“Thank you so much.”
The Director gave Moon Heesung a deep bow for defusing the situation.
“You really saved us back there.”
“…Not at all.”
Moon Heesung gave a vague nod and moved to leave — and then:
“Excuse me.”
The Director’s sudden words made him pause. The Director looked Heesung up and down at length before speaking.
“I apologize for asking something so personal when we’ve only just met, but — are you currently employed?”
The out-of-nowhere question made Heesung’s eyes flicker slightly. The Director quickly reached inside his jacket and produced a business card case.
“I should introduce myself first. This is who I am.”
The card listed the name of the agency Yoo Sinju currently belonged to, along with a title and a name. Double J Entertainment — Director Cha Jungho. Commonly referred to as Director Cha. He was the younger brother of Representative Cha, the true power at Double Entertainment, and was himself considered the second most powerful figure there.
“I apologize for bringing this up so abruptly, but you’re exactly the kind of person I’ve been looking for…”
“…I’m not sure what you mean.”
“It’s a long story. If you’re willing, would you be able to come by here tomorrow?”
“……”
“If that’s difficult, you’re welcome to contact me and we can arrange a different place.”
“…Why me.”
Unable to make sense of the request, Heesung furrowed his brow slightly. Being approached first was not something he’d anticipated. He kept his expression blank as he studied the man across from him.
“Because I think you might be exactly the person we’ve been looking for.”
“……”
“I don’t have much time right now. Could we meet tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
The calm, immediate answer made the Director pause instead. Moon Heesung took the card as though he’d been waiting for it and shoved it carelessly into his trouser pocket.
“Ah… then please do get in touch with us tomorrow.”
“Right, will do.”
The answer came back just as quickly and simply. Director Cha hesitated for a moment.
“Sorry?”
“You said you wanted to meet.”
“…Ah. Yes.”
The blunt, unbothered tone drew a faint smile out of the Director. He looked at Heesung with an expression that was half-amused, half-baffled — but Heesung didn’t seem to register it at all. Director Cha watched him with quiet interest before turning to gesture urgently at the Manager, who was still struggling with Yoo Sinju — get him in the car, now. The Manager, drenched in sweat, finally managed to stuff the completely out-of-it Sinju into the vehicle.
“Well then. Until tomorrow.”
The Director gave a light nod in parting. Moon Heesung nodded back a couple of times.
Once the Director climbed in after him, the van — its windows tinted so dark not a single strand of hair was visible through them — started up immediately and vanished from the spot as though it had never been there. Moon Heesung’s grown-out hair stirred in the wind. His detached, consistently blank gaze remained fixed on the place where the van had disappeared.
That hopeless little idiot.
The famous actor Yoo Sinju — that was the brother Moon Heesung had come looking for.
Not a drop of shared blood between them.
**
“Director, who was that man just now?”
Director Cha was frantically making calls — to the company staff currently at the awards ceremony, and to his contacts among the event organizers. He was busy managing the fallout, spinning the story that Yoo Sinju’s panic disorder had flared up and he was simply unable to attend. The fact that Yoo Sinju had depression and panic disorder was something the whole world already knew. When it came to explaining away a story about him getting drunk and starting a fight with ordinary people, his mental illness was the only card they had.
This time was no different. Not that it was entirely a lie. Yoo Sinju had been off in some way even before he became an actor. Whether it was the solid backing he had behind him or simply the way he was born, he had an enormous talent for acting but not a trace of humility to be found. He had a clear goal of wanting to be an actor, but once he’d actually climbed to the position he wanted, he seemed to lose interest entirely. As if it didn’t matter to him one way or another whether he kept acting. Like right now. But the unsettling thing wasn’t just the attitude.
From his rookie days — when he’d been gritting his teeth and clawing his way up to where he wanted to be — he’d already had panic disorder, and occasionally hyperventilated too, showing signs of psychological instability. He’d been a liability from the very beginning, but the reason no one could give up on him was his reasonably solid backing, and above all else, his overwhelming looks. A face that could never come around again in this generation. Even with all the trouble Sinju kept causing, every agency in the industry still had their eyes on him. Because as much as his acting mattered — those looks, that presence, were simply impossible to manufacture no matter how much you tried.
Director Cha looked at the passed-out, drunk Yoo Sinju with a dissatisfied frown and let out a long sigh. A treasure you couldn’t afford to lose. And simultaneously, the most difficult person in the entire agency to manage. That was Yoo Sinju right now. Lately the reckless behavior had been getting worse. He used to at least keep his professional and personal lives separate, but even that line had been getting dangerously blurry.
