Sun & Moon
After realizing that it wasn't just Cheon Yua—the company itself had something going on—I went straight to Team Leader Seo. He was the only person in a position to keep me informed about what happened inside the company.
Once I'd summoned him, I began coaxing him gently, gathering tidbits of information one by one. As it turned out, nothing was under strict confidentiality, and he answered my questions far more easily than I'd expected. But with every piece that fell into place, my sighs only grew deeper.
"So you're saying the CEO came from Cheon Entertainment?"
"That's right. He used to work at Cheon Entertainment."
"Isn't Cheon Entertainment's CEO Yua-sunbae?"
"Officially, yes. But the actual running of the company was handled by the CEO. And going forward, all of Ms. Yua's work-related affairs will continue to go through him."
To sum up: CEO Joo Seokcheon, the newly installed head of Flame, was the man who had supported Cheon Yua back at Cheon Entertainment. In other words, Cheon Yua had only ever been a figurehead, and it was Joo Seokcheon who had actually run Cheon Entertainment.
Which meant this wasn't Flame poaching staff from Cheon Entertainment at all—it was Cheon Entertainment expanding itself into Flame. The whole thing had been crooked from the starting line.
"Oh, now that you mention it, Ms. Yua seems to be a board member with equity holdings."
"Yua-sunbae holds shares? How many?"
"Hmm, that I'd have to look into separately."
"Could you possibly check on the company's ownership structure for me?"
"Let's see... one moment."
And so I learned that Cheon Yua held a stake in the company itself. It just kept getting better and better.
The investor, S&M, was all but confirmed to have ties to Cheon Yua. The CEO was her people. And now the woman herself owned stock in the company? What was this?
"Ah, I just heard back from the finance department. Apparently there's no problem sharing the ownership breakdown. The materials they sent are... oh, here we go. So, the major shareholders holding stakes in the company are..."
So they had no intention of hiding the ownership structure, it seemed. Did that mean there was nothing incriminating to find? Considering they were laying the whole share distribution out in the open, apparently not.
As a mere employee—not even a shareholder—I'd had almost no way of digging into the equity of a company like Flame that wasn't even publicly listed, but thanks to the company handing it over willingly, I confirmed it far more easily than expected.
"...This is the company's ownership situation?"
"Yes, that's what they say. Wow, Ms. Yua. She holds a lot more stock than I imagined."
Here's roughly how Flame's shares break down:
"Cheon Financial is obviously Cheon Yua's stake just from the name, right? Add the CEO's shares to that... no, wait, more than that—"
S&M, which had even deployed personal guards to the company, had already been revealed to have some kind of relationship with Cheon Yua. There was no other way to explain the guards' overprotectiveness—and Rick, the head of the guard detail, had confessed he'd known about Cheon Yua in advance.
And Cheon Financial, as anyone could tell from the name, had to be deeply connected to her. For all I knew, it was a financial management firm handling her personal assets. And the CEO's own shares couldn't exactly be called unrelated to her either.
The only truly unidentifiable party was the largest shareholder, Sunny Investment.
"S&M, S&M... what the hell is that even short for? Let's see... this doomed... Sun&Moon?"
Sun&Moon. And Sunny. There was no question about it—Sunny Investment was an investor with deep ties to S&M.
"So the company's entire ownership structure... traces back to Cheon Yua."
At this point, this was simply Cheon Yua's company. No wonder they'd been so brazen about disclosing the share distribution—with nothing to hide anywhere, they could afford to publish it with total confidence.
"And then there's Sun&Moon. That's just sun and moon spelled out in plain sight."
But more shocking than anything was the true nature of S&M.
The sun and the moon—and fire, the symbols of the Cult. Considering that before it was the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, the Cult had been the Sun and Moon Cult, there was no longer any need to deliberate.
And so I had to admit it: even S&M was, in one way or another, connected to Cheon Yua—to the Cult, to be precise.
Of course, it couldn't be the same Cult I'd known, but it was clearly some Cult-like force that had taken root in this world.
"No wonder the building looked so Heavenly Demon-ish from the ground up—it's Cheon Yua's taste."
Once I concluded that Cheon Yua was the de facto owner of this company, the bizarre architecture, that monochrome devotion to black, made a certain amount of sense. She'd simply designed it to her liking.
Which meant this place was, essentially, a modern-day Korean branch of the Cult?
I'd wondered for a while why the whole thing smelled off from the shape of it, and it turned out I'd shoved my head straight into the tiger's mouth.
"...I honestly have no idea anymore."
At this point, what was the point of agonizing over it? It would probably be far easier on my nerves to simply accept that this woman was the Heavenly Demon, and that the Cult existed in a form entirely unlike Murim's.
All those hours I'd spent gritting my teeth and observing her, desperate to find some difference between her and the Heavenly Demon, suddenly felt utterly pointless.
I adapt reasonably well. If I hadn't, I never would have survived fifty-some years in Murim, a place too barbaric to even compare with the modern world.
Besides, this was the Cult—the organization that made even the Central Plains' hardened gangsters click their tongues and shake their heads. And I'd endured thirty years of it watching over the Heavenly Demon's errands(?). That is not an achievement just anyone can claim.
"So in the end, after everything, I've landed somewhere that feels like the Cult again..."
Well, what can you do. Adapt and live, that's all there is to it.
