12 Hours After

Translator: Khan

Editor: Aelryinth

I came into the president’s office and looked at my cell phone. I didn’t know what this guy meant or what he was thinking, but he was most likely connected to this case.

‘… why the Hell…?’

In any case, there was no reason not to answer the phone. I pressed the call button.

“How have you been, CEO Han? I’m Lee Won-jae of the Daewon Daily News.”

“Yes, Mr. Lee. Long time no see.”

“Yes, it’s been a long time. How have you been, Mr. Han?”

The voice of Director Lee Won-jae was nowhere near as bad as Kang Joo-hyuk’s.

I answered implicitly, “Yes, of course. How are you?”

“Yes, I’ve been doing well, too. Haha.”

I was slightly surprised to hear a laugh coming over the phone.

‘Are you laughing?’ He might not have touched on this case. ‘If it’s not, then why are you calling me?’

I asked him, “By the way, what made you call me?”

“It’s just…” He blurted his words out, “I’m calling to thank you.”

I asked back, “Thank me?”

He brought up words to me. “Yes, well, this is about Bisang Construction and Jinyang Development.”

I spoke in the most obtuse tone of voice, “Ah, yes. But why… are you saying ‘thank you’?”

“Isn’t this a painting done by Mr. Han Sang-hoon?”

As expected, this guy thought I was behind the scenes, like reporter Kang Joo-hyuk, the prosecutor, and so on. I couldn’t help it.

‘In a mystery novel, people who benefit from a person’s death are the most likely to be questioned. This incident has resulted in tens of million dollars of profits for our company and me. It’s just that I screwed up the operational forces.’

I just hit them with the money they hit me with, and that was all that happened. I was as consistent to him as I was to others I didn’t know. “No. How did I, the president of an investment company, find out about the corruption and know the information in advance? I was lucky to make a bet on the wrong side.”

“Ah, was it that so? I thought it was unlikely, but you are the one the money went to. Haha. I’m sorry, I just doubted.”

He said so, but he didn’t seem to believe me 100%.

‘Bah, you are the man of a fox.’

But I had a question: why did he say “thank you” to me? I asked him, “But why… did you say ‘thank you’ to me? Did you buy Jinyang Development, too?”

“No. I bought Bisang Construction, not Jinyang Development. I should’ve sold it when it went to the upper limit price yesterday. I was so greedy that I got the lower limit price. I put in a million dollars. I don’t know how much I can get back.”

He bought the stock of Bisang Construction worth a million dollars, but he still thanked me. It didn’t make sense.

I asked him, “So, how come you’re grateful to me?”

This fellow said something I could not understand. “Oh, I made more than a million dollars.”

“What are you talking about…?”

Director Lee Won-jae told me, “Haha, well, it’s difficult to say right now, but read the article later. Ah, CEO Han, will you keep hitting the short stock sale for Bisang Construction?”

“… I’m sorry to tell you, but it’s about our company’s profit. I’ll keep hitting it.”

“Oh, I see.” That was also a strange reaction. He was happy the price of his stock would go down. It was quite strange. He left a strange remark until the end. “I see. It was nice to talk to you on the phone after a long time. I think our relationship is a good one. I don’t know what CEO Han might think, but… If you have any further requests for us, please contact us immediately. I’ll send out a well written article.”

I answered briefly, “Yes.”

After I finished my phone call, I put down the cell phone.

‘I got the loss, but made a bigger profit; thank you for hitting the short stock sale to the stock I bought.’

There were a lot of strange words. I thought of them in silence. ‘What is a possible scenario for this…?’ Come to think of it, there was only one. ‘Don’t tell me… Is that it?’

———————————–

That evening, there was an article on the Internet.

[Jung Gi-woong, president of Bisang Construction, confessed to all charges.]

It was as expected. Since the data I had circulated was so accurate, there was no way out.

I read the article.

[… He has been acquainted with Seoul City Hall for ten years, and when he was among the selected candidates for this project, he was in contact with them.]

‘With the mayor admitting this, the lower limit price for Bisang Construction is fixed again tomorrow. It has hit the lower limit price twice so far, but there is a long way to go down, since it’s risen so far. It is nothing more than a bubble bursting. Now that the CEO has committed a crime, it’s proper to go below the usual price.’

I looked further down the article.

[… However, he has denied any recent stock price manipulation. President Jung gi-woong says he expected the stock price to rise if Bisang Construction was selected, but he didn’t really share the information with anyone.]

He denied stock manipulation. I looked at it and thought, ‘He is lying.’

‘In the case of the stock price soaring with a good source, such as Bisang Construction, it is usually required to be approved by major shareholders. When its stock price soars, and major shareholders sell off their shares, the operational forces have a burden, too. Of course, some stocks go even higher after major shareholders sell their shares, but most of them take the same steps.’

I thought of the presidents of the small and medium-sized construction companies who had bowed and scraped to Tak Joon-gi at Seoul City Hall.

‘President Jung Gi-woong must have known that if his company was chosen as a business operator, the stock price would rise even more than normal… I don’t know what the price would have been…’

I read all the articles to the end. In the comments of the articles, in general, political ones were the main focus.

