Chapter 17

Han Jun-tae tapped at the photographs strewn across the desk with the long nail of his ring finger.

“This bastard really is a joke.”

With that same long nail he flicked the photographs off the desk, and a sneer followed.

“I told him over and over to share anything fun with his hyung, and here he is off having a good time by himself again. So do I get angry, or don’t I?”

The man who had been standing before him with his head bowed picked the photographs up off the floor and set them back on the desk. His gaze rested a moment on the elegant woman in them, then slid away.

“What, is she drop-dead pretty to you too? Then why the fuck didn’t you report to me that she was pretty, huh?”

Han Jun-tae rummaged across the desk and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

“If there’d been even one word in here about her being pretty instead of ‘cripple’, I’d have taken a proper look at her, wouldn’t I.”

No personal background report meant for a superior’s eyes could ever have carried so insulting a word. The man had already submitted several photographs as well, but he bowed his head obediently and offered his apologies.

“I’m sorry. That was my oversight. Though you were the one who refused her first, Vice Chairman.”

Among the hollow words sat one with a barb in it.

He knew better than anyone why his superior had turned his interest back to Yun Seo-ha. Because the woman was pretty? Not a chance. Han Jun-tae had a truckload of pretty, empty-headed girls around him. Behind it all stood none other than Han Jun-tae’s half-brother, Han Jun-hyeok. Had Jun-hyeok passed over Yun Seo-ha the same way, he himself would never have been summoned here at this hour. At the news that his younger brother was getting married, Han Jun-tae had made the whole round trip to the family house in Pyeongchang-dong¹, a place he would normally never have given a second glance.

“It’s saved you some bother, hasn’t it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If your brother clears Yun Seo-ha away for you, you won’t have to trouble yourself over the matter any further, Vice Chairman.”

Han Jun-tae’s interest in his brother came closer to a raging obsession. Brotherly affection had nothing to do with it, of course; what he felt was a thoroughly abnormal tangle of love and hate.

“That was your brother’s role from the start, wasn’t it, Vice Chairman? Your own private garbage disposal crew.”
“True enough. Father does say the same thing.”

Only then did Han Jun-tae recover his ease. He snickered and slipped in a question.

“Still nothing from over there?”
“No, sir. Not since the report that the infiltration had succeeded….”

As though he had no wish to hear it, Han Jun-tae dug roughly at his ear with his little fingernail and rattled on.

“Taking that kind of money and then working like that.”
“Even so, he’s the first man to get through Shield One Secure’s outer security.”
“Fine. Nothing short of somebody bringing me that damn mutt’s hide is going to improve my mood. Hogging the fun toy all to himself, no idea how to share with his hyung. Tsk. I raised my little brother wrong.”

Worthless pebbles became jewels, raw gemstones, the moment they fell into Han Jun-hyeok’s hands. The whole thing was ridiculous beyond words, but Secretary Choi let none of it reach his face and asked quietly.

“And if the job has gone wrong, by some chance, what do we do?”

Han Jun-tae had picked up a photograph with Seo-ha’s face in it, and he answered carelessly as he waved it about.

“Handle it as you see fit. Even if we’re found out, my beloved little brother won’t mind. You’ve kept everyone’s mouths shut properly, though?”
“Yes. You needn’t concern yourself on that point.”

Han Jun-tae was not exactly wrong. He went berserk at every opportunity and never left his brother alone, and still Han Jun-hyeok stayed as quiet as the eye of a typhoon. In a way, that alone proved how shrewd Jun-hyeok was and how well he knew his own hyung, because more often than not Han Jun-tae wore himself out against his brother’s non-reaction and lost interest in the end.

“Anyway. Have you ever once seen Jun-hyeok with a woman?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s exactly my point. They say the demure cat is the first one up onto the stove ledge² — but does it make any sense, him pushing past his hyung to get married first? A man who’s never so much as dated, let alone touched a woman?”

Secretary Choi privately doubted that Jun-hyeok had stayed single all his life, or that he was still a virgin, but his opinion hardly mattered just now. To calm Han Jun-tae’s towering rage he stated a fact, and only after the words left his mouth did he realize it was a mistake.

“Chairman Han Dong-pyo arranged it himself, as a stand-in for you, so he couldn’t have refused either, Vice Chairman.”

