The Crown Prince's Return
A man stood rigidly before the airport security checkpoint, his face set in a hard mask.
Just have to get through here...
It was Choi Tae-jin, the eldest son of Choi Jeong-san, who was supposed to have returned to Korea this year.
He kept walking as if nothing were wrong, but inside he was tense enough to snap.
I didn’t bring much. There’s no way they’ll catch me.
Tucked against his chest was a bundle of white powder, wrapped tight in plastic. It was the drug he had first encountered during his student years in the United States and never managed to quit, no matter what he tried afterward.
“Next, please.”
Beep.
When the warning sound rang out from the scanner, Choi Tae-jin’s stomach lurched.
“W-what is it?”
“Please spread your arms.”
The checkpoint staff swept a long metal detector over Choi Tae-jin’s body, and it stopped at the pocket of his pants.
Beep.
“Please show me what’s in your pocket.”
“......”
W-what did I put in my pocket again?
He hurriedly thrust a hand inside and felt the metal straw he usually used to take the drug in the United States.
Damn it.
He hesitated, wondering whether to take it out or not, but decided it was better to show it before they grew any more suspicious. He pulled it free in a hurry and held it up.
“My pen broke, and I was going to throw it away, but I forgot.”
It had, in fact, been cut from the barrel of a fountain pen and repurposed.
“Oh. Nothing else, then. Next.”
Only after Choi Tae-jin made it through the scanner unscathed did he finally let out the breath he had been holding.
Whew. Thank God...
Then he noticed the drug-sniffing dog staring at him from a distance, and Choi Tae-jin quickened his pace as soon as he saw it.
Why the hell is that mutt staring at me like that...
He was supposed to go get his luggage near the dog, but doing so would only make it more likely that the animal would catch the scent. The personal straw he had just gotten through security was still reeking of drugs.
Forget the luggage.
Choi Tae-jin abandoned his bags and headed for the exit. He had gotten through the airport without being caught for carrying drugs, but there was no telling whether luck would stay on his side for the rest of the day.
“Young master. Your luggage...”
The chauffeur from the secretarial office, finding it strange that Tae-jin wasn’t taking his bags, spoke up.
“You go get it.”
“Yes, sir...”
It’s not like I’m missing hands and feet. Why make a fucking mess over something that should’ve been brought out on the way...
“You slow bastard... what’s taking you so long?! Run!”
“Ah. Yes. Coming.”
He couldn’t do a thing about it, not when the man was the boss’s son.
By the time Tae-jin got home, he paid his respects to his father and mother, then went with them to see his grandfather.
“I’m back, Grandfather.”
“...Hmm. So you’ve finally come to your senses?”
“Yes. From now on, I’ll be careful and make sure nothing troubles you.”
Unlike the way he had treated the staff driving him from the airport, his respectful greeting pleased Chairman Choi Tae-yeong, who looked over at his son, Choi Jeong-san, with obvious satisfaction.
“Heh. He’s come back from studying abroad, and the boy’s grown serious.”
Choi Jeong-san hid his own pleasure at the chairman’s reaction and answered as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Seems he’s grown up a little late.”
“Now that he’s finished school, he should be getting started, shouldn’t he?”
By “getting started,” the chairman meant company life, which was exactly what Choi Jeong-san wanted for his son as well.
“If you allow it, I’d like to begin management training.”
“Let him try anything he wants. But don’t go handing him a director’s title out of nowhere.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Choi Tae-jin hurriedly bowed, too.
“Thank you, Grandfather!”
“Hohoho. You rascal. Learn hard from your father.”
“Yes, Grandfather!”
Even on the way back home after meeting his grandfather, Choi Tae-jin could not hide his excitement.
Once I start working at the company...
He was certain that he would be the one to follow in the footsteps of his father, the president of TY Telecom.
“Son.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Any department you want?”
“......”
It was a casual question, but Tae-jin could not answer recklessly.
The competition’s already started. I’m ahead of the second one!
