Leaving the bank, I headed straight for Mullae-dong.
An unconventional landscape where old factories and brand-new apartment complexes coexisted.
Crossing through an alley where the past and present blended together, I opened the door to Daebak Real Estate, which I had scouted out in advance.
An old man was watching TV and drinking instant coffee mix.
Known as the Land Ghost of Mullae-dong, he gave me a halfhearted glance before turning his eyes back to the TV.
“I don't deal in studio apartments. Go ask the place next door.”
Turned away at the door before I could even say hello.
His eye for land might have been ghost-like, but his eye for people seemed worse than the puppy next door.
Not that I cared.
Paying him no mind, I sat down right in the middle of the sofa and crossed my legs.
“I am not looking for a studio apartment. I came to buy a building.”
“…You came to buy a building?”
The old man snorted and fiddled with the remote control.
“Do you even have the money? Properties around here start at a billion or two billion won minimum.”
“Not a small building like that. The site where Daeyeong Precision used to be. That property is on the market, isn't it? It seems to be listed exclusively with this agency.”
When the specific business name came out of my mouth, the old man's white eyebrows twitched.
Though he still looked like he didn't buy my story.
“The owner refuses to sell that site for anything under fifty million won per pyeong. Did you come here knowing that?”
Fifty million won per pyeong.
Calculated at 250 pyeong, that came out to 12.5 billion won.
It meant I would have to pour in almost all the money I had won from the lottery.
However, I had no intention of doing that whatsoever.
It was land I had personally analyzed three years ago as a candidate site for the group's fashion outlet.
Another location had been chosen due to interference from the owner of the building next door, but the price of this land had already dropped to 8 billion won back then.
“Sir. Do you not even offer a guest a cup of water?”
Staring straight at the grumpy old man, I put on the most arrogant expression I could muster.
It was a battle of nerves.
At my imposing attitude, the old man flinched.
“They say everything is self-service these days······.”
The real estate agency owner had started a fight he couldn't win.
A thirsty man cannot speak.
And the one who wanted to hear what the other had to say was him, not me.
“I have a lot I want to say, but my throat is too parched to speak.”
“Hmph···.”
Grimacing, the old man begrudgingly got up and headed to the refrigerator.
“What is this?”
“Cassia seed tea. Why? Can't drink it unless it's bottled water?”
“Not at all. Please hand it here. I will pour it myself.”
Acting even more brazen on purpose, I poured the tea into a paper cup and drank it.
“Ahem, now let's hear it. Did you look into a loan before coming here?”
“No. As long as the property is solid, I can buy it without a loan. If you find that hard to believe, I can show you my bank account.”
Had he learned mind reading or something?
The old man stared into my eyes for a long while before opening his mouth.
“Money is only confirmed once the commission is deposited into my account. Until then, I don't believe a thing no matter what I see.”
Even as he said that, the old man's gaze was glued to my hand.
“Is that so? Then let us hurry the transaction along. There does not seem to be any need to drag things out pointlessly.”
I pulled up the balance screen on my banking app and placed the phone in plain sight on the table.
Didn't believe a thing no matter what he saw?
Then why were his pupils dilating like that?
Treating me like a peddler vanished without a trace.
His face was filled solely with greed.
Aside from the rumor that he had a good eye for land, I disliked everything about the man.
“Ahem-. How may I help you, sir?”
I hadn't necessarily been trying to make him speak politely to me, but the power of cash sure seemed strong.
“I would like to meet the owner of the Daeyeong Precision building. If there are no issues, I will proceed with the contract right away.”
“Right away, sir? Have you looked over the building closely?”
“I have had my eye on it for a long time. Why do you ask, though? Is there some problem with the building?”
“···Ah, no, sir. Of course not! Do you know how many years I have been working in this neighborhood alone? Huhu. Please wait just a moment. The gentleman lives nearby, so he will be here right away.”
“Is that so? Then while I wait, I will look over the documents related to the Daeyeong Precision building. You have a copy set aside, right?”
“Of course. I may be old, but when it comes to handling business, I am thorough. Huhuhu.”
Now even laughing out loud, he pulled a file folder from the bookshelf, handed it to me, and slipped out the back door.
He was probably going out to conspire with the owner out of my earshot.
Maybe he was already counting his chickens before they hatched—drinking kimchi soup first, as the saying goes—crowing that a rich young sucker had walked in.
Don't drink too much of it.
Because if you drink kimchi soup the wrong way, you're bound to get indigestion.
After the fox-like old man disappeared, I turned my eyes to the table.
The certified copy of the register, the building ledger, the land ledger, and the cadastral map.
Looking at the thick stack of documents the old man had handed me, I turned on the diary app.
‘Let's take a look, shall we!’
It was time to get a taste of future misfortune.
