Chapter 8

A few hours earlier, Sa-heon had been sitting on the living-room sofa, staring up at the ceiling with a bored look on his face.

“Doesn’t feel familiar at all…”

He might have lived here, but the place felt foreign, as if he’d just arrived somewhere strange. Would he even be able to sleep like this? It looked like he’d be up all night either way.

Then he remembered the phone in his pocket. He took it out and went through it for anything that might lead him back to his lost memory, but he must have been the type to delete messages the moment they came in, because the inbox was clean and there was nothing worth noting in his contacts either.

The photo album was just as dull. Now and then a screenshot of a news article about the company, and that was all.

“Hm…”

He scrolled with indifferent eyes until his finger stopped on one photo.

It was a group shot, dozens of beaming faces under a banner lettered in thick gold: the 71st Anniversary of the Founding of the Hyeongang Group. His father, Chairman Lee Gang-mun, stood at the center. Immediately to his right stood Sa-heon in a blue tie, and beside him several people who looked like executives stood at attention.

Sa-heon’s gaze passed over the unfamiliar faces and came to rest on one he knew.

The very edge of the very back row.

Ji-an stood there in an ivory blouse and navy slacks, her hair neatly tied back, wearing a slightly awkward smile. Sa-heon spread his fingers to zoom in, and her small, neat face filled the space between them.

So in an album without a single ordinary landscape shot, this was the one photo he’d bothered to keep. Somehow Sa-heon had the feeling that the man he’d been before he lost his memory had looked at it for quite a long while.

“Interesting.”

He muttered it under his breath, then tapped one of the recorded files in his call log.

‘It’s getting late and you’re still so full of energy, our Vice President.’

The call had been recorded on the day of the accident. The voice was his own, yet it sounded as unfamiliar as a stranger’s.

—You. You little bastard. What the hell are you scheming! And what is all this material!

‘Ah, so you got the present I sent?’

—Present, my ass. Where do you get the nerve, trying to frame me with this shoddy garbage!

After that came more shouting and pleading, scorn and argument, right down to the frantic moments of trying to stop the car somehow. Sa-heon listened to the end, and the corner of his mouth tilted up.

So that was roughly the shape of it.

He hummed to himself for a moment, thinking, then found Lee Jae-gwon in his contacts and tapped the name. After a few short rings Lee Jae-gwon picked up, and Sa-heon greeted him, perfectly composed.

“Good evening, Hyung.”

—…Right. I hear you’ve been discharged.

“Apparently I’m hard to kill.”

A brief silence ran down the line. He could practically hear the gears turning from here.

—I’m glad to hear you weren’t badly hurt.

“Thanks for worrying about me.”

“Here’s the thing, Hyung.” Sa-heon let out a quiet laugh and went on.

“When you go right up to death’s door and come back, all sorts of things go through your head.”

—…What sort of thoughts.

“Just — something didn’t sit right with me. It hit me that if I died, there wouldn’t be a single person who’d really cry for me. Looking back on how I’ve lived all this time, it all felt kind of empty. Hollow, you know?”

Meanwhile Lee Jae-gwon, who had lain down to sleep and come wide awake at Sa-heon’s call, paced his bedroom restlessly and held his tongue rather than answer too quickly.

“…”

Listening to that suspiciously gentle voice, he wondered what scheme the bastard was cooking up to screw him over this time.

Because who was Lee Sa-heon, after all? Wasn’t he the lunatic among lunatics, the one who’d broken both of the second son’s legs to take a trillion-won order¹ off him? He was selfish through and through, without an ounce of human feeling, and he was always watching for a chance to blow Jae-gwon and Jae-seong away.

“It’s a shame you’d think that way, Sa-heon. You’ve got me and Jae-seong, and you’ve got Father. You have family who’d grieve for you, don’t you?”

When their father had led the two of them by the hand into the Hyeongang mansion, Lee Sa-heon had been just an elementary schooler.

The rich family’s youngest young master.

The crisply pressed, expensive clothes, the well-taught table manners, even the way he talked. Jae-gwon was in high school, yet in front of a mere child he’d felt like some lowborn thing. Maybe it was because he’d been born out of wedlock and raised among hushed whispers, pointed at as his father’s blemish, but Sa-heon, the legitimate son, seemed to have been born with dignity. Though nobody knew better than Jae-gwon that this was just his own ugly inferiority talking.

Honestly, at that age, never mind that the brothers had come rolling in from nowhere, wouldn’t a normal kid have tagged along behind them going hyung, hyung? So he’d figured a few smacks would at least settle the pecking order.