He had gotten the jump on his younger brother, which meant he had to secure his place in the company without fail. Only then could he keep that position locked down in the years ahead.
In that case...
To secure his inheritance, Tae-jin brought up the department he had been thinking about since his study-abroad days.
“I’ve been torn between the finance team, which can help me understand the company’s internal flow, and the sales team, which connects the company to the outside world.”
“Oh? You’d already been thinking about it? Hahaha.”
“...I’ve been worrying over it for a while.”
“So you’ve been gulping down your wishful thinking by the bowlful, huh?”
“Well, thanks to that, I was able to answer your question.”
“Heh. Fine. Then I’ll assign you next week. Start as a deputy manager in Sales Strategy Team 1.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“Once you’re at the company, you call me President.”
“Yes, President!”
“Not yet, you punk. Hahaha.”
His mother joined the conversation, too.
“Our son’s all grown up now. You’re reassured, aren’t you?”
“Ahem. My dear, it’s strange if a man this age still acts like a child.”
That said, Choi Jeong-san was pleased with the change in his son as well.
“Take this. You’ll need to adjust to life in Korea before you start work.”
Choi Jeong-san pulled a corporate card from his wallet and held it out.
“Father...”
“Go meet your friends, buy some clothes... But don’t contact any of the troublemakers you used to run around with.”
“Yes.”
“And no women. You understand?”
“Of course. I’m not interested in women anymore.”
His interest in women had long since vanished. That was because he had become addicted to a drug they could not even begin to imagine.
“Looks like our Tae-jin is finally taking after you. He used to torment you over that problem all the time.”
“......”
He was the eldest son, and in that one matter he looked exactly like his father, but Choi Jeong-san pretended not to notice. So far, he had managed to keep his mistresses hidden from his wife.
And lately, my condition’s been good too...
On top of that, he had recently been full of the kind of vigor he used to have when he was young. The symbol of his long-deflated manhood had come roaring back to life.
I was under a lot of stress from work back then.
But the reason he had started functioning again was because James had lifted the castration spell cast on him.
Choi Jeong-san wanted to see his mistresses again, and as expected, he had been going back to the women he had stopped visiting. Everything was unfolding exactly according to Park Jin-tae and James’s plan.
“That said, you can’t be completely uninterested either, can you? You’ll be getting married soon...”
“Honey. Should I look into it separately?”
“Do you have any decent families in mind?”
“It won’t be easy to find someone who can keep up with our brilliant son...”
She was no different when it came to cherishing her son.
“I’ll find a good family and narrow down the candidates. Hohoho.”
“......”
Choi Jeong-san thought of the youngest daughter of the ST Group, whom James had been seeing, and said,
“Tae-jin.”
“Yes, Father.”
“I hear the youngest daughter of ST Group is about your age...”
“Ah...”
“Oh? ST Group? You really know her?”
“I heard the kids were all exchanging contact information and hanging out with each other. I wondered if you might know her, too, Tae-jin.”
He was hoping, if only for a moment, that perhaps his son could be paired with her instead of James. If his son could snatch the woman away from that bastard, it would not only help him seize control of the TY Group, but also let him get rid of the bastard child who was getting under his skin.
“I do know her. I got to know her face while I was studying in the States.”
“Really?”
Choi Jeong-san’s hopes swelled at the possibility that Tae-jin might actually end up connected to her, but what his son said next was nothing like what he wanted to hear.
“That bitch... no, that girl was always running around with foreign men while she was abroad. Not just blond-haired foreigners, either—black-haired foreigners, too. I’m guessing she probably went around with Black guys before that as well.”
“......”
Choi Jeong-san knew exactly which black-haired foreign man his son was talking about.
So she’d been seeing James since her days in the States? Not in Korea?
“I didn’t have a very high opinion of ST Group to begin with, but their parenting is pathetic. They let their daughter run wild and don’t even control her. I definitely won’t be putting her on the list.”
If a girl was said to have been seeing foreign men during her time abroad, most people would naturally think of her that way.
“Anyway, I’m not interested in that girl.”
