The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 81

Before departing for Japan, I had things to take care of.

First was confirming how the casino and Eight Outcasts Society had changed while I was away at the Northeast Frontier.

And confirming what business each organization’s leaders were running, and how that business was faring.

In short, getting everyone together for a long-overdue face-to-face.

And as it happened, a suitable occasion arose for exactly that.

Its centerpiece was the proprietress who oversaw all of our casino operations: Madam Park Bokja.

“Oh, here he comes.”

“We’ve been waiting, young master.”

The door of the waiting vehicle opened, and the madam came out to greet me, dressed impeccably in a hanbok of black fabric with gold accents.

Standing beside her was Dolsoe, who had undergone a grand overhaul with the latest artificial body, and the head of the Killing Pact, Min Jeonghwan, exuding a sharp edge.

I’d gathered everyone for a long-overdue reunion, and every face was looking well.

“A graduation ceremony, though. Has that much time really passed already?”

“The casino and the orphanage opened at almost the same time, didn’t they. The school we started running then has grown to this already. When I think about it….”

Trailing off mid-sentence, the proprietress pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes.

Where I and the Eight Outcasts Society officers were headed was the first graduation ceremony to be held at the currently operating educational foundation.

Being the first, she had said she wanted to spend big on it and I had allowed it, but I hadn’t expected to be attending in person as a guest.

“But anyway….”

Skimming through the financial statement for the funds the proprietress had sent while riding in the vehicle, I noticed a significant entry.

“The educational foundation’s finances are…. turning profitable starting this year? What on earth happened?”

“Ah, that?”

The proprietress smiled and began to explain.

In summary: this educational foundation project was the proprietress’s lifelong ambition.

Because of that, she had managed it with as much care as the casino, perhaps even more so, and it seemed to have caught on unexpectedly with ordinary residents living in the middle tier.

About forty percent of graduates had successfully gained admission to what were called ‘upper-tier universities’ directly operated by corporations, and the rest could pass into any decent regional academy without difficulty.

As a result, inquiries about enrollment had been flooding in from middle-tier parents.

‘But why?’

Why and how, when you actually think about it, the answer is simple.

First, I had plastered money from the gambling hall all over the school facilities, creating a paradise for the students.

On top of that, the teachers instructing the children were professors and scholars personally recruited from regional academies, and even by conservative estimates that put it only slightly below the top-tier school districts.

After all, about eighty percent of children in Joseon are put through an endless rotation of private tutoring, so why had I spent so much on schoolteachers?

I had asked out of curiosity, and the proprietress’s answer was a sight to behold.

“Why, this is the underground tier, isn’t it? If we ran the children through late-night tutoring rounds like children in the middle tier, all manner of thugs would kidnap them and make a fuss over ransom money and the like. Isn’t it far better to have them protected at school around the clock?”

“Wow. That’s something.”

A far more grim reason than I had imagined.

But more to the point, if there’s a risk of kidnapping, why send children to tutoring centers at all.

No matter how intensely people valued education, wasn’t this practically a sickness at this point?

Either way, the ‘Pyeongwoon Orphanage’ the proprietress had been running was renamed the ‘Pyeongwoon Educational Foundation,’ and that foundation went on to establish ‘Pyeongwoon Academy,’ the underground tier’s largest integrated boarding school covering elementary through secondary education.

And this graduation ceremony was the event marking the foundation’s debut before the world.

When the size of those school facilities and the university admission rates came to light, word had reportedly spread rapidly among middle-tier parents.

‘Around the middle tier, if you go to undeveloped areas there’s no shortage of rotten schools. Wouldn’t this place be better than sending them somewhere like that?’

‘Most of the children living in the underground tier were kids who’d never been educated properly and just made trouble, and forty percent of those kids got into upper-tier universities.’

‘Then if our child goes there, admission is as good as guaranteed, right?’

A perfectly middle-tier mindset, soaked in prejudice and contempt for the people of the underground tier.

