Part 4. The Second Task Begins (1)
Smack!
“Do you call yourselves hyung when you don’t even know your kid brother is sick?”
Smack! Smack!
Standing in a straight line, the three Jang brothers’ cheeks were struck in turn, their faces snapping to the right under the pot-lid-sized hand of Jang Yuguk. Jang Jihyeok’s body—who had been standing silently with his hands clasped behind his back—swayed violently. Though Jang Yuguk was seventy-eight years old this year, he took better care of his body than most men in their sixties; he was robust and solid. If not for the chronic heart disease he suffered from, he was an old man with no reason to fear dying anytime soon.
“And you—working as Vice President at Free Enterprise—you, of all people! Your younger brother hasn’t shown his face for over three days!”
Smack!
With a sharp sound, Jang Jihyeok’s cheek snapped to the left once more. Seeing that, his wife shouted,
“What is wrong with you, seriously?! What is that bastard worth for you to do this to my son?!”
But Jang Yuguk, instead of agreeing, defended Choi Suho, who wasn’t even present.
“If we’d raised Suho in this house, this never would’ve happened! If only you’d accepted Suho as your son……!”
“Why should I accept him? He’s not my son—he’s Choi Juho’s!”
“Strictly speaking,”
said Jang Jihyeok calmly, not even wiping away the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth after being slapped repeatedly,
“he isn’t Choi Juho’s son either.”
“You little bastard……!”
Jang Yuguk trembled with rage. His wife, pale with shock, stepped in front of Jang Jihyeok to block him.
“Stop it, dear. He’s not even one of our children.”
“What do you mean he’s not our child?! He’s my son!”
When Jang Yuguk roared, Jang Jihyeok—who almost never raised his voice—wrapped an arm around his mother and shouted back,
“Choi Suho is NOT part of this family!”
“What? I’ve told you over and over that Suho is your brother!”
Twisting his blood-smeared lips upward, Jang Jihyeok replied,
“He was registered in the family registry as Choi Juho’s brother. Did that bastard even know Choi Juho as his hyung? The name Choi Suho itself came from Choi Juho’s name in the first place—”
Thud!
Crash!
Jang Yuguk’s fist smashed into Jang Jihyeok’s face, and Jang Jihyeok’s massive body collapsed backward along with his mother. Even in that moment, he shielded her with his body, so she wasn’t hurt. The startled wife whipped her head around, rushed at her husband, grabbed him by the collar, and screamed,
“Shut up!”
“What?! Who do you think you are, telling me to shut up?!”
“I’m your wife! Your lawful wife and the mother of your children! Why shouldn’t I say anything?! My son is getting beaten over some worthless bastard! Or what—he’s not just a bastard? He’s a replacement for dead Choi Juho? You filthy piece of trash!”
Unable to contain his fury, Jang Yuguk let out a low, mocking scoff at his wife. When even Jang Jihun stepped in, saying,
“Father, Mother, please stop. The kids are on the second floor,”
Jang Yuguk planted his hands on his hips and bellowed in a thunderous voice,
“You think your kids amount to anything? They’re not even the ones Suho will give birth to!”
At that moment, Jang Jihyeok—who had been sitting on the floor listening to everything—burst into uncontrollable laughter. Like fireworks exploding out of nowhere, his sudden laughter made the family freeze mid-fight and stare at him in shock.
“Haahahahaha! Hahahahaha!”
But Jang Jihyeok didn’t stop laughing, like someone seated in the front row of a stand-up comedy show. The boy who had always been quiet to the point of being unreadable suddenly behaving like this left everyone staring blankly.
“Heh… hehehe.”
Shaking his shoulders with his head bowed like a madman, Jang Jihyeok abruptly cut off his laughter and asked flatly,
“So what will you do if Suho really comes back pregnant?”
In that instant, it was as though the house—after being ravaged by a typhoon—had entered the eye of the storm. The winds had been raging just moments ago, and now a suffocating, insane tension descended, the kind where one wrong step could get everything swept away. Everyone except Jang Jihyeok and Jang Yuguk couldn’t even breathe.
This was Jang Yuguk’s wish—his reverse scale—something no one dared touch.
“Suho having a child……”
The look on Jang Yuguk’s face as he imagined Choi Suho returning with a child was that of a man who had reached utopia. Envisioning a future where the son he loved most bore a child was no different from any other father’s dream.
But the expressions on the rest of the family’s faces were pure abyss. His wife screamed,
“How could that be possible?! What is some bastard worth?!”
Jang Jihun bit his lip and bowed his head deeply, knowing that no matter how hard he struggled, he could never win against Choi Suho, who started from an entirely different line. Jang Jihae, meanwhile, acted as if he didn’t even exist, focusing solely on holding his place while barely breathing.
