The Granddaughter's Spite
It had already been five days since I started syncing up with Seong Jiyeong. Our practice schedule wasn't too heavy lately, so we ended up hanging out together several times a day. Truth be told, we'd pretty much done it all. I'd become a total pro at climbing ages ago and grown quite comfortable with the flashy action moves we needed for performances. Even so, the reason I kept rolling with Seong Jiyeong was simple: it turned out to be an excellent way to warm up. At first we matched each other like we were rehearsing a scene, but lately we'd grown so used to it that we'd shifted into full-on sparring. And damn if it didn't feel good. It was just the right amount of exertion—no real pressure, yet it loosened every muscle in my body. After a solid round with her, I felt incredibly refreshed, like everything had been reset.
As Seong Jiyeong and I kept roughhousing like this, the number of spectators grew, but I didn't bother stopping them. When we debuted and started promotions, the company needed to know we had genuine action performance skills. It was cleaner for them to think, Oh, we just didn't realize it before. These kids had talent in this area too, rather than suddenly wondering why their idols had gotten so strange.
Of course, it did nag at me a little that Manager Cha—who I'd already pegged as part of the "axis of evil" in my mind—had been watching our sessions, nodding quietly before slipping away. Still, everyone in the company was bound to find out eventually, so I didn't lose sleep over it.
"Cool. So inspiring... inspiring..."
"Hehe~. Jjeong-jjeong's pretty good too. You're not even choreographing that in advance, are you?"
Since the staff knew, the members naturally knew as well. Every time Seong Jiyeong and I moved together, Ji Seoeun would stick to us like glue, observing with intense focus while shouting about inspiration for whatever she was designing. Our squinty-eyed villain was simply humming a tune and watching from the sidelines.
"This is unfair. Why do you only play with Seong Jiyeong?"
Our hot-blooded idiot, on the other hand, was starting to get on my nerves. Once you started something with her, it never stayed light. There was a reason I chose to warm up with Seong Jiyeong instead of Tasha. Anyway, I decided the best move was to pretend I hadn't heard Tasha's complaint at all.
"So you're... having pine needle tea?"
"Yes, that would be perfect."
"Here you go."
After another light warm-up session with Seong Jiyeong, we stepped outside for some fresh air. It seemed the feeling was mutual—moving with me left her body feeling lighter too, judging by her expression. She'd even pulled out her beloved pine needle drink and had it waiting. This felt like the perfect moment to hear an interesting story.
I'd built up a decent amount of friendship points with her lately. The reason I hadn't approached her too aggressively before was because I'd suspected her personal boundaries were higher than they appeared. People who experienced betrayal at a young age usually drew very clear lines around who belonged in their inner circle. And sure enough, even after we'd gotten on the same boat, Seong Jiyeong had never once shared anything personal.
The only thing I could safely probe was her unusually strong interest in this CF. It didn't seem like it would touch on anything too deeply private. If it had felt like that kind of conversation, I wouldn't have approached at all.
"Can I ask you something?"
"What is it? Go ahead."
"You seem pretty serious about appearing in this CF."
"Ah, that. Yes, you're right. It does look rather tempting."
"Could I hear the reason?"
"Hmm..."
Seong Jiyeong pondered for a moment, then let out a small laugh and nodded.
"Well, you'll find out eventually anyway. It doesn't matter. Yu Hana probably already knows."
She muttered something to herself, then surprisingly opened up and began telling her story.
"My family is quite well-off. To be precise, my biological father was the eldest son of a chaebol family that everyone knows."
"Oh? Which one..."
"Cheonji."
"...Cheonji?"
Her tone remained the same as always, but my scalp tingled as I processed what I'd just heard. The Cheonji? One of the top two conglomerates in Korea?
"The chairman of Cheonji is... Nam Cheon-sik, right? Then your father must have been..."
"Ah, my last name comes from my mother. I was completely removed from the family register."
The story, in summary, went like this.
Seong Jiyeong's father had been Chairman Nam Cheon-sik's eldest son. Not long after she was born, he died in an accident. Or more accurately, he was killed in a villain's terrorist attack. He'd stopped by a building for a quick personal errand when the entire structure collapsed.
One might wonder how the eldest son of a major corporation could meet such a fate, but at the time, her father had been living somewhat distanced from the group. He'd left home after insisting on a love marriage with Seong Jiyeong's mother. Moreover, the villain's terror attack hadn't specifically targeted him. It was simply terrible luck.
The villain naturally couldn't escape the wrath of a furious Chairman Nam and met a gruesome end, but that didn't bring the eldest son back. It was empty rage. After her father's death, Seong Jiyeong and her mother moved into the chairman's house, but the arrangement wasn't particularly pleasant.
Finding it unacceptable, Seong Jiyeong abandoned her father's surname "Nam," removed herself from the family register, and gave up all inheritance rights. She took her compensation in assets upfront and now lived a life completely unrelated to Cheonji.
"So you have nothing to do with Cheonji at all?"
