Ten men had been deployed, weaving a tight net — it was a meticulously planned kidnapping. The traffickers intended to extract a ransom from the Herald family in exchange for a superior Alpha.
The money was more than available, yet Viktor maintained his silence. After all, it had been Viktor himself who had leaked the adoption plan in the first place, deliberately drawing the traffickers’ attention toward Cesare.
What he needed was not a weak Alpha. He needed someone strong — someone who could crawl their way through even the most extreme conditions and hold on until the very end.
He regarded the entire ordeal as a kind of test. He wanted to measure whether Cesare had the makings of a key figure who could one day lead the company — whether he had the capacity to take on every dirty, blood-soaked task that came with it.
In the process, the kidnapping stretched on with no end in sight.
And then, two weeks later, Cesare turned up in the most unlikely of places — an empty lot in District 5. In his hand was the severed head of the kidnapping ring’s leader.
Having escaped unscathed in such a manner, Cesare was formally registered into the Herald family. There simply was no other Alpha in the world who matched Cesare’s caliber — a far-superior Alpha of Rain’s age, and equally without parents.
Even so, the third kidnapping incident remained shrouded in mystery in many respects.
Cesare could barely recall what had happened during the kidnapping or across those ten days. He remembered fragments — a few scattered scenes, nothing more.
Two things were confirmed through a hospital visit afterward: that a rut had come upon him during the kidnapping, and that there was a possibility his memories had blurred because he had failed to properly ride out his first rut after manifesting as a superior Alpha.
There was no chance the conditions during those ten days of captivity had been anything close to decent. It had been the dead of winter, with cold snaps and heavy rain bearing down without pause, and whatever food the traffickers gave to the child they’d snatched would obviously have been pitiful.
To make matters worse, the traffickers had used large quantities of sedatives and tranquilizers to keep Cesare subdued. Those drugs had conflicted with each other and wreaked havoc on his body.
It was later revealed that among those drugs was an artificial Omega pheromone. The doctor subsequently offered the opinion that the drug may have played a role in intensifying Cesare’s deep-rooted aversion to Omegas.
In any case, those ten days that had been erased from Cesare’s mind came to occupy an empty space within him. Cesare himself described that emptiness as disturbingly unpleasant — unsettling to a degree that made him sick.
Once the matter had reached some semblance of closure, Cesare stopped bringing it up entirely. Ensha and Colin couldn’t bring themselves to press him further either.
It was only a few years later that Ensha and Colin came to learn there had been a single East Asian person present at the scene of the kidnapping. Cesare Herald was not a magnanimous man. The disposition he had always had — that he could never rest until he had repaid every wrong done to him — hadn’t changed one bit.
The moment he seized real power over Herald Financial, he began hunting down those behind the kidnapping in earnest. Anyone who had been involved, even in the slightest, was tracked down and dealt with without exception. Not a single one of them remained with a foothold in the Graven Federation any longer.
Cesare wanted revenge, yes — but he also wanted to know what had happened during the time he’d forgotten. And so he threw himself even deeper into finding those responsible for the third kidnapping.
A new question arose from this. The traffickers had testified that the day Cesare escaped was exactly one week after the kidnapping had begun.
From the moment Cesare escaped to the moment he was found — ten days unaccounted for, known to no one.
No matter what violence or threats were unleashed upon them, they all said the same thing. Every single account was consistent, with no contradictions from start to finish. There was nothing to be gained from lying, and so it was difficult to believe they had any hidden agenda either.
Cesare himself did not believe their testimonies were false.
He simply wanted to know one more thing: whether, before or during his kidnapping, the traffickers had also taken another East Asian person.
But the traffickers denied it. Their claim was that since they had a clear target in Cesare, there had been no need to take any other child in addition.
Cesare’s own memories of this East Asian person were far from clear.
And yet he was convinced that there had been some point of contact between them. He dug out information on every individual the traffickers had abducted at the time, combing through it exhaustively, and began hunting down the traffickers one by one like vermin.
Cesare spent a considerable amount of time searching for a child whose identity he didn’t even know. He pulled the ID records of every East Asian person registered in the Graven Federation and checked them one by one.
But since fewer than a third of those living in the Graven Federation were registered under any official identity, the search had to be repeated over and over. Information was gathered through every possible channel, yet there were limits.
Yi Seohan alone was an East Asian person who had not existed in any of the records they had secured. And there would be no shortage of others like him within the Federation.
At the time, Colin and Ensha couldn’t understand Cesare’s behavior.
