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# Chapter 2
A curse does not always come from the lips of a witch wearing a black cloak.
The most frightening curses in the world are delivered by someone wearing a luxurious silk dress and carrying the gentlest, most elegant smile.
For Taekyung, that person was his mother.
"Brother! Big brother! Please save me!"
As Taekyung stepped through the enormous revolving doors of the Oracle Building, he completely ignored Taejin's desperate screams coming from behind him.
The chilly wind announcing the beginning of winter brushed against his cheek.
As Taekyung tightened the collar of his luxurious vicuña coat, an old memory he had buried deep within his mind like a fossil rose to the surface.
A day when he was six years old.
The beginning of every tragedy.
The day the horrifying shackle called sacrifice was branded into his mind like a permanent mark.
Back then, Taekyung's family was one of the wealthy and respected families in the region.
The twin brothers had been born at the famous SY General Hospital, which had a VVIP ward, exactly ten minutes apart.
Their father was the CEO of a small-to-medium-sized company with solid sales, and above all else, he was a hopeless romantic who loved his wife to an almost blind degree.
During his courtship with Taekyung's mother, his father had been the only son of a fairly well-off family and a successful police detective.
But when his mother said that she disliked and was afraid of the idea of him being a detective and told him to change careers, he chose an entirely different path.
After their children were born, Taekyung's father hired two live-in helpers so that his wife would never have to lift a finger around the house.
Thanks to that, his mother spent her days at home wearing elegant dresses custom-made by famous designers and listening to classical music, as though she were the queen of a small kingdom.
His father's love for his children was equally profound.
Every evening on his way home from work, without missing a single day, he would open the front door with both hands laden with fresh-cream cakes from famous bakeries or limited-edition toys.
But from that warm front door, Taekyung's sense of deprivation had already begun.
Quietly.
Subtly.
Cleverly.
"Dad's home!"
Whenever the front door opened and his father's lively voice echoed through the living room, six-year-old Taekyung would always be the first to run toward the entrance, only to stop there.
Because of Taekyung's introverted and cautious nature, he would wait for the cold air from outside clinging to his father's clothes to settle.
He would simply smile faintly, waiting for his father to embrace him first.
But in that brief moment when Taekyung hesitated, his younger brother Taejin would always come charging from behind with a tremendous clatter and throw himself at their father.
"Dad! Is this mine? Whoa!"
Taejin possessed an instinctive talent for craving and winning other people's attention and affection.
Not only did he snatch all the colorful boxes his father had brought home in an instant, but he also completely monopolized his father's broad hands and warm embrace.
When Taekyung, pushed aside, stared at his father with disappointed eyes, his father would merely give him an awkward smile while lifting Taejin high into his arms.
"Taekyung, I bought two, so you can share them."
The problem was that it would have been better if he had simply bought two identical toys.
But one of them was always less impressive, somehow lacking something.
And every time, his younger brother got the better and more impressive one all to himself.
Whenever that happened, his father would say,
"Your brother is so happy, so you should understand. Next time, Dad will buy something bigger for our eldest son, okay?"
At that moment, their mother would walk out from deeper inside the living room, the rustling of her silk dress accompanying her steps.
She always enjoyed presenting herself as a benevolent, self-sacrificing angel.
"Oh my, our Taekyung is such a mature little boy. Your brother loves Dad so much, doesn't he? Since Taekyung is the older brother, he doesn't throw a tantrum and gives in to his little brother, right?"
With a pitiful yet warm smile, their mother approached and gently stroked Taekyung's hair.
Their father had always been all talk.
He was a good man, but he hated creating conflict within the family to an extreme degree.
More than anything, he was a bystander who absolutely supported his wife's approach to raising their children.
"Mom is so grateful that our eldest son is so good at giving things up. You'll keep letting your little brother have his way so that Mom doesn't have a hard time, right? If Taekyung doesn't give in, Mom might get such a terrible headache that she could collapse."
There was even a faint trace of sadness on their mother's cheek.
Six-year-old Taekyung was far too young to logically understand the vicious violence hidden beneath those words.
All he could instinctively sense was the terrifying thought that if he stubbornly insisted on holding his father's hand or acted spoiled, the most beautiful mother in the world would become sick while wearing such a sad expression.
In the end, young Taekyung looked at Taejin, who was hugging their father tightly and sticking his tongue out at him in a smug little gesture, and nodded in resignation.
On the stage of the perfect, peaceful family play their mother had created, Taekyung's role was thus permanently fixed.
