A Chaebol Heiress as an Idol
I walked over to Taeseong.
"Been a while for you too, Taeseong. Somehow you haven't changed a bit since we were kids, huh?"
"Of course not. I'm always the same. But watching you grind it out out there, I honestly thought you were something else. Let's be real — for families like ours, the whole image thing… sitting in your room with a camera on, doing ankle-tackle reaction bits for donation money? That isn't something just anyone can pull off. I couldn't do it if I died and came back."
Taeseong shook his head slowly, as if he were genuinely impressed. A gentle smile sat on his lips, but his eyes were looking straight down at me.
"Guess all that YouTuber experience turned out to be solid groundwork for running the Association, huh? The way you pander to the public and whip up pot-temperament outrage is pure art. I was about to tell our planning team to study your streams for reference."
This was it — not outright swearing someone out, but wrapping the insult in pretty packaging, needling their nerves and shaming them with surgical precision. That was the real house style the chaebol bloodlines loved to use.
But there was one thing this bastard had failed to account for.
I was not the type who staked his life on face. I wasn't about to get sucked into some refined little pissing contest.
"Taeseong."
"What is it, Mr. Chairman? I gave you an honest compliment and you're making that face? Ah, is it because I didn't drop any donation money and just ran my mouth for free? Do your signature reaction bit right here and I'll swipe my personal card nice and clean for you."
"Shouldn't you be at a hearing instead of Cheongunhoe?"
"…What?"
Taeseong's easy smile cracked clean down the middle and hardened into stone. The whiskey glass he'd been idly swirling came to a dead stop.
I dusted off his shoulder with a couple of casual pats and spoke loud enough for everyone nearby to hear every word.
"Your name's been plastered all over the business news as the company that squeezes its subcontractors dry with every dirty trick in the book, so I was wondering if you even belonged in a place like this. I came to Cheongunhoe as Association Chairman — not as some tow-truck chasing a wreck."
I leaned my face in close to his frozen one and smiled.
"So tell me. Did you show up today as an executive director, or as a suspect?"
The mockery made the veins stand out sharp along Park Taeseong's neck.
"You little son of a—!"
"Alright, alright. That's enough."
A heavy voice cut in as Seunghyeon hyung slid neatly between us.
"This is a gathering of adults. Is there any reason to flush red and embarrass the family on a good day like this? You too, Taeseong. Drop it."
The moment Seunghyeon hyung — wearing the title of Group Managing Director — stepped in, the others who'd been hanging back reading the room piled on in the same direction.
"He's right, Taeseong oppa. There are plenty of eyes outside the banquet hall too. Kick up a scene and it'll be a headache."
"Cool it, Taeseong. Your dad's in a good mood tonight. No need to go and ruin the paint job."
Under the cascade of restraint from every side, Park Taeseong ground his teeth, seething. He'd started the fight himself and then gotten beaten down with cold facts — of course his mental game was collapsing. With the kids all watching, hearing someone call your company a corruption shop to your face instead of some comment-section rumor or tabloid scrap was more than enough to make anyone's eyes spin.
"Ah… this is seriously pissing me off."
In the end he shot me one vicious look, then roughly snagged the shoulder of some easy target standing nearby.
"Hey. Let's go outside and smoke."
Muttering under his breath, Taeseong stormed out of the lounge.
Pathetic bastard. Same as when we were kids — the second he starts losing, he runs.
Once Taeseong was gone, the lounge settled back into its usual fake peace.
"Why did that one just storm out in such a temper?"
A calm, settled voice.
At that single line, every gaze in the lounge drifted toward the entrance.
A woman was walking in with elegant steps, dressed not in the flashy, boundary-pushing idol outfits she usually wore on stage, but in a clean-lined ivory silk two-piece that fell with quiet precision.
The youngest daughter of the Jinyang Group chairman — one of the absolute top ranks in the domestic business world.
And the center of Korea's top-tier girl group. My childhood friend, Yoon Chaewon.
Idol careers lasted longer these days, and she still held her active idol title. Dressed this formally, she looked every inch the refined young lady of a great house.
"Oh, Chaewon, you're here?"
"It's been a while. Did you wrap up the album promotions?"