But Lee Sa-heon had been unlike other children from the start. However hard he and Jae-seong beat him to break his spirit, the venom in his eyes only grew more murderous by the day. It wasn’t until Jae-gwon ran Lee Sa-heon through a ‘sociopath self-assessment’ he’d once seen on TV, and found that most of it fit, that he finally understood the little bastard.

“Father’s been very worried about you since the accident.”

These days, ever since he’d learned that Lee Sa-heon had dug up his slush fund and the blade was at his throat, Lee Jae-gwon could hardly sleep at night. He’d be sound asleep, then jolt upright in a cold sweat and grope at the back of his neck to make sure his head was still on.

So he’d meant to send a warning. And of course there was a little revenge for Jae-seong in it too. The accident had turned out bigger than he’d planned, but since it had come to that anyway, he rather wished it had just finished the man off.

The kind of bastard who’d crawl out of a fire pit.

After a moment’s silence, Sa-heon spoke, and his voice over the line carried a trace of loneliness.

—On that last call, Hyung, you told me something. That we might be half-brothers, but we’ve still been brothers for over twenty years.

“…I did.”

—I finally understand what you meant by that.

It was obviously an act. Lee Sa-heon had a gift for lying without so much as a blink. Lee Jae-gwon called up the psychopathy checklist he’d seen back then. Number one: a lack of guilt or remorse.

—You said that even if I grabbed you by the ankle, there’d be nothing in it for me either.

“That’s right.”

—When the car flipped and I thought I was done for, that’s when it finally sank in.

“…”

Item two: a strong tendency to manipulate others with an attractive appearance and polished speech. Lee Jae-gwon stayed silent as the items ran through his head.

—The ones who’d stay at my funeral to the very end would be you two, Hyung… In the end, family’s all that stays by my side, so I found myself wondering what I’d been bristling for.

He wasn’t falling for it again. How many times had that punk’s silver tongue taken him in? People don’t change. He was thinking exactly that when Sa-heon gave a bitter laugh over the line.

—One wrong move and I really would’ve died. I’m on the phone laughing and healthy now, but it was seriously bad. They say it was pure luck I made it out without any major injuries.

But still.

If there was one single case in which a man did change…

—Honestly, it scared me.

It would be a man who’d been to death’s door and back. If there was one thing that was fair to everyone, it was that every person got exactly one life.

—In that split second, it hit me. So you hated me enough to want me dead, Hyung. So it had come to that — and what do we get out of trading blows like this? Hyeongang’s a huge company either way, and if the three of us brothers joined forces, we could make it even bigger.

However brilliant Lee Sa-heon might be, he had only the one life too.

Lee Jae-gwon was silent a moment, then opened his mouth.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say. If the three of us brothers join forces, there’s nothing we can’t do.”

At that, Sa-heon’s hollow laugh came over the line.

—You’re right. It took me until now to learn that. I owe it to your teaching, Hyung.

A faint unease still hadn’t lifted, but he couldn’t help snorting. Idiot bastard. So even you are no match for death.

—So, about that, Hyung.

“Go on.”

—The material I’ve got — I’m thinking of handing it over, originals and all. So we can trust each other.

“…”

Lee Jae-gwon fell silent again. As expected, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it that easily.

—In exchange, I have a favor to ask too.

“What is it.”

—Cash out one of the affiliate stakes you’re holding and hand it over to me. I ought to get at least that much, shouldn’t I?

So money matters to you too, in the end. Lee Jae-gwon answered with a short laugh.

“I’ll think it over. For now, I’m sending Chief Kim over to your place, so be ready.”

He hung up and summoned Chief Kim at once. At any rate, tonight he finally felt he’d be able to fall asleep in peace.

“Haha.”

When the call ended, Sa-heon pressed a hand to his forehead and laughed out loud.

Material? He couldn’t even remember what it was. He’d only guessed at it roughly from the recorded call earlier. Not that he needed to look to know: evidence of the slush fund the idiot had so stupidly fattened, no doubt. Naturally there was nothing to hand over, and even if there had been, he didn’t remember it.

His performance must have been convincing, because Lee Jae-gwon sent his secretary over in under fifteen minutes, and Sa-heon reported the secretary who walked into his house for trespassing. Chief of Staff Choi Kang-hoon heard the news and turned up ashen-faced with a lawyer in tow to smooth things over.

And Sa-heon placed a call to Ji-an.