So Choi Suho’s existence, in the end, was nothing more than a child forcibly conceived to shackle Choi Juho— not a child born of love.
Knowing that, what kind of expression would you make, Suho?
I wish you’d kill yourself too, just like Juho hyung did.
Since you drove Juho hyung to his death, you should die as well.
I’ll make sure that happens.
Jang Jihyeok smiled, his face drenched in blood.
Your very existence is karma.
***
Unfortunately, on the day he arrived in front of Ji Haesu’s office, Choi Suho was told that his father had gone into surgery for acute cardiac arrest. Having been explicitly warned by his father’s lawful wife never to show his face when the Jang family gathered—just because he was a bastard—Suho couldn’t go to the hospital room.
Everything about this reality was fucking awful, but at least there was a sliver of relief in hearing from his father’s secretary that the surgery had gone safely and the Chairman had been moved to a hospital room. That meant he no longer had to show his current state to his father.
—Young Master, even so, you mustn’t get into another fight. You understand, don’t you?
“I know. Don’t worry.”
Saying that, Choi Suho shoved Tylenol and fever reducers into his mouth and swallowed them. Gulp, gulp. After noisily finishing the pills, he downed the tonic his father had given him as well. As the growing drowsiness washed over him, his eyelids fluttered slowly.
“Haa… what’s wrong with my body? The fever won’t go down……”
Removing the eyepatch from one bloodshot eye, Choi Suho rubbed his throbbing cheek and spat out a curse. The beating he’d taken from Ji Haesu left no part of his body untouched by pain as time passed.
“You fucking bastard. I’ll kill you today, for real.”
They said it would take several days before Father fully regained consciousness. That gave him enough time to deal with Ji Haesu.
Yet guilt crept up from the corner of his heart at the thought of not being able to go to his unconscious father. I shouldn’t be here—I should be by Dad’s side…… But my social standing, and this face injured because of Ji Haesu… I can’t even stand next to him.
The anger at being unable to visit his father shifted toward Ji Haesu, flaring into an open blaze. Just thinking about what Ji Haesu had done to him made his teeth grind together, his hands trembling so badly they shook the steering wheel.
Show yourself already, Ji Haesu.
Contrary to expectations, Ji Haesu’s office was blatantly located near Gangnam Station, swarming with people. Suho had assumed it’d be somewhere in Gyeonggi Province—close to Seoul but less crowded—but instead it was a massive eight-story building right by Gangnam Station.
But the real problem surfaced elsewhere.
According to Suho’s investigation, the man called Ji Haesu was a completely different person from the Ji Haesu he thought he knew. The shock of that discovery was indescribable.
Using the address, phone number, and name he’d painstakingly copied down while looking at himself in the mirror, he asked a contact to dig into it. The result was—
Ji Haesu was a missing person in his thirties who had graduated from Seoul National University’s graduate school of engineering. His age was roughly similar to the Ji Haesu Suho knew, but his appearance and life history were entirely different.
—Is this really the information you dug up like I asked?
When Suho questioned him, the broker said something strange.
—Yes. But, uh… actually, he’s not just missing. He’s legally deceased. He’s been missing for over seven years, so he was declared dead.
In that instant, goosebumps rippled across Suho’s entire body, like ice-cold water being poured over him.
—What about the phone number?
—That’s a burner phone too. It’s not under his name.
—And the building?
—Registered under someone else. Looks like that floor is used by a loan shark operating out of a multi-level marketing company’s building.
A man living brazenly in South Korea under the identity of a deceased person—using the alias Ji Haesu.
Squatting inside a floor used by a pyramid-scheme loan shark, in a building registered under someone else’s name.
Even the phone number Suho had been given was a burner, and the car plate was fake as well.
Then what part of the Ji Haesu Suho knew was even real?
By the time he reached that conclusion, Suho could feel just how meticulously Ji Haesu had approached him. He could sense that Do Si-in had deliberately tried to drag him all the way down into hell. With that realization, Suho burned all the documents he’d gathered.
No one else can know about this.
And before Father finds out, Ji Haesu and Do Si-in must be dealt with—fast. If he let Do Si-in live after trying to push him into a fate worse than death, something far worse would happen.
“Fuck, I should’ve killed them back then!”