The other second- and third-generation chaebol kids in the lounge offered their greetings as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
They'd all grown up bumping into each other at family events and social gatherings since they were small, so among the Cheongunhoe peers, everyone more or less stayed on easy, ordinary terms. Chaewon smiled brightly and traded light hellos with them in turn.
Then her steps quietly faltered as she spotted me standing near the head of the room.
"…Oh."
A flicker of hesitation crossed Chaewon's eyes.
As kids, Yoon Chaewon and I had played in the dirt in the family courtyard without a scrap of distance between us. But once she entered an agency young and started trainee life, our meetings thinned out, and when I took off for Europe to chase football, our paths split completely. Maybe it was the physical distance, but even the occasional check-ins and updates grew sparse, and overseas schedules left both of us too busy to breathe. We'd once been closer than anyone in the world — and now, after the long blank stretch, even meeting each other's eyes felt awkward and stiff.
Chaewon approached slowly and lifted one corner of her mouth into a small smile.
"It really has been a long time, Han Yideun. …Ah, should I be calling you Football Association Chairman now?"
In the old days she would have fired something right back or started teasing without a second thought. The carefully measured politeness in her tone laid bare exactly how much distance had opened between us.
The old closeness was still there somewhere, but she was being careful not to cross any lines.
I looked at her evenly and answered.
"Just call me Yideun. What's this 'Chairman' nonsense."
"Alright. Let's do that."
Chaewon idly turned the smartphone in her hand and drifted a little closer to my side.
"I've only been seeing you on the news, so running into you in person feels a little strange. Have you been well?"
"More or less, as you can see. I've only been catching you through entertainment news myself — the real thing is even more impressive."
"Pfft."
Chaewon lightly covered her lips with her hand and let out a short laugh.
A conversation after so long. Even through the awkwardness, a faint current of that old childhood-friend familiarity was still there.
"They're calling me over there. Let's talk more later."
Chaewon left a light nod of farewell and moved off to join another cluster of people.
Around the time her soft fragrance had faded, Seunghyeon hyung — the same one who'd kept a polite distance while exchanging greetings earlier — quietly drifted back to my side.
He gave the whiskey glass in his hand a light swirl and dropped his voice.
"But Yideun. Don't get too full of yourself just because they pinned the Chairman title on you."
"Excuse me?"
"Blowing up the Sports Reform Committee was a clean move, I'll give you that. But the people inside it — I've heard there's someone pretty powerful sitting behind them."
Coming from the Managing Director of K Group, with its fat business-world information network.
I snorted and laughed it off with easy confidence.
"Come on, hyung. I already know that much. But at the end of the day, aren't they just a bunch of clowns doing admin work for the guys who actually kick the ball? Even if they all pile together, what are they going to do to me?"
They were the stagnant water of the football world, nothing more.
They knew how to build little brotherhood cartels among themselves. Facing someone like me head-on — chaebol backing and public opinion both at my back — was a different story entirely.
But at my answer, a subtle current crossed Seunghyeon hyung's face.
"……."
An ambiguous expression. The uncomfortable look of a man swallowing something that was neither agreement nor denial.
"Yeah, well… I only said it because I was worried as your hyung. Don't worry about it."
He gave my shoulder a couple of light pats and walked off toward another group.
I narrowed my eyes at Seunghyeon hyung's retreating back.
Just him overthinking it?
Or had he actually caught a whiff of something rotten I didn't know about?
There was definitely a note of real concern in his words and manner. Especially someone like Seunghyeon hyung, who'd clawed his way to Managing Director — the experience and depth he'd stacked up since childhood had to be enormous. If he was bringing this up, there was probably something there.
But I couldn't pin down exactly what that feeling was.
Was there some serious player hiding behind those football-world parasites?
Nothing had come up through my direct lines.
Well… whatever. Even if they try something, it's still just them.
I hadn't planted my people inside the Association for nothing. If there was anything worth knowing, it would have been reported to me already. Working myself into a headache over it in advance wouldn't do any good.
While I was sorting that out—
Clack—
Someone came in through the lounge entrance.
Park Taeseong — the same bastard who'd taken a clean hit from my hearing line and stormed out seething — was walking back in.