Chapter 101.2: Who Would be Quicker? (2)

Sunday morning.

“Channy! Let’s have breakfast!” Yoo Hye-Sook called.

Kang Dae-Kyung and Yoo Hye-Sook had told Kang Chan that apart from going to the supermarket after lunch, they would stay at home all day.

With so many National Intelligence Service agents guarding them, Kang Chan didn’t really lose sleep over his parents going to the supermarket.

Kang Chan wasn’t too worried since his parents seemed thankfully satisfied with the new employees.

After eating, Kang Chan went into his room and turned on his computer. While browsing, he remembered the scene that he saw in front of the building yesterday.

However, no matter how hard he searched for what Seok Kang-Ho told him and how many search words he used, he found no news articles about the picketing aside from the one titled ‘Miss Lee suicide’ and the one that stated she suffered from depression

“What the? Did this fucker do something to get rid of the evidence?” Kang Chan asked himself.

It wasn't impossible. Considering even the knife fight on the national road in Yongin was kept secret, there was no way a chaebol like Yang Jin-Woo wouldn't be able to stop the spread of articles about an employee committing suicide.

In the afternoon, he went to the supermarket with his parents.

He couldn’t believe that this mundane kind of life gave him happiness.

He was in a highschooler’s body, but since he was quite mentally old, he also thought that it wouldn’t be bad if he married a bit earlier than others.

Whom should he marry, though? Kim Mi-Young? She hadn’t even graduated yet.

Kang Chan shook his head while smirking to himself. He decided to wait at least until she graduated from university.

After a simple lunch at a restaurant, they headed home. Looking for an opportunity, Kang Chan then brought up the subject of his schedule on Wednesday while pretending that nothing was wrong.

“Do you two remember the Ambassador of France? His name is Lanok,” Kang Chan told his parents.

“Yes. What about him, Channy?” Yoo Hye-Sook peeled off the skin of the yellow melon on the tray, then sliced them and placed them neatly on a plate.

“He told me there’s someone that he wants to introduce to me among the people that are visiting Korea, so he asked what I thought about attending as the French interpreter at the presentation hall,” Kang Chan explained.

“Really?” Yoo Hye-Sook first looked at Kang Dae-Kyung, surprised.

“That’s a good opportunity. What do you want to do?” Kang Dae-Kyung asked Kang Chan.

“I want to attend if the two of you are okay with it. I also want to know how that type of event progresses.”

“It’s going to be a good experience for you,” Kang Dae-Kyung sent him a worried glance as he answered. He seemed to be asking if it wouldn’t be uncomfortable.

“Right! Channy, you’re going to get the certificate of acceptance from a national university in France tomorrow, right?” Yoo Hye-Sook asked.

“Yes. I’ll receive it at school tomorrow. I think I’ll be going to the French cultural center starting the day after that.”

“Is that okay with you?”

“I’ll decide once I’ve received the special admission letter to a Seoul university and after I see how everything goes. I’m still not sure whether a university in Seoul or France would be better.”

Yoo Hye-Sook burst into tears again.

“Why are you crying?” Kang Chan asked.

“I just remembered when you were hospitalized. I decided back then to forget about you going to college like what your dad had said, so I’m thankful that you got accepted to a university that everyone wants to get into.”

While Kang Chan was looking down at the oriental melon, not knowing what to say…

Buzz— Buzz—Buzz—. Buzz— Buzz—Buzz—. Buzz— Buzz—Buzz—.?

His phone rang.

“Go. You should answer it,” Kang Dae-Kyung said and gestured with his eyes. Kang Chan went into his room.

“Hello?”

- It’s me. Let’s go check out the land that we bought yesterday if you don’t have anything special going on.

That wasn’t a bad idea.

After giving a plausible excuse, Kang Chan immediately left the house and found Seok Kang-Ho already waiting for him in the car.

He immediately got in the passenger seat.

“Your family doesn’t complain?” Kang Chan asked.

“About what?”

“Why don’t you go to Gapyeong with your family for a day?”

“Don’t even get me started. It seems they want me to go out of the house because I’m a distraction to my daughter when she’s studying.”

“... How big of a ruckus do you cause at your house?”

Seok Kang-Ho shook his head when Kang Chan looked at him. “We couldn’t send her to a

hagwon

or get her private lessons before because we couldn’t pay for them with a school teacher’s salary. But now that we have some money left over after moving to an apartment, they’re both going crazy.”

“Your daughter’s not mad?”

“The weird girl likes to study. She also can’t stand falling behind the other kids.”

“Why would you call your daughter a girl? And why would you act like that—isn’t it good if she’s studying hard?”

Seok Kang-Ho smirked. “She’s dumb. We sent her to

hagwon

, paid for private lessons, and she’s studying so much that she’s sacrificing her sleep, but she’s barely fifth in her class.”

“Being fifth in her class is excellent!”

“How could you say that? It takes so much money for her to study! I would’ve saved up that money instead and sent her to study abroad. Their eyes blaze up with fury as they glare at me if I just so much as turn on the TV!”

Kang Chan had to change the subject because the displeased Seok Kang-Ho kept grumbling.

