at me yesterday—saying he hated me.

“Hyung… I’m sorry.”

At last, Min-soo spoke in a small voice.

“Back then… I yelled at you… and said I hated you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Min-soo. I didn’t hate you at all.”

I knelt in front of Min-soo to meet his eye level.

Then I gently wiped the tears from the corner of his eyes with my thumb and said,

“Do you know how much I treasured you, Min-soo?”

“Hyuung….”

Min-soo, who had been on the verge of sobbing, buried himself against my chest and began to wail.

He only had me in this world to trust and rely on; being told to leave the country must have felt so crushing and frightening.

I patted his trembling back and sank into a strange sentimentality.

Guilt, relief… all those feelings spun together in a dizzying mess.

Not long ago Min-soo had been nothing but a handful of ash.

The warmth in my arms now felt both strange and grateful.

After he had cried for a long while, Min-soo lifted his face from my chest and drew back.

“Hyung, I’m going to America.”

His small voice still had traces of crying.

“This is a good thing for you, right?”

“Yes. It’s good for me and for you.”

Wiping his tears with his sleeve, Min-soo continued.

The expression on his face was one I had never seen before—there was a hard resolve in it, as if he had decided something.

“But there’s a condition.”

“A condition?”

I found myself opening my eyes wide without realizing it.

This was the first time Min-soo had asked me for anything.

“I won’t go alone. I’m going with Yang Yeong. Please send her with me, hyung.”

I was surprised once more by a request I had not expected.

I had suspected Yang Yeong wanted to go with him, but I hadn’t imagined Min-soo would press so strongly.

“You want Yang Yeong sent too? Did you two agree on this?”

“Yes. Yang Yeong said she didn’t want me to go alone. She wants to go with me.”

Yang Yeong was Yang Sobo’s only blood relative.

Asking him to send her to America was practically asking Yang Sobo for the impossible.

“Min-soo, that’s not my decision to make. Yang Yeong is the teacher’s granddaughter. The teacher won’t let her leave the country.”

“But Yang Yeong said if it’s you, hyung, she’d be convinced.”

“What?”

So Yang Yeong had taken my remark—‘your whereabouts depend on Teacher Yang’—to mean that if I permitted it, she could be sent. She must have told Min-soo that.

“Min-soo, I never promised to send Yang Yeong to America. I said her situation was up to Teacher Yang.”

“No… then I won’t go either. I can’t stand it there by myself.”

Min-soo began to throw a tantrum—the first time he’d acted like an ordinary child.

I drew a deep breath and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll try. But I can’t give you a definite answer. I’ll do my best to persuade the teacher, so you trust me and get ready to go to America, okay?”

“How long… how long do I have to be away?”

“Until I have the strength to protect you. Then come back and help me.”

“Hyung… what on earth are you planning to do? Can’t we just live together like before?”

I hugged the anxious boy tightly.

“We both know that can’t happen.”

“I’m scared you’ll get hurt… If you disappear, who will I trust?”

“Don’t worry. I won’t vanish leaving you behind. Trust me, go study hard in America and come back. Okay?”

I ruffled his hair roughly as I spoke, and Min-soo nodded.

“There’s still enough time. Persuading Teacher Yang… sigh, we’ll take it slowly.”

“Okay.”

“Now stop crying. Go on, go sleep.”

I sent Min-soo off and lay back quietly, staring at the ceiling.

Min-soo and Yang Yeong. How deeply did those two children depend on each other? Could there be something more than just friendship between them?

If that were the case…

‘Would Yang Sobo ever understand this?’

Would Yang Sobo comprehend Yang Yeong’s feelings? Even if he did understand, would he allow his only granddaughter to be sent abroad?

It was a night full of heavy thoughts.

The next morning, as expected, Yang Sobo came to see me.

He cut straight to the point without greeting me.

“Was the deal with Old Man Han completed? Did you exchange the hwan to dollars properly?”

“Yes, Teacher. As promised, I exchanged 500 million hwan into dollars. I set aside 200 million hwan for you.”

“So that 200 million hwan is entirely mine.”

“Yes. It will more than cover the losses you suffered because of Kim Jin-ho.”

Yang Sobo nodded as if satisfied.

“Good. Then use that money to do a job for me.”

“You mean the thing you mentioned back then?”

A cold smile spread across Yang Sobo’s lips as he nodded.

“You can already guess how it will proceed, can’t you?”

“Probably… you plan to exploit the ordinary-trade system’s loophole to orchestrate a massive short sale of Daegung stock, right?”

It wasn’t hard to answer, since his intent was obvious.

Yang Sobo’s eyes narrowed with interest. He gave a slight nod, as if urging me to continue.

“If we deploy enormous funds and dump sell orders into the market, the current exchange system won’t withstand it. The amounts the exchange would have to cover because of ordinary trades would balloon, and an exchange already close to capital erosion would eventually go bankrupt.”

The core of ordinary trading was that buy and sell orders could be placed even without actual physical certificates. Since the exchange mediated settlement, you could place sell orders without owning the stocks. You could acquire the physical shares later or settle the difference two months afterwards.

If Park Jeong-ho and his faction had used this loophole to inflate stock prices, the reverse—causing the price to collapse—would also be possible.

As I expressed admiration, Yang Sobo looked at me with sharp eyes.

“Where did you get a mind like this, Mr. Baek? It’s too keen to be knowledge picked up from the street.”

“I just noticed the system’s loophole. The reason I hadn’t tried it myself was that I couldn’t bear the loss if the operation failed.”

If one could pour in sell orders in an amount the exchange couldn’t withstand, the plan could work.

If overwhelming capital power could flood the market with sell orders and the external variables arising in the process could be controlled, success was possible.

I couldn’t do it alone, but Yang Sobo was different. As if he knew this, Yang Sobo spoke decisively.

“That’s right. I intended to use that method too.”

“But if it fails, you could suffer losses you can’t handle. The risk is enormous.”

“If it doesn’t fail, that won’t matter.”

Yang Sobo answered confidently.

“Even if it fails, do you think I’ll go bankrupt? I won’t collapse over something like that.”

His eyes shone with confidence and certainty. The terrifying thing was that his words were true.

“One thing: it would be awkward for me to step in personally… so you will do it for me. I trust you can pull it off.”

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