He claimed to have no memory of seeing this East Asian person, yet he was out looking for one — it made no sense. How could you search for someone you didn’t even remember? And even if you found them, how would you recognize them?
Colin had come to believe that the East Asian person Cesare was searching for simply did not exist in this world. One day, unable to contain his exasperation, he had even burst out asking whether the person was some imaginary creature.
He had fully expected a furious reprimand — but to his surprise, Cesare agreed with what Colin said. That it might be nothing more than a fragment conjured by some distortion of memory, or a hallucination.
Only, Cesare mentioned that ever since the kidnapping, he sometimes dreamed. Strange dreams — neither quite nightmares, nor quite pleasant ones.
He never spoke about what the dreams contained.
Perhaps he simply couldn’t. All he would offer by way of explanation was that the moment his eyes opened, they vanished like sand slipping through his fingers. He added that it irritated and annoyed him to no end.
That was the full extent of what Colin and Ensha knew — that somewhere within the hazy, fog-like fragments of these dreams, there was a single East Asian person. And so, those missing ten days of Cesare’s life had gone unfilled for over thirteen years, right up to this day.
“So what you’re saying is, you think that person might be the East Asian from back then?”
“Who said anything like that? I’m saying he might be someone who resembles them.”
“Come on, does that even make sense? He has no idea what the person looked like, so how could he know whether someone resembles them or not?”
That was precisely the problem. The only thing Cesare remembered about the person he was searching for was that they were East Asian.
And even that wasn’t certain. Whenever anyone asked why he was so sure, he never gave an answer.
“So the only reason you thought Yi Seohan was the Executive Director’s type was just that? Because he’s East Asian?”
“No, it’s because of his looks.”
“His looks? Because he’s pretty?”
At Ensha’s words, Colin found himself picturing Yi Seohan. The man’s appearance was plain bordering on shabby. Even today, he had shown up with completely unstyled hair and a pilling sweater.
Everything about him — the way he moved, the way he spoke, the look in his eyes, the way he walked — betrayed a lack of confidence. And yet, for all of that, he was a man whose face was pretty enough that all of those things registered only as afterthoughts.
His eyes were not large, but they were clear — bright, as though brimming with something unspoken. His small nose, with its rounded tip, sat delicately upright. There was an air of untouched purity about him, as though the grime of the world had yet to reach him. His was the kind of face that seemed entirely unaware that the word beautiful applied to it.
And so even his shabbiness came across as nothing more than an unassuming simplicity. But whether the Executive Director actually favored that sort of look — that was another question entirely.
Unlike Colin, Ensha shrugged her shoulders with a confident expression.
“He tends to look just a little bit longer whenever someone with that kind of face walks by.”
“The Executive Director? I never noticed.”
“That’s why I said just a little. Maybe about one second longer than usual — give or take?”
“That’s nothing.”
Colin laughed, dismissing it as a flimsy excuse. Yet he couldn’t quite brush off Ensha’s claim as pure nonsense. Under normal circumstances he would have teased her for saying something ridiculous — but hadn’t he heard something with his own ears today?
“Seems like the Executive Director is planning to take Yi Seohan into his home.”
“Excuse me?!”
Ensha exclaimed, shoving her glasses up her nose with a look that was close to outright shock. A three-month contract was already astonishing enough — but now he was bringing him home to live there? The sun must be rising in the west tomorrow.
“Only for the duration of the contract.”
“Didn’t think our boss had it in him — that’s bold. Setting up house already, just like that?”
Ensha let out a mock whistle and clapped her hands together. She didn’t stop marveling, saying that she had lived long enough to see a day like this after all. She began listing off, one by one, every dish she intended to order from Stiria Restaurant that evening.
As Colin fiddled with his wallet, he called to mind Cesare’s expression from moments ago. Those eyes of his, filled to the brim with undisguised interest.
“Ensha, let’s make another bet.”
“Another one?”
“Yeah. Whether Yi Seohan stays here after the contract ends, or whether he doesn’t. I’m putting my money on him staying. The prize: a full month of coffee, lunch, and running errands. What do you say?”
This was his chance to turn things around. He had a strong feeling about this one. It felt like he could tell exactly which side to bet on if he wanted to win.
“Are you joking? It’s obvious I’d lose — what kind of idiot would bet on that? Do it yourself.”
“That’s not fair! Make another bet with me. Just one more!”
“Absolutely not. Bleh.”
Ensha made a show of laughing at Colin for proposing a bet with an obvious outcome, then stuck her tongue out at him playfully and darted away.