“But did Suho get some Omega pregnant without my permission? He didn’t impregnate some worthless recessive Omega, did he?!”
Jang Yuguk’s blissful expression didn’t last long. The thought that the son he cherished most might have impregnated an Omega like Do Si-in without his approval made a heavy lump surge up in his chest.
“No, no. That can’t happen. A recessive Omega in our family……”
Shaking his head, Jang Yuguk muttered, “Absolutely not,” when Jang Jihyeok flashed a toothy grin and added pointedly,
“I said Suho would be the one giving birth.”
“So that recessive Omega is the one giving birth—”
“No.”
Jang Jihyeok covered his mouth with his fist to suppress the laughter bubbling up and said,
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Suho—hehehehe—became a recessive Omega himself, gave birth, and came back to you? Just like Suho was born because Father raped Choi Juho, Suho could become a recessive Omega, get raped, and give birth to a child that looks just like him! Another child Father desires being born again……!”
Thud! Crash!
“SHUT UUUUP!”
Letting out a lion’s roar, Jang Yuguk smashed a flower vase over Jang Jihyeok’s head. Blood streamed down over Jang Jihyeok’s smiling face. Seeing that, his wife covered her mouth, unable to breathe, while Jang Jihun and Jang Jihae stared wide-eyed at the confrontation between father and eldest son. Jang Jihyeok wiped away the thick blood running down enough to block his vision and muttered,
“This doesn’t change the fact that you raped Choi Juho and had Choi Suho.”
“Shut up! I loved Juho—huff, huff……! I loved Juho more than anyone—huff……! Ugh……!”
“Dear!”
That was when it happened. Jang Yuguk clutched his chest, his face draining white, and collapsed unconscious. Jang Jihyeok stared at his father with a blood-soaked face and said indifferently,
“Call the professor. The device implanted in his heart probably failed to activate properly due to the shock.”
“Is this really the time to call a professor?! Your father collapsed! Call 119 right now!”
“And you still have it in you to care about Father?”
At Jang Jihyeok’s question, his wife clutched her husband and snapped sharply,
“You boys haven’t seen the will yet, have you?”
At that, the three brothers fell silent. Staring coldly at her husband—who was barely breathing, still deathly pale—she continued in a hollow voice,
“If you knew the first beneficiary on the will is that bastard, would you just let your father die?”
Before the sneer in her voice had even faded, Jang Jihun shouted to Jang Jihae,
“Call 119 now! Call the professor too!”
as he lifted their father up.
“Father, are you okay? Father!”
“Huff… huff.”
Having taken a severe shock to the heart and still not fully conscious, Jang Yuguk—who hadn’t heard the earlier exchange—desperately called out one name.
“Juho… Juho… Juho……”
Jang Jihyeok watched him coldly, his face drenched in blood. Looking at his father—howling Choi Juho’s name like a wounded animal—as something less than human, Jang Jihyeok glanced at the handkerchief offered by the housekeeper who had worked in this house for years. Not understanding what he was supposed to do, he just stared at her with a blunt expression.
“Oh dear, young master Jihyeok,”
she said, calling him as she used to, as she pressed the handkerchief against the place where his scalp had been completely torn open and blood was flowing freely. Then she spoke anxiously,
“It’s important to take care of the Chairman, but someone needs to look after you too. Your head is split open—what are we going to do? Go to the hospital right away.”
Come to think of it, while everyone was busy tending to the father who held the power to write the will, there wasn’t a single family member taking care of him—with his scalp torn open.
—Jihyeok-ah, are you okay?
Come to think of it, Choi Juho had been the same. Even when his own situation was dire, he was the only one in this household who took care of Jang Jihyeok when Father scolded him.
Even as Jang Jihyeok, following Father’s orders, pinned down Choi Juho’s wrists and bound his body with his own hands, Choi Juho worried about Jang Jihyeok.
As if he understood that Jang Jihyeok wasn’t acting of his own will, he looked at him with gentle eyes……
—Jihyeok-ah, if it gets too hard, you can stop. What you want to do……
—Juho hyung.
—Yeah?
—I’m doing this because I want to.
If he hadn’t said that, would Choi Juho have chosen suicide after giving birth to Choi Suho?
—Aaaaaaah! Juho!
Father’s scream still echoed in his ears.
—Juho! Nooooo!
—Waaah! Waaah!
—Juho, Juho!
Beside him, the baby Choi Juho had just given birth to was barely breathing after the umbilical cord was cut, yet no one paid any attention. They acted as though the child’s existence had never mattered in the first place.
In truth, to Jang Jihyeok, Choi Suho had never mattered.
And perhaps—to Father as well.
