Married Off

"Choose your words with care."

Choi Seonggi said it smiling, neither cowed nor worked up, his composure perfectly intact.

Chairman Cha Jinpyo's clenched fists trembled. A green boy was running wild right in front of him, and without a shred of fear.

"Words won't settle this. Secretary Kwon! Have the boys come in!"

"Yes, sir!"

At the order, the man called Secretary Kwon started for the door.

"Father!"

With the word, Seonggi pointed to the pen lodged against his chest. It looked like any ordinary pen, except for the faint red light glowing at the tip.

"Secretary Kwon. Wait. Stop."

The instant he caught Seonggi's grin, Cha Jinpyo barked and halted the secretary mid-stride. Still smiling, Seonggi went on.

"I understand very well how ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠precious your youngest daughter is to you. From now on, I'll do my utmost to look after her with the same care. The hour is late, so I'll take my leave for tonight. We'll meet again."

He dipped his head, retrieved the phone that had been confiscated on the way in, and walked out through the same door he had entered.

"Chairman, do you really mean to let him walk out like this?"

"If not... what exactly would you have me do?"

Chairman Cha's face contorted. He had taken the man for some half-witted fool crawled out of nowhere, but this was no fool. This was an old snake, sly and playing a long game. That pen had almost certainly been filming. Not merely saving a recording—streaming the picture and the voice somewhere in real time.

"He's no ordinary man. If I'd laid a hand on him carelessly... I nearly ruined everything."

"As far as that? He looked like an idiot to me..."

At Secretary Kwon's words, Jinpyo's face twisted harder still.

"And that is why you still have a long way to go. Where did Jiyeon even dig up a monster like that..."

"I don't understand why you see him that way, Chairman..."

"You looked at that pen and still don't get it?"

"The pen?"

Jinpyo had been angry enough to threaten to turn the man into fish food. If Seonggi died, there would be no escaping a charge of solicitation to murder. Worse, if Seonggi felt like it, he could tip the press about soliciting violence—or anything else—and bury Cha Jinpyo alive. Of course, if it came to that, Jinpyo meant to wriggle free by insisting it had all been a joke. Had a pack of suits come pouring out the back door, the evidence would have been airtight.

Once that thought landed, he felt a measure of relief. The man who had stopped him in that instant seemed to have kept things inside the line—if one could call it a line. Someone who had come to seize a weakness would have pushed all the way and sunk his teeth into the proof.

"That pen... it wasn't ordinary."

"You should have confiscated a thing like that before you ever let him in!"

"I'm sorry, Chairman."

Secretary Kwon bowed his head as he answered.

"He's no ordinary man. How does someone like that even... Dig up everything on him!"

Cha Jinpyo said it with the ends of his brows lifted.

"How did you do it?"

Cha Jiyeon asked, startled.

"Do what?"

"Father was that furious, and you walked out without a scratch. I can't believe it."

"He didn't strike me as the sort of man who'd beat someone just because he was angry."

"No..."

She had been about to say that he did beat people, threaten them, even torture them—and shut her mouth. Driving, she stole a glance at Choi Seonggi in the seat beside her. At first he had been a beggar. Scrubbed clean and polished, he passed for a decently handsome man, and now he felt like a magician who had dragged something impossible into the real world.

The Chairman Cha Jinpyo the world knew was forever the smiling, generous uncle next door. The real Cha Jinpyo was hot-tempered, vicious, and, when the occasion called for it, cruel. That was why ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she had sent Seonggi into hiding the moment the sham marriage was announced, and why she herself had stayed away.

And yet this ordinary man beside her had walked into the tiger's den and come back out on his own two feet without a mark on him. It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠felt uncanny.

"Handsome, aren't I?"

"What?"

"Looking at a handsome man is fine, but keep your eyes on the road. Want to put it on cruise? I don't particularly feel like dying in a car accident the moment we're married."

"Ha! Unbelievable!"

Shameless, full of himself, absurdly overconfident—and yet so quick on his feet it left her speechless.

"What kind of person are you, really, Mr. Choi Seonggi?"

"Well. Can't you tell at a glance? So cool. This man is my man..."

"Don't joke."

"How would I know what I'm like? I'm just me. Anyway—what made you decide to marry me?"

"That..."

Tell him the truth? That would be too pathetic. She could hardly say he had looked like a worthless beggar she could order around as she pleased. Fine. She would be reasonably honest.

"You looked like the most pathetic, worthless man in the world. Exactly like a beggar who'd do as he was told."

"Ah. Shouldn't have asked. Isn't that a little too honest? You could have softened it..."

Seonggi shook his head as if he regretted opening his mouth.

"Why bother? Honesty's better. I can't lie."

He glanced sidelong at Cha Jiyeon. Even in profile she was breathtaking, and there was something striking about her besides. If a woman this beautiful, this remarkable, were truly his wife...

"And now? Is it still the same?"

"It's a little different now."

"Pfft."

The laugh had slipped out of him before he went on.

"Careful. I'm a bewitching man. Fall for me, and... even I won't be able to help you."

"I'm sorry? Puahahaha."

She couldn't hate him. That baseless confidence, that bluster, those lines slick as melted butter. And more than any of it—where on earth did that ease come from?

"That is never going to happen, so don't worry."

"Good. See that it doesn't. Otherwise we'll both just end up exhausted."

"I swear, you are unbelievable..."

The conversation died there.

Seonggi tipped his head back and watched the night streak past the window. In all that dark, only the car he rode in ran with its lights burning, and it felt uncomfortably like himself—racing forward with no idea what the future held.

Eh. So what?

