# Chapter 167
“Nothing special, I just need a proper pledge that you’ll cooperate.”
Though the memory of regression wasn’t clear, he could figure it out just from having a rough conversation. He wasn’t exactly the type of person who inspired trust.
Rather… how should I put it? The kind of human who would look for opportunities and sacrifice his comrades to escape if things went south?
“You wouldn’t believe me if I promised, would you?”
“Of course not. I’ll get it in writing, so prepare your seal.”
As he spoke, Lee Hwan loosened his cuffs, placed them in his shirt pocket, and rolled up his sleeves.
“That doesn’t seem to be all.”
“Right.”
Lee Hwan reclined the backrest of his seat and leaned back comfortably. Kang Dongha snorted at his relaxed behavior but raised an eyebrow at his subsequent request.
“I need certainty. ‘White bowtie’. You said you’d talk about it, didn’t you?”
“Hmm…”
If he had already made up his mind, he would answer. He was probably just contemplating how much truth to tell.
‘I came from the future to save a life that’s about to end.’ Lee Hwan saw the issue as how much of that statement Kang Dongha believed.
If he believed the far-fetched claim about coming from the future, then ‘white bowtie’ was a term that, as far as he remembered, Dongha hadn’t told anyone yet. The reason he had brought someone to his car willing to listen to the story was because his own life depended on it.
It seemed like that keyword wasn’t something he would have mentioned unless he was cornered to that extent. So Kang Dongha now roughly believed two things: the claim about “coming from the future” and the fact that he was “about to die.”
What remained was the truth of ‘coming to save him.’
But was he the type of person who would readily accept help even from a complete stranger? Tracing through the fragments of memory, he didn’t seem to trust even his family much to begin with.
Once suspicion arises, everything looks suspicious. People like Kang Dongha looked for an escape route first in such situations. They contemplated opportunities to push those around them into a pit and climb up on them.
‘So, I need to obtain information that would make him uneasy about leaving me behind and escaping.’
At the same time, he had to ensure that Dongha wouldn’t mix significant lies into the information. That’s why Lee Hwan deliberately asked vaguely. In a way that couldn’t determine if he was testing him while already knowing the meaning of those words, or if he genuinely didn’t know and wanted to secure a guarantee.
Kang Dongha was silent for a while. He just slightly raised the corner of his mouth and stared straight ahead with sensitive, unpleasant-looking eyes.
Lee Hwan, half-lying on the heated seat warming his back, comfortably waited for his words. As the silence that had fallen in the narrow car began to grow heavy, Kang Dongha finally opened his mouth.
“Well… I once tried to use it to kill that bastard Kang Dongying.”
Whoa.
An unexpected story flowed out. Lee Hwan maintained his poker face while hiding his surprise.
“In detail.”
A pair of eyes sharply examined Lee Hwan’s demanding face. If he showed even the slightest awkwardness, Kang Dongha would realize that he knew nothing and start spouting lies.
“Well, that person has bad habits with his hands. Roughly… from the moment I can remember?”
A dream of being slapped across the face suddenly came to mind. Lee Hwan unconsciously nodded but quickly stopped when he felt Kang Dongha’s gaze measuring his reaction. Fortunately, that acknowledgment seemed to come across positively to Dongha. He began to unfold his story bit by bit.
“After I grew up, he only hit places that wouldn’t show, so this lasted a long time. My father seemed to notice, but he overlooked it for various complex reasons.”
No matter how meticulous Kang Dongying might be, he couldn’t have beaten someone secretly for over a decade. He probably constantly crossed lines that were awkward for parents to intervene.
Even as he spoke of something that should have made him feel wronged, his voice carried no particular emotion. Either it was not a significant matter to him, or he had already become numb to it.
Lee Hwan had heard about Kang Dongying many times. An elite who excelled in appearance, intelligence, work skills, academic background, and more. If the only way this perfect son let off steam and deviated was by “educating” a less outstanding child in ways that wouldn’t show… someone like the Vice President would likely have turned a blind eye to it.
“Then one day, I caused a major incident, and if I got caught, I really felt like I would die.”
Kang Dongha’s eyes rippled calmly and serenely.
“Thinking I would die if I didn’t kill him, I made some arrangements for the white bowtie he would wear for dinner.”
White bowtie. The face that met his as he told this story took on a strange light. For the first time, Lee Hwan could properly read his expression. Fear, anger, regret, disappointment, and resignation that passed through his eyes in turn.
“But I gave up at the last minute and replaced it. That’s the extent of my caliber. As a result, I’ve had to live looking at that person’s face until now, and fortunately, soon after, Kang Dongying awakened, so I stopped getting beaten… that’s the end.”
As if finishing an empty story, he turned his head with an indifferent expression. However, Lee Hwan could feel it. That this wasn’t as simple an incident as he made it sound.
‘The more you dig, the more this family seems like an urban legend.’
