A Shaken Heart
“I don’t think you’re the kind of person who’d see it that way, Mr. Choi.”
“...Ah, no. I... was...”
“You may think of me as the nephew you’re meeting for the first time, but legally, we’re strangers. I took down the TY Group all by myself. I’m the conqueror.”
It was hardly the sort of thing one should say to a man dressed in mourning, but James wanted to push Choi Jeong-pil away for good.
You’re not my family!
“Have you never considered that today’s events would, in the end, be my fault as well?”
James meant that in the sense that he had been the one to kill Chairman Choi Tae-yeong, but Choi Jeong-pil took it as an expression of self-reproach.
“It’s not your fault.”
“...”
“You have no idea how pleased Father was to see his grandson grow into such an accomplished young man. He wasn’t shocked by handing the company over to you. Besides...”
Choi Jeong-pil recalled the documents his father had been holding right up until the moment he died.
Choi Tae-yeong had been a man whose greed for money reached to the heavens, and his son had been certain that nothing about that nature would change before the day he died. But the end of his father’s life had been so different from what he had expected.
Father smiling as he held a donation certificate...
At the moment of death, Chairman Choi Tae-yeong had been clutching a donation certificate and laughing.
“...In the end, he returned even his remaining fortune to society and went on his way. As though he knew his final hour was approaching... If this was because of you, then I suppose it was because of you.”
“...”
James knew Choi Jeong-pil had misunderstood something terribly.
I did that too. It was all my doing.
Every part of it—altering his behavior and memories so he would return his wealth to society, driving him to his death—had all been carried out by James’s will.
“Father never worried about the TY Group, because he had you.”
“I don’t think I need to hear any more of this. May I go now? It’s still before lunch.”
Choi Jeong-pil could understand why James might not mourn his father’s death.
“...I already know you don’t feel much affection for our family. You’d have good reason.”
“That’s a relief.”
“I wish we’d had more time, but it’s too late, isn’t it?”
“It is. It happened too long ago.”
So long as James himself had killed Choi Tae-yeong and driven Choi Jeong-san to his death, there would be no changing what they were to one another.
“One last question, then.”
“...Haa. Please make it quick.”
“Your father...”
“My father died in the United States. Who exactly are you talking about? Did I even have a father?”
Hearing through his father that James refused to acknowledge Choi Jeong-san as his father, he admitted to himself that he had misspoken.
“...Right. That was thoughtless of me. I understand. Have you had any contact with your brother? Choi Jeong-san, I mean.”
“No. Come to think of it, I don’t see him anywhere. Has he still not arrived?”
James was the only person who knew why he would never make it to the funeral hall.
How is a bastard who drowned in the East Sea a little while ago supposed to show up here?
“...If you don’t know, then forget it. No matter how late he is, the news will tell you soon enough.”
“Can’t you reach him?”
“Father said before that he’d be hiding somewhere and crawl back out again, so there’s no need for you to worry about him too.”
Choi Jeong-pil was not the sort of man to speak carelessly about family matters like this, but because he thought James was no outsider, he explained everything.
“I wasn’t worried.”
“I heard Father kept him at the main house, but he still ran off in the end.”
“He’s a hard man to catch a glimpse of. There must be a lot of guests, but the chief mourner has been away from his post for quite a while. You should get back out there.”
“Yes. And earlier, I met Representative Colt. He went out of his way to apologize for being discourteous before.”
“Ah, Colt was rude enough, all right. I already warned him to mind his manners from now on. Your injured hand is better now, isn’t it?”
“...”
Feeling that perhaps James did have some concern after all, Choi Jeong-pil patted his shoulder for no real reason.
“Ha-ha. Thanks for worrying about me. Come say hello to the kids separately later. They’re all your younger siblings, so there’s no need to be shy.”
“...”
James had only been concerned about Colt and his relationship. It had absolutely not been said out of concern for him.
What greeting? Please.
After that, Choi Jeong-pil took over greeting the mourners in Choi Jeong-san’s absence, and James pulled out the chair in front of Colt’s table and sat down.
Creak.
“You weren’t waiting long, were you?”
“No. I saw you come in earlier too. What were you two talking about for so long?”
Colt was curious what James had discussed privately with former Representative Choi Jeong-pil.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t bring up you and Ho-jung.”
“Hey. Hey, watch your mouth...”
Colt glanced uneasily toward Choi Jeong-pil, who was greeting the guests. He was genuinely worried James might have mentioned it.
“...You really didn’t, right?”
“Not yet. Has Ho-jung not come? I don’t see her.”
“She did come, but she’s busy making phone calls.”
“Who’s she calling at a time like this?”
“Choi Jeong-san’s family. They said they were thinking about divorcing, and now it looks like they’re not even planning to come to the funeral.”
“Oh. Really?”
Whether those people showed their faces at the funeral hall or not meant nothing to James.
“I’m just going to eat and leave.”
“Hey. There are a lot of big-shot business figures here today.”
“So?”
“Have you never thought they might help with running the company?”
“Help?”
James was not desperate enough to go begging for help from the business world. He had taken over the TY Group as part of his revenge; he had never intended to run it and build it into anything greater.
“Yeah. They could be a huge help to the TY Group.”
“I’m not stepping into the front lines of management. And today isn’t exactly the right time, either.”
“Why not?”
James gave him another reason why they could not make connections today.
“...Colt, have you forgotten where we are right now?”
