Untangling the Misunderstanding
“Ugh...”
Colt looked even more tense than he had at TY Telecom’s shareholders’ meeting.
“Why are you trembling like that while waiting for your darling?”
“If it were you, you’d be calm?”
“Heh.”
James had been waiting with Colt to meet Ho-jung. At last, it was time to tell her the truth.
Click.
“She’s here.”
Ho-jung walked into the cafe with a stiff expression.
Tap. Tap.
“If you’re here, sit down.”
“...”
Ho-jung glared at James and Colt for a moment before pulling out a chair and sitting down. Through her cold attitude, James could tell she still hadn’t been given the full story. That alone proved how tightly Chairman Choi had been controlling the information.
“Looks like you still haven’t heard, then?”
“...I heard that Father had voluntarily stepped down as TY’s president. And that my brothers had turned in their resignations too.”
“Anything else?”
“No matter how much I asked, he wouldn’t tell me.”
“As expected. He really does keep security airtight.”
“What on earth are you hiding? And Colt! Why haven’t you been answering my calls?!”
When the arrow suddenly pointed at him, Colt hurried to apologize.
“Sorry... I just felt bad...”
“If you know you’re sorry, then—”
James raised a hand and cut her off.
“I’ve got a lot to say today. Don’t wear yourself out before I even start.”
“James oppa, this whole thing... it seems like you even kept Su-ji in the dark?”
Since the matter was connected to James, Ho-jung had even called Su-ji to ask about it, but all she got in return was that Su-ji didn’t know anything either. She had discussed it with Chairman Kim Seong-oh, but she had left Su-ji with no clues or hints at all.
“It is a private matter, but the person involved should know first.”
“Know what? What is it that I don’t know?”
“Me.”
“What?”
“The thing you don’t know is me, Ho-jung.”
“...What does that mean?”
James took a slow sip of his iced Americano and answered at leisure.
“You know why I came to Korea, don’t you?”
“...”
Ho-jung had met James in the United States together with Su-ji, and through that, she had heard the reason he entered the country in the first place.
“...Now that I think about what happened, that sounded like a pretty flimsy excuse.”
She had heard that he was looking for his biological parents, and then that he still hadn’t found them. Looking at how TY Group had been swallowed whole, searching for his birth parents now seemed like a side matter. She had begun to think the real goal was corporate hunting.
“No. I really did come to Korea to find my biological parents.”
“...And then, incidentally, you hunted down a major Korean conglomerate? You expect me to believe that? It’d make more sense the other way around!”
Ho-jung was insisting the order had been reversed.
“I found my parents.”
“...Huh?”
“I found them. I just didn’t tell you or Su-ji.”
“...You found them?”
“Yeah. But because the other side found out I was looking for them, they made a move first and things got a little tangled.”
“...So your birth parents said they didn’t want to meet you?”
James answered with a sorrowful look.
“For one thing, my mother isn’t in this world anymore. She died thirty years ago, not long after I was born.”
“...Oh dear.”
“But the other half of my genes is still alive.”
“Your biological father? Then your father refused to meet you...”
“Would it be a relief if all he did was refuse? He tried to kill me. He was trying to erase every trace of me from this world.”
“!!”
That was the first Colt had heard of it too.
“What? That guy tried to kill you? Is he insane?”
Colt knew one thing well enough.
‘How the hell do you kill this guy?’
There were not many ways to kill the world’s one and only magician.
‘There’s basically no chance. It’s impossible!’
“S-so? Was that guy arrested by the police?”
“No. He’s still alive and well somewhere, I’d imagine.”
“Huh? How can that be?”
That was the heart of the matter.
“You know him too, Ho-jung. He’s someone very close to you.”
“!!”
Ho-jung asked, unable to believe it.
“M-my father isn’t it, right? It isn’t him, is it?”
Among the men close to her, the only one around that age was her father.
“Pfft. No way Chairman Choi Jeong-pil would do something like that. Isn’t he a man with manners and a proper devotion to his family?”
“Then...”
By now, only one person in the TY family remained who could have been James’s father.
“Choi Jeong-san. Your uncle.”
“!!!”
Ho-jung could connect this with the womanizing scandals that had recently kept her uncle Choi Jeong-san all over the news because of his latest mistress problem. And she knew very well what kind of man Choi Jeong-san was from everything she had seen growing up.
‘If it’s that filthy bastard’s personality, he’d do something like that!’
“So you really were my cousin.”
