Fantasy
“……”
James stood there for a long time, staring after the black sedan as it disappeared into the distance.
“Must be nice.”
What he felt now was an endless, aching envy. But it wasn’t the fact that her family owned a major conglomerate that he envied. Material wealth was something James could seize whenever he wanted.
“How happy must she have been... and how happy will she be from here on out?”
It was the envy of a life filled with the attention and love she had received from her parents, and of the complete family that would keep on continuing into the future. Family couldn’t be bought with money.
Some bastard is already planning to kill his own son...
Because that future would never be permitted to him, he couldn’t hide the envy he felt for the happiness Suji enjoyed.
So he kept thinking of Suji’s parents, comparing them to his own situation. After standing there for what felt like forever, thinking of her parents and of her, James finally replied to the text he had seen earlier and ignored.
[They’re good people…….]
James looked at the message he had written that far and thought about it for a long while longer. Then he added one more line, sent it, and went into the house.
[Because of them, I realized I’m not someone who suits you.]
A deep shadow had settled over James’s face as he stepped inside.
First there was the woman who gave birth to my son, and now there’s a bastard who wants to kill his son, or a bastard who wants to kill his father in revenge for his mother... is there any family more rotten than this?
Suji’s life, which had seemed nothing but happy, now felt to James like it would be stained into unhappiness because of him.
I’m too dangerous for you.
Even now, the smell of gunpowder still clung to his body. He had sprayed bullets while fighting the British mafia, so it was only natural.
* * *
“……”
[They’re good people... Because of them, I realized I’m not someone who suits you.]
Back home, Suji read James’s message over and over again. She tried replying several times, but each attempt ended the same way: she typed, then erased, then typed again.
[Are you giving up just because I’m the ST Group chairman’s daughter? Is that it?]
No. Not now. This isn’t the time to pick a fight.
[James oppa. Mom said she liked you.]
No, that’s not it either. Mother would change her mind if she knew we were actually seeing each other.
And on top of that, there was the even bigger problem of her father.
[Oppa. What was everything we shared, then? The fact that we met and had feelings for each other? Just because of something like this......]
Suji. Don’t go grilling him!
“Haaah.”
No matter how hard she thought, Suji couldn’t see a way to turn this around. Just then, her phone vibrated.
Vrrr. Vrrr.
She brightened, thinking it was James calling, but the name on the screen was Hojung’s.
“Yeah, Hojung.”
-What the hell? Why were your parents at James’s place?
“……”
It was the kind of story that was hard to explain over the phone.
“Let’s talk when we meet.”
-Don’t tell me they found out everything? About you and James? That would be a disaster.
“It’s not that. Come pick me up in your car. My parents saw you on that main road earlier, so prepare an excuse on your own.”
-What about your car?
“I left it at the airport.”
She had gone to pick up James and then ended up running into her parents, so she had left her car at the airport.
-What?
“I’ll explain when we meet.”
* * *
The moment Suji got into the car, Hojung started firing off questions.
“Spit it out fast. I’m dying of curiosity. Your parents don’t know James, right? Right?”
“Yeah.”
But when she thought about it, that wasn’t quite right.
“No... they do know James.”
“Huh? They know James?”
“...They met him today. That’s all.”
“Today? Then how did they end up going all the way to James’s house?”
“Short version: your parents met James on the plane, and he drove them home. That’s it.”
“...And the long version?”
Suji took out her phone, reread the message from James that she still hadn’t answered, and said, “James oppa met my parents, who are ST Group’s chairman and the president of ST Fashion, on the plane.”
“He didn’t know they were your parents?”
“Right. But I was the one who went to meet them at the airport, and I ran into them there.”
“Ugh. So James found out then!”
“...James and I pretended not to know each other.”
“So it wasn’t your parents who found out, it was James?”
“Yes. James found out everything.”
“...What did James say?”
Suji reread the message that had arrived from James with gloomy eyes and said, “He said he... isn’t... someone who suits me?”
“!”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to reply to him.”
“……”
Hojung didn’t know either.
“What are we going to do about our Suji......”
Suji let out a long sigh and, thinking back over everything that had happened today, remembered her mother’s reaction.
“Tch. And in the middle of all that, my mom was going on and on about how handsome James is. She kept saying we looked good together and making a fuss. Ridiculous, really. She says one thing now and then later she’ll probably say something completely different......”
“...You think that’s funny right now?”
“It is funny. I mean, introducing a couple who’s already dating to each other again like this.”
“Love and reality are completely different, you know.”
That was exactly what was frustrating Suji too. Still, she had to apologize to Hojung, who had fled her own house because of Suji’s problem.
“...I’m not sure if I ruined a good time for you and Colt. Sorry.”
“Well. We see each other a lot, so it’s fine......”
In that moment, Hojung remembered Colt’s fluent Korean.
“You know Colt can’t speak a word of Korean, right?”
“Yeah. He can’t understand Korean at all.”
“And yet he was talking in internet-slang style today?”
“...What?”
That kind of casual slang wasn’t standard Korean. It was a peculiar language you could only pick up after spending a long time on the Korean internet.
“He’s good with honorifics too... and his listening and speaking are basically native-level. He even read the text messages that had come to your phone. I’ve been completely fooled this whole time.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah, whoa. I’ve also had a ton of calls with other guys without Colt knowing, so... did he hear all of those too?”
