A Situation Urgent Enough to Demand an Obvious Lie
“What is it? Why are you acting like that all of a sudden?”
Lee Jeong-eun looked up at Lee Mun-jong with a strange expression as he abruptly shoved back his chair and rose to his feet.
“What kind of news could have startled you so badly? Did something happen at the company?”
Lee Tak-hyeon, who had told him to listen, seemed just as curious about Mun-jong’s sudden reaction.
Still standing, Lee Tak-hyeon studied Mun-jong’s vacant expression for a moment before speaking in a sharp voice.
“What is it?”
Snapping back to his senses at his father’s voice, Lee Mun-jong glanced around briefly.
Then he realized this was the weekly family dinner at the Pyeongchang-dong house.
“What’s wrong? Did one of your parents pass away or something?”
“How can you make a joke like that when Father is sitting right here?”
“Well, you’re flailing around like someone whose parents just died. It’s weird.”
Lee Jeong-eun pointed at Mun-jong as she spoke to Chu Suk-ja, who had just scolded her, insisting it was strange.
Chu Suk-ja found it just as incomprehensible and stared at Mun-jong with a puzzled look.
When even his mother began regarding him oddly, Lee Mun-jong hurriedly explained himself.
“A friend’s father has passed away. That’s why. He was perfectly fine until just recently.”
“So a parent did die, then. Just not mine.”
Chu Suk-ja shot a glare at Lee Jeong-eun, who had muttered loud enough for everyone at the table to hear, then turned back to Mun-jong.
“Then shouldn’t you be hurrying over there?”
“I suppose I should.”
Collecting himself, Lee Mun-jong sought leave from Lee Tak-hyeon.
“Chairman, I’ll take my leave now.”
Lee Tak-hyeon looked up at him for a moment from his seat.
Then he nodded and waved a hand.
“Very well. If you must go, then go. Be on your way.”
Lee Mun-jong offered his farewells to Lee Tak-hyeon and Chu Suk-ja and hurriedly left the table.
Lee Jeong-eun watched his retreating figure with a strange look before muttering to herself.
“What was that? Why’s he acting like someone’s chasing him?”
Lee Tak-hyeon also watched Mun-jong’s back for a moment before picking up his spoon and addressing the family still seated.
“That’s enough talk about the one who left. Eat up before the stew goes cold.”
“Gumi. Heat the stew up again, would you?”
As Lee Tak-hyeon kept urging them to eat and Chu Suk-ja called for the housekeeper to reheat the stew, the family members who had been watching Mun-jong leave finally lifted their spoons and chopsticks once more.
Yet in their hearts, Mun-jong’s strange behavior still left a lingering question mark.
After finishing the meal and returning home, Kim Seong-ho sat in his study and opened the leather diary.
…Byeong-jin had been right. The Ilhyeon Group was nothing short of a den of hell. The people who lived here were not human. They were demons dwelling in hell, and to them I was nothing more than a worthless soul who had just leaped into the underworld… I didn’t regret the marriage. Choosing Gyeong-eun was the best decision I had ever made in my life. But living here after entering this family was the worst choice of my life. I should never have come to live in this place.
Kim Seong-ho felt the emotions of that time rising up as vividly as if they were happening again.
Now he held a firm place of recognition both within the group and the family, maintaining good relations with his brothers-in-law, but it had not been that way in the past life.
Back then he had been treated worse than a stone rolling in the Pyeongchang-dong courtyard, and at the company he had been an object of ridicule as the live-in son-in-law.
That’s why they tried to do that to me.
Kim Seong-ho turned the page and continued reading.
…My brother-in-law said he had a favor to ask of me. If I would just take this one thing on for him, he would open the path ahead for me. As the eldest, he was the most likely successor to the Chairman. If a man like that pushed me forward, I could secure my place both at the company and within the family. But… but how was I supposed to face Gyeong-eun after that? I…
Kim Seong-ho bit his lip hard and muttered to himself.
“What happened back then… I’ll pay it back in full.”
Just because he had secured his position at home and at the company this time around did not mean everything they had done to him had been forgotten.
That was why the leather diary was all the more necessary.
People were creatures of forgetfulness, as the saying went; memories could grow faint.
But the rage written in the leather diary never faded.
Looking at that rage brought the memories flooding back, and with the memories the thirst for revenge against them returned as well.