“Gah!”
With the huge shock she had just received, Ho-jung’s mind flashed through everything that had happened so far.
‘Then James knew all along that his uncle tried to kill him...’
At once, everything clicked into place. It made perfect sense why James had hunted down TY Telecom.
“So... James took over TY Telecom...”
“Yeah. Let’s call it my little revenge? In the end it all went back into the Choi family’s hands, so the chairman seemed pretty pleased.”
“...Y-you told Grandfather too?”
“Yeah. I told him everything on the day of the shareholders’ meeting. That’s why we stamped it in at the board meeting where Colt became CEO. What else was he supposed to do when his grandson said he’d take the company and save it from crisis?”
“Wow... and all this time I was the only one who didn’t know...”
Ho-jung let out a hollow breath, as if every question had finally been answered.
“Chairman Choi Jeong-pil probably heard everything from Chairman Choi too. That’s why he could make the decision to step down voluntarily from the presidency of TY Chemical. The reason he didn’t tell you was probably because it needed to be kept especially secure.”
“...Hah!”
“I told Chairman Choi that once the press quieted down and TY Group’s image recovered, I planned to give TY Chemical’s president post back to him. But I still don’t know the exact timing. We don’t know when the image will recover, and we certainly don’t know when the public will forget.”
Ho-jung nodded at James’s words. Right now was the time for TY Group’s ruling family to keep their distance from the company.
‘That’s the only way TY Group survives. What James oppa has done is a chance for our recovery that will never come again.’
“That’s the explanation. If you’ve got any more questions, ask now.”
“...”
But Ho-jung couldn’t think of a single thing to say to James, who had now become her cousin.
“No questions? Then I’m leaving?”
“Hey! Wait a second! I need time to sort through all this before I can even ask anything!”
“Now, now. Don’t talk back to your oppa.”
“...S-sorry.”
“You should say, ‘I’m sorry, big brother.’”
“...I’m sorry, big brother.”
“Ugh... never mind. Big brother? What big brother? Just go back to normal.”
He had only been joking. He hadn’t meant to make her actually call him that.
“Hehe.”
“Do you believe I’m your cousin now?”
“If I go ask Dad, I can confirm it right away. And James oppa isn’t the kind of person who’d joke about something like this.”
“Hmm. Accurate judgment.”
“Now that I think about it... James oppa really does look like him.”
Anyone looking at James and his uncle Choi Jeong-san would say they were unmistakably father and son. But their personalities were almost opposites, so she hadn’t thought of them as alike.
“I don’t want to hear anything disgusting. I already told Chairman Choi in advance too. Don’t even dream of trying to tie me to that bastard as father and son. Chairman Choi agreed as well.”
“Mm. Okay. I won’t mention Uncle anymore.”
If the man had tried to kill him, then Ho-jung could understand not wanting to see his face either.
Just as their conversation seemed to be wrapping up smoothly, Colt quickly jumped in.
“So this conversation is over now, right?”
“...”
But there was a chill in Ho-jung’s eyes as she looked at Colt.
“W-what? Why?”
“...My father came back from the shareholders’ meeting with bandages wrapped around his hand.”
That was the result of what Colt had done.
“!!”
But at the time, he had been acting without knowing whose father or uncle Choi Jeong-pil was.
“Then...”
“He said he only went to greet the opposing candidate... and that the man stared at him like he wanted to kill him and left his hand in that state? A bone cracked, so now he’s got a cast on it.”
“...Ugh.”
“Who was that opposing candidate again? I think Colt probably knows.”
“Ah... damn it.”
James frowned and said, “Hey, Colt. If Ho-jung’s father is my uncle, then he might end up becoming your father-in-law someday... why did you do that?”
“I-I didn’t know that man was family! You should’ve told me something that important first!”
“Even if you didn’t know, was it okay to leave a stranger in that condition? That’s not something a normal person does.”
“...”
By any sane standard, James was right. Ho-jung kept letting out heavy sighs, openly worried.
“Haah. Thanks to that, I couldn’t even say I knew Colt. Father kept cursing you as worse than an animal... He even said where on earth we had gone to find some muscle-bound foreign monster to sit in the CEO seat of TY Telecom?”
“...Tch.”
The very first button had been fastened completely wrong.
“Colt’s a foreigner to begin with, so first impressions matter more than anything... sigh.”
James waved a hand as if it didn’t matter.
“It’ll be fine once some time passes, Colt.”