Fortunately, Flame—effectively the modern Cult's Korean branch—was unlikely to be as unhinged an organization as the Murim Cult. No such organization could exist in today's world.
And above all, I'm a contract actor, so I'm not exactly Cult-direct. If anything, the guards working in-house are the direct lineage; I'm more like an outside master hired in as a guest expert. The Cult isn't exploiting me so much as protecting me, you could say. Far better terms than Murim ever offered.
As I came to accept reality, things actually grew easier in some ways. Especially when it came to dealing with Cheon Yua—what to do and what never to do became crystal clear.
Our company's head chef, Shotgun Mom, takes one day off per week. On that day, the staff either fix something for themselves in the kitchen or head out to eat. In my case and Cheon Yua's, we usually just go out—and when dining with her, there's truly nothing to worry about. Order up some duck soup or smoked duck nearby, and everything resolves itself perfectly.
For no good reason, if you suggest something bland and safe like a pork cutlet or spaghetti to Cheon Yua, you're courting conflict from the very first moment. Both are menus she has a particular loathing for.
Spaghetti especially. It's a massive trap card. If anyone out there is planning a date with Cheon Yua—vongole, rosé, any spaghetti whatsoever—do yourself a favor and pass.
And as my secret weapon, I've memorized a hole-in-the-place famous for sulfur-duck medicinal baeksuk, known only to those in the know. My plan is to deploy it whenever Cheon Yua seems to be in a foul mood.
"Sulfur-duck medicinal baeksuk, huh. Now that's a menu with some real bastard-proof heartiness to it."
There wasn't the slightest chance that this Great Heavenly Demon-exclusive weapon would miss the mark on Cheon Yua's tastes.
The advantage of being familiar with the Heavenly Demon shows itself in daily life, too. Take today, for instance.
We had some time to spare, so I ended up playing a soccer video game in the break room. It started with just me, but at some point Cheon Yua wandered over and picked up a controller, and the game turned into a head-to-head showdown.
Seen up to that point alone, it was an utterly ordinary slice of daily life—but as a dedicated scholar of Heavenly Demon Studies, I was already feeling a strong sense of crisis. Playing a game—or anything resembling one—together with the Heavenly Demon was a fairly dangerous undertaking.
In Murim, I'd shared many such pastimes with her. Baduk, in particular, was one of the most common games of the age, alongside mahjong and janggi. Having stayed glued to the Heavenly Demon's side for so long, I had inevitably accumulated a lot of experience playing baduk with her.
And the Heavenly Demon—brilliant mind, yet inexplicably terrible at contests of this sort—got mercilessly trampled by me from the very first game.
So far, so good. A game is a game, and our Heavenly Demon wasn't petty enough to grind me down over losing one. But this woman also subscribed to the rain-dance school of thought—if you keep trying, you will win eventually—while being a bona fide rage-quit-prone player who flew into a fury if you threw the match on purpose.
What does that mean? It means she would challenge me endlessly until she beat me with her own skill. And when the rage finally boiled over to the crown of her head, she'd give her eyebrows a little twitch and reach for the baduk board...
Oof. Goosebumps just remembering it.
Summoning memories of the past, I conducted a rigorous analysis of Cheon Yua's gaming ability—and sure enough, it was awfully bad. To put it in perspective: it's like Barcelona, with the MSN front line all fit and healthy, getting slapped around by the Pohang Steelers.
At this level, hers were cursed fingers that should never be allowed near a controller. But I absolutely must not win.
I'd already experienced, many times over, what happens when you beat the Heavenly Demon at something like a game.
"Neymar! GOOOAL!!! You see? I told you Pohang stood no chance."
"You're right. I got overconfident."
"Heehee!"
Serve up a razor-thin loss in the first match like that, and everything falls neatly into place. The Heavenly Demon who won the first game grows magnanimous, and from the second game on, she no longer flails away mindlessly even when she loses. One single defeat frees you from the infinite-repeat hell—and spares you future torment besides.
After that first game, we played a few more rounds, trading wins and losses. Just as I'd predicted, even when I won, she only looked a little rueful—no Heavenly Demon-style strong-arming made an appearance. At that point it felt less like a game and more like entertaining a patron, but hey.
Who cares. Cheon Yua isn't just a senior actress—she's the owner of this company. Keeping the owner in a good mood is something anyone should be able to do for smooth, comfortable office life. And compared to the Murim Heavenly Demon, this woman is an absolute angel. So no, I didn't feel hard done by in the slightest.
"Hmhm~ That was fun today. Good games."
"Ah—yes, ma'am."
So that was my office politics for the day, all well and good—but watching Cheon Yua skip away humming a tune after we finished playing stirred up an old memory, and my mood turned strange.
The Heavenly Demon used to smile like that too, genuinely, before she began cultivating the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. In her Little Heavenly Demon days, she honestly hadn't been that stiff a person.
If she hadn't carried the burden of becoming a divine being propping up the Cult... would our Heavenly Demon have been someone who laughed that easily?
Probably, yes. She was secretly a rather tender-hearted woman.
If Cheon Yua truly is the Heavenly Demon of a world without martial arts—if she's what the Heavenly Demon would have become, never having learned the Heavenly Demon Divine Art—then my theory may not be far wrong at all.
"But what's the point of all that, now that it's water under the bridge?"
It was one of those days where pointless thoughts left me feeling gloomy for no good reason.