Family
"Don't you want to return to the world you used to live in?"
A dry laugh slipped past my lips the moment I read the opening line.
Don't I want to return to the world I used to live in?
Who did this person think they were playing with?
Well... sure, once upon a time, I desperately wanted to go back.
Can anyone blame me? It was utterly unfair. Not only had I been dragged against my will into the middle of an over-the-top makjang soap opera, but I had also been forced to spend my days ducking beneath the radar as the illegitimate bastard of a chaebol clan.
Yet circumstances were somewhat different now.
Through every conceivable variety of agonizing, bloody struggle, I had somehow clawed my way into a pretty decent life.
No, to anyone else's eyes, this probably looked like the absolute pinnacle of human fortune.
After all, wasn't I currently the reigning chairman of the number-one conglomerate in the Korean Empire?
Compared to the life I had back in my original world, my ship hasn't just come in—it's anchored in gold.
In that sense, Mother, Father...
Please forgive your unfilial son...
I intend to live out my own little slice of happiness right here.
...Not that I can brush it aside without a lingering twinge of unease in the back of my mind, of course.
Still, one thing was undeniable: I had zero desire to blindly rush back.
And then came the next part.
"The reason I chose this exact timing to send this letter is that I knew you’d finally have some breathing room once the Neovision collaboration talks wrapped up. Ah, but how did I know that?"
The sentence that followed was...
"Because I came from the future."
...Utterly detached from reality.
She came from the future?
My train of thought ground to a screeching halt. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have dismissed it as pure lunacy and torn the paper to shreds on the spot.
In a world built on the logic of a makjang drama, however, literally nothing that happened could surprise me anymore.
Did it make a shred of sense that a normal guy living in South Korea wound up here in the first place? And considering I possessed a supernatural sixth sense called Intuition, well...
It carried a bizarre ring of truth.
Whoever penned this letter clearly knew I wasn't native to this fictional reality.
The timing of its arrival was also far too precise to be a coincidence.
I didn't have the faintest clue who this person was, yet it felt as though they knew me inside and out.
That unsettling gap gnawed at my nerves, and unable to suppress the itch of curiosity, I had no choice but to read on.
"I didn't mean to startle you. I just really wanted to write you a handwritten letter like this, at least once."
Laying out all those ominous declarations only to suddenly pivot to handwritten sentimentality...
Was it just my imagination, or could I actually feel an anxious, fidgety awkwardness radiating through the page?
With a strange sensation prickling my spine, I scanned the next line.
"So, what I mean is..."
A tiny extra dot was pressed at the very end of the sentence.
As if the writer had hesitated, carefully lifting her pen before freezing in place.
"Would you like to go on a date with me?"
...?
I froze solid.
A date?
Did I read that right?
As if anticipating my stunned disbelief, the very next line picked up without missing a beat.
"Ah, I don't mean anything weird by it. Well, it would be a lie to say there's absolutely nothing weird about it... but I just wanted to meet up and talk, first and foremost."
By this point, one thing was crystal clear.
This person...
Was far clumsier than she seemed.
While possessing an alarmingly deep vault of classified knowledge, when it came to actually interacting with me, she seemed remarkably out of her depth.
And then.
"This place should be fine, right?"
Beneath that, she had neatly penned the date, time, and location of her proposed rendezvous.
Saturday at 11:00 AM, and...
"Huh?"
The venue she had selected was one I had virtually no reason to turn down. And in the final paragraph, for some bizarre reason, an internet URL was scribbled down.
What was this...?
Just then.
"Chairman."
Choi Yuna, who had been watching me intently from across the desk, called out with a furrow in her brow.
"What does it say?"
I didn't answer right away.
The contents were far too sensitive to blurt out without thinking.
The only thing I could offer her right now was this:
"Secretary Choi."
"Yes, Chairman."
"It appears I will be going on a date this weekend."
"?"
Choi Yuna tilted her head in utter bafflement, giving me a look that asked what unprompted nonsense had just flown out of my mouth.
"With whom, may I ask?"
"..."
It wasn't something I could answer—I didn't even know myself.
I cleared my throat and retreated into silence, but...
"Whatever the case, I consider this a remarkably positive development. Given your position, Chairman, you need to produce many offspring."
"Uh... produce what?"
"Children, of course. A child brings a profound sense of responsibility and stability. Furthermore, the existence of a confirmed heir to your bloodline will undoubtedly be welcomed as wonderful news by Seonghwa Group."
Isn't that jumping the gun a bit considering I'm technically still a minor...?
You're skipping several dozen chapters here, teacher.
"What does age matter? You are none other than the Chairman of Seonghwa Group."
Choi Yuna delivered this with an utterly proud, unyielding expression.
Right... let's just stop inquiring any further into that train of thought.
Once Choi Yuna stepped out, leaving the office quiet once more, I picked the letter back up.
I reread the final paragraph.
To be precise, the web address scrawled at the bottom.
soundcloud.com/teia
SoundCloud.
