Invest in Me!
The whole family sat gathered around a single dining table.
I hovered in an agony of indecision over whether I was even allowed to start eating. I was starving, and I had no idea what the rules were supposed to be.
I reached for my spoon.
"So. What do all of you think?"
The words left Grandmother's mouth, and I was forced to set down the spoon I had been about to pick up.
The family only watched one another's faces. Not a single person looked ready to speak first. Everyone clearly had something they wanted to say—their lips kept parting and closing on nothing. The glances flying around the table all said the same thing: Somebody else go first. And even though every person sitting there could read those looks perfectly well, not one of them opened their mouth.
The eldest uncle kept glancing at the third, and the third uncle kept prodding our dad.
"What kind of company do you run, Grandmother?"
The silence had gotten so stifling that I finally asked the question that had been sitting on my tongue since we arrived. I had only been told that she ran a company. I still had not even heard its name.
Grandmother considered me for a moment.
"Well. Jiwoo is a high schooler now, so I suppose you ought to know. The company this grandmother of yours runs is called Dohan."
"Do...han?"
The name hit me like a slap. Dohan. Not quite a major conglomerate, but close enough in scale to stand beside one, and still carrying the kind of growth that made people talk about its future. A brand with real weight. And the company I had worked for in my previous life.
Living as an actress and a broadcaster, I had always figured our paths would cross again someday. I had never once dreamed it would happen like this.
"Dohan. I've heard of it. I never imagined the chairwoman of that famous company would be my own grandmother, though."
"We're not that famous. We haven't made it into the ranks of the major conglomerates yet."
I shook my head at the way she cut herself down.
"No. You mustn't think like that, Grandmother. We can do this. We have to believe we're already a major conglomerate. Even the things that look impossible are still things we can do."
"Heh heh. Listen to this granddaughter, saying such things in front of her grandmother. Come to Grandmother's room later. We'll finish this conversation there."
She cut the exchange short and swept her gaze once around the adults at the table. I followed that look. Opening my mouth seemed to have helped—their faces were easier than they had been a moment ago.
"Mother. If you mean to hand the company over, it ought to go to me as the eldest. I already hold a director's seat at Dohan Group headquarters. Naturally, I should be the next chairman."
"What are you talking about? You hold a director's seat at headquarters, sure—but I'm the president of a subsidiary."
"The scale is completely different. Yours is a Dohan Group subsidiary. I'm at headquarters. How is the president of a company with fewer than a hundred employees supposed to take the chairmanship of a headquarters with five hundred? Am I wrong?"
"You really think that, hyung?"
The fight between the eldest uncle and the third uncle suddenly dragged in our dad, the second son. Of everyone at the table, he had been sitting the most comfortably—until every eye swung toward him and his brow furrowed.
From everything I knew of his temperament, he hated seats like this. The man disliked gatherings on principle. Even at the hospital, when colleagues or other professors tried to pull him into a dinner, he refused every time and came straight home. Which was why, even now that I was past seventeen and they had been married nearly twenty years, the two of them were still sickeningly in love.
A sliver of anticipation that a second child might appear was outweighed by anxiety. Both of them were getting on in years, and a late pregnancy was a real concern. They looked young enough that you could have believed they were barely into their thirties, but they were actually past forty.
They really ought to take it easy, I was thinking—and that was when he spoke.
"I'm sorry, but I'd rather this particular spark not land on me. I'm plenty happy with the work I already do. And I didn't come here today to listen to any of this."
Dad's gaze swung suddenly toward Mom and me. Ah. I did not like the way that look felt. And my unease landed exactly on target.
"Hyuna—my wife—is pregnant with our second child. That's the only reason I came. So I'd appreciate it if we dropped the talk about the company and successors. I've said what I came to say. I'll be taking my leave."
We had not even started the meal, and Dad stood up from his seat. Mom rose right after him.
Was I supposed to stand too?
Abandoning the delicious food sitting right in front of me was not possible. I swallowed.
Just eat.
I picked up my chopsticks and started the meal alone.
"Well then, let's begin with the meal. Jiwoo looks hungry enough that she's already begun."
"Ah... I'm sorry. The food just looked so good, I couldn't help myself."
"No. I'm the one at fault for calling everyone to dinner and then bringing up company business. Everyone, please eat."
