Chapter 104

Kwon Taehan furrowed his brow like he couldn’t make sense of it. Yeah, even to my ears it sounded like complete bullshit.

“Biological father? If he’s your biological father, why adoption...? Is that even a thing?”

“Well... not my legal father on the family register—my biological father.”

Saying it like this made it sound even more ridiculous. I clicked my tongue and started from the basics.

“First off, my father is indeed the head of Seongmu Group.”

“...Seongmu Group?”

“You didn’t know?”

I’d meant to explain assuming he already knew.

Well... whatever.

It wasn’t important anyway. He kept dumping his life story on me, so I said this on impulse too. Sure, it’s faded a lot now more than ten years later, but back «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» then it caused a decent stir, so plenty of people knew.

Looking genuinely shocked, he asked back:

“The Seongmu Group I know... the company?”

“Yeah.”

“And the head of that company is your father?”

“Right.”

Come to think of it, it made sense he didn’t know. We’re the same age. If I was ten when I was adopted, that means he was ten too.

Seongmu Group, the company led by my biological father and one of Korea’s flagship corporations. They’ve got their hands in everything from electronics to food, and after the Gates started bursting, they quickly seized distribution rights over dungeon artifacts and ballooned even more.

What people thought of the company wasn’t my concern. It’s not like they were going to hand me management control or company shares. Even if they had, I wouldn’t have taken them.

And if you get technical... it’s basically a clean break, isn’t it?

After “that incident,” I started living separately from high school onward. Sure, little bits of meddling still pop up indirectly. Like how every time I go to see my mother, something unpleasant happens.

Of course, from the time we split households I did get an excessive amount of money tacked on with various conditions, but even that wasn’t out of love for a child.

After a long silence, Taehan asked, puzzled.

“But isn’t the Seongmu Group head a Choi? I thought it was CEO Choi Museok. Your last name is Seo.”

“Oh, that’s because I didn’t change my surname after the adoption. I took my mother’s surname.”

“...I don’t really get it—so CEO Choi Museok is your biological father, but your mother is someone else?”

You understood it just fine.

I let out a small laugh and added a bit more.

“To be precise, my mother and CEO Choi had a brief affair.”

“What?”

“Of course, before CEO Choi married his current wife, my adoptive mother.”

Yeah, that’s how it was. The famously beautiful love story of Seongmu Group’s Choi Museok had a few behind-the-scenes footnotes.

The Korean woman the twenty-four-year-old Choi Museok “happened” to meet on a trip turned out to be the daughter of Madam Yang, who oversaw the department store affiliate of Yurim Group. And unbelievably, the two of them supposedly had no clue about each other’s backgrounds, were swept up in the romance of travel, and naturally fell for each other; they started dating, and by their thirties they just as naturally married. They had several children and remained a picture-perfect couple....

That much is the love story known to the public; my mother and Choi Museok’s love story was closer to the behind-the-scenes.

Even setting aside that all of Choi’s “coincidences” were neatly packaged lies, he was a pretty filthy person.

Before marriage, sometime around twenty-eight, he gradually grew bored with the relationship. I can’t say whether he deliberately decided to stray or just happened to fall in love with my mother, but the conclusion is this: right before his wedding, he started dating my mother.

Absolute lunatic.

Whether my mother recognized who he was then is unknown, but their affair burned hot, and in the process a child was born.

I went on, flatly.

“Then I happened, and my mother wanted to get married, but it must have been very difficult on CEO Choi’s end. He’s the type who can’t drop what’s in his hands, so maybe—from his perspective—it was the obvious choice?”

“...You call your biological father ‘CEO Choi’?”

Yeah, that was the problem. He wasn’t the type to give up everything for me and my mother. Choi’s father—that is, my grandfather—wouldn’t have tolerated his son’s infidelity, and Yurim Group’s Jang Yujeong, Choi’s wife-to-be, would have reconsidered the marriage.

Choi chose Jang Yujeong over my mother, and only tried to correct a momentary mistake that happened along the way.

“CEO Choi and my adoptive mother got married. In exchange, he proposed secretly sending child support to my mother.”

“......”

“It was a decent deal. The child support was hefty. My mother wasn’t exactly well-off.”

My memories from that time are all in shards. But what I remember clearly is that despite receiving child support, my mother still lived pretty poor.

“Then why the adoption...?”

“My mother asked for it.”

Even at that, he still frowned, like it didn’t add up.

“...Sorry to say it like this, but if CEO Choi’s that kind of person, why would he agree to adopt you? Not adopting would’ve been... easier, from what it sounds like.”