Knock, knock.
Lee Gyeong-eun carefully opened the study door and peeked her face in.
“Seong-ho. Are you busy?”
“No. It’s fine.”
Kim Seong-ho relaxed his hardened expression and answered toward her.
Hearing that it was all right, Lee Gyeong-eun came straight into the study carrying a plate of fruit.
“Have some of this while you work.”
She set the plate of fruit on the desk and glanced down at the leather diary spread open in front of him.
“You like that one so much?”
Realizing that what he was looking at was the leather diary she herself had given him, Lee Gyeong-eun’s face bloomed with a smile.
“What’s the point of staring at blank paper every day? You should be writing something inside it.”
Even as she told him to fill the diary with words, she seemed pleased that he treasured the leather diary, and her expression remained brightly smiling.
Kim Seong-ho stroked the diary—its pages full of writing that only his eyes could see—and said,
“It was the first gift you gave me after we married. Of course I treasure it.”
“I’ll buy you another one.”
“Even if you do, it won’t change that this was the first. This is the most precious thing I have.”
Lee Gyeong-eun’s smile grew even brighter at his words. She stepped back slightly and brought up what had happened that morning at Pyeongchang-dong.
“Father suddenly brought up Chairman Dan and then the story of you buying that building came out with it. You have no idea how surprised I was.”
Kim Seong-ho casually pushed the diary a little farther forward and slid his chair back.
Then he turned the chair toward Lee Gyeong-eun and spoke.
“Do you dislike that the building purchase became known?”
“It’s not that I dislike it… I just wish it had come out a little later.”
“Worried your brothers or sister might try to snatch it away?”
When Kim Seong-ho tossed out the joke, Lee Gyeong-eun gave a short laugh.
“I’m not a child and a building isn’t a toy. How would they snatch it away? It’s more that…”
She wiped the smile from her face before answering.
“I’m worried they’ll think something strange of you.”
“Strange?”
“Yes. If they hear you suddenly made that much money… they might suspect you used your company position to pocket it unfairly.”
“Hahaha. You’re worrying about all sorts of things.”
Lee Gyeong-eun seemed to realize she had gotten ahead of herself; her cheeks flushed slightly at his laughter.
Kim Seong-ho said it was fine, but he did not think her words were wrong.
“Honestly, if the Chairman doesn’t say anything it wouldn’t matter… but there’s no harm in being careful. I earned the money legitimately and acquired a legitimate asset with it, but there’s no way to prove to every single person that I earned it fairly.”
“So my brothers or sister might pick a fight after all?”
“Your brothers or sister-in-law might, or… someone else might start picking at it.”
“Someone else?”
Lee Gyeong-eun tilted her head, as if the idea of anyone other than her siblings making trouble had never occurred to her.
Kim Seong-ho offered a gentle smile at the sight of her and spoke words of thanks.
“Thank you. Because of you I’ve become more alert to something I was overlooking.”
Lee Gyeong-eun, who had been trying to think who that “someone else” might be, beamed at his gratitude.
Then, along with the building matter, she brought up one more strange incident from the dinner.
“But why do you think Mun-jong oppa acted like that all of a sudden?”
Lee Gyeong-eun tilted her head again, as if she still could not make sense of it no matter how hard she thought.
“Bolting out of a meal because a friend’s father died… Oppa doesn’t have any friends he’s that close to. I have no idea who it could have been.”
Kim Seong-ho turned his head and looked at the diary he had pushed aside.
Then he gazed down at the writing on its pages and said,
“It could be that a friend’s father really did pass away… or it could be for some other reason.”
“Some other reason?”
Lee Gyeong-eun pondered what other reason there could be before opening her mouth.
“If it were company business, you would know about it. Father would know even more. But if neither of you knows, then it isn’t company business…”
Her face showed that she simply could not think of any problem outside of company affairs that would make Lee Mun-jong jump up from the table.
But in Kim Seong-ho’s eyes the reason was clear.
…My brother-in-law asked me for a favor. He said that since I was already married and time had passed, they wouldn’t be able to drive me out of the family… I told him about the shock Gyeong-eun would receive, but he said she would understand…
Kim Seong-ho closed his eyes for a moment, as if the emotions of that time had returned.
With his eyes still shut he felt the texture of the diary paper under his fingers.