“...Is this really the kind of thing time fixes? Doesn’t seem like it.”
The first impression of beast and monster alike felt like the sort of thing that would stay vivid no matter how much time passed. On top of that, Colt had broken the man’s hand in the handshake, then poured a fierce knight’s mana into it and put on a wildly ferocious air for good measure.
‘...If I go visit that house to introduce myself, I’ll get thrown out before I even get through the door.’
James didn’t consider Colt’s case much of a problem either.
“Colt, have you forgotten who you are?”
“You don’t know who I am? I’m Colt Evans...”
“You’re the CEO of TY Telecom now. You’re not the Colt Evans who used to perform onstage with the magician James Kane and host his shows.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll be the one deciding what happens to the soon-to-be-vacant TY Chemical president’s seat too. The former TY Chemical president, who was nothing more than a salaried CEO, is becoming unemployed now... and Ho-jung’s brothers all handed in their resignations this time too, so they’re in the same boat.”
“Oh?”
At James’s words, Colt began to reexamine his own position.
“Ho-jung’s father, Choi Jeong-pil, is now in the position of moving according to the decision of Colt Evans, the holding company CEO. He’ll be waiting with bated breath for the group president to call him back to the TY Chemical presidency.”
Colt had only thought of Choi Jeong-pil as his girlfriend Ho-jung’s father, but his own standing now was the very definition of power at the top of the heap.
“Ohhh! Right. I’m the CEO of TY Telecom now!”
“Ho-jung, you should be on your best behavior with Colt too. Holding company CEO Colt will decide when Choi Jeong-pil gets to come back, after all. If Colt doesn’t like him, then Choi Jeong-pil will never return to TY Chemical.”
“...Ugh. That’s terrifying.”
“Hahaha. Still, isn’t it a relief that your girlfriend Ho-jung is the holding company CEO? At least he’s not a stranger.”
If the one who had acquired TY Telecom this time had been a truly foreign power, then TY Group’s ruling family would not only have been completely cut off from the company, but they might also have had to answer legally for every bit of corporate money they had gradually siphoned off over the years. No matter how transparently a company was run, if you went through the executives’ corporate cards and company vehicles in detail, costs that had nothing to do with the business would always turn up.
‘That’s how Korean law works. It’s whatever you can hang on someone’s ear or nose.’
Even if the money had genuinely been used for the company, it was not easy to escape if someone simply claimed the expenses had been used privately for work unrelated to the business.
“If it hadn’t been for Colt and me, I wouldn’t even have promised Choi Jeong-san a chance to come back.”
“I admit that too. If it hadn’t been for James oppa, we really would’ve been done for.”
James had to make it clear that goodwill did not apply to everyone.
“But this benefit is limited to your family alone.”
“Only our family?”
“The Choi Jeong-san family, including Chairman Choi... they’re truly finished.”
“Ah...”
“I’m planning to make sure they can’t set foot anywhere near TY Group again.”
“...”
Even with James’s firm stance, Ho-jung could understand it.
‘An adopted son who was raised overseas came looking for his biological parents, and instead of welcoming him, they...’
---
“...The fault is ours, no matter how you look at it.”
Leon quietly acknowledged his error.
“True. Even setting aside our treatment of James, we should have taken better care of this no matter what. Since they are our descendants.”
Archbishop Adolf also had no excuse.
“I never imagined James was the son of Choi Jeong-san and Jeong Min-ju, nor that he was your grandson, Leon.”
But even so, the reasons for their oversight were understandable. Leon had already thought James was a descendant of the Holy Kingdom’s royal line, so there had been no reason to suspect any other possibility. Only James knew that his soul had crossed over from Earth to this place, and he had never revealed it to anyone else.
“They have already paid for it by losing James, who had become the greatest power on earth.”
“...That is true.”
Kim Seong-oh glanced at the two of them and spoke.
“At the very least, the Choi family has lost a grandson. And that grandson has become the Earl of Linzberg and Grand Duke James in the holy kingdom, has he not?”
“Yes. The first great noble of the Holy Kingdom and the only one carrying the divine crest.”
“And he has also been appointed a cardinal in the Vatican.”
“Phew. Even if they had taken better care of him from the start, could they have ever managed to hold onto a grandson like that?”
Adolf’s words were met with silence from everyone present.
“Those bastards don’t deserve to have James as their son, grandson, or nephew.”
Choi Jeong-pil’s expression was colder than ice. James’s existence had to be hidden from the family, so they had not told even him in advance. Now he had fully grasped the extent of the problem.
