“Seo-ryong, if you’re ready, let’s go.”
“What about Uncle?”
“Take care.”
“He said take care. Come on.”
Even as Cha Eui-sung flopped down and got up again from the sofa, making a scene, neither Kim Jeong-baek nor—surprisingly—Seo-ryong reacted in the slightest.
It wasn’t like he’d done anything particularly weird in this house before. But since nobody seemed the least bit surprised or fazed, Cha Eui-sung felt strangely unsettled.
“You came knowing it’s school time, didn’t you? Just sit tight. I’ll check the rest when I get back.”
Was there any need to say something everyone already knew? As soon as Kim Jeong-baek specifically brought up school, Eui-sung instinctively furrowed his brows and bit his lip.
That so-called insignificant place called school suddenly felt like an isolated realm wrapped in a barrier.
A place someone like him couldn’t step into. It hadn’t even been that long ago that he’d been attending every day—yet now it felt utterly foreign.
The only comfort was that, like it or not, every morning Moon Tae-young would see Seo-ryong and inevitably be reminded of him.
Cha Eui-sung didn’t want to be forgotten—by his enemies or his lovers.
He’d rather be remembered through gritted teeth and curses. Because in the end, that still meant attention.
While he stood there, lost in thought, clack! the front door shut.
With the residents gone, the house fell into an eerily profound silence.
His body began to slacken under the oppressive stillness, yet his mind remained on razor-edge alert.
Not that his thoughts were any clearer for it. He was just teetering along, nerves stacked up layer by layer like fragile glass.
Pressing a hand against his pounding temple, Cha Eui-sung sifted through the documents alone.
Issues related to the prison. Ominous information about certain individuals in the Hunter Association.
Those goddamn old bastards—every one of them was in on it.
Oh Se-dan had deliberately muddied the waters, including irrelevant figures to make it harder to pinpoint the actual culprits.
But as he dug deeper into the data, it became clear that even more people were entangled in the mess than either he or Moon Tae-young had realized.
And it made sense. The Jo Tae-jong case had caused a massive national uproar.
To the people involved, though, it was just one of many dirty deeds to be buried.
There wasn’t just one or two names tied to it. It was infuriating.
It wasn’t their crimes that pissed Cha Eui-sung off—it was that he hadn’t known about them.
Even after all that, after rising as high as Chairman of the Association, how many people had still been laughing behind his back?
Moon Tae-young probably didn’t know about many of the people involved either.
While Oh Se-dan was definitely a main accomplice to this current stress fest, teaming up with him hadn’t been entirely a mistake.
Now all that was left was to actually sit down and talk with Moon Tae-young again.
To probe how much he knows, how many more days do I need to wait?
He’d been an idiot. He should’ve humbled himself, calmed things down, and slipped in a few questions to draw out info.
Why had he lashed out like that all of a sudden? He still didn’t know.
The more his gauge filled, the stranger he became.
Got burned once already, and yet…
Come to think of it, he’d snapped like that with the second-round Oh Se-dan too, and everything had gone south.
It was all something he’d anticipated and braced for—so what the hell did he think he was doing, suddenly getting emotional like a child?
Cha Eui-sung stared blankly at the ceiling, trying to suppress the emotions that kept bubbling up.
He hated being clumsy and emotional.
It felt like the ghost of his first life kept hovering around, refusing to die.
Clack!
How long had he been zoning out? The sound of the front door being unlocked broke the silence, signaling someone had entered the house.
His eyes slid sideways.
There stood Kim Jeong-baek, hands in his pockets, wearing an odd expression.
“…You’ve been standing there the whole time? There’s a sofa right behind you.”
“Apparently so.”
“You’ve got a screw loose in the weirdest place, seriously.”
Grumbling, Kim Jeong-baek nodded toward the dining table.
Only then did Cha Eui-sung pick up the tablet PC he’d set down and head over to the table.
“Can you check this as quickly as possible?”
But unexpectedly, Kim Jeong-baek barely glanced at the tablet before switching off the screen.
He hesitated for a moment, eyes darting as if gauging the mood, then finally spoke.
“So, uh, mind if we talk about something else first?”
“What kind of something?”
“Earlier, I didn’t say anything because Seo-ryong was there—but you know you’re acting weird right now, don’t you?”
Apparently, all that time pretending to be fine in front of him had worked to some degree. The moment he spotted signs of stress from sleep deprivation, he jumped in with the question.
“If you’re worried something might go wrong with the job, don’t be. I’ll take full responsibility without any slip-ups.”
“I know. You’re the kind of guy who gets it done when he says he will. And for the record, I usually don’t get involved in my clients’ personal business. But…”
“…”
“Even if we’re not exactly close like that, I still worry about you as a fellow human being. So I figured I should ask.”
Not exactly close like that.
The oddly chosen phrase stirred up recent memories.
Cha Eui-sung instinctively frowned, tapping the glass tabletop with his finger.
“Did something happen with Mr. Moon?”
“…!”
“Yeah. That’s the kind of face I expected. But I still need to know. I only moved in here in the first place because of him.”
Cha Eui-sung flinched. He was pretty sure he hadn’t given anything away that pointed to Moon Tae-young, but maybe because this involved his own survival, Kim Jeong-baek picked up on it with eerie precision.
