Getting the Hang of It
I opened the study door, and a sharp cigar smell rushed over me. Chairman Han Taegun stared straight at me through the haze of smoke. The air felt different from when I’d pinned my cousin as a traitor at lunch and snatched my uncle’s three-hundred-billion-won project. Back then he’d been an observer. Now his eyes were those of a predator ready to seize my throat.
“Sit.”
I sank into the leather sofa. Father ground out his shortened cigar in the ashtray and spoke.
“The nickel mine on Java Island. A three-hundred-billion-won project. The prize Taijin has been working on in secret for half a year.”
Tap. Sparks flew from the stub as it hit the ashtray.
“So. How do you plan to handle it?”
A test of my ability. And a very clever trap. If I started rattling off a detailed plan—claiming I’d already looked into local conditions in Indonesia—he would immediately conclude I had planted informants inside the company without his permission. The man was vicious. He didn’t even trust his own blood; he kept testing me, knife at my throat, whenever he could. I shrugged lightly.
“I’ll have to call everyone in and check things out first.”
“……What?”
“I only just received the project at lunch. How would I know the details already? I haven’t even seen the documents.”
Father’s eyebrow twitched at my shameless answer. I continued as if it were a bother.
“The three finance-team aces Uncle promised to send. I’ll have them brought to my office first and get a briefing. We won’t know whether it smells like money or shit until we open the lid, will we?”
A short silence followed. Instead of answering, Father studied my face.
“Hoo.”
He clicked his tongue and leaned back. The killing intent had eased; I’d apparently cleared the first hurdle of suspicion.
“Fine. I’ve handed it to you for now. But remember this.”
The warning dropped.
“This is your last chance. If you drag my name through the mud again, losing the division-head seat will be the least of your worries.”
In other words, he’d cut my head off. The brutal logic of this household was starting to feel familiar—whether I wanted it to or not.
“I won’t cause any trouble. Look forward to it.”
I gave a light nod and left the study. Once the door closed, a laugh escaped me. This wasn’t difficult. I already knew exactly where the trap lay and how Kang Jinwoo had overturned the scam in the original story. That didn’t mean I could afford to be careless, though. Either way, all that remained was to flip the board and grow my own power.
My steps felt lighter as I headed down the second-floor hallway toward my room. Then I spotted a familiar figure lingering in front of my personal office and bedroom. Lee Soyul. The woman who had come this morning with a body-renunciation contract, using her family’s debt as leverage.
“What are you doing here?”
At my call, her shoulders stiffened. She turned, startled, her face drained of color. She had come back on her own before I even summoned her? I jerked my chin toward the door without a word. Lee Soyul hesitated, then followed me inside. She stood in front of the desk, clutching her hands tightly, unable to sit on the sofa.
“I distinctly told you this morning to go to school and behave. Did my words mean nothing to you?”
I tossed my jacket onto the sofa and asked. Lee Soyul shook her head quickly.
“N-no, it’s not that……”
She trailed off. Her pale face looked up at me, focus wavering.
“I…… had something to report.”
“Report?”
“This afternoon, at school, a senior named Kang Jinwoo kept approaching me.”
Kang Jinwoo. The original male lead of this damned game—the self-righteous fool who was supposed to come for my neck.
“I’ve never met him alone or had any private conversations! I kept avoiding him, and I’ll keep doing so.”
Her words tumbled out in a rush. She wasn’t even being interrogated. Why was she this desperate? I leaned against the desk and looked down at her. Interesting.
“So?”
“……Yes?”
“Why did you crawl all the way here to report that bastard hitting on you? Did you think I’d manage your stalkers for you?”
At my sneer, the corners of her eyes reddened. She drew a trembling breath and finally spoke.
“……If you heard it from someone else later, I was afraid you’d find another excuse to squeeze my family’s throats again.”
So that single line—“I don’t like flies buzzing around what’s mine”—had become a shackle in her mind. She feared that once I learned of Kang Jinwoo through my own investigation, her family would be torn apart. So she’d struck first, flattening herself at my feet. ……She wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t just fear that brought her here. She was testing me. Gauging how far I would react to Kang Jinwoo’s name, where the line was that would bring trouble to her family, whether I was a truly insane delinquent or a monster with rules. Even while trembling, she was calculating. That was Lee Soyul. The woman who, in the original story, endured to the end before sinking her teeth into Han Seojun’s throat. Even terrified, her mind never stopped. I liked that. At the same time, it made her more dangerous.
“Lee Soyul.”
I took a step closer. She flinched and backed away until her back hit the wall.
“Y-yes……!”
I reached out and wrapped an arm around her waist. Even that light contact made her shoulders go rigid.
“Ah……!”