“That part’s not really important.”

“Is it that awkward to tell me?”

“No, I’m just too lazy.”

At that, his brow unknotted and his face flashed with a brief, incredulous look. But honestly, I was lazy about it. To explain this whole process to him, I’d have to explain my mother, too, and there were more than a few complications there.

No need to make him swallow every last detail.

I mulled it over for a moment, then skipped to the conclusion with a slight frown.

“Well... it wasn’t so much a request as it was basically blackmail. My mother was preparing to go public.”

“Go public? With what? The affair?”

“That too, while we’re at it. He hadn’t even paid the child support properly. To avoid prying eyes, he used to deliver cash only; then at some point, it just stopped.”

Thinking back now, he probably wanted me and my mother to just die and be done with it. Which, fine, I could understand to a degree.

Rationally, it’s cleaner to eliminate a risk than to carry it forever. And my mother’s mind had started to go by then, so it was a fairly workable plan.

He pressed his brows together, unable to find a proper response.

“In that whole process—who knows what exactly—debts piled up... loan sharks started knocking... that kind of thing. She’d pay, then it would balloon again. Common tactics. But honestly, I don’t remember well. I was a bit too young.”

“How old were you?”

“Before ten. I was adopted at ten.”

“...What the... And now... that kind of man is living it up like that? Why didn’t you blow the whistle?”

What kind of crap is that. His funny little idea made me laugh without thinking.

“...Why are you laughing?”

“Come on, Taehan. Whatever else—I was adopted. And what would I even expose about Choi Museok? Do a DNA test and hold it up as proof—what would I get out of it?”

He looked like he wanted to argue.

“At least his relationship with your mother...”

“Oh, that? That’s already long past.”

I shrugged and stated a simple fact.

“My mother’s dead.”

“......”

“I was eleven? No, maybe twelve... around then, for sure.”

“...Dead.”

“I don’t know the exact date. She disappeared first, then was found dead. No autopsy.”

“......”

There were endless doubts you could raise, but the world has truths that don’t need digging up. I believed Choi had my mother killed, but... even if he hadn’t, it didn’t change much.

There was a reason for the missing-person report.

My mother, oddly enough, wasn’t that different before and after drinking. Most people are out of it after drinking, but she, peculiarly, spoke more lucidly after she drank.

Maybe because of that, from when I was young she drank often to maintain that clarity. The last time I saw her, she’d been drinking too.

She was diagnosed with alcoholism, but in truth it was closer to drinking as a means to stay sane. Of course, nobody knew that backstory, so the “reason for disappearance” line just said something like “loss of reality due to frequent drinking,” and that was that.

He stayed quiet for quite a while. I waited for his reply and pulled up those days in my head, one by one.

What came first were the things my mother used to say on reflex when she was at her clearest.

Before ten, I was, naturally, as dumb as a ten-year-old, so I didn’t understand most of it. Looking back now, she was right about everything.

“I don’t believe in the theory that humans are born good.”

“......”

“A child is vicious from the moment they’re born. They can’t consider others, so of course they’re self-centered. But can you call that evil? It’s perfectly natural. If ninety-nine kids pop the candy into their own mouths and a single child yields it, that one is the outlier. So can we say that one child is good?”

“......”

“The answer to that question is ‘yes.’ You won’t understand it now... but, Jehyun.”

“......”

“Goodness is a good thing.”

Isn’t it strange? My memories are a mess, yet those words come back whole.

Anyway, she kept teaching me why I should live kindly. Even on the last day I saw her.

The apartment I visited for the first time after the adoption wasn’t the shabby villa we’d lived in together, but a clean high-rise. I didn’t think it would be the last time, so we didn’t do anything special.

We just talked a bit... did we eat together? Probably. She likely drank with the meal, too.

What really stuck from that day wasn’t much beyond that I touched something I shouldn’t have and burned my shoulder and back. To be honest, even that isn’t a vivid memory. The scar remained, and I reconstructed the rest.

More than that, what stayed with me was what she said, holding me tight as the skin of my back peeled in real time from the burn.

“If you can’t draw the line between good and evil yourself, then always follow the rules.”

Her eyes flashed. It was a moment so intense I forgot the heat on my back.

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand. Keep repeating it to yourself. Keep the law. Follow the rules. Don’t live as a criminal. Just that alone makes you worthy.”

“......”

“If you absolutely had to break the law, then don’t get caught. You’ll understand what I mean when you’re older, so just memorize it for now.”

“......”

“Live kindly.”

When I revisit... my mother’s excellent lessons, yes, I did grow up excellent.