Kang Dongha is a thorough and methodical person. Lee Hwan could tell despite not having interacted with him much. Such a person, even if it was before he was fully grown, wouldn’t have risked his life doing something that could be discovered by anyone.
Lee Hwan speculated. Perhaps the measures he said he took with the bowtie were perfect. It might not have been a natural ending where Kang Dongying would slowly waste away and die of illness, but it meant Dongha wouldn’t have been identified as a prime suspect.
Nevertheless, Kang Dongha gave it up at the last moment. Though the matter ended unremarkably, it certainly didn’t remain a light memory for him.
‘As a result, I’ve had to live looking at Kang Dongying’s face until now…’
The lingering attachment and resignation that settled on his face as he said those words seemed to still hover before Lee Hwan’s eyes, even now that his expression had returned to a blank state. Like a deep scar that remained throughout his life, the incident was significant enough for him to use it as a means of identification before death.
“If you had just gone through with it then, the situation would certainly be different now. Right?”
At Lee Hwan’s probing words, Kang Dongha momentarily moved his lips.
“Well, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do as well as Kang Dongying. Then not only your father but also that old fox of a chairman would have been dissatisfied with the succession issue.”
Was that the bull’s-eye?
“You’re making wild guesses. Kang Taesung has spoiled his lover too much.”
Kang Dongha looked at Lee Hwan with coldly chilled eyes. It was time to stop. Reading the atmosphere roughly, Lee Hwan ceased talking and comfortably lay back, resting his hand behind his head.
‘I wondered where that crazy sensitivity came from…’
He had just been living constantly watching others’ reactions. From birth, all the way through.
Would Kang Dongying have only beaten him? He was a person who persistently checked and tormented Taesung even in the future just because he had awakened as S-class. Let alone a potential threat born under the same conditions as himself, he wouldn’t have let him grow properly.
Besides his inherently vile nature, Kang Dongha’s personality becoming this messed up probably had family circumstances worthy of being featured in an exposé program.
Nevertheless, not killing Kang Dongying might have been due to simple human affection, or for the reason Lee Hwan mentioned earlier, or perhaps a complex mix of all those reasons, but…
Either way, Kang Dongha became someone who lived his life moving under Kang Dongying’s shadow, avoiding his surveillance. That must be the “price” he was talking about.
“There’s a slight difference from what I heard before.”
“But the summary is the same?”
“Yes.”
Having never heard anything before, Lee Hwan pretended to know something by tracing his memory.
‘I’m… a civilian, aren’t I? I’ll compensate with money.’
He could roughly guess from his fragmented memories that Dongha had made similar remarks several times. Kang Dongying’s awakening must have been a somewhat sensational change for him. Kang Dongying’s beatings stopped, and his name was removed from the list of those to be kept in check.
However, his ambition was too great to be satisfied with the former, and his courage was too small to regret the latter. Kang Dongha must have vacillated between those two extremes all his life before resigning himself to an unchangeable reality.
What could have stimulated him to suddenly start causing trouble?
‘Urgh.’
Just as he was thinking that, a throbbing headache that seemed to have been waiting struck his temple. Lee Hwan, trying not to contort his face, faintly recalled the memory of regression at Kang Dongha’s side.
‘Cough, haah… if a hunter far from Naru finds this record, I hope they find the skill stone in my stomach and use it. If they come to find me at ‘Tamitree’ bar and say white bowtie…’
The words he hadn’t been able to hear to the end in the previous dream appeared vividly in his mind, as if engraved. The reddish-black leather, purple teeth. What the dying man had uttered to the monster with a familiar appearance was undoubtedly… the regression skill stone.
‘!’
Lee Hwan opened his eyes wide and turned sharply to look at Kang Dongha.
The regression skill stone had been his.
‘White bowtie…’
His surprised heart pounded, and cold sweat began to seep out on his forehead. Only then did the situation before the first regression draw like a blueprint in his mind.
Kang Dongha, who had obtained the EX-grade skill stone, bet everything on the one chance to surpass Kang Dongying.
The semi-awakening experiment, the ensuing monster wave, and the destruction. In the end, he was only used and discarded, but still, that was another ‘white bowtie’ for him.
“What are you staring at?”
The Kang Dongha from seven years ago, who knew nothing, provoked him with a frost-laden voice. Lee Hwan stared at him silently with eyes mixed with shock and compassion.
Judging from his frequent appearances throughout the regression memories, it seemed he had been continuously entangled with Lee Hwan after transferring the regression skill to him.
Perhaps it was a natural course of action for Lee Hwan to come looking for him like this. It was just as he was thinking that.
Bang!
Suddenly, the car door opened so forcefully it almost tore off. Soon, someone’s hand reached in and grabbed Lee Hwan’s clothes.
An arm filled with muscles that were as hard and delicate as sculptures. It was clearly someone he knew well.
“Kang Taesung…?”
The man who had bent at the waist and half-entered the car glared fiercely at Kang Dongha with smoldering black eyes.