He hadn't done anything bad enough to die for. Cha Jiyeon and Choi Seonggi were both adults.

The pen, in truth, was nothing but an ordinary presentation pointer, the kind that only lit up at the back. He had stuck it there just in case, and the situation had unfolded exactly as he had feared. Chairman Cha Jinpyo had swallowed a perfectly serviceable bluff that wasn't much of anything at all.

A man could run a corporation and see every kind of madness there was, and still—

Chairman Cha Jinpyo is a dangerous man.

After dropping Seonggi at the mansion, Cha Jiyeon went home. The most awkward confrontation—the one with Cha Jinpyo—was behind them, so there was no reason to stay at the safe house. She could have slept at a hotel, but Seonggi chose to remain. Having already warned the chairman, an attack was unlikely; even so, he could not sleep until every door and window was locked.

The next morning, the moment he woke, he brewed coffee, turned on the computer, and started gathering information. He knew the broad shape of Gwangmyeong Group, but the fine print was still a blank.

Who searched anything by hand these days? He fed the prompt to four reasonably clever AI models, and the analyses came back at once. Cross-checking them against one another, he began to pull out something concrete.

Gwangmyeong Group was made up of twenty-three companies, and the heart of it was Gwangmyeong Electronics—the flagship, and the one with the largest sales. The actual holding company, though, was Gwangmyeong Corporation, which held roughly ten to twenty percent of each affiliate.

"Interesting."

The old smokestack businesses all began with Gwangmyeong. The newer ventures took the English initials and started with GM. Most of the companies that still carried the Gwangmyeong name were stable, and their revenue was high. The ones that opened with GM were all noise and no substance.

Retired former chairman Cha Wonseok held forty percent of Gwangmyeong Corporation.

Cha Jinpyo, chairman of the group and president of Gwangmyeong Electronics, owned about eighteen percent. His wife, Madam Jeong Sehee, held roughly two.

The eldest son, Cha Dohyeok—vice president of Gwangmyeong Electronics and vice chairman of the group—held ten percent, and his wife, Gong Eunseon, three-tenths of one. The second son, Cha Gihyeok, president of Gwangmyeong Construction and likewise a group vice chairman, held eight percent; his wife, Ham Eungyeong, another three-tenths. The eldest daughter, Cha Jiseon, president of Gwangmyeong Hotel, held four percent, and her husband, Yoo Jeonggyun, vice president of Gwangmyeong Country Club, two-tenths. Cha Jiyeon, a director at Gwangmyeong Electronics and Choi Seonggi's wife, held three percent. And if things proceeded in the ordinary way, Seonggi himself would probably come into two-tenths of a percent as well.

"Wow. These people were trying to eat for free."

They meant to buy him off with a mere two billion won in cash? Gwangmyeong Group's annual sales ran past three hundred trillion won. A two-tenths-of-a-percent stake in the holding company, Gwangmyeong Corporation, could mean several billion won in dividends every single year.

"Hm?"

Add up the family alone and it came to eighty-six percent. Fourteen percent of the stock was unaccounted for. The shareholder registry showed a record from some forty years back: convertible bonds issued, then taken up as shares. Shares issued directly on paper, at that.

He thought he understood why Chairman Cha had been so angry. A thing like this would have been hard to swallow even in ordinary times. With former chairman Cha Wonseok liable to die at any moment, the youngest daughter had suddenly announced a marriage and walked in with some nobody no one had ever laid eyes on. The share structure of Gwangmyeong Corporation, and the division of the estate, were both about to get complicated.

"Ah, stingy old man. It shouldn't have been two billion. You should have sprung for twenty."

Two-tenths of a percent of Gwangmyeong Corporation—the holding company of a group with more than three hundred trillion won in sales—was worth at least ten billion won, and depending on the circumstances, perhaps a hundred billion.

So had he just come into astronomical wealth? No.

Under the marriage contract, if Cha Jiyeon declared the marriage void, he was bound to accept it. Then the two-tenths of a percent of Gwangmyeong Corporation he would have gained as the second granddaughter's husband would never be his.

"Haaah... how did it come to this..."

He turned it over for a long while, then leaned back in the chair.

His years as a civil servant came back to him. Optimistic by nature, he had simply done as he was told, and before he knew it he belonged to the team that handled civil complaints and nothing else.

Meeting every kind of person had changed the way he saw the world.

The poor were tenacious. The rich were vicious. The clever ones slipped into every gap with a venomous precision, and the dim ones threw tantrums and insisted they were right. Dealing with complainants, the one thing that mattered above all else was the ability to test the truth.

The world was full of people with grievances—enough of them to be run down in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠street—but a man who claimed he had been wronged was not, by that fact alone, a good man.

One slip of the tongue and the blame landed entirely on you. Nod carelessly at a complainant's story and they latched on for dear life. Listen only to the words and they sounded like innocent victims; look closer, and most of them were shameless criminals.

The only way a low-ranking civil servant survived that field of thorns was to keep an objective distance and judge the truth.

Even the ones who had been thrashing and insisting eventually backed down, once you set your face blank and pressed nothing but the objective facts. Thanks to that, his ability to read whether the person across from him was telling the truth had sharpened until it looked like a superpower.

"Still. Those days were good."

He missed the time he had dreamed of a newlywed life with Oh Sunyoung—not a rich one, but a sweet one.

A text arrived from Cha Jiyeon. How long had they even been apart, that she couldn't wait? Smiling, Seonggi opened it.

He had looked perfectly fine. And now, suddenly? In the space of two days, it felt as if he had lived through months.

Seonggi, who had been getting ready for bed, hurriedly changed his clothes.