"It's not completely nothing. Blood is blood, after all. The chairman is my grandfather. He treats me decently as his granddaughter. Once I gave up the shares, it actually made things easier. He sees me purely as his granddaughter now."
"I see. That makes sense."
A granddaughter who had completely given up her shares and had no connection to the group. From the chairman's perspective, she was probably much easier to deal with. He could treat her as a pure grandfather would, without corporate calculations. Which meant the wealth Seong Jiyeong currently possessed came from the assets she received in exchange for renouncing her Cheonji shares. Considering her father had been the eldest son, just imagining the amount made my head spin.
"But what does that have to do with this CF? If you're connected to Cheonji, wouldn't it be more natural for Shining to reject you?"
"Not at all. While I have Cheonji blood, I'm not on good terms with that side of the family. If I were, I wouldn't have given up my shares and walked away like that. Except for Grandfather, of course."
"Ah, I see."
That tracked. Come to think of it, the time Seong Jiyeong had nearly died over kimchi was probably connected to those shares too. Otherwise, there'd be no reason for her to experience something like that at such a young age. It made sense that she'd resent the other family members.
"So by taking the Shining CF... you're trying to screw over Mirinae..."
"I evaluate myself quite highly. Especially my appearance—I consider it rather exceptional."
"That's true."
"Therefore, I'm confident that if I appear in the CF, the effect will be outstanding. The smartphone division is currently run by my grandfather's second son. A man I don't particularly like."
So she really was doing the Shining CF just to mess with Cheonji Group? This... was more interesting than I'd expected.
First, Seong Jiyeong clearly wasn't close with her paternal relatives. Referring to her uncle specifically as "Grandfather's second son" showed she didn't even see him as family. She'd changed her surname, after all. She seemed to maintain a somewhat normal grandfather-granddaughter relationship with the chairman, but even he apparently hadn't intervened in the family competition when she was still Nam Jiyeong. Otherwise, she wouldn't have suffered that bizarre kimchi incident as a child.
In short, giving up her surname and shares had been an act of self-defense. The full story was probably far more complicated than what I'd heard, but based on what she told me, that was the gist.
This Shining CF would succeed even without Seong Jiyeong. But that was information only I possessed. If the CF became a massive hit and Shining managed to steal even a little market share from Mirinae, the Nam Cheon-sik family would lose their minds. And if the face of that CF was none other than the chairman's own granddaughter? How hilarious would that be?
The fact that Seong Jiyeong was Chairman Nam's granddaughter was something only the immediate family would know, but ignorance doesn't change reality. I could only imagine how her uncle, who ran the smartphone division, would feel.
"Really? But what about the chairman? You seem to get along with him like family."
"Grandfather? It doesn't matter. He's the one who told me that if I wanted to become an idol, I should succeed no matter what it took. Since those are his own words, he'll probably scold his second son instead of me. If he complains, I'll just skip one family gathering. Simple."
This girl was secretly a real piece of work. It wasn't easy to come up with that kind of response. Honestly, if she'd said something like, I'm Cheonji's eldest granddaughter. I'll take what should be mine, I could have understood. But instead she was going, Cheonji's problems aren't my business, but I should still make these bastards suffer a bit. That wasn't normal thinking. Especially since she still maintained a decent relationship with the chairman.
Then again, a normal person wouldn't have gone through all that trouble to become Phantom in the first place.
"Is it okay to tell me all this? It seems pretty personal. I'm a little surprised."
"Come on, you'll find out soon enough anyway."
"Well, that's true..."
"So please cooperate with me until the end on this. I didn't realize it before, but lately I've noticed... you have a strange quality about you. Like you'll somehow solve everything. It makes me understand a little why Tasha recommended you so strongly."
"...Really? I wasn't aware of that myself."
"Plus, you're the only member who properly understands taste."
"Isn't that irrelevant?"
"It's important. Mother told me never to associate with those who don't understand flavor."
"Who said that?"
"My mother."
"Ah. She sounds like a wonderful person."
I'd only asked lightly, but the conversation had gone much deeper than expected. Her Phantom activities and their origin had even slipped out. Her father had been a victim of indiscriminate villain terrorism, after all. The only reason it didn't feel too heavy was because she'd lightened the mood with that silly tangent at the end. Whether I understood flavor had nothing to do with the personal stories she'd shared.
I did have some idea about the "strange quality" she'd mentioned. My body might be different, but my mind had lived through the hellscape of the first round. That kind of experience showed unconsciously. The fact that most things felt trivial to me was real, and that ease seemed to influence the people around me without them realizing. Maybe that was why someone strange like Yu Hana had latched onto me so quickly. I wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
Anyway, since Seong Jiyeong seemed to be harboring more interesting thoughts than I'd expected, it might be worth watching how this played out. She didn't know about my existence, but if she landed the CF, my contribution wouldn't be small. When would I ever get another chance to strike at a massive corporation like Cheonji? Just thinking about it made my heart race a little.