“Prosecutor? Prosecutor?”
The sound of Chief Inspector Oh’s voice snapped him back to his senses. Kang Heesin looked at the face of the young, handsome man sitting across from him. The man had come in early that morning as a witness, and the exhaustion on his face was plain to see.
Heesin suppressed his bewilderment and opened his mouth slowly.
“Kim Haeseong…?”
“Yes.”
“You’re… him? In person…?”
How many times are you going to ask that. The man knitted his brows with an irritated expression, and Heesin told him to wait a moment before pulling Chief Inspector Oh aside and stepping out. He turned to Oh, who had been dragged out without a clue, and kept tilting his head in confusion.
“That’s Kim Haeseong? Roy?”
“Roy, not Louis. Our prosecutor is great at everything, but honestly, remembering people’s names…”
“So you’re saying that is Kim Haeseong?”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
Heesin ran a hand over his face. His face looks completely different. The build too. When he said the man seemed taller, better-looking — like someone other than the person he’d met — Chief Inspector Oh nodded in understanding.
“It’s the lighting and the makeup. Looks the same to me, though.”
As if I’d fail to recognize someone that badly. When he insisted that it wasn’t him, Chief Inspector Oh asked who on earth he had met then. He couldn’t readily answer. They’d verified the man’s ID the moment he arrived, so the person inside was definitely Kim Haeseong.
…Then who was that slippery bastard I met a few days ago?
“Should I look into the venue separately?”
“No. It’s fine.”
Nothing important had been said anyway — he’d only briefly run into some drunk lunatic. He rationalized it to himself like that. In the middle of it all, a call came through. Chief Inspector Oh must have seen the screen flash <Restricted Number>, because he frowned.
“Still getting those? I told you to report it.”
“It’s fine. Probably just some bored bastard with nothing better to do.”
Lately, restricted-number calls had been coming in all the time, but the problem was that whoever it was would hang up the moment he answered. It rang again, and he moved to block it — but this time it was none other than his mother. Chief Inspector Oh, standing nearby, glanced over discreetly.
“I’ll head in first. Take your time.”
His greatest quality was knowing when to read the room. Left alone, Heesin didn’t pick up, and the phone rang several more times. Should I just block her entirely. He agonized over it, but couldn’t bring himself to do it — not for his sake, but for his younger sister’s. The phone rang a few more times, then finally went quiet, and a message arrived.
— Are you busy…? The transfer didn’t come through… I was just wondering when you might be able to…
He leaned against the wall and let out a low, quiet sigh.
…I’m so tired of this.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and the face of the man behind all of this — his father — rose up in his mind.
Why couldn’t you just disappear somewhere and die instead of showing your face again. Now he resented even his mother for taking a man like that back. But what he resented most was himself — for not being able to cut ties with these people, all in the name of family.
Until the youngest finishes high school. Just until then….
After that, he would never look back at this wretched household again. He made that vow to himself, then walked into the break room and pressed the button on the vending machine for a coffee. The door opened and Prosecutor Park Taemin walked in. Park Taemin, his senior from high school, had a habit of picking fights or cracking jokes every time he saw him.
“Kang, what are you doing here? Coffee? Get me one too.”
He said nothing and took only his own cup, bringing it to his lips — and Park Taemin clicked his tongue, as if he’d expected exactly that.
“Oh right. I heard you’ve got good news?”
“What news?”
“Come on, don’t play dumb. The word’s already spread. That you got chosen by the youngest daughter of Seoil Group.”
“Chosen. Do you live in the Joseon Dynasty?”
“The nerve on you. No wonder you don’t have friends.”
“I don’t have friends not because of my nerve, but because I went to a nobody school and got lucky enough to pin on a prosecutor’s badge. You of all people — why pretend not to know?”
He threw back, word for word, what the man had once said about him at a company dinner. Park Taemin laughed shamelessly, unbothered.
“You’ve been holding onto that all this time? Kang Heesin, your capacity is really something.”
“Yes, yes, I’m a man of very small capacity.”
“Enough, will you. You take an inch and you never let it go. If anything, shouldn’t you be trying to get on my good side? If I get promoted first, I could look out for a fellow hometown boy. Couldn’t I?”
Heesin scoffed inwardly. Before that happens, I’ll have already climbed higher than you. While you’re sprinting up the stairs one step at a time, I’ll grab the rope and shoot straight up in one go. That’s what I mean. Not that he could say any of that out loud, of course.
He tossed his empty cup into the bin and was heading out when Park Taemin managed, as always, to get under his skin.
“By the way — is your father still up to the same things?”
He stopped and looked at Prosecutor Park.
“Well. Better than the trouble he used to cause, I suppose—”
“Senior.”
“What.”
“Worry about yourself. Not me.”
He pushed open the door and walked out. Before it swung shut, he caught the murmured words — sensitive bastard — but it didn’t particularly bother him. It wasn’t untrue, and back then, everyone in the neighborhood had known about it anyway.
The navigation announced they were approaching the destination, and he straightened his back without thinking. Arriving in a neighborhood said to be home only to the very wealthy, even the air felt different somehow. The sight of expensive cars at every turn made his secondhand one feel embarrassingly insignificant.
He drove up the hill and arrived to find a woman already waiting outside. Her name was Yun Sena. Behind her, a red boundary wall that easily cleared a person’s height stretched out like a backdrop — the moment he saw it, he felt dwarfed.
“You’re earlier than I expected. Traffic wasn’t bad?”
Yeah. It was fine. He answered and reached over to pick up the gift he’d left on the passenger seat.
Yun Sena smiled when she saw it.
“What’s this — I said just come. It’s just a casual meal.”
“It’s nothing much. I thought your mother might like it.”
“Thank you. It would’ve been even better if my father could’ve been here today.”
