Chapter 44

After receiving the money, the two brothers, who left the mercenary camp, headed straight to the market.

The distance between the mercenary camp and the market wasn’t a problem for the two brothers, who were too excited about being able to make money to concern themselves over that despite it being a long way to the markets.

They arrived at the village market with excitement and began to buy the ingredients Levan had asked of them. Once they’d gathered as much ingredients as they could carry between them, they immediately began heading back the mercenary camp.

However, even before leaving the market square, Joshua called out to his older brother, who was walking slightly ahead of him,

“Andrew hyung,”

“What?”

“Wait a second, I have something to say,”

“What is it then?”

Joshua put the shopping on the ground for a moment and continued,

“I was just thinking… should we take a little bit from here?”

“Take it? What do you mean?”

“It’s…  well, it’s a little hard to take everything back the mercenary camp, I was just thinking that even if we take a few things from here, it wouldn’t be obvious.”

Andrew responded with a sharp voice,

“No way! That’s cheating!”

Joshua, who’s words had been cut off sharply, once again began trying to persuade his brother,

“Even if we stole a few things from here, you wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“We can’t! That would be scamming them! We made a promise with the Ajusshi’ that we absolutely wouldn’t scam!”

“But are you saying you’ll bring all of this to them? Then we should at least get more money. This is hard work,”

“We’re already being paid for the hard work,”

“But we could get more.”

“Are you really going to be like this?!”

“Andrew hyung, try to think a little differently. We don’t have to bring every single thing to them like idiots.”

Andrew didn’t like Joshua’s immoral side while on the contrary, Joshua was frustrated with his older brother, who was trying to be stupidly honest about this.

“Even if we take a little from here, they won’t know. And if we do take some, that just means our family can eat a little more in the evening. Andrew hyung, you know it too don’t you? There are a lot of mouths to feed at our house, so we’re always hungry at dinner at time.”

“Even so, this isn’t how to do it.”

****

“And that’s why you ended up coming here?” Rockefeller said to his two younger brothers who had dropped by to visit him.

The two brothers, who were fighting to see who was right while running their errand, stopped by Carter Banco, where their eldest brother was, to get a quick answer for their dilemma.

Just before coming to the Banco, they’d had the following conversation:

“Since it’s near the market anway, lets got to Banco and ask Rockefeller hyung, he’ll be able to tell us what the right answer is.”

“Okay fine, if Rockefeller hyung says I’m doing something wrong, then I won’t bring this up anymore. But if Rockefeller hyung takes my side, then Andrew hyung won’t say anything either?”

“Okay, let’s do that. But if Rocekfeller hyung says you’re wrong, you won’t touch these ingredients.”

“Of course!”

Carter, who had been working on making gold coins, popped his head to the front of the shop and looked at the two children who were visiting the Banco.

“Why are your brothers here? Nothing bad has happened right?”  He asked.

“No, it’s not a big deal, just a small family matter,”

“Really?”

Rockefeller asked Carter for a little time, and took his two younger brothers outside of the shop.

Then he began to express his thoughts on the subject of the two’s arguments.

“Alright, about your argument, I’ll tell you what I think.”

As if standing in front of a judge, Andrew and Joshua gulped, as they waited fro Rockefeller to voice his opinion,

“You both got it right, and you both got it wrong.”

They, who had thought Rockefeller would side with one of them, heard the unexpected answer, the two younger brothers looked a little flustered.

“Rockefeller hyung, what do you mean?”

“Both of us got it right and wrong? Doesn’t that mean neither one of this got it right?”

“It could meant that.” Rockefeller began,

“In cases like these, it’s really important to build up and maintain trust, like Andrew, especially if want to deal with a lot money later on.”

Andrew was happy to here that while Joshua became sullen,

“Then, like Andrew hyung said, do we have to be honest and keep their trust?”

“No, you don’t have to be too honest. Maintain their trust, but you don’t have to be honest.”

When they heard that, their expressions changed again, as Rockefeller continued to explain,

“If you’re absolutely honest all the time, there’s no way you can make a lot of money. But you also can’t make money if you lose trust. So you maintain trust, but don’t have to be honest. Do you understand?”

The two younger brothers looked completely lost at his strange words.

“Rockefeller hyung, it’s too hard, I don’t get what that means?”

“Same for me, I don’t get what you mean by maintaining trust and not being honest at the same time?”

“At the end of the day, making money is a result of taking other people’s money. Then, how can you take other people’s money? By being honest and good? If you’re too good, people will never be willing to pay, since they’re not idiots. So like Joshua said, you won’t be able to make money that way. To do so, would be to only deal with fools.”

Andrew became deflated at those words and this time, it was Joshua’s spirits that were lifted.

“Yeah! People aren’t fools! If you act too good, you can’t make money, just like Rockefeller hyung said!”

“But, just because you don’t have to be honest, doesn’t mean you can cheat people like that Joshua.”

Once again, Joshua’s sprits fell,

“Joshua, from what I heard earlier, you tried to cheat too directly. It’s never a good thing to try and deceive others like that. It’s not different from stealing from them.”

“Then… what should I do?”

Rocekeller smiled slightly at Rockefeller’s question,

“Hm, what should you do? Cheat as much as you can, in a legitimate way, that wouldn’t break their trust.”

The reason for doing that?

It was simple.

“That way, you’ll be able to make a lot of money.”

Virtuous wickedness.

The two younger brothers tried to understand those unclear words, while Rockefeller didn’t push them to understand any faster than they could.

“I don’t get it.”

“Me too…”

“What I said might be a little difficult for you to understand straight away, but you have a lot of time left to think about it. From now on, engrave what hyung has said in your heart and think about it carefully. Then you might end up seeing another path, different from the obvious path in front of you, that might make you a lot more money.”

As the conversation came to an end, as if to emphasise the point of this, he added,

“Even if you can’t think of a way to deceive them, never, ever betray their trust. Even if you make less money, breaking their trust means you’ll eventually lose everything. So keep that in mind and think about it again. I’m sure you’ll come up with a good plan.”