The Daughter of Lee Tae-seop
Lee Eun-seo was Lee Tae-seop’s daughter.
She was the executive director at CHJ Entertainment. Han Ji-yu was signed to CHJ, so the manager had been the one to receive the accident report.
“Why?”
“She’d been using drugs now and then, you know? I warned her through her manager, but she couldn’t quit. Then, after a falling-out with a foreign fan who’d been supplying her, someone filed a tip-off to the prosecution. When the prosecutors issued a summons...”
“And you couldn’t stop that? If that’s the case, why do you keep the prosecutors under control in the first place?”
“Well... because Han Ji-yu wouldn’t listen...”
“Is she really dead?”
“The manager found her, but it was already a cold body. They reported it to the police right away. Ah, it’s already on the news.”
“......?”
Song Ji-na froze as if turned to ice. The remote slipped from her hand at last.
Clatter.
The sound of it rolling across the floor struck Kang-to’s ears.
“Has my oracle been proven?”
“......”
“For now, please register me in the family registry.”
“......”
“But don’t worry. I have no intention of asking you to carve out a share of Cheonjo Group just because I’m entitled to a forced heir’s fraction, nor do I plan to join this family’s business.”
“......”
“I’m only asking that you not dismiss me as you please.”
“......”
“I’ll consider this gentlemen’s agreement effective from this moment on.”
“......”
“The aches and pains will need talismans, so if you want healing, call me. If I’m to become a member of this family, I should make at least a basic contribution. Beyond that, whether it’s business, family, or even a suitable date for investment, I can help with anything, so treat me like a VIP any time.”
Kang-to, who had been heading for the stairs, stopped for a moment.
“Ah, one plus one is trendy these days, isn’t it? Here’s a bonus, too. It looked like it was dying, but tomorrow it should be bright and green again.”
He reached toward a bonsai drying out by the window and lightly tidied it. The moment Kang-to’s hand touched it, the drooping leaves began to stir with fresh life.
“......?”
As Kang-to came downstairs, Lee Tae-seop lifted his head.
“Please go upstairs. I think she’s taken quite a shock.”
“What did you say?”
“I’d appreciate it if you sent a message once the family registry work is done.”
He still showed Lee Tae-seop the bare minimum of courtesy. After all, the man was his biological father, wasn’t he?
“Just what in the world...”
“If you have questions, ask Mother. She doesn’t think of me as her son, anyway.”
Kang-to passed Lee Tae-seop with deliberate, straight-backed steps.
“Mother.”
Once the chairman reached the second floor, his expression crumpled. It was because of Song Ji-na’s face. She had gone so tightly, seriously still that it was startlingly rare.
“He left?”
“Yes.”
“Register him in the family registry.”
“Mother.”
“Don’t make me say it twice.”
Song Ji-na pressed the remote. Only then did the news stop. The spacious second floor fell into silence, the kind that sank in layer by layer around the two of them.
Out on the road, Kang-to looked back at the distant mansion.
Mom...
He thought of his mother in white shaman’s robes.
She had waited for the chairman for more than thirty years. But Kang-to hadn’t waited. He had planted a flag on the enemy’s stronghold, the chairman’s base, where no one had ever been kind to him.
Song Ji-na.
She had guarded the secret of his adoption all her life. Unless it was a deathbed confession, there was no reason to bare it from her own mouth now. It would only stir up needless chaos.
She was the real power behind Cheonjo Group and a person who moved easily among world-famous figures as well. With that level of judgment, there was no way she would overlook Kang-to’s ability. True leaders were drawn to people with talent.
If the family registry was going to bear his name, Kang-to also needed some support at his back.
From that angle, the best pillar in this family was not the chairman but Song Ji-na, his mother.
Now it would be Lee Tae-seop, his wife, and the son and daughter who would start to boil with agitation. Kang-to rather liked the idea of watching their reactions unfold.
“Chairman Lee.”
After a long silence, Song Ji-na finally spoke.
“Yes, Mother.”
“How did you say you met that child?”
“Well...”
“There’s no need to hide anything anymore, is there? Tell me in detail.”
“As I said before... he came to the company. He had my old business card and my old watch.”
“Did you give that to the child’s mother?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. And to Eun-seo and Hyung-wook’s mother as well, I suppose.”
“......”