Not just Su-ji—every woman in the world was outside Tae-jin’s interest.
...I can’t even get it up anymore.
As a result, he no longer felt any sexual desire, and his interest and obsession with women had naturally disappeared as well. The only primal urge left in Choi Tae-jin’s head now was for drugs. Even now, all he wanted was to get out of the house and get high.
“Oh. Right. We can’t exactly put a girl like that on the candidate list.”
“I’m not interested in women. We can think about that later.”
“Still, a man...”
Choi Jeong-san’s insistence that his son meet women came from a sense of debt toward the mistresses he himself had been seeing.
“Honey. I said I’d look for suitable girls, didn’t I? It won’t be ST Group level, but there are plenty from good families who are proper and well-behaved.”
“Then you go and find them properly. The boy who used to hunt down women day after day now doesn’t want anything to do with them, no matter how much you push him...”
For Tae-jin, the card his father had given him, meeting his friends, and, above all else, the drugs he had smuggled in from the United States were far more important than women.
Enough of this boring conversation!
“Mom. The car I used to drive before is still in the garage, right?”
“It’s there. We had your father’s driver get it serviced because you were coming home.”
Choi Jeong-san said with clear displeasure,
“Let’s get rid of that old car quickly.”
“Then how am I supposed to get to work starting next week...”
Then, puffing himself up as if he had finally earned the right to play the father, he said,
“The company bought you one you can actually drive. They said it’ll be delivered during the week, so use your own until then.”
“Hehe. Thank you, President!”
“Thankful, my ass...”
As soon as Choi Tae-jin got home, he hurried right back out again.
“I’m heading out!”
He hadn’t even gotten in touch with his friends yet. His eyes were full of a dark, hungry longing as he stepped outside.
Someplace with no people... I should get a hotel first.
He wanted nothing more than to pull out the drugs he had brought in and use them right away, but that would be impossible anywhere with people around. So while he was driving, he called a hotel.
“Is this XX Hotel? Do you have a room available? A small one is fine.”
And behind him came a large SUV.
“Mr. Park. You’re keeping up, right?”
“Yes, Mr. James.”
Park Jin-tae’s vehicle was following close beside James’s car.
“Looks like Tae-jin’s headed for a hotel. I overheard him when he set out earlier—he was making a hotel reservation.”
James had activated his Third Eye and eavesdropped on Choi Tae-jin’s call.
“If he’s at a hotel, getting evidence will be...”
“This isn’t the only day we’ve got. It’s fine. He won’t be able to quit drugs all at once.”
“And once you factor in the other chaebol kids, he can’t be alone. Only if several of them become a problem at once will no one think this was aimed at Choi Tae-jin.”
That was the starting point for the media work that would drag down TY Telecom’s reputation. If they came out swinging too blatantly from the start, it could cause trouble for the plans that followed.
“Okay. Then let him have his fun today.”
“Yes. Then I’ll stop tailing him and head back to the company. Please get some rest as well, Mr. James.”
“Cool. Then let’s go after him again later, once he really starts using with his friends.”
But James had no intention of dropping the tail.
“I’ve got my own plan.”
Buuuuuum.
James’s car kept following Choi Tae-jin’s sleek imported sedan.
After rushing through check-in and getting to his room, Tae-jin slipped a hand inside his jacket.
“Come on out, my pure and sweet love...”
Rustle, rustle.
His fingers trembled as he peeled away the carefully wrapped plastic.
“Uuugh...”
He tilted the small bag over the hotel vanity and shook out a little of the white powder, then took out a card and spread it into a long, even line. After that, he brought the metal straw he had taken from the airport checkpoint to his nose.
“Hhhup.”
The white powder vanished in an instant.
“Ahh... sniff. Sniff.”
Ting.
Choi Tae-jin set the metal straw down on the vanity and threw himself onto the bed.
“This is it!”
The feeling of endless freedom in a dizzy world spinning around him always delivered a vicious, intoxicating thrill.
“......”
And James, hidden by magic, watched Choi Tae-jin from the shadows.