Chapter 1

It had all started the day before.

The military training ground in Posan, Gyeonggi Province, was thick with tension.

Chairs stood in neat rows stretching back from the VIP seats at the very front, and the seats were filled with a mix of people in uniform and people in suits. From the very last row, Ji-an took in the scene, steadied her uneven breathing, checked her wristwatch, and counted down in her head.

Three, two, one.

A warning tone tore through the quiet, and a 155mm shell went screaming off across the ground. The boom rolled out, and dozens of kilometers away the target blew apart, flinging a plume of dust into the sky.

The ground shook, and as the pressure pushed through the air, the helmeted figures in the VIP seats flinched visibly. They included the Minister of National Defense, Balton’s defense minister, who was today’s biggest client, and the other high-ranking officials with them.

The opening show of force had done its job, and Ji-an’s eyes sparkled with hope.

She leaned forward a little, and the moment her gaze moved to the first seat in the front row—

“Quite loud, isn’t it? The psychological pressure on the other side will be considerable.”

From among all those stiffened people, a man in sunglasses rose from his seat with an easy smile.

“And the accuracy goes without saying, of course.”

He stood close to a hundred and ninety centimeters tall, and as he stepped up onto the outdoor dais, the seated crowd’s heads tipped up to follow him, and looking up at him seemed to come naturally. His suit hung perfectly on his well-built frame, the cut as sharp as the man himself. He was standing before generals who were the best of the best, yet his bearing never slackened. He was ramrod straight and brimming with poise.

He bent at the waist toward a microphone set well below his height and smiled, unhurried.

“Allow me to introduce myself properly. I’m Lee Sa-heon, Managing Director of Hyeongang Aeros.”

Sa-heon took off his sunglasses.

His mouth curved up in a wide, clean arc, his skin was bright, and confidence shone from those keen, deep eyes. The audience broke into applause all on its own.

Ji-an was clapping as hard as everyone else when a small whisper leaked out of the row in front of her.

“That’s the youngest of the Hyeongang sons, right? Of the three brothers.”

One reporter had leaned a little to the side to ask, and the one beside them, a business-desk reporter whose face even Ji-an knew, grinned and played along.

“That’s him. The older two were born out of wedlock, and only the youngest is legitimate. Word is, even after two grandsons came along, the late chairman flatly refused to accept that woman as a daughter-in-law.”

“So it’s true what they say, that of the three brothers, only the youngest is a half-brother to the others?”

“You didn’t know? He had two grandsons born on the outside, and he still refused to acknowledge them to the very end. Then he went and broke the couple up and married his son off to Assemblyman Choi’s daughter instead. That’s where the youngest came from.”

“Huh. So he’s the legitimate son, but he’s still the youngest.”

The business-desk reporter nodded, putting on airs.

“That’s what makes it interesting. The market’s saying the youngest is the most like the late chairman in temperament. Everyone figures he’ll push past his older brothers and come out on top.”

The Hyeongang Group’s tangled family history was hot gossip that never stopped making the rounds in business circles.

“What good does that do him, though? The two older ones are full brothers.”

Sometimes Sa-heon’s tall good looks and self-assured manner stirred up more than simple curiosity in people, and it turned into envy, jealousy, and a strange sort of inferiority.

“True enough. Just look at how Chairman Lee Gang-mun brought his sons in the moment the late chairman passed. The youngest has to fight it out all on his own—”

Envy and jealousy, just like right now.

Ji-an cleared her throat with a loud ahem, and the two reporters jumped and whipped around.

She lifted the corners of her mouth into a bright smile and lowered her voice.

“Hello, members of the press. I do hope you’ll write kindly about us. Our Managing Director put a great deal of care into today’s demonstration.”

Her smile was sweet, but there was nothing warm in her eyes. The two flustered reporters let a short silence pass, then laughed awkwardly.

“Ah, yes. Of course. Haha.”

Then they traded a quick sidelong look and busied themselves over nothing, one flipping through a notepad, the other rolling a pen.

Honestly. When you work for a boss this impressive, you have to tidy things up like this every so often.

Ji-an turned her head back to look at Sa-heon on the dais.

He was far too outstanding for an outsider to belittle with a phrase as simple as “fighting it out all on his own.” He was better than anyone, a man mad about his work who judged by results alone. So when people who knew nothing whispered about his background and nothing else, she felt wronged herself. She was the subordinate and colleague who had been through all of it with him.

All the countless nights she’d stayed up for today flashed before her eyes, and just then Sa-heon’s voice cut into her thoughts as he went on from the dais.

“First, I ask your generous understanding, as I stand here today in place of my hyung¹, Senior Managing Director Lee Jae-seong. The Senior Managing Director was in a traffic accident recently, and unfortunately he couldn’t attend.”

The unexpected news of an accident set the audience stirring, but Sa-heon went on in a gentle tone.

“The Senior Managing Director has spent so much time looking at Hyeongang’s sturdy armored vehicles that he seems to have briefly forgotten how thin the sheet metal on a civilian car is. I hear he’s learning the value of safety firsthand.”

Laughter broke out here and there at the joke, and the mood eased.

Bending slightly at the waist, Sa-heon lowered his voice a notch, and every eye was drawn to him.

“The weapon you have just seen is our flagship here at Hyeongang, the TS-8 Falcon self-propelled howitzer. It’s the newest model, equipped with an automatic loading system and MRSI (Multiple Round Simultaneous Impact) capability.”

There was a force in that confident voice that pulled the relaxed mood right back in an instant. The people who’d been laughing only moments ago put their smiles away and listened closely, and Ji-an, watching them, nodded.

And he never even rehearsed it. No wonder he’s so confident.

Sa-heon had a gift for speaking in front of a crowd.

Ji-an herself had been one of those new hires. Right after joining, she had heard him speak at the training center and come away swelling with company loyalty, brimming over with what people called ‘Hyeongang pride.’

Of course, that was three years ago. Since transferring to his secretariat not long ago and learning firsthand just how deranged a workaholic Lee Sa-heon was, she’d come to shudder at the sight of so much as the ‘L’ in Lee Sa-heon².