“Which is why Choi Jeong-san will never get his son back.”
“We will make sure the Choi family cannot touch James again.”
“So it’ll all be settled with the destruction of TY Telecom.”
James had already finished taking away everything that needed to be taken. Unlike with a criminal organization, it wasn’t enough to simply crush the company until it was wrecked; if the major shareholders ran around disposing of stock and escaping the collapse, then the result could even become an advantageous one for them. To avoid that, James had first stripped away the potential legal responsibility tied to it all. That way, if the company sank, the Choi family would go down with it.
“TY Telecom will be destroyed in the final washout, and the family’s property and shares will be taken away as well.”
“Since the former chairman is tied to the first and second-generation offenses, there’s no way out for him.”
“And once the current chairman is cut off from the company, his daughters and sons will all follow in the same way.”
“From the beginning, Choi Jeong-san had no qualifications to inherit the family business.”
With such a scheme and such a father, everything had to go wrong from the start.
“If James had been the eldest son instead, the whole family would probably have been saved.”
“If only the birth order had been different, that would have been possible.”
“So where did the father and son relationship begin to go crooked?”
“At the point where the father killed the mother, most likely.”
The basic bond of a family was already broken from the start. No matter how much they tried to force the next generation to maintain it, the old wound never disappeared.
“The first mistake was Choi Jeong-san trying to build the next generation on the ruins of the first.”
“Exactly. If the patriarch had handled the family properly, none of this would have happened.”
Adolf observed James’s family with a complex expression. Choi Jeong-san’s family could not have handled James the way Leon had. The more he thought about it, the more he saw that the father’s own nature had been the first cause. To be precise, the grandfather had been too busy and had not cared for the family as he should have; that negligence had bred the monster.
“Well, if James wanted to save the house, he could have done it. But with that level of damage, he’d probably rather cut it loose.”
James had chosen a different path. There was no need to make the Choi family whole just because they were his blood. If they had not accepted him, then there was no point in accepting them either. They had chosen their own end.
“At least the area around them will be cleaned up.”
“The fact that they can no longer cause trouble at your side is enough.”
Kim Seong-oh looked at the others and lightly tapped the table.
“Then, until TY Telecom’s collapse is finalized, we’ll just make sure the company doesn’t have room to breathe.”
“Agreed.”
“The public mood has already turned. Once the press keeps circling the scandals, that family won’t be able to recover.”
“James has already laid the groundwork. What remains is simply to let the collapse run its course.”
Leon’s gaze turned toward the window.
James had already gone far ahead. What remained for them was simply to ensure that the wreckage did not rise again.
---
Ho-jung stared at James for a long moment, then finally let out a shaky breath.
“So... that’s what happened.”
“That’s what happened.”
“And my father... no, our family... did all that?”
James didn’t answer right away. He simply looked at her, calm and unhurried.
“You didn’t do it.”
Ho-jung swallowed hard. That simple sentence loosened something in her chest.
“Still... I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Colt, who had been sitting awkwardly to the side, scratched the back of his head and forced a grin.
“Man, this is a mess. But, uh... at least now I know why James was so serious about it.”
“You should be serious too,” James said. “You’re the CEO now.”
“Right. Yeah.”
Ho-jung gave a small, tired laugh despite herself. The tension in the table eased a little, just enough to let the truth settle where it belonged.
“The more I think about it, the more obvious it is,” she said quietly. “If James oppa had really been treated like family from the beginning, none of this would have happened.”
“Exactly.” James leaned back in his chair. “But they made their choice.”
Ho-jung lowered her eyes. The answer was simple, and that made it worse.
“Then TY Telecom is really finished, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
James’s reply was brief, without ceremony.
Ho-jung nodded once. “...Then I’ll do what I can from my side.”
“That’s enough.”
Colt let out a breath, as if only now realizing how much heavier the conversation had become.
“So I’m really the guy in charge of TY Telecom now, huh.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Damn. That sounds cool.”
James snorted. “Don’t get cocky. You still need to survive the hand you broke first.”
“Hey, I said I was sorry about that already!”
Ho-jung looked between the two of them, then gave a small smile. For all the damage that had been done, the three of them were still here, still talking, still alive. For now, that was enough.
Outside, the afternoon light rested quietly over the street, as if nothing in the world had changed. But inside the cafe, the last confusion had finally begun to dissolve.
End of excerpt.