Holding the documents in my hand and glaring at them, I wrote a fake diary entry.
[Monday, March 9th. I bought the Daeyeong Precision building, paying the full 12.5 billion won the landowner asked for. I emptied out my entire fortune, but I didn't regret it in the slightest. Because the Daeyeong Precision land is guaranteed to become a prime piece of real estate that will completely transform my life.]
About five seconds passed after I wrote an entry that sounded like a total sucker even to me.
My smartphone vibrated repeatedly.
Three diary entries popped up on the diary app.
Among the records glowing in red, I started reading from the closest date.
[Friday, May 15th. I'm ruined. Completely ruined.
As soon as demolition work began, the excavator operator made a huge fuss.
Pitch-black waste oil gushed out like a fountain.
To think there was a waste oil storage tank buried underground···.]
It was the moment my suspicion turned into certainty.
Something had struck me as odd when I looked around the factory before.
Even though the building had been left abandoned for a long time, the soil around the factory had been completely bare, without a single weed growing in it.
The second diary entry was from a week after that.
[Friday, May 22nd. Ha-. I'm truly, royally screwed.
A stop-work order came down from the district office.
500 million won just for soil contamination cleanup costs?
On top of that, the retaining wall is on the verge of collapsing due to ground subsidence. Those damn old geezers···.]
This thing really was a marvel.
With the corner of my mouth twitching upward, I tapped on the third message.
It was the decisive blow that would slash the price of the land.
[August 1st. I'm ruined. Ruined. Completely and utterly ruined.
Lawsuit, my ass. The owner already bolted to the United States ages ago.
My lawyer told me to give up. I just bought a 12.5-billion-won piece of trash.
Why did I do something this crazy?
There's no sucker in the world bigger than me. I wonder how many degrees the water in the Han River is right now···.]
Sorry about that, future me.
You didn't actually do that—I induced it.
When I deleted the fake diary entry I had written for the test, the records of misfortune vanished right along with it.
Though the hollow despair the future me had poured out still lingered in my ears.
Recalling the contents made me grind my teeth so hard I almost needed to look into dental implants.
A man called the Land Ghost of Mullae-dong didn't know about this?
And on top of that, the building owner was already all set to flee to the United States?
With details like these, there was simply no way I could play the gentleman.
***
At that same hour, in the Seongun Group Commercial District Analysis Team.
Senior Manager Kim Seok-hun, who had been fuming all day long, called over Assistant Manager Park Jong-il.
“Hey! Assistant Manager Park!”
“Yes, Senior Manager!”
“Where did Manager Kang say he is?”
“Well, aside from a brief call earlier where he said he was going to the bank, I do not know.”
“Nothing else?”
“No, sir.”
“Ha···. That damn bastard, I don't care if he's on leave—how does he not pick up a call from the office?”
Assistant Manager Park, who hadn't done anything wrong, bowed his head in Jin-hyeok's stead.
“By any chance, did he mention anything like winning the lottery?”
“The lottery? ···Ah, no, Senior Manager. Haha. He did not mention anything like that at all.”
“Of course not. There's no way a stroke of luck like that would ever happen to a guy with such rotten luck.”
Seok-hun kept probing Jong-il.
He had to.
Because if the contents of that unhinged text message were real, it felt like Seok-hun would be the one losing his mind instead.
“Then what could it be? Why would a guy who can't even get married and is scraping by in a rooftop room to pay off his father's debt need to go to the bank? Has it gotten so bad he can't even pay his monthly rent? Taking out an additional loan?”
Watching Seok-hun's expression brighten more and more as he imagined the worst possible scenarios, Jong-il hung his head.
“No, it did not seem like anything like that······.”
“What do you mean it didn't? That's why he's not answering his phone. Because he's too embarrassed.”
Senior Manager Kim Seok-hun's voice was brimming with conviction.
‘Looks like he's been reduced to a complete beggar this time, huh?’
Thinking of it that way made it somewhat understandable why Jin-hyeok had thrown a fit over five thousand won and lost his composure over the pay cut.
Watching Seok-hun wear a sleazy smirk, Jong-il scratched his head.
It didn't seem to be what Senior Manager Kim Seok-hun was thinking.
Even if it wasn't winning the lottery, Jin-hyeok's voice had been bright, like someone who was thoroughly excited about something.
Unlike Assistant Manager Park Jong-il, Seok-hun was quite satisfied with the conclusion he had jumped to on his own, leaning back in his chair and snickering.
“Kekeke. Now it finally makes sense why he threw such a fit. Kekekeke.”
After sniggering for quite a while, Seok-hun looked up at Jong-il.
“Enough about that. You know the Mullae-dong commercial district analysis report, right? The one Manager Kang wrote.”
“Pardon? Mullae-dong?”