And on top of that, Pyeongwoon Academy was a boarding school managing an integrated curriculum from elementary through secondary.

For middle-tier parents whose average daily working hours exceeded twelve hours, the conditions couldn’t be better.

“I made it to teach children living in the underground tier, and now middle-tier children are coming in…. doesn’t that turn the whole thing on its head?”

“It does. So I restricted enrollment to underground-tier residents. Even blocked workarounds by limiting it to actual residents. But….”

“But?”

Now here is where something peculiar occurred.

When the chairwoman’s announcement came out that only underground-tier residents would be admitted, something caught the eye of the now-disappointed parents.

‘The area around this school is near Pyeongwoon Casino. The streets are clean and the city infrastructure is…. actually decent.’

‘Security firms run regular patrols, so the public safety is better here than places with only drones flying around?’

And the most important reason.

‘The land prices are cheaper than the middle tier, aren’t they?’

Cheaper land.

The moment that news spread, a real estate frenzy erupted around the boarding school.

Parents trying to enroll their children in Pyeongwoon Academy. Apartment developers targeting those parents. And every manner of opportunist trying to get a piece by squatting on parcels of land.

All of them clashed in a full-scale battle centered on Pyeongwoon Academy as the prize.

“It was absolute chaos. Madam Park, they even came to our organization with ‘cooperation requests,’ you know?”

“Oh my, what could I do about that? They came marching into the office with guns demanding land. How is a delicate woman like me supposed to stop them.”

“You ended up subduing them yourself in the end. Bare-handed combat at that…. aagh?!”

“Mouth! Mouth! I’ll shut that mouth of yours for good!”

Well, there they go.

Watching a woman past fifty and a man past thirty bicker like that, I looked over the educational foundation’s financial records once more.

‘To support the Iron Tiger Army’s revolution down the line, I need to capture the hearts not just of the underground tier, but of the common people in the middle tier. I’d been wondering how to work that out…….’

The inconceivable situation of middle-tier residents actually relocating into the underground tier was happening.

From my perspective this was the best possible news, but as the person watching this phenomenon unfold, it was too bizarre a development to laugh at.

“The spark of revolution comes from parents scrambling to get their children into university.”

Our country….

Is this really something to be pleased about?

“Ah, come to think of it, young master, this is your first time visiting our school, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

All I know how to do is spend money, so there’d be nothing to gain from involving myself in school operations.

I said that offhandedly, and for a moment the inside of the vehicle fell silent.

The proprietress looked out the window with an awkward smile, as though something was weighing on her conscience, and Min Jeonghwan kept turning his head away, continuously avoiding my eyes as though he’d lost something.

“……?”

On a hunch I glanced over at Taewoong riding with us, but same story.

He had turned his face to an angle that made his expression unreadable and was desperately holding something back.

“What is it?”

You all.

What have you been up to behind my back?

---

“What is this…. what on earth is……?”

Stepping into the academy, I couldn’t finish the sentence.

‘Devotion, loyalty, and filial piety.’

A massive statue standing alongside a stiff inscription that could have come from any military academy.

That enormous statue, clad in lamellar armor I had never seen in my life and sword raised high to the sky, had on it….

On it…….

“Why…. is my face carved on that thing?”

“Pfft, pfffft?!”

“Gkkhh!”

When I asked that in a state of bewilderment, Min Jeonghwan and Taewoong standing behind me finally burst out laughing like they couldn’t hold it in any longer.

A statue of the founder erected inside the school?

That’s plausible enough.

Good money spent teaching children deserves at least that much recognition.

But this had gone too far.

Why?

“Why are King Sejong and Admiral Yi Sunsin standing on either side of my statue?! And why is mine the biggest of the three?!”

“Puhahaha?! Khha?! Uhahaha?!”

No matter how mad people get over hunger for recognition, there are limits.

A person of Joseon, not some other country, placing those two on either side of their own statue?

Even the most exceptional person, isn’t that a bit…. excessive self-regard?

“Wow, seeing it in person makes it even funnier! Uhahaha!”