“You said he was an ordinary child back then?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“He had a seizure in my office... I think it may have been a shamanic illness. We kept him in the hospital, but he discharged himself, and after that there was no contact for a while...”
“Then he came back as a shaman?”
“It seems he received a divine calling in the meantime.”
“Have you ever received a reading from that child yourself?”
“Pardon?”
“So you have.”
“......”
“Tell me. What sort of reading did he give you?”
“Well... it could have been a coincidence...”
“Chairman Lee.”
Song Ji-na’s voice sharpened.
Even at eighty, she was still a formidable woman. Her business sense was formidable, and so were her connections; compared with his mother, Lee Tae-seop still amounted to no more than a phoenix beside a peacock.
“He came on the payment date for the balance on the German yacht company M&A deal you connected me with two years ago, and he said it would become an accident. But Hyung-wook caught the information and blocked the transfer, so...”
“What else?”
“Our Eun-seo’s mother’s accident...”
“He got both right?”
“......”
“What do you think?”
“Pardon?”
“That child, Lee Kang-to, I mean.”
“I’m not sure what you mean...”
“What do you think of his gift for reading fate?”
“It may have been coincidence, but... according to Hyung-wook, he also warned about Chairman Jo of Taebaek Construction.”
“You mean the helicopter crash?”
“Yes.”
“......”
“I’m sorry. Because I handled things poorly...”
“Chairman Lee.”
“Yes?”
“When you first told me about him, what did you say? You said he was an island boy and didn’t know much about the world, so all you needed to do was register him in the family registry, didn’t you?”
“......”
“Seeing him today, I don’t think he’s that easy. He may have the resolve to make Cheonjo Group seem small.”
“Surely not...”
“Chairman Lee, what’s the hardest part of management?”
“A keen eye for the future, I suppose.”
“Exactly. And that’s why you’re having Eun-seo’s fiancé, Doctor Oh, work on AI.”
“......”
“That child has it, doesn’t he? Foresight about the future.”
“Mother.”
“What’s my philosophy on life?”
“Pick talent that suits the ability, and treat it according to that ability.”
“Right. That’s what matters in business. Give a large bowl a large treatment. Invest in a small bowl, and everything falls apart.”
“......”
“Where did you say the island was?”
“Chilui Island...”
“When the family records are sorted out, print me a copy.”
“You’re going to bring it yourself?”
“You can tell a person’s character by how they live. I’ll see the place with my own eyes before I decide whether to take him in, or...”
“Mother.”
“That’s all I have to say.”
Song Ji-na drove the nail in.
As Lee Tae-seop went downstairs, Song Ji-na approached the bonsai. It was an older piece than Lee Tae-seop, a work her late husband had cherished. It had been withering since three years ago, and even the tree doctor they called in had said recovery seemed unlikely. Yet now life was suddenly returning to it.
That fellow...
A faint smile touched Song Ji-na’s lips.
Bungeoppang.
While buying five thousand won’s worth of the fish-shaped pastries that sold three for two thousand won, he had also cleared Sol-bi’s mission.
“Don’t close the bag. It’ll get soggy if you do.”
He boarded the passenger ferry after taking the hat-wearing vendor’s advice to heart. The moment he found a seat in a corner, Gong Guk-hui’s call came through.
“Chairman?”
“Are you on the island?”
“Not yet. I had something else to handle, and I’ve just gotten on the ferry.”
“Ji-yeon’s baby has just finished surgery. They say it went very well.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Ji-yeon called me a moment ago, and she was so happy I could hardly stand it.”
“Thank you for believing the words of an insignificant shaman.”
“I had to believe you. I don’t think I can afford not to anymore.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll come see you soon. Please wait for me.”
“Yes.”
The call with Chairwoman Gong was short.
He was grateful.
By status alone, she wasn’t someone he should have been able to reach on a hotline. Even so, she had met him with an open heart, and that was enough.
If she came down, he planned to give her a broad, generous oracle of mutual liberation and restoration. A project for the descendants of independence patriots. That was Kang-to’s blueprint.
By then, the island had come into view.
Among the people at the dock, Sol-bi stood out in close-up. Even if she were mixed into a crowd, she was the sort of child who would catch the eye at once.
“Dad.”
The instant Kang-to stepped off, Sol-bi broke into a full sprint. As the distance between them vanished, she sprang into the air.