“Huh?”
“We’re thieves who stole the thing that used to be in Choi Tae-yeong’s hands. Wouldn’t acting friendly with us here look like an insult to the late Choi Tae-yeong?”
“Ah...”
Only then did Colt seem to understand that this was not the time to go broadening their network.
“No one knows the hidden details, after all...”
The fact that James was Choi Tae-yeong’s biological grandson had been shared only among the company’s internal directors and the family of the chairman. To outsiders who didn’t know that information, their friendliness here could easily be seen as dishonoring the dead.
“So let’s just eat a decent meal and get out.”
“Fine. Today’s not our day.”
James left the funeral hall without even greeting Choi Jeong-pil, and sent Colt back to the company first.
“So you’re slacking off again?!”
“I’m not in a good mood today.”
“Ah... fair enough.”
Unlike most people, Colt knew that the late Chairman Choi Tae-yeong was James’s grandfather.
“...”
James was not in a bad mood for that reason, but however one looked at it, he definitely did not want to go back to the company.
“Go in and rest.”
“...I’m going.”
Colt could feel a deep sense of loss from the sight of James’s retreating back as he waved and walked away.
“Did I let him go alone for no reason?”
* * *
But the heavy look on his face vanished without a trace once James climbed into the car with a bright expression and a light step. Then, inside the car, he threw both hands up and shouted in triumph.
“It’s really over! All over! The End!”
Today was the day a secret plan that had begun long ago finally came to an end.
“It was disgusting meeting you, and let’s never see each other again!”
That was the extent of the past, in James’s mind. He drove home and planned to take his time reading his magic book, looking forward to a rare moment of peace.
“...”
And yet, for some reason, he couldn’t focus on the book at all.
Snap.
James closed the book and stood up, tilting his head.
What is this? Why does my chest feel...
He was feeling an inexplicable heaviness and a vague sense of regret.
“Regret? Me?”
It wasn’t about Choi Jeong-san and Choi Tae-yeong, the men he had dealt with by his own hand. Their ends had already been written, and they had been cleanly erased from James’s mind.
Choi Jeong-pil.
It was about Choi Jeong-pil, who had treated him like a real member of the family today. James could feel a faint ripple rising from the deepest part of his chest.
“Because I’m family with that guy?”
Lately, James had hardly any memory of being loved by anyone else.
Of course, he had felt friendship through Colt and learned the love between lovers through Suji, but the unconditional care and love between family members was not something he could receive from them.
“No... that can’t be.”
Up until now, the largest share of that had come from the love he received from his adoptive parents in America. The rest had been nonexistent. Choi Jeong-san had tried to kill him, and the mother who had given birth to him had died long ago at Choi Jeong-san’s hands. Since the death of his adoptive parents in childhood, James had lived without ever feeling that kind of warmth again. That was why the fact that his mother had thought of him up until the moment of her death had hit him so hard, and why he had been able to deal with Choi Jeong-san so mercilessly in revenge.
“Why...”
And yet today, Choi Jeong-pil had poured water onto parched earth. The water that soaked his dry, cracked heart awakened a seed that had been hidden by some miracle, and that seed had sprouted, revealing a small, fragile form.
“!”
James could now face the feeling directly and see what emotion he was actually experiencing. That was because he was a wizard influenced by the Great Sage Mercia Lynchberg.
“...”
James was so desperate for unconditional love that a single kind word from Choi Jeong-pil, a relative only through a roundabout connection, felt precious to him.
“Just a few words like that...”
Seeing himself from the outside, as though he were looking into another person’s feelings, made it even clearer.
“...I fell for it?”
James remembered Choi Jeong-pil’s sincere apology and the pitying gaze he had given James, who had lived such a miserable life. He also remembered the happy reaction that had come back in response to his tiny gesture of concern, though it had been born from a misunderstanding.
Ha-ha. Thanks for worrying about me.
“Whose blood did you inherit, anyway...”
There was nothing in him that resembled the way Choi Tae-yeong and Choi Jeong-san had behaved. What was more, even knowing that his father Choi Tae-yeong had returned all his wealth to society, he hadn’t felt the slightest regret. If anything, he seemed relieved that his father had set aside his greed and passed on.
“You’re a saint.”
Nothing about Choi Jeong-pil would leave James’s mind. On the contrary, it only grew clearer.
Come say hello to the kids separately later. They’re all your younger siblings, so there’s no need to be shy.
“Damn it.”
James had to stand in the living room for a long while, gathering himself. Thanks to that, he did not merely confirm his own feelings; he also discovered the reason for the confusion he was in now.
“My human connections were too narrow.”
His life in America had been nothing but Colt, and after that, meeting Suji and Ho-jung had only widened the circle a little. There had been others he met at the Las Vegas VIP club, but to James, they were merely public connections, not people he valued very much.
“But... no matter how many people I meet and grow close to... it won’t be easy to surpass him.”
The problem was that all the solutions he came up with to settle the emotional upheaval kept leading to the same conclusion: they didn’t work.
“Huu.”
That look in his eyes when he pitied me, that deep concern... and the warm mana that revealed his wish to help me however he could.
Through mana, James had known that Choi Jeong-pil genuinely felt sorry for him. There wasn’t a single grain of falsehood in it.
If he truly values me...
He could not erase the emotions that kept rising in him.
“...”
Before long, James found himself regarding President Choi Jeong-pil as one of the people he cherished.
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