Shadows of the Fire
Lunchtime had arrived, yet Yuju sat alone on a campus bench instead of heading to the cafeteria.
Ever since her brother’s forced marriage had been decided, not a single day had passed in peace. The mental fog she had been living in only deepened after her sudden marriage to Seo-won.
Her friends seemed to sense something was off; their eyes held a hundred unspoken questions. But Yuju had nothing clear or coherent she could offer them by way of explanation.
It was not merely the awkwardness of broadcasting news of her marriage to her brother’s friend. A nameless restlessness had unsettled her heart.
“…….”
After a long while lost in thought, Yuju stared fixedly at the phone in her hand.
Her entire body still ached from the night before. Her appetite had vanished along with it. Seeing Seo-won so desolate and drunk had left the strange energy she had felt meeting Chairman Choi lodged stubbornly in her mind.
The suspicion that Seo-won had endured an unhappy childhood, that he carried many wounds.
Once that thought seized control of her mind, resolve kindled in her eyes. Her hesitant fingers began to move with sudden speed.
Osong Group.
At first she had hesitated, uncertain even what to search for. She soon discovered the worry had been needless.
It was a major conglomerate ranked among the top five in the business world. So famous was the company that simply typing the name flooded the screen with countless results in an instant.
Main businesses, stock performance, philanthropic works large and small—everything.
In the articles, Chairman Choi appeared thoroughly unassuming. Yuju herself would have thought the same had she judged only by appearances.
Kind. A good man.
If she had never actually met him.
Somehow, I get a bad feeling from him.
That was as far as Yuju’s impression of Chairman Choi went.
She could not put her finger on exactly what it was. Yet somehow he radiated an unpleasant energy. Having survived so long under her coercive father, it was pure survival instinct that had sensed it.
Her hands gradually quickened. Then they stopped cold. The very reason she had searched rather than ask Seo-won directly—the subject she had feared would touch his wounds—had just appeared before her eyes.
“A fire accident?”
What she most wanted to know was information about Seo-won’s parents.
According to her brother they had died when he was little. He had never explained the exact circumstances, so she had never known. Before the marriage she had not been curious enough to look it up on her own.
But it had apparently been a major incident; the articles laid out every detail. As if spellbound, Yuju focused on the text.
Beneath the densely written account of the circumstances remained photographs taken after the accident had been cleaned up. There were only a few, yet they were horrific enough to convey the scale of the blaze.
She calculated the date. Instantly her face drained of color.
“Seo-won oppa must have been so terribly young.”
The conclusion left Yuju’s stomach churning.
She had had an older brother to protect her. Her mother had still been alive until she was in middle school.
But to have grown up under a man like that with no one at all to shield him—life must have been desperately hard.
“…….”
A sharp ache flared through Yuju’s chest in an instant. It was the symptom she had been experiencing more and more often lately: synchronizing with Seo-won’s pain without even understanding why.
She still could not define her own emotions—why she kept worrying about him, why his wounds made her own heart ache.
Unruly thoughts spun her mind into dizziness. Yet one thing she was certain of.
Yuju wanted Seo-won to be happy.
Chairman Choi slowly read down the densely written page.
The matter had nothing to do with business, yet his intensity surpassed even the focus he brought to major projects. The tension was so thick that Chief Park felt it wash over him as well.
“She appears to have grown up entirely ordinarily in a middle-class household. She studied well; there’s nothing particularly noteworthy. If I had to dig something up…”
Chief Park trailed off. He hesitated, yet finished in the end.
“Prosecutor Han Beom-su seems to have a well-known tendency to try to control his children.”
“Control?”
“Yes. The rumor is widespread that he raised both his son and daughter in a manner no different from abuse. He chose everything to his own taste—schools, personal relationships, all of it.”
In short, he had used even his own children for his network of connections.
Having seen similar sorts before, Chairman Choi felt little reaction. What intrigued him was not Han Beom-su but Han Yuju.
The thoroughly terrified girl had looked, at a glance, like any ordinary child of her age. Yet just as Yuju had sensed in that brief moment that Chairman Choi was no ordinary man, he had sensed that she was no ordinary college student.
The reason she had been frightened of him—who wore the mask of a kindly man—seemed to be that she had read the true nature hidden beneath that smiling face.
“She did seem clever enough…”
She appeared good at reading situations, knowing when to yield. Still, she was a young thing who could not yet hide her age.
The real problem was his grandson’s intention in marrying that girl even while defying his orders.
Of course her beauty was striking. Even through an adult’s eyes it was understandable why a young grandson would fall for her.
But a mere love game did not seem reason enough for his grandson to defy him.
Tuk. Tuk.
Chairman Choi’s thoughts stretched longer. He tapped the desk irregularly, absorbed in trying to excavate his grandson’s true motives.
The boy was polite and usually listened well enough, yet the chairman had never been able to read him. That had been true since childhood, when a child’s inner world should have been transparent.
Which was why he could not simply dismiss this act of defiance. Even knowing that longer thought would not readily yield an answer, his mind continued to turn.
What finally pulled him free was the unexpected mention of a name.
“Chairman, Prosecutor Han Beom-su is downstairs. He says he has come to see you.”
“Prosecutor Han Beom-su?”
Chief Park, who had just taken a call from the lobby, spoke without preamble. That single phrase instantly cut through Chairman Choi’s thoughts.
Even a prosecutor would know it was difficult to appear in a place like this without an appointment—especially when seeking a face-to-face meeting with the chairman.
Chairman Choi read a great deal of meaning from the brief situation. Beom-su clearly had a great many things he wished to discuss with him as well.
“Send him up.”
That was the conclusion he reached. Chief Park found the response unexpected—odd for a chairman who was hardly a man of leisure with time to meet just anyone.
“…Send him up.”
Chief Park harbored doubts but did not dwell on them; he simply followed the chairman’s order. A smile of satisfaction then curved Chairman Choi’s lips.
Perhaps this man could become a useful card to play later on.
With that thought, pleasure lit the corners of his eyes as he rose from his seat.
Honk!
Yuju, chatting with her friends as they left the building, reacted to the sound of a car horn.
In the parking lot with a clear view of the department building, a familiar car was waiting.
The scene felt somehow familiar. The day she had learned the marriage registration was complete, Seo-won had come looking for her just like this.
“I’ll go on ahead.”
“What? Hey, Han Yuju, why do you keep… lately…”
There was no reason for him to come here today the way he had that other time. Though puzzled, Yuju dashed toward Seo-won’s car as if drawn by an invisible thread.
The moment she heard the locks disengage, she pulled open the passenger door and climbed in.
“Oppa, what brings you here?”
“I heard Tae-ju picks you up sometimes.”
“Huh? Yeah, he does, but…”
“Think of me as filling in for him.”
Why did this oppa keep trying to take over her brother’s role? There was no need to go that far.
Perhaps because he was her husband now, he had developed some strange sense of duty that he had to take responsibility for her. He had always been someone in a position overflowing with responsibility, after all.
On the other hand, it also seemed his eyes were oddly drawn to the existence that had suddenly begun living under the same roof. For the same reason as her own.
Pity.
She wondered if the emotion she was feeling right now amounted to something like that.
In an instant Yuju was swallowed by a chain of thoughts. For a moment she sat blankly facing the person in front of her.
Suddenly Seo-won leaned in close. At the dense scent that brushed her skin along with the breeze, Yuju swallowed her breath without realizing it.