Her stiffened body trembled slightly. She neither pushed me away nor screamed—just stood there awkwardly. I took the opening, slowly lowering my head until my lips hovered beside her ear. Close enough to touch, yet not quite.
“You’re doing well.”
“……”
“You know your place exactly. That’s praiseworthy.”
I withdrew my hand from her waist and stepped back. Lee Soyul remained pressed against the wall, frozen, her face bloodless. She looked as if she didn’t even know what expression she was making.
“From now on, if any more flies come buzzing, report them yourself like today. Understood?”
“……Yes.”
The answer came out barely above a whisper. Just then, I felt a presence through the slightly open office door. I glanced over and caught a flash of white silk fabric beyond the gap. Yoon Seoa had been peering inside. I kept Lee Soyul standing there and checked the situation outside from the corner of my eye. Yoon Seoa behind the door looked quite the sight—hand clamped over her mouth, frozen, ears bright red. I almost laughed. Normally she loitered in front of Han Seojun’s room in nothing but a thin robe, offering massages and dripping with seductive intent. A viper who enjoyed his panting while plotting to stab him in the back. Yet the moment she witnessed an actual scene, she completely locked up. She only knew how to tempt; when her own pace collapsed, she had no idea how to respond. I wasn’t going to do anything right now, but I had other methods suited for her. It would just take a little time.
Pretending not to notice the gaze from outside, I jerked my chin at Lee Soyul.
“Go. The driver’s waiting. Take the car.”
“……Goodbye.”
Lee Soyul fled the room. The moment she opened the door and left, I heard Yoon Seoa hurriedly hiding around the corner of the hallway.
******
Yoon Seoa, pressed into the hallway corner, couldn’t move for a while. Han Seojun had been with a woman. That wasn’t strange. What was strange was that he had simply let her go. Yoon Seoa roughly knew how many women he had touched so far. His base desires had always been obvious, and therefore easy to handle. But just now it had been different. He had stopped exactly there, as if waiting for someone to see. Could it be…… that he had known I was watching? The thought made her face flush hot. Han Seojun’s face, lowered close to Lee Soyul’s ear moments ago, belatedly sank into her mind.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Yoon Seoa pressed her burning ears with her fingertips. She refused to believe she was the kind of innocent woman who would freeze over something so minor. She had believed that. But Han Seojun had changed. And that change bothered her far more than she had expected.
******
All in all, a very satisfying afternoon. Tap. Tap. Not long after, another knock sounded at the door.
“Come in.”
Kim Manager entered, followed by a man in a suit who looked stiff with tension.
“Division Head. As instructed, I’ve brought Finance Team Leader Kim Ji-hoon.”
The ace my uncle, Han Taijin, had sent down to me. At the same time, the pawn planted to pin the three-hundred-billion-won scam on me.
“Sit.”
At my curt order, Team Leader Kim sat on the sofa opposite me with perfect posture. Despite his respectful demeanor, a strange confidence lingered. Understandable—he firmly believed I was a clueless delinquent. He probably thought that if he sprinkled in a few technical terms, I would happily stamp the approval documents.
“Division Head. I’ll report on the Indonesia Java Island nickel mine project.”
“Go ahead.”
Team Leader Kim pulled out a tablet and brought up the screen.
“Local due diligence has been completed. Initial reserve data exceeds the original estimate by thirty percent. The most critical part is the mining permit. The local broker handling it is demanding a five-hundred-billion-won advance payment by the end of this month.”
“Broker?”
“Yes. He has deep connections with high-ranking local officials. Before Chinese capital moves in, we must secure an exclusive contract through this broker……”
The way he rattled it off was quite the spectacle. The broker they were talking about—Michael Chen—was currently on Interpol’s red notice. He had appeared several times in the original story; there was even a route where he took Lee Soyul from Kang Jinwoo. They had to know he was a wanted man. Just as I suspected, this bastard was following my uncle’s orders to push me straight into the abyss. He knew full well that the Java Island mining rights couldn’t be obtained through a broker without going through the military, yet he was still pushing it.
I tapped the sofa armrest lightly, then cut in abruptly.
“You want me to hand five hundred billion to Michael Chen?”
Team Leader Kim’s mouth froze. I could almost hear the gears in his head spinning. The core of their scam, something only they knew, had been pierced by the division head they thought was an idiot. He was no doubt suspecting an informant inside.
“H-how did you……!”
I placed my hands on the desk and rose, looking down at him over the sofa. Team Leader Kim sat frozen stiff.
“The moment you contact my uncle now, you’re dead.”
The ease vanished from his expression.
“Cut the broker out. And connect me directly to the local military commander in charge of Java Island, Indonesia. Right now.”
“……Understood.”
I didn’t discard usable pieces. Even a blade raised under my uncle could become my blade if I changed the hilt. I would teach him from the bottom up what real business truly was.