“Hey! I searched online, but there wasn’t any article about the picketing anywhere. Where did you see that?” Kang Chan asked.

“Huh? Oh, I’ll look for it later and call you.”

There was no point in him reading the news article. After all, there was nothing he could do about it. He was satisfied that it changed the subject, though.

They reached their destination after a while. The land was in a fairly good location. It had a view of the river, and it wasn’t far away from the roads.

But before them was an eyesore of an incomplete building that had ‘Foreclosed’ written in red on white fabric in three different locations.

“What’s this?” Seok Kang-Ho asked, finding themselves in an unexpected situation.

Seok Kang-Ho immediately took out his phone and pressed the screen to call someone.

“Hello! I’m Seok Kang-Ho, the person that bought the land in Misari yesterday. Yes. I’m here now, and I see that it’s under a property lien. What’s this?”

Kang Chan perched somewhere nice and smoked a cigarette as Seok Kang-Ho’s voice got louder and louder.

No wonder he was so confident.

“When did you say something like that!”

Right after Seok Kang-Ho yelled, two men with big builds approached them from the other side of the building, dragging their feet on the ground.

When Kang Chan tilted his head and looked at them, he noticed a small container tent behind the building. It was positioned in a way that seemed to hide it from view.

They were annoying him in so many ways.

“What brings the two of you here?” One of the men asked, sounding raspy. His head, which was about twice as big as Kang Chan’s, alternated between Kang Chan and Seok Kang-Ho. “I heard that this land was bought yesterday. Are you two the new owners, by any chance?”

“Alright! The people that you told me about just came. I’ll call again once I’m done talking to them!” Seok Kang-Ho said, then hung up. He looked at the guy with the big head. “I bought this land yesterday, but I didn’t know about the property lien. What happened?”

Kang Chan smirked when he saw the man spit on the ground. The guy behind the big-headed man stared at Kang Chan, looking uncomfortable.

“You two bought good land. The landowner went bankrupt while this building was being built, and he didn’t pay for the construction costs. If you two just pay us what we’re owed, we’ll be out of your hair by tomorrow,” the big-headed man replied.

“And how much is that?” Seok Kang-Ho asked.

The guy smiled sleazily. “Just two billion won.”

Kang Chan laughed dryly.

Seok Kang-Ho was happy for getting a five hundred million won discount for a land that was worth two and a half billion won. Unfortunately, that led them to his situation where if they exchanged blows, the two men would shift the blame on them and make them pay one and a half billion won.

“Let’s go,” Kang Chan said, and then stood up.

They got fooled because they were stupid. It was their fault for impulsively buying the land without checking out the site first and for thinking the price of land would absolutely increase because of the Eurasian rail.

If it was just the hundred million won initial payment, then they got away easily.

“Go! I’ll send you a hundred million won tomorrow, so be more careful next time,” Kang Chan insisted, then walked to the car while dusting off his butt.

“Those sons of bitches completely treated me as if I’m an idiot!” Seok Kang-Ho yelled.

“This happened because we were greedy. Didn’t you also expect this land to become several times more valuable once the Eurasian rail is connected? Just shake it off and move on. The Gong Te stocks that you own are going to increase in price a lot. In just ten days, I heard they will increase from twelve billion won to twenty-four billion won, so just think of this as an opportunity to learn a good lesson.”

The two men gave them a blank look. It seemed they thought that Kang Chan and Seok Kang-Ho would cling to them because otherwise, they would regret the lost deposit.

~

Sitting at the cafe that they always went to, they smoked and drank coffee. Seok Kang-Ho got angry multiple times, his eyes burning.

“Stop it. We won’t be any different from gangsters if we beat up people just because we got fooled because of our own stupidity. Or do you want to take this to court? Sue for fraud? Just let it go,” Kang Chan said.

It wasn’t as if Kang Chan didn’t understand how Seok Kang-Ho felt. He also knew how big a hundred million won was. However, it would be best to stop pursuing this matter further.

“Right! The fifty billion won that I told you about last time has been deposited into my brokerage account. I’ll take it out soon and send you some,” Kang Chan added.

“Why would you send that to me? I received money from Lanok.”

“See? When did we ever get greedy about money? We suffered this loss because we were uselessly greedy, so just shake it off and remember never to do this ever again. Anyway, I’ll send you some money.”

“That’s not it—”

“Daye.”

Seok Kang-Ho flinched when he heard Kang Chan briefly call him.

“Let it go. How many times do I have to say that this happened because we were greedy before you understand? Yes, those fuckers did act dirty. Still, there’s no way to get that money back. So just move on,” Kang Chan said.

“Alright. I’m sorry.”

When Kang Chan drank coffee with a smirk, Seok Kang-Ho exhaled. “Phew!”

𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

He had finally gotten rid of his lingering anger.

“Sons of bitches. They took a hundred million won in the blink of an eye,” Seok Kang-Ho commented.

“It’s a relief that you only sent a hundred million won as a down payment because yesterday was Saturday. Imagine what would you have done if it was a weekday and you could pay off the money owed to the bank and the remaining balance.”

“That’s true.”

“Yeah. We still have luck remaining on our side. Let’s be careful from now on.”

“Alright.”

Sunday passed like that.