The moment Grandmother lifted a spoonful, we were able to have a meal in the true sense of the word. How many people at that table actually ate in any kind of comfort was another question.
A second child, though... my little sibling.
The food had looked wonderful, and it tasted every bit as good as it looked. Full, happy, and warm, I found myself turning the idea of a younger sibling over in my mind.
A little brother? Or a little sister?
Either one was fine. It was August now; if the pregnancy ran its usual nine months or so, the due date would fall in May of next year. A late baby among late babies—a full eighteen years between us. Of course the child would monopolize every ounce of cuteness in the house, and there was not a single way it would get in the path of my life as an actress or a broadcaster.
Every so often, stories still cropped up online of people who had to walk away from entertainment because of family trouble. Someone might think I was jealous of a sibling who had not even been born yet. But the entertainment industry was the kind of place where a single crack in your image could send you straight to the bottom. Even if I was careful, a hit could come from a direction I never saw. Anything that might get in the way had to be kept as far off as possible.
The meal ended at last, and it was time for tea. The same tension that had sat on the table at the start of the evening settled over it again.
"So, Mother. Who are you considering as successor?"
"Honestly, I used to think any of my children would do. Looking at you now, I realize that thought was a delusion on my part."
The eldest uncle and the third uncle both flinched, their brows twisting at Grandmother's bomb of a remark.
"Mother, what do you mean, a delusion? Are you saying you were going to leave the company to the two of us?"
"That was your grandfather's dying wish. That the family as a whole inherit the company. But the eldest and the third start fighting the moment they meet, and the second pretends none of it has anything to do with him."
At those words, the eldest uncle and the third uncle looked ready to leap from their seats and drag our dad back in. What they failed to account for was that, unlike the two of them, who had spent their entire lives on company work, our dad worked in a hospital crawling with every flavor of nightmare patient. He was the kind of man who said that to keep your patients healthy, you had to start with yourself—and unlike his two brothers, he had the most finished physique of anyone in the family.
"Then," I said, having sat quietly through the talk with my tea, "what if I received Father's shares in his place?"
"This is no place for a child to—"
"Hold on, hyung."
The third uncle cut the eldest off mid-sentence.
"That's not a bad idea. Second hyung has no interest in the company anyway. But Mother looks determined to honor Father's wishes. So we give Jiwoo a fixed share, and we climb to the chairmanship with whatever's left. That way we follow Father's will, and Mother will be satisfied too."
The third uncle's thinking was more flexible than I had expected. I had said it with exactly that calculation in mind, but I had not thought he would see through it in a single breath.
In the future I remembered, though, the third uncle had never become chairman. I did not know why, but the chairman had definitely been the eldest. There had been some reason. I even remembered that there had been something about it in the news—but back then I had been too busy surviving day to day, and most of what I watched had simply washed over me.
"So what do you think, Jiwoo? Splitting the shares with us, thinking about the future. I think it'd be good for you. How about it?"
"The future... that's not a bad thought. I don't even know how long I'll keep acting. I'll do it."
"That's a good answer. I wish my own son would answer that cleanly."
From the sound of it, the third uncle's children locked themselves in their rooms and did nothing but game the moment school and cram academy let out. He added that that was also why they had not been able to come today.
"It seems we're done talking for now. Jiwoo, come see your grandmother."
"Yes."
I was just about to rise and follow her when the eldest uncle spoke again.
"Mother. We still haven't finished discussing the successor."
"I did not call you here today to choose a successor. I called you only to talk about the matter of succession."
Grandmother was absolute.
"So take a little more time and think it over."
The eldest uncle, unable to read the room, only kept losing points. I watched him, and all I felt was pity.
I followed Grandmother into the study. And the first thing out of her mouth was this.
"So. You've something to say to this old woman, haven't you."
"You knew?"
"If I couldn't pick up on a hint that obvious, this old woman would have to step down from her seat. Jiwoo, a person in business needs precisely this kind of instinct, and—"
"The ability to read people."
"You know it well."
How could I not? It was what the chairman of the company I had worked for in my previous life used to say every single time. I had always wondered who he had learned it from. So it had been Grandmother.
"Now then. Tell this old woman what you wanted to say."
For a moment I wavered over whether to say it. Then I decided.