– Mayor Joo Sung-won, who is the main hall of bribery, step down!-

– The mayor himself revealed the corruption and had no sin. I think he’s stopped the wrongdoings of Seoul Metropolitan Government.-

The public seemed to be interested in this.

‘What I’m curious about is how the stock manipulation scandal is going on.’

Suddenly, I picked up my cell phone and searched for reporter Kang Joo-hyuk. I recalled the conversation I had had yesterday, ‘CEO Han… please spare me. Gangnam Station? It’s nice to have a lot of people. I’ll call you back.’

He said he would contact me again, but I hadn’t heard from him.

‘What’s going on?’

He seemed to have contacted a broadcasting company last night, but it was not enough to get a clear pass.

‘He might have stimulated the upper line…’

Come to think of it, it was a game-changer of his own: “Look, I can expose myself to the press, to the police. Don’t touch me.”

‘But… what if they ignored that message? I have an ominous premonition. I hope that no matter how evil he is, he will not be buried in the hills or thrown into the West Sea with stones in his boots. I want him to go to the police station, court, and prison, and pay for his crime. In the process, it’s good if he says the name, Tak Joon-gi. But somehow… I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

Considering Lee Won-jae’s strange phone call today, it was clear that something was happening below the waves. ‘Read the article later.’ However, it should be said that his decision was already made. Whether it was the police or the media, it was about the timing and how it would be revealed to the public.

‘Well… what the Hell… what’s going on?’

———–

It didn’t take long for my question to be solved. Around 8:30 in the evening, I waited for nine o’clock without playing a game or watching a movie. It was to watch the nine o’clock news from BKS. I was hoping that something more might come out today. However, there was some news on the main screen of the smartphone and portal site, which was picked up without much thought.

[Kang Joo-hyuk, a reporter for Jaeil Economy, committed suicide after disclosing about the stock price manipulation in Bisang Construction.]

I saw the title, and I groaned a little. Ah…

‘Is this what happened in the end?’ I thought the disclosure yesterday might have killed him. There would have been no guarantee of living if he hadn’t made the disclosure. I read the article.

[Kang Joo-hyuk, a report at Jaeil Economy, wrote a suicide note revealing stock price manipulation, and lit charcoal in his car.]

If it were as usual, I would’ve thought, ‘That’s how he went.’

However, this time, I thought, ‘Did they give him sleeping pills and light charcoal to kill him?’

I continued reading the article.

[… According to the suicide note, he was the brain of the stock manipulation team, and he planned what businesses they were going to manipulate, how he would run the news, how he would run the funds…]

I scrolled down further and looked at it. His death was sorry, but more important was the upper line. I found a name, a cash cow at the heart of stock manipulation. I soon found a familiar name.

[… he conspired with Executive Director Lee Won-jun of Daewon Daily News, and Park Soo-young, president of Seree Investment, to collect Bisang Construction shares…]

Looking at the name, Lee Won-jun, I thought, ‘The reason why Lee Won-jae liked it is this…’

When I spoke to him earlier, there was only one scenario that brought to mind his elder brother, Executive Director Lee Won-jun of Daewon Daily News. I didn’t know him well, but Lee Ah-young had pointed to Lee Won-jun, not Lee Won-jae, as her enemy, so it would have to be true that Lee Won-jun was closer to the stock manipulator. Lee Won-jae heard the story and invested a million dollars. But Lee Won-jun, the center of the forces, might have invested nearly ten million dollars, possibly more.

‘He lost more than ten million dollars and he’s caught in stock price manipulation… If so, he is likely to be excluded from succession to the Daewon Group. The chances will be much greater for the third son, Lee Won-jae. If such stakes are raised there, a million dollars is a very small amount of money.’

He knew his brother was going to be arrested away, so he liked it. As expected, they didn’t have close relationships in a rich family. I saw the following name. ‘Seree Investment? What’s this?’

I searched the name in the portal window. It was actually near my company. It was an investment company located in Gangnam. ‘Seree Investment, total market capital, five million dollars.’

By the way, I didn’t know anything else, but looking at it just one time, it gave me a rough idea: it was a lizard cutting off its tail.

Five million dollars? More than fifty million dollars had been transferred, just looking at what I saw. I came back to the article again. In the will, there was no such thing as Tak Joon-gi or anything like that.

‘Did they manipulate the will… or…?’ Nothing was left to write a novel now. I read the article to the end.

[Police say he appears to have committed suicide because he couldn’t overcome his guilt.]

I repeated that when I saw it, “He couldn’t overcome his guilt?” I was dumbfounded. Anyone who couldn’t overcome his guilt never did this. It was definitely a fabricated situation, maybe even by the police who had done the investigation. Suddenly I recalled Director Tak Joon-gi, who was making a mean smile and him saying, “I’m not with those vulgar things…”

He had never been mentioned in this case of the dead reporter Kang Joo-hyuk and Director Lee Won-jae. I looked at the clock. It was 8:45, five minutes before the second future news would come.

‘… this guy… even if he didn’t get caught now… Let’s see what will happen in the future.’ I sat down in front of the computer, thinking about that.