The obedient sacrificial lamb.
And that cursed role became officially engraved in the minds of everyone around them on the day their family held one of its grand monthly social gatherings.
It was a night when crystal chandeliers shone dazzlingly overhead, the enticing aromas of elaborate catered food filled the living room, and soft jazz music drifted through the air.
The mansion was packed with the corporate associates invited by their father and their mother's acquaintances from high society.
From around the height of the adults' knees, six-year-old Taekyung quietly looked up at them.
And in his eyes, he could see strange things that others could not.
The jealousy of people who showered the family with extravagant compliments while their eyes secretly wandered over the expensive furniture and display cabinets.
The deception of people who smiled in front of someone and gossiped about them behind their back.
The smell of greed emanating from people who had drenched themselves in expensive perfume.
Taekyung's unusually keen powers of observation, extraordinary even from such a young age, were unconsciously reading the essence of people and the causal laws of the world.
Just then, a group of ladies adorned with dazzling jewelry spotted the twins standing in a corner of the living room and hurried over.
"Oh my, so these are the twins I've heard about! But how can they look so different?"
"Exactly. Which one is the older brother and which one is the younger?"
As everyone's attention poured over them, Taejin eagerly bowed at the waist and flashed bright smiles, as though he had been waiting for this moment.
Meanwhile, Taekyung, overwhelmed by the hypocritical and sticky energy radiating from the people around him, quietly retreated behind the hem of his mother's dress.
The moment everyone's curious gazes converged on them, his mother flawlessly put on her characteristic elegant and gentle smile.
Then, in a clear and proud voice loud enough for everyone to hear, she declared,
"Our eldest, Taekyung, is such a mature boy. He's so good at giving things up that he does it as naturally as breathing. Whenever his little brother asks for something, he gives it to him without a single complaint. Perhaps it's because he's the eldest, but you wouldn't believe how thoughtful he is. I barely have to worry about him at all."
Her hand tightened firmly around Taekyung's small shoulder.
"And our second son, Taejin, isn't he handsome? He's so cheerful and knows how to be loved wherever he goes. He's the face and treasure of our family."
That was when it happened.
Amid the adults' laughter and praise pouring down like a waterfall, one heavy question dropped into six-year-old Taekyung's mind.
Why?
Why does Taejin get loved and praised just for smiling prettily...
Why do I have to give things up?
But six-year-old Taekyung had no strength to logically challenge such enormous injustice.
His mother's indifference felt like a chilling threat.
As though she were silently telling him that if he refused to give in, she would take away this warm home, his father's smile, and his mother's love.
That night, without anyone knowing, an enormous chain was locked somewhere deep inside Taekyung's heart with a heavy clank.
'Ah, so I have to give everything up to be loved.'
'I have to give everything that belongs to me to my little brother.'
That elegant curse that had flowed from his mother's lips would eventually become a deadly poison, endlessly eating away at Taekyung's life force and potential until he confronted the truth himself and awakened in his late teens.
"President."
In the back seat of a luxury Rolls-Royce sedan gliding silently along the road, Secretary Choi's polite voice reached Taekyung from beyond the soundproof partition separating the passenger compartment from the driver's seat, pulling him out of the swamp of his past.
"There is something I need to report."
"Go ahead."
"Mr. Taejin was eventually removed from the lobby by the security team. However, while leaving, he apparently threatened to contact reporters and expose corruption within the guild and Oracle Consulting. Shall I have the legal team take preventive measures?"
Taekyung stared expressionlessly at Seoul's dazzling nightscape flashing rapidly past the window.
Then the corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
"No. Leave him alone."
"Pardon?"
"Whether he calls reporters or writes some emotionally manipulative post on social media, let him bark and struggle all he wants."
The six-year-old child had been helplessly bound by his mother's curse.
But the man he was now was an overwhelming transcendent being who controlled and severed the chains of causality themselves.
"Taejin spent his entire life dancing only on scripts written by other people. He probably doesn't even properly understand what he's doing right now."
Taekyung's eyes grew cold.
"And he won't even realize that his ignorance will eventually become the perfect noose that tightens around his own neck in an instant."
The light reflected in Taekyung's eyes shone an intense blue against the car window.
The Absolute Observer's vision stretched across the sky above Seoul, reading the countless threads of causality woven throughout the world.
On the enormous chessboard Taekyung had newly arranged, the downfall of his arrogant family had only just taken its first step.
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