“Yeah, punk. The data from about three years ago when we were selecting a site for the fashion outlet. Find that on the server and email it to me.”
Not long ago, a new assignment had come down from the Division Head of the Integrated Development Division.
To look into a site in Mullae-dong 3-ga for a mega-sized complex shopping mall.
It was an absurd order.
Neither was the transportation particularly good, nor was it an area with a thick consumer base.
Above all, in Mullae-dong 3-ga, which was packed with ironworks, there simply wasn't any suitable land to begin with.
However, the man who gave the order was called one of the founding contributors of Seongun Group.
When he arrived a year ago as a Division Head rather than a company President, some people had chattered that it was practically a demotion, but he remained a man at the very center of power.
One only had to look at the moves he made the moment he took office to see that.
Timing far too exquisite to be called a coincidence.
Just one day after Division Head Baek Kang-jin came to Seongun Development, the company President's embezzlement was uncovered.
A year had passed since then.
Various rumors floated around regarding the President's seat, which remained vacant to this day.
The most plausible among them was that people were terrified of Division Head Baek Kang-jin's presence.
No one wanted to sit above him.
And was that all?
Declaring that innovation was needed, the Division Head had transferred all four Team Leaders off to other affiliates.
For that reason, there wasn't a single General Manager-level executive across the four teams belonging to the Integrated Development Division.
Seok-hun had to get in his good graces.
It wouldn't end with his upcoming promotion to General Manager.
Considering the Division Head's age, he had five years left at most.
Even if Seok-hun had to give up every shred of pride—sacrificing his liver and gallbladder, as the saying goes—if he just held out well for five years, he might even be able to inherit the man's position.
Unable to blindly submit an unsuitability report, Seok-hun skimmed through the data Jin-hyeok had created three years ago.
The report analyzed for selecting a fashion outlet site.
Inside it were both unsuitable factors anyone could agree with and solutions to address them.
‘He doesn't listen worth a damn, but he sure is good at analysis. This much will be plenty.’
Even reading it three years later, it was a flawless, impeccable report.
Letting out a satisfied smile, Seok-hun tapped away at his keyboard.
He simply replaced the words “fashion outlet” with “complex shopping mall” and typed his own name into the author field.
He didn't feel an ounce of guilt.
Because it wasn't the first or second time he had done this.
A team member's achievements belonged to the department head anyway.
That was how Seok-hun had always lived.
***
-SCREECH!
From an older-model Equus that pulled to a stop in front of the real estate agency, a white-haired elderly gentleman stepped out.
The real estate agency owner practically ran out barefoot to welcome him and ushered him inside.
Now that I knew the truth, the sight of them was infuriatingly detestable.
“Sir! This is the gentleman right here.”
The elderly gentleman looked me up and down with sharp, critical eyes.
“That young fellow says he's buying? A fellow that young is buying my land?”
I looked up at him with a slightly chilly gaze.
I knew his situation all too well.
His plan to unload the land and bolt to the United States.
He was in a position where he needed to get rid of this headache of a property as soon as humanly possible.
Which meant that right now, he was putting on an act as if he had nothing to lose, just to squeeze out every last penny he could.
“There is no need to test the waters. Let us get straight to the point. I am a rather busy man.”
When I answered without being intimidated in the slightest, the elderly gentleman's eyebrow twitched.
“12.5 billion won. I have no intention of knocking off a single ten-won coin.”
A firm voice.
Did I have the face of an easy mark—a sucker waiting to be fleeced?
Sipping my cassia seed tea leisurely, I asked him.
“Sir, would you care to have a seat first?”
“Why? Is it more expensive than you thought? That's the going rate all around this neighborhood! If you're not buying, don't waste my time! People are lined up wanting to buy it. I can't stand watching young punks swagger around just because they've touched a bit of money. Are you buying or not?!”
It was so absurd that a dry laugh escaped me.
People were lined up wanting to buy it? Then why not just sell it to them?
He was brazenly tossing out a lie that wouldn't even fool an elementary schooler.
Shall we begin?
I loaded the future information verified through the diary app and the specialized expertise gained at Seongun into my head.
“12.5 billion won···. It must be a very fine location, then?”
“Of course it is! It's the site I've guarded for 50 years while eating grease and oil for a living. The framework is solid, and it sits right on a four-way intersection—it's a prime spot among prime spots!”
“A prime spot, you say···.”
Smiling wryly, I tapped my finger lightly against the cadastral map lying on the table.
“It seems you spill quite a bit when you eat, sir.”
“What? What kind of nonsense is···.”
“The grease you have been eating for 50 years seems to have spilled quite a lot. Even deep underground, the soil is soaked in oil, isn't it?”
The old man's long white eyebrows twitched once again.
Don't be too surprised yet.
Because the bargaining is only just beginning.