A fairly heavy paperweight flew out of Han Jun-tae’s grip, and all it left behind was the dull echo of a crack.

A moment later, a trickle of bright red blood ran down Secretary Choi’s forehead.

“F—k, if you’re going to take a side, take one worth taking. Does he look to you like a man who’d meekly do a thing just because Father told him to? You. Whose side are you on?”

As naturally as breathing, Secretary Choi drew out a handkerchief, pressed it to his forehead to stop the bleeding, and pushed his slipped glasses back up. Few people knew it, but he had lasted so long at Han Jun-tae’s side precisely because he was the sort who could stand firm and say one more word at a moment like this.

“If Madam is what’s at stake, it could be different again.”
“Madam, my ass! What grates on me is that he won’t budge an inch if he doesn’t feel like it. Never mind that, go dig up more on Yun Seo-ha. Not this any-old-nobody information every dog and cow already knows.”
“Understood.”

Han Jun-tae had not raved like this in a truly long time, not since Han Jun-hyeok took his hands off H Bio’s line of succession entirely and struck out on his own. And here Secretary Choi had been thinking how comfortable life was, with things quiet for a while. He could not tell whether his head throbbed because a basalt paperweight had split it open or because of the superior who would be making his life hell from here on. Either way, the conclusion was the same: money was the enemy.

Making a living really was not easy.

The air inside the car on the way home was a little close.

Seo-ha groped for the button with her fingertips, found it, and lowered the window a little. Cool air brushed past her cheek, and only then did she relax. Jun-hyeok seemed to think she was hot and switched on the air conditioning, and the car cooled quickly.

“I think it’s because I ate something hot.”

He had not said a word, but Seo-ha offered the excuse awkwardly anyway. Rather than say anything unnecessary, Jun-hyeok only turned up the soft jazz drifting through the car, and her mood settled.

How long has it been since I felt like this?

A late-night outing that anyone her age would take for granted had always been out of the question for her. She could barely remember the last time she had been out at night like this, alone, with no Cha Mi-yeon and no companion. A good long time had passed while she lived in a prison that was not a prison.

I switched my phone off a long while ago, so….

Picturing how furious her adoptive mother must be, Seo-ha perversely felt she might laugh. If one moment’s release could make her heart this light, she imagined, then with real freedom in her hands she might fly up and up into the sky.

“Oh — thank you for dinner. It was delicious.”

Jun-hyeok met her belated thanks with indifference.

“That’s where I eat whenever a contract closes.”
“Ah. So it’s a kind of routine, then.”
“I hate seeing a rule broken once it’s been set.”

When Seo-ha told him she ate anything, he took her to a restaurant famous for its mung-bean ginseng chicken soup. Since the soup was difficult to eat, he ordered her chicken porridge instead and ate his own meal quietly, while Seo-ha lifted her spoon without a word. Even so, and unexpectedly, there was no awkwardness between them.

Something else struck her as curious, too. She was getting around without Dodam, who had always been like a part of her own body, and still Seo-ha felt no discomfort at all, perhaps because Jun-hyeok guided her so flawlessly.

Too much kindness and too little have both always left me at a loss….

And yet Jun-hyeok behaved like a man who knew exactly where the balance between the two lay. Was it experience, or the years behind him? Seo-ha grew more and more curious about this man, Han Jun-hyeok.

He stopped back by the company to bring Dodam out, then asked her a question.

“If you’re going to live with me right away, you’ll have to pack your things and bring them out of that house, won’t you.”

Seo-ha was about to tell him there was no need, but his next words stopped her short.

“I can’t stand letting anything into my house that other people have handled. Unless you absolutely need it, throw it all out and buy new.”

He had pinned down her private thoughts so exactly that Seo-ha could not help being startled; it felt as though Jun-hyeok had looked straight into her head. In truth, she would have liked to tell him plainly that there was not one thing in that house she wanted to bring. She did not want to carry a single thing out of Cha Mi-yeon’s house, not even the toothbrush she had been using.

Caught out like that, Seo-ha could not find an answer right away, and Jun-hyeok seemed to mistake her silence for displeasure.

“Like it or not, there’s no choice. My law comes before your preferences.”

He was right. The marriage registration was only a pretext, but as someone who would be living under his roof for the time being, she would be the strange one if she complained. Besides, Jun-hyeok had been the one to bring up the very thing she wanted, so if anything she should be grateful.