PHUW 112

Haeri could not believe it. Would an organization capable of committing murder really kill Lee Sangjin over a set of cheap manicure kits? It was nonsense. But there was no point in saying that. If they caught even the smallest slip, all he would hear was that Lee Sangjin deserved to die.

“I don’t know.”

He fixed his gaze and denied flatly.

“Do you really know nothing? They said you were close with him.”

“Do you have to know everything just because you’re close? And who says Sangjin stole something? Aren’t you pushing things too far, accusing him like that just because he’s dead?”

Everything in his life up until now told him the same thing. Always pretend you don’t know.

“What a problem. The whereabouts of that item are still unclear, and even Sangjin’s girlfriend said she doesn’t know.”

“You met his girlfriend? She’s alive?”

“Yes. She’s under protection, so don’t worry. According to her, you knew, so I came to ask. Well then.”

Damn it. She passed it on to me? All the worry he’d felt a moment ago was wasted.

“Do you remember the address of the house you lived in?”

“Why do you need that?”

“Vice Chairman’s orders.”

“…I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“I see. You’ll remember in time.”

“I’m tired, do we have to keep going? I’m sleepy.”

He spoke to the nurse. The nurse then told the two to continue another time.

The Vice Chairman Chief Ahn had mentioned had at first shown his face a little, but now he did not appear at all. Even when he did come, he only asked the attending doctor and nurse detailed questions about Haeri’s condition, watching him for a long time without ever speaking directly to him. He looked as if he were waiting for something. But Haeri never recalled anything about him. If anything, he only felt uncomfortable. Then the man would leave without a word.

Haeri felt relieved, but at the same time it gnawed at him. Later, he heard that this man had personally found him after he was kidnapped, which troubled him even more. Wasn’t he putting too much effort into this for just some pervert?

“Hey.”

Haeri called the nurse.

“What?”

The nurse, polite to everyone else, used casual speech only with Haeri. She said that was how their relationship had been. Haeri did not like it. But he had no advantage in this situation, so he stayed quiet.

“That man, Jeong Mok.”

“Yeah.”

“Was I close with him?”

“Of course. You were like real brothers. He even nursed you himself. When you hurt your leg, he helped you bathe too.”

“Really?”

Helping him bathe. For an ordinary man, maybe. But Jeong Mok was not an ordinary man. In a hospital room this expensive, with a dedicated nurse stationed full time, why would he personally take care of bathing him?

Had it already gone that far?

It certainly seemed so. In the two months he had been unconscious, who knew what he had done. Judging from all that was being provided for him now, this was no ordinary relationship.

‘What do I do?’

Should he just close his eyes to it, cling to the man and keep living since, even if he was a pervert, he was rich? Or should he deny it all and say he remembered nothing? But if he denied it, would Jeong Mok accept that so easily? Even if he did, what could Haeri do alone, when Hongil Trading or whatever it was called was going crazy trying to hunt him down?

‘This is insane.’

His head throbbed at the deadlock that trapped him either way.

***

Inside the descending elevator, Shin Chaehee spoke as she watched the numbers go down.

“He’s lying, isn’t he.”

“Hm.”

Chief Ahn seemed to feel the same.

“He was meek and cute when he didn’t have his memory, but now he’s just a punk.”

Chief Ahn nodded and clicked his tongue.

The Ahn Haeri who had regained his memory was a different person, only similar in face. He had certainly lost the charm he once had.

“It’s a difficult situation in many ways.”

“Exactly.”

After learning Haeri had lost his memory, Jeong Mok had entrusted the two of them with speaking to him, hoping to lessen the psychological shock. But there was another important reason as well.

“The Chairwoman was as expected furious.”

“Of course. She was always strict when it came to the Vice Chairman. There may be more hardship soon at Solsoop.”

What Chief Ahn meant was that another cold storm from the Chairwoman was coming. It took enormous legal manpower to replace a Vice Chairman who stood at the center of the group. After Choi Sangeon’s sudden resignation, Solsoop had been drowning in nightly overtime.

“Anyway it was acting. I was prepared for it.”

Ping. The elevator arrived at the underground parking lot. It was the VIP line, so it was fast.