That was precisely why it was necessary. Someone who could watch over and manage that disaster of a Yoo Sinju. Countless people had come and gone over the years. They’d tried the most well-regarded staff in the management industry, tried foreign security firms — everyone left wanting nothing to do with it. No matter what approach they threw at the problem, it always ended the same way: either a physical altercation with Sinju, or a string of profanity and a resignation letter.
But that man today. The moment Director Cha laid eyes on him, the sharp instinct he’d honed across twenty years in this industry kicked in. The man’s presence, his gaze, his build — and his voice, his eyes. An inexplicable certainty welled up in him, and Director Cha had shoved the business card into his hands before he’d even thought it through.
“No idea. Neither do I.”
“Sorry? But you gave him your card?”
Director Cha checked his tablet and scanned the articles already mushrooming everywhere — Yoo Sinju, sudden no-show at awards ceremony. If anything had been put out with malicious intent, it needed to be handled immediately.
“I just had a feeling.”
The Manager glanced at Director Cha in the rearview mirror as he drove. His expression said he had absolutely no idea what kind of feeling that was supposed to be.
Director Cha tapped the tablet screen restlessly, his expression simmering, and shot another glare at the Sinju who had conked out again.
“This is no time to be picky.”
Director Cha ground his back teeth and kept tapping the screen with a troubled, anxious look.
“Before he causes any more trouble — we need to find it. The leash for this disaster.”
His instinct could be wrong, of course.
But somehow, he’d liked him.
Those eyes — detached and hollow, as if he had nothing left to lose and didn’t care about anything at all.
**
After confirming Sinju was gone, the place Moon Heesung headed without any particular plan was a columbarium on the outskirts of Seoul. Without so much as a jacket in the cold night, he walked all the way there on foot and bought a single chrysanthemum from the stand at the park entrance.
Late in the small hours of the morning. Deep into the night with even the lights dim. Moon Heesung crossed the empty lobby. And then — to the far corner, somewhere in the back, where his brother was. No photograph. Nothing ornate or elaborate. Just three characters of a name on a cremation urn.
Moon Huijae.
Moon Heesung had two brothers. Moon Huijae — his blood brother. And Yoo Sinju — the neighborhood kid with no shared blood.
Moon Huijae had grown up with a mother who’d run away and a violent father, and being beaten from such a young age had left him extremely frail. Unlike Heesung, who’d at least had a mother in his early childhood, his younger brother had never once seen their mother’s face. She’d left the moment she gave birth to the second child. A father who failed at every business venture and brought ruin to the family — and then took it out on his young children — was the only guardian the brothers had ever known. Because of that, Moon Heesung had been out earning money from a young age, and even in the brief moments he was away, young Moon Huijae always came back covered in wounds.
“I’m here, Moon Huijae.”
Seeing his brother — just a little past ten years old — turn up with a face full of bruises and cuts sent a rage through Moon Heesung that he couldn’t contain. But even for Heesung, who had been a high schooler at the time, their large-framed father was no easy opponent. He’d stand up to him and demand he leave his brother alone, but their father was stronger, bigger, and crueler.
“…It’s been way too long since I last came.”
More than ten years. Since his brother died.
Heesung smiled faintly and added:
“Saw that little kid today.”
He sank down to the floor with the exhaustion of someone who’d been running on empty, and let another face drift into his mind. Moon Huijae had been not only frail from all the beatings but also developmentally behind his peers in terms of intellect. Unlike Heesung, his growth had been slow — his speech too. He was a child Heesung couldn’t afford to leave unprotected. His one and only brother. A pitiful kid abandoned by both parents. A child who might not have survived at all without him.
So naturally he’d been a target in the neighborhood too. He was known as the stutterer, the beggar with no mother, the ragamuffin who got beaten. Whenever Heesung came home and Huijae wasn’t there, he always went to the neighborhood playground to look for him. And he’d always find him surrounded by kids bigger than him, being tormented.
Huijae!
The moment his older brother Moon Heesung showed up, the neighborhood kids would scatter and run. Because unlike his dumb, pitiful little brother, their hyung was the scariest one in the whole neighborhood. Having been beaten by their father just as much as Huijae, and mocked by his peers just as much — Moon Heesung had been hardened by it all, and where his brother had been born weak, Heesung was the opposite: relentlessly tough. He was notorious for fighting back against the father who kicked him around, and for turning around and beating up the older kids and peers who’d tried to bully him.