“I’m sorry, young master. It’s just that…. gkkhh!”

No, stop laughing and explain it to me.

How else am I supposed to know whether to be angry, embarrassed, or laugh along?

“I, I tried to stop it. Young master! Truly!”

After standing there with a crumpled face for quite a while, the proprietress came forward first and started coming clean.

“When recruiting professors from the regional academies, the pay rates were quoted quite generously, weren’t they? And there was a lot of support for protocol and academic research and the like……!”

Right. That was so they wouldn’t think of going elsewhere and would come to us instead.

But what on earth does that have to do with this absurd statue?

As I pressed her in silence, the proprietress kept hemming and hawing as she explained the sequence of events.

“The professors were apparently moved by the support at the time, and a motion came up at the faculty meeting. They said the young master’s statue was too small…. and that it needed to, to be rebuilt….”

“What?”

Unable to make sense of it I asked again, and Taewoong, who had been barely holding in his laughter, began to elaborate.

“Most of the scholars at regional academies have been pushed out of Hanseong’s mainstream academic circles, meaning they’re scholars whose abilities haven’t been recognized. They don’t say so, but they are hungrier for recognition than anyone.”

“And?”

“And you recognized them, treated them as faculty members, and even funded their personal research. For someone to go that far for them…. something like this is not unthinkable.”

“And they make this much fuss over a bit of money?”

“That might be pocket change to a power clan, but do you know how much that is to us?”

The one who stepped forward with that was Min Jeonghwan.

“And on top of that, around that time…. a video of young master had been circulating.”

“A video?”

“You know, that time. When those Sword Pact members like the Azure Fellowship were swept out, and young master stepped in personally.”

Saying that, Min Jeonghwan sent me a clip.

It showed me giving the order to kill the Sword Pact members who had been threatening to seize the orphanage children as hostages.

[What did you just say about our orphanage?]

[Kill them. Not a single one left.]

Wow, seeing it directly makes it three times more embarrassing.

Watching that cringe-inducing scene, Min Jeonghwan grinned and said.

“That video spreading among the children was the deciding blow. From that day forward, young master is untouchable at this school. If anyone were to say a single word against young master here…. they probably wouldn’t make it out of this school.”

“No, that doesn’t even….”

“With that video, the entire student body marched into the chairwoman’s office led by the professors…. and the result is this.”

Having heard all the explanation, I stood in a daze and looked up at my towering statue.

‘Of course, to you who has lived your whole life as an aristocrat, it may not land the same way….’

‘Surprisingly, things like that can move a person’s heart.’

The words Imae mask had said to me at Iron Tiger Fortress drifted through my head like an echo.

“So people in this world aren’t as cynical as I thought.”

Whether to feel glad about this or not.

Caught in that uncertain feeling for a little while.

“……Hold on.”

Before long, I was seized by a dread I could not see the end of.

The students and faculty of this school were the ones who had pressured the proprietress into erecting this absurd statue.

In other words, they had become a kind of zealots.

Just thinking this made my head swim, but there it was.

And today?

Was the school’s graduation ceremony.

The school’s grand event, with especially heavy investment put in because it was the first.

Which meant……?

“In front of those people…. I have to go out there myself?”

“Oh my, it won’t end at just going out, young master.”

As though coaxing a child being brought to the dentist.

As though pronouncing the truth that the tonkatsu they’d been promised was a phantom conjured solely to lure them here.

The proprietress, wearing an expression of unusual warmth, gently wrapped an arm around my shoulder.

“Speeches and congratulatory remarks, interviews and panel discussions with students, an autograph session and handshaking event are all scheduled. Twenty-one hours all together….”

“No…. no no! No no no……!”

I had described it wrong.

She hadn’t wrapped an arm around me. She’d grabbed me in advance so I couldn’t run.

“You’ve been away a long time, so surely you can do this much?”

With that warm voice, I was dragged to the podium like a dog being led to the slaughterhouse.

Proprietress! You tricked me! Proprietress!!