The worn surface, opened and closed so many times, brushed against his fingertips.
He opened his eyes and looked down at the diary.
I think it was because of me. If I had not granted my brother-in-law’s request back then… if I had refused, Gyeong-eun would never have ended up that way… I keep wondering whether she left this world in anger because of me. In the end I was the one who pushed her. If I could go back to the moment he asked, I would never grant that request. Never…
Kim Seong-ho knew that Gyeong-eun’s death from cerebral hemorrhage had not been solely because of that incident.
Yet he also knew she had been shocked by it, so he could not claim it had had no effect at all.
When Gyeong-eun fell ill he had blamed himself for everything, and to those who knew nothing of the circumstances he had become a sinner.
Carrying that sense of guilt he had been unable to leave the Ilhyeon Group, working like a slave for the rest of his life until he was finally discarded.
“Seong-ho.”
Lee Gyeong-eun called to him as if she found it strange that he kept staring at the diary.
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
After calling several times before he came back to himself, she looked back and forth between him and the diary with a puzzled expression.
Under her gaze Kim Seong-ho smiled and reached out to close the diary.
“I was just wondering what sort of company business might have made my brother-in-law leave if that was the reason.”
“Do you really think Oppa left because of company business?”
Kim Seong-ho rose from his seat, took Lee Gyeong-eun’s shoulders, and answered.
“But no matter how I think about it, that doesn’t seem to be it. Gyeong-eun. You’ve already been to Pyeongchang-dong today and must be tired. Let’s go in and rest.”
“You want to sleep already? It’s still broad daylight…”
Lee Gyeong-eun’s face flushed at Kim Seong-ho’s suggestion that they go to bed.
And as if she had cleanly forgotten the conversation about Mun-jong from moments earlier, she said to him with a completely different expression,
“Then I’ll go wash up quickly. Just wait a little.”
Leaving those words behind, Lee Gyeong-eun vanished toward the bathroom like lightning.
Kim Seong-ho watched her go with a soft smile, then turned his head and looked at the diary he had been reading a moment before, his eyes filled with quiet emotion.
“I can’t afford to regret it this time either.”
Kim Seong-ho had no intention of repeating the single most regrettable act of his previous life.
He meant to correct that wrong choice of the past and prevent Gyeong-eun from coming to harm.
And he intended to take the bomb Lee Mun-jong had brought and detonate it not on himself but back among the people of the Ilhyeon Group.
Kim Seong-ho looked at the diary once more, closed the door, and headed for the room where the person he loved would soon enter.
Late that night.
Seated in his study, Lee Tak-hyeon listened to Hwang Do-beom’s report with a furrowed brow.
“So the eldest doesn’t have a single friend whose father actually died?”
“No, sir. I checked thoroughly from today back a full week, and not one of Mun-jong’s friends has suffered a paternal bereavement.”
Lee Tak-hyeon nodded at Hwang Do-beom’s words.
“Of course not. Any father of that boy’s friends would be someone I know. Word would have reached me before it reached him.”
“Exactly. So I wondered whether he might have ordinary friends from elsewhere and turned over every stone… but Mun-jong has no friends who are ordinary people.”
“What ordinary friends would that boy have? He’s lucky to have any friends at all…”
Hwang Do-beom’s expression turned bitter at Lee Tak-hyeon’s remark.
Having witnessed Mun-jong’s sudden outburst at the dinner table, Lee Tak-hyeon had ordered Hwang Do-beom to look into whether any of Mun-jong’s friends had lost a father.
In Lee Tak-hyeon’s eyes Mun-jong’s behavior had not looked normal.
Hwang Do-beom had found it just as strange.
So he had investigated even more thoroughly.
He had scoured everyone Mun-jong usually associated with, including those younger or older, and even people with whom he had merely exchanged words in recent years.
Among them only a single person had suffered a paternal bereavement.
Aside from a second-year male employee in the Ilhyeon Group’s general affairs department who had lost his father, there was no one else.
And that employee and Lee Mun-jong had no connection beyond meeting once during new-hire training at the start of the man’s employment.
Hwang Do-beom was certain Lee Mun-jong had been lying.
Yet he could not begin to guess why.
What could possibly have been so urgent for Lee Mun-jong that he needed to tell a lie that transparent? Even Hwang Do-beom could not tell.