“He really did seem clueless before......”
Even thinking back to when they’d first met in the U.S., Colt had seemed like a true American who didn’t know a single word of Korean.
“So I confronted him too. And he said he learned because he’s smart, but... tsk. His excuse was even more ridiculous.”
“What did Colt say?”
“He said he graduated from Columbia Business School in New York.”
“What?”
It was still Ivy League, even if it was the lowest-ranked of the schools there, but it was famous for being the alma mater of a former U.S. president.
“Then you mean he graduated from graduate school, not just college?”
“That’s why he’s claiming he’s smart, but how am I supposed to believe that?”
“Pfft. What if Colt really is a Columbia MBA graduate?”
“Then I’d believe him, I guess.”
“So Colt was an intellectual after all? He always did seem pretty sharp.”
“Really? Heh-heh.”
Hojung, who had brightened at Suji’s words, quickly realized this wasn’t the time to be happy.
“Ah... I shouldn’t be laughing......”
“It’s okay. James and I didn’t have a future anyway. Sigh.”
The clouds of gloom hanging over Suji’s head looked ready to rain.
“No, no. You said your mother liked him. Then there’s still hope.”
“...You think so?”
Suji was desperate for even a sliver of hope.
“Of course, even if your mother likes him, there’s no way you’re getting past a wall like the chairman that easily......”
The rain that had seemed about to stop had turned into hail and was pelting Suji’s chest. Cruel reality.
“...You’re weirdly realistic sometimes.”
“Can’t exactly dream up some impossible fantasy, can I?”
“Sometimes in life, you just need a fantasy to hold on to.”
“Hmm......”
At the word fantasy, Hojung came up with a ridiculous scenario. A scenario for a friend who was falling into despair.
“James works his ass off to make a ton of money with one goal in mind: marrying the woman he loves. Then he buys one of Korea’s big conglomerates.”
“!”
“And then he shows up, standing shoulder to shoulder with the chairman at the Korea Business Association. Youth really stands out among a bunch of old men! The chairman immediately takes a liking to James.”
“Oh!”
Hojung lowered her voice and spoke like a man.
“Young man. Wouldn’t you consider dating my daughter? Yes. Thank you, Father-in-law.”
“Ngh.”
Suji had covered her mouth, trying to hold in her laughter.
But at Hojung’s next line, the laughter burst out between her fingers.
“Ho-ho-ho-ho. You’re quite the charming fellow! Ho-ho-ho. I like you very much. Ho-ho-ho. Take my daughter with you, son-in-law.”
“Puhahahaha!”
It was funny enough that Hojung was imitating her father, and the absurdity of the whole development was fresh in a way that made it even better.
“Hojung. Isn’t that development a little too fantasy?” Suji laughed.
“Want me to make it even more fantasy?”
Hojung added more flesh to the scenario she had invented, even bringing in her own lover, Colt.
“Hey, my friend Colt. Since you graduated from the Ivy League, you can take over my company for me. CEO Colt enters the scene! Oh! James. How did you know I wanted to run a company? Thank you! After that, James’s company grew stronger and stronger, and the two of them married the people they loved and lived happily ever after until the day they died. The end.”
“Haha! Colt becomes CEO of James’s company? Heh-heh.”
“That way I can even bring Colt home, right?”
“Haha. Yeah. Your fantasy is incredible.”
As if that were enough fantasy for now, Hojung returned to reality.
“...The problem is that all of it is fantasy.”
“You could’ve gone a little further......”
“Feeling a little better?”
“...A little.”
“Talk to James properly. We’re still young. The chairman probably isn’t thinking of selling you off the second you graduate from college.”
“The way you say it... selling me off? Am I some object to be bought and sold?”
“An arranged marriage is basically the same as selling off a daughter. You give your daughter away and get the other family’s influence and capital in return, so it’s a fair trade. That’s honestly how people on that side see it, anyway.”
“……”
Hojung’s words were a precise assessment that didn’t stray even a hair from reality. A marriage between conglomerate families wasn’t built on love or trust, but on something more like a corporate merger, where each side added to the other’s influence and created synergy. If they could cover each other’s weak points, that was ideal; if not, then at the very least the two families had to be on a similar level before joining together. Some version of that old, inherited idea sat at the bottom of the way they saw the world.
“Should I... be in a terminal romance?”
The thought that this was a relationship that would eventually have to end already made her feel depressed.
“If you hate that, then ask James to buy you one conglomerate.”
“...Tch. Does that even make sense? That’d cost trillions.”
“If it’s an appropriately sized conglomerate, he could easily become the majority shareholder with two trillion won.”
“Two trillion... that’d be enough for a company in the top thirty in Korea, right?”
“Of course.”
“...If only that could really happen.”
“……”
Hojung was about to tell Suji to step out of fantasy and into reality, but she held her tongue.
She’s already desperate enough. I should probably stop hammering her with realistic advice.
“By the way, why is traffic so bad?”
The road toward Incheon Airport was jammed solid with cars. Hojung only understood why after checking the time.
“Damn it. It’s rush hour for office workers. Getting to the airport and back is going to take hours.”
“……”
Suji looked at her own situation, just as tightly blocked and just as suffocating as the traffic outside, and finally managed to send James a reply.
[Let’s talk when we meet. Oppa.]
That was the best answer Suji could give right now.
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