Kang-to caught her. It was a leap-and-hug he could now perform even with his eyes closed.
“Where are the fishcakes?”
Sol-bi went straight for the heart of the matter.
“What, weren’t you waiting for Dad?”
When Kang-to sent her a small laser beam of a look,
“Dad, I love you.”
Sol-bi blocked his mouth with a kiss on the cheek.
“This side, too.”
When Kang-to offered the other cheek,
smack.
Sol-bi grabbed his face and planted a kiss mark right on it.
“Dong-cheol, Hong-seo oppa, Tae-hee unnie, our dad brought fishcakes.”
Sol-bi took the bag and ran to the fans.
“Whoa.”
Praise wasn’t the only thing that could make children dance. Sometimes one fishcake was enough. And there Kang-to was, staging yet another event.
“Sol-bi, I’ve got a second round of gifts, too.”
“A second round?”
Sol-bi lifted her head.
“Ta-da.”
What Kang-to held out was jelly. The watermelon-shaped kind that sent kindergarteners and grade-school kids into a frenzy...
“Wow, watermelon jelly.”
“I know this one. My cousin brought some from the mainland last time.”
“It really tastes like watermelon.”
The children’s happiness level shot up to infinity. Thanks to that, Kang-to found himself happily buried in their untouched innocence.
Was it because a daughter takes after her father?
The attention Sol-bi had been receiving shifted straight to Kang-to.
“Could you be... Dharma Master Kang-to?”
That was the beginning, asked by two young women near the dock.
“That’s right.”
“We signed up for a divine reading tomorrow. Sorry, but could we get a selfie?”
“Of course.”
Kang-to agreed. Then middle-aged women who had booked sessions crowded in too. It was no different from the frenzy around a celebrity, and the fan club members’ word of mouth had clearly done its job.
Hm?
While posing for photos, Kang-to caught sight of a middle-aged woman’s six evil stars in the front of his vision.
But...
The six evil stars were rapidly loosening.
“Did you come for a reading?”
Kang-to asked.
“Yes, I’m sixth in line tomorrow morning.”
“Your son is in the hospital, isn’t he?”
“Oh my.”
The woman jolted at Kang-to’s sharp oracle.
“That’s right. After a benign tumor operation, he hasn’t come back to consciousness. My mother-in-law said it was such a ridiculous thing that she went to see a fortune-teller, and they said the ancestors were angry and a bad star had taken hold, so we’d need a thirty-million-won ritual and three million won in talismans. While I was worrying whether to do it or not, one of my old classmates said this Lighthouse Shrine here sees things properly, so I came.”
“Did you happen to do any good deeds on the way to the island?”
“Not anything I’d call a good deed... I was pulling a cart of waste paper and resting because I was exhausted, so I bought the person a warm cup of coffee. And there was a cat that had been hit by a car, so I took it to a veterinary clinic. But it turned out that cat was pregnant. The vet said if I’d left it alone, all the kittens would have died too...”
So that was it.
Kang-to nodded.
The woman’s curse star was the six evil stars. It had been a rough one. But the chain had broken through her good deed, so the bad fortune had been undone.
“The six evil stars were clinging to you strongly. Luckily, they’ve just come loose, so your son will wake up. You should board that ferry and go out now. There’s no need for you to stay here any longer.”
“What?”
Just as the woman hesitated, her phone rang. It was her mother-in-law’s number.
“Really?”
The woman’s face bloomed like a flower in full season. Kang-to’s oracle had landed exactly on target.
“Good heavens... I’m at the hospital with my mother-in-law, and she says our son just regained consciousness.”
“Waaah.”
As the woman began to tear up, the crowd around her fell open-mouthed silent.
That was what being possessed by an oracle looked like.
That was exactly the phrase for it.
“You’d better catch that ferry.”
Kang-to pointed toward the passenger boat. If she missed it, she would have to wait until tomorrow morning to leave.
“The fee, the fee...”
In her haste, the woman fumbled for her wallet.
“I didn’t even give you a proper reading, did I? Hurry along now, the ferry’s about to depart.”
Whoosh.
The whistle sounded to announce departure. The woman barely managed to board the ferry, then stepped out onto the second-deck railing and cupped her hands around her mouth.
“Thank you. Dharma Master Kang-to, thank you so much.”
Her words of gratitude rang louder than the ship’s horn.
---