“That’s good then. Please give my regards to CEO Shin.”

“Isn’t that something I should be asking you? You’re having lunch together later, aren’t you?”

“Oh, you knew. Heh, well.”

Chief Ahn gave a shy laugh, raised his hand in farewell. Shin Chaehee bowed her head politely to the man who was both her superior and her mother’s boyfriend, then headed to her car.

***

Jeong Mok was at the family home. More precisely, in the study.

This was the first time he had entered since he was a small child who had once wandered in by accident not knowing any better. As a boy he had rejected the world, and the Chairwoman had despised such a nephew.

Their relationship had always been cold. During the time when Choi Sangeon stirred up scandals and fled overseas, things had been tolerable. But that was over now.

True to her habit of wearing hanbok, the study was furnished with antique traditional furniture. On the pieces crafted with painstaking care by a living national treasure were arranged fine porcelain and the scholar’s four treasures. They were the Chairwoman’s actual belongings.

When Jeong Mok entered, the Chairwoman did not acknowledge him. She ground the ink, laid paper, and with measured strokes wrote. The text was the Heart Sutra. In her younger years she had studied calligraphy under a famous Buddhist nun, and she had also lately immersed herself in Buddhist scripture. Perhaps she sought release from the frustrations of the world.

While the Chairwoman concentrated on her writing, Jeong Mok stood before the desk waiting. After about an hour, when the long sheet of hanji (rice paper) was filled, she finally set down the brush.

“How is it?”

“It’s splendid.”

“Here, here, it’s crooked.”

She pointed to two places in the calligraphy. There was a faint wobble.

“Looking at it, I can’t tell.”

“Hmph. You’ve gotten slippery too. Did your hyung tell you to answer like that?”

“No.”

“Hang it up over there.”

Jeong Mok took the paper she handed him and hung it on a frame on one side of the study. While he did so, the Chairwoman put the brush and inkstone aside and brought out another wooden box. She pushed it toward him as he returned to the desk.

Taking it as permission, he opened the lid. Inside were reports concerning Ahn Haeri, Lee Sangjin, and Hongil Trading.

“If you have anything to say, say it.”

From her chair, the Chairwoman’s piercing gaze fell on him.

“What would you like to know?”

“First, what exactly is your relationship with him?”

“I like him. It’s one-sided.”

Jeong Mok answered plainly. The corners of the Chairwoman’s mouth twitched faintly.

People often imagined the Chairwoman to be of average build, but in fact she was small, even for a woman of her age. With that small body she had stood firm at the top of Hyeonsan Group, where enemies swarmed, through relentless effort. The way she puffed her hair and insisted on hanbok was not mere personal taste. Hanbok was her armor. She sometimes wore Western suits, but never in front of Jeong Mok. As far as he remembered, she was always in hanbok.

Perhaps because of that, even among the conservative ranks of the chaebol, she was considered especially strict and traditional. Some called her a walking Sungkyunkwan¹, or the last lady of the golden age.

“Did I see wrong? These days it’s hard to tell boys from girls. It’s a girl?”

At last the Chairwoman spoke. He had expected her to ask that first.

“No. He’s a man. It says so right here in his resident registration record.”

“Huh.”

She let out a low exclamation.

“Since when?”

“What do you mean?”

“When did your tastes–no, your inclinations become that way?”

“I don’t know. Before Ahn Haeri, I had never reacted to anyone.”

“Is that so?”

Though she reacted as if she just learned it now, the Chairwoman regularly received reports on who Jeong Mok met. Partly because if he courted some rich family’s daughter, no one knew what might happen, and partly to prevent scandal that could tarnish the Hyeonsan family’s image. The world was too sensitive to chaebol misdeeds.

Unlike the past, there were too many eyes watching for things to be hushed up with money. Leaks were countless.

“Did your hyung know and still pass the Vice Chairman’s seat to you?”

“If you mean my relationship with Ahn Haeri, yes, he knew.”

“Hah.”

This time she sighed toward her son, somewhere in America.

1. Confucian academy and what it symbolized strict moral discipline, rigid scholarship, and traditional Confucian values. She was seen as the embodiment of those values, like a living personification of Confucian orthodoxy and propriety ↩︎