The petty sympathy and cheap guilt he’d once felt toward Do Si-in vanished the moment he finished investigating Ji Haesu. Fuck, I’m the one about to get completely screwed right now—feeling sorry for him? Guilty? Fuck that! If things went wrong, his entire life would be ruined forever.
“Huff… huff.”
Inside the domestic burner car he’d arranged through a broker—just like Ji Haesu, to keep his own trail hidden—Suho screamed and slammed the steering wheel repeatedly. His right eye throbbed painfully beneath the eyepatch. Letting out a groan, he covered his aching eye with his left hand, when the phone on the dashboard mount rang.
It was a number he’d never seen before.
Yet he had a strong premonition that he couldn’t ignore this call. Extending his right hand—crudely wrapped in bandages—Suho answered. Pain shot from his wrist to the back of his hand, but he forced himself to ignore it.
Before he could even say Hello, a soft female voice spoke.
[The boss says for you to come up to the 8th floor.]
“Is the boss there?”
[No. He stepped out briefly to meet a client—]
The line went dead before she could finish.
Suho immediately got out, grabbed a golf club and a baseball bat from the back seat, and stormed into the building. Elderly men and middle-aged women—lured by pyramid schemes in hopes of tasting easy money—hesitated when a handsome young man with an eyepatch, covered in bruises, entered like a demon, gripping a baseball bat in one hand and a golf club in the other.
Yet no security guard, no one at the desk, dared stop him. An artificially constructed silence settled over the place.
Suho confidently boarded an elevator someone else had been holding open. True to someone who’d long since tossed morality aside, he pressed 8, and when others tried to get on, he repeatedly mashed the Close button, locking them out.
Riding alone straight up to the 8th floor, the elevator doors slid open.
A line of bulky men in black suits—gangsters—stood waiting for him.
“Welcome—”
“Fuck off. Where’s your boss’s room?”
Suho demanded. Eyes buried in muscle—or fat—twitched, but they didn’t resist. Either Ji Haesu had given orders, or they simply guided him obediently.
President Shim Youngsoo
“…Huh.”
“This way.”
Not Ji Haesu, but Shim Youngsoo? This bastard really laundered his identity clean.
Letting out a short laugh, Suho followed them inside and removed his eyepatch. He put on the transparent goggles he’d prepared in advance, blocked the gangsters from entering, and locked the door.
“H-Hey, you can’t do that!”
From outside, they shouted, “This is inappropriate, President Choi Suho!” but knowing exactly who he was, they didn’t dare touch him.
Yeah. That’s the kind of man I am. Hear my name, and you all know better than to cross me.
“Fuck you, Ji Haesu, you son of a bitch!”
Bam! Crash!
“President Choi Suho—!”
“You fucker, I told you I’d kill you!”
Choi Suho’s rampage began. Though the room bore the name President Shim Youngsoo, it had been introduced as Ji Haesu’s office, so he didn’t care. Gripping the baseball bat with both his roughly bandaged right hand and his left, he started smashing everything in sight.
Bonsai trees worth hundreds of thousands at minimum, meticulously cultivated orchids, lavish Eastern paintings—countless expensive items were reduced to worthless fragments in Suho’s hands.
He smashed so violently that his bare left hand was quickly drenched in blood. His right hand swelled even more, turning mottled blue and red like autumn leaves. The subordinates, forced to watch through the glass wall, fidgeted helplessly—until they flinched at a sudden laugh.
“Hahaha, such a cute little thing.”
“J-Ji Haesu…… President?”
“Isn’t Suho cute?”
Ji Haesu had appeared without a sound. From beyond the glass wall, he gazed fondly at Choi Suho as he raged and destroyed the office.
Only after the baseball bat finally gave out did Suho pause, panting. Sensing a smiling gaze fixed on him, he slowly turned his head. The moment he saw Ji Haesu on the other side of the glass, greeting him with a cheerful,
“Hi, Suho,”
Crash!
“Kyaaah!”
“Aaaah!”
He hurled the remaining golf club straight at the glass wall. It shattered easily—not reinforced glass—and Ji Haesu and his staff were showered with shards like falling sleet.
“Th-the glass……! Do you know how much that costs—?!”
A panicked gangster made a fuss, pointing at the gaping hole. Ji Haesu lightly shoved the man’s head aside, reached through the broken window, unlocked the door, and stepped in, speaking leisurely to Suho.
“Was breaking this meant as a kind gesture—telling me to open the locked door myself?”
“Shut up, you fucking freak!”