Yun Sena gave her characteristic eye-smile and hooked her arm through his from the side. Let’s go in. With a short bob and an ivory dress, Yun Sena was a woman whose clean, striking features and warm smile made her beautiful. She was the kind of woman so far out of his league he’d never have dared to even look her way.
He handed his car keys to the staff keeping watch at the gate, then stepped inside to find a set of well-maintained stone steps. He climbed them and reached the top to find an immaculately tended garden spread out before him.
On one side of the garden, the koi her father reportedly raised as a hobby were gliding through a pond. Yun Sena mentioned that her mischievous half-brother had once poured alcohol into the pond. She said their father had nearly keeled over clutching the back of his neck that day. And yet the brother hadn’t been punished, which showed just how much their father doted on him.
They crossed the yard to find chefs moving busily on one side of the garden. In front of them sat a large table, and on either side, family members were seated and chatting among themselves.
Sena had a total of four siblings, all with different mothers. The eldest three had been born to Chairman Yun’s first wife, the fourth to his second wife, and the youngest — Yun Sena — to his current wife. As the youngest daughter, Yun Sena had her father Chairman Yun’s affection all to herself.
Had this been an ordinary family, it would have invited nothing but scorn — but perhaps because the company maintained a positive public image, Chairman Yun had been framed as a capable, accomplished man. There had even been articles that compared him to a king, portraying his efforts to secure heirs as something to be admired.
The closer they got to the table, the more it felt as though the necktie was strangling the air out of him — but he tried not to let it show. As the family’s gazes landed on him one by one, he deliberately straightened his back further and kept a calm smile at the corners of his lips.
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Kang Heesin.”
Everyone gave a barely perceptible nod, but Yun Sena’s mother was notably warm in her welcome.
“Come in, come in. Our future son-in-law.”
At the words future son-in-law, a faint, mocking smile flickered across several of the siblings’ faces. It was different from how Prosecutor Park had smiled at him earlier that day. This felt less like curiosity about their half-sister’s boyfriend and more like an assessment. Whether this man will be of any use to our family, or not.
The siblings gathered at the table, excluding Yun Sena, numbered three — along with their respective spouses.
The only one absent was the fourth. The fourth had been born between Chairman Yun and a second-generation Zainichi Korean woman — a woman who was the daughter of a powerful Japanese businessman. The business, as the talk went, was a well-known Yakuza operation.
At the time of the divorce, Chairman Yun had done everything he could to obtain custody, but in the end, the court had ruled in favor of the second wife rather than Chairman Yun.
Once the introductions were done and he’d taken his seat, the conversation drifted along pleasantly enough.
“I was surprised when Sena said she was seeing a prosecutor.”
“Really. I thought things were going well with the youngest from Jinseong Group.”
The unexpected remark made Yun Sena’s brow furrow. Oppa, stop. Bringing that up here is incredibly rude — she snapped. Everyone was smiling and keeping the tone light, but Kang Heesin was not unaware that each word carried hidden barbs and blades beneath the surface.
“Oh — and your parents? I heard they’re abroad?”
His grip tightened on the knife in his hand.
He couldn’t bring himself to speak, and Yun Sena stepped in first.
“They’re in Toronto. They’ll come back briefly for the wedding.”
“They’re in food business, I was told?”
“Yes.”
This time Yun Sena’s mother chimed in.
“Personally, I’d much rather have a son-in-law who catches criminals than one who runs a business. That’s so much more impressive.”
She lifted her wine glass with a bright smile, and Kang Heesin smiled along.
His father — a man who had gambled, committed domestic violence, had an affair, and left home — was as good as nonexistent. On top of that, his guardian, Chairman Kim, had now been entirely repackaged as his foster parent. He swallowed a piece of meat to push down the bile rising in his throat.
Just then, someone looking toward the other side let out a startled sound — oh—?
Gazes shifted in that direction one by one, and then, as if on cue, silence fell. At the sudden appearance of a man, a small groan and a barely audible curse slipped from the second son’s lips. Yun Sena’s mother set her wine glass aside and rose gracefully to her feet.
“Not a word of notice — when did you get to Korea?”
The man who had approached held out flowers he’d been carrying.
“Last week. I’ll be leaving again soon.”
Yun Sena’s mother received the flowers with an expression of exaggerated delight. Perhaps it came from her background as an actress — her expressions were remarkably expressive. Quick as he was to pick up on things, Heesin gathered from the exchange between the two that this man was Chairman Yun’s fourth son.
The air shifted the moment the man appeared.
The smiles faded from the faces of the first and second sons, who had been laughing easily just moments before.
Yun Sena introduced Heesin, and just as he was about to greet him —
A strange sense of déjà vu washed over him from the man.
Hm…?
This man — I’ve seen him somewhere before.
Where was it…? Have we met at the prosecutor’s office?
He was combing through his memories when something hit him like a bolt of lightning.
The man had closed the distance and extended his hand.
Still wearing that infuriating face.
He had that look that day too, I’m sure of it.
…I’m sure of it.
“I think we may have met before, haven’t we?”
Every pair of eyes at the table turned toward him. He scrambled to hold onto his rapidly slipping composure. This isn’t a mistake. He wasn’t a host? Damn it, what exactly did I say to him that day…. His mind went completely blank, and he couldn’t make sense of anything.
“What? Do you two know each other?”
Yun Sena’s mother glanced back and forth between the two of them with undisguised curiosity.
In that instant, countless thoughts raced through his head — but the best he could do right now was this.
“I don’t think so? I don’t believe we’ve met…”
He played dumb with shameless composure, and the man’s lips curved upward.
“Ah — is that so? I must have been mistaken then.”
And then the man extended his hand afresh, bright and easy.
The warm, steady look in his eyes was entirely unlike that night.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Im Gyeong.”