It was the link to the audio streaming platform commonly referred to as SoundCloud.
I typed the address directly into my laptop browser.
Hitting enter brought up a profile page set against a sleek dark backdrop.
At the top sat a single moniker:
TEIA.
Curiously, the profile avatar featured an adorable photo of a white tiger cub, while the bio section was completely blank.
Below it, however, several tracks were publicly uploaded.
Every single song had been posted by the exact same creator over the past year.
And the play counts weren't low at all.
In fact, they were astronomically high.
The track pinned to the very top had already sailed past 1.73 million streams.
Naturally, a long cascade of comments trailed beneath it.
A faceless singer?
TEIA?
One thing was undeniably clear: she was already a prominent figure online.
I immediately clicked play on the top track.
The title was...
One and only?
The moment playback started, a crisp, invigorating melody driven by electric guitar washed through the speakers.
And slipping right in behind it came a voice—dewy as the early dawn, yet strikingly clear, bright, and effervescent.
It was the kind of effortlessly comfortable vocal that moved your heart without ever needing to strain or force a single breath.
Assuming this anonymous singer and the sender of the letter were one and the same, I could deduce two facts:
For some reason, she was an exceptionally gifted singer, and the author of the letter was definitely a woman.
The latter fact, at least, was a relief.
Judging by the elegant prose and delicate handwriting, I had been fairly certain she was female, but there was always that one-in-a-million catch.
If a man had sent me a letter asking me out on a date like this...
Ugh, just imagining it gives me chills.
I rubbed both hands vigorously along my forearms.
Relief aside, I still couldn't fathom her angle.
Why did she jot down the link to her SoundCloud page at the very end of the letter?
Did she simply want to show off her music?
"Hmm..."
Just in case, I queued up and listened to the rest of her tracks as well.
And arrived at a brand-new conclusion.
"Should I just download these and save them to my playlist...?"
Weirdly enough, her songs were completely and utterly my taste.
The Emperor's Men.
Lee Se-rin, the protagonist of the soap opera that bore that title, opened her eyes inside her dormitory room at the Imperial Academy.
While students of the Imperial Academy were permitted to return to their family estates over the weekend, they were also allowed to remain on campus at their own discretion.
In this regard, Lee Se-rin almost always opted to stay behind.
Though she had staunch retainers looking after her back at her residence, that place was by no means a home.
And deep down, she felt stifled.
Her sole motivation for entering the Imperial Academy had been simple: to forge allies.
To befriend peers whose interests aligned with hers and who possessed the influence to lend weight to her ambitions.
Yet a full month had passed, and she had yet to make a single friend of that caliber.
If anything, I've gotten into more feuds than alliances.
Reflecting on just how exhausting human relationships could be, she let out a weary sigh.
"Hmm~ hm~"
In sharp contrast to her brooding, someone else in the room had been humming merrily since dawn.
A girl with soft, pastel-pink hair tumbling loosely past her shoulders was surveying an assortment of garments laid out across the bed.
A pristine white one-piece dress.
A pale pink cardigan.
A lace-trimmed blouse.
"Mmm... which one should I wear?"
The girl smiled with effortless charm.
Even to Lee Se-rin, the girl before her was a deeply enigmatic companion.
She had appeared out of nowhere a year ago and, without a word of explanation, began providing assistance.
Primarily on the financial front.
Whenever Lee Se-rin invested where the girl pointed, her capital multiplied at a terrifying velocity.
On top of that, she seemed privy to an astonishing wealth of confidential intelligence concerning the Korean Empire.
The only frustrating part is that she doles it out in tantalizing, bite-sized crumbs.
Still, Lee Se-rin harbored no resentment.
Though barely a year had passed, the two had grown close enough to genuinely call each other friends.
Today, however, the atmosphere was distinctly peculiar.
The girl didn't look like someone preparing for an ordinary weekend outing.
Rather, she resembled someone on the verge of their very first date, anxiously standing before a mirror to swap outfits dozens of times over.
"What are you doing?"
"Hm? Picking out an outfit, obviously."
"I can see that. I'm asking why you're being so dead serious about it."
The girl rolled her eyes thoughtfully for a second.
They were bright and clear as polished gemstones, and she showed not the slightest inclination to mask the giddy anticipation shimmering within them.
"A date."
"...A date?"
Lee Se-rin's expression stiffened subtly.
It was a claim she found hard to digest.
Bright and carefree as she usually was, wasn't this the very same girl who turned colder than ice whenever anyone confessed their feelings to her, ruthlessly turning every suitor away?
Always accompanied by the exact same scripted refusal: I already have someone I like.
And a girl like that was suddenly going on a date?
"With who?"
At that question, an emotion resembling deep, aching yearning flickered across the eyes of the girl... or rather, the girl named Sia.
Before long, Sia gave her answer.
"With family."
"Family?"
"Yep."
The girl answered with a radiant smile.
At least, that was how she truly saw it.