Well, they were business partners, technically. Even if it was a contractor arrangement, they’d shared so much info that they probably knew more about each other’s situation than anyone else.
Not to mention, in certain areas, he was actually pretty damn competent.
Maybe it wasn’t so surprising he’d noticed something.
Suppressing his irritation, Cha Eui-sung stopped drumming his fingers against the table.
He had rarely, if ever, mentioned his dealings with Moon Tae-young in front of Kim Jeong-baek. But now he was in a position where he at least owed him a heads-up.
And unlike romance, ‘friendship’ was something Kim Jeong-baek likely had more experience with than he did.
He hated admitting it, but it was true. A lot of the connections he had in this timeline were, after all, thanks to him.
Relaxing his expression, Cha Eui-sung pushed back the hair that had fallen over his eyes.
Kim Jeong-baek must have picked up on the shift—his eyes sparkled with curiosity.
How should he bring it up? What angle should he take?
After a moment’s hesitation, Cha Eui-sung sighed, feeling drained, and skipped straight to the point.
“He found out.”
“…What?”
“Moon Tae-young figured out—at least to some extent—that we’re a scam organization.”
“…WHAT?!”
His reaction was comically over-the-top.
…Am I really supposed to ask this guy for advice?
“He figured it out somehow and started probing me about it, so I gave him a cold brush-off. I think he got pissed. Said he won’t meet with me even if I call.”
“Wait, hold on—”
“So now I’m waiting. I figure once he cools off, I’ll try to talk to him again. I don’t know how much he’s pieced together, so I need to poke around and see.”
“Tsk…”
This time, it was Kim Jeong-baek who winced.
The thought of half a year’s worth of effort circling the drain clearly made him feel sick.
Then suddenly, his face stiffened and he spoke in a grave tone—like delivering a death sentence.
“No refunds.”
The seriousness in his voice was damn near heroic.
“Is that seriously what matters right now?”
“Of course it matters! Is the project dead or not?”
“Who says it’s dead? What, are you praying for it to fail or something?”
“Didn’t he say he never wanted to see you again? Is he gonna report you? Or told you to watch your back at night?”
“Never wanted to see me again, my ass…!”
Damn it. There it was again—that hot flash of anger.
The kind of nasty, doom-filled talk that made him want to snap. His eyebrows shot up involuntarily.
Seeing that reaction, Kim Jeong-baek clammed up, but then scratched the back of his head and cautiously continued.
“I mean, come on, look at the situation. And you know damn well that once you make up your mind, you have a way of just tearing people apart.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You mean to tell me someone you were glued to every damn day turned out to be a total fake—and then when he asks you about it, you answer like a dick? You’re lucky he didn’t knock your teeth in.”
Maybe he was just fired up because of how serious the situation was.
All the blunt, unfiltered expressions he usually kept in check came pouring out like a dam burst.
But Cha Eui-sung didn’t argue.
He just kept tapping the table with his finger.
It had already been five days of endless spiraling thoughts.
His mind said he was fine, but his stomach kept churning.
Maybe he just wanted to hear someone else’s objective take.
“No, if it were me, I wouldn’t have even confronted you. I’d have just ghosted your ass right then and there.”
Maybe because the atmosphere had softened, Kim Jeong-baek—after testing the waters a bit—went on without hesitation.
“But since he actually asked and left it at that… maybe he really wanted to know. That’s how it looks to me, anyway.”
“I’m not sure. Moon Tae-young’s always been the quiet type.”
“Then wouldn’t he have just cut contact completely? The fact that he came to ask in person—that’s not nothing. That takes effort. That’s interest.”
There was something oddly sweet about those words.
Even Cha Eui-sung, who’d been keeping up a front of cold cynicism, unconsciously leaned forward a little.
“I don’t know how much he knows. But I don’t think it’s completely over. Maybe that’s why he left the door open a crack.”
“You really think so?”
“I agree it’s risky to make the wrong move and trigger something that didn’t have to be triggered. But if we let this drag out too long, that’s not good either.”
“I’m not planning to let it sit forever. Two, maybe three weeks max.”
“Two weeks? Three?”
Damn it. Another screech.
“That’s basically a breakup!”
“You have to give people time to think. Besides, once we’re past two weeks, he’ll start feeling the pinch on his end too. And then…”
Left with no choice, Cha Eui-sung started outlining his plan, based on what he remembered from the second timeline.
Guys like Moon Tae-young—those with rigid inner worlds and stubborn wills—required a longer con.
Most importantly, unless they personally felt disruption in their own affairs, it was hard to get a grip on them during the next meeting.
Kim Jeong-baek wouldn’t know this, but Cha Eui-sung had plenty of experience manipulating people in a professional context.
He had a whole list of tailored psychological tactics ready depending on the personality type.
“Weren’t you pretending to be friends with Mr. Moon or something?”
But when he laid out the operation he’d carefully prepared, Kim Jeong-baek let out a disbelieving scoff.
Looking completely dumbfounded, he stared down at Cha Eui-sung for the first time and asked:
“Who the hell measures friendship like that? What, you running a business or something?”
