A Brain Soaked in Dopamine

"Big brother?"

"Yes."

At the housekeeper's announcement, Lee Do-hee didn't rise from the sofa—just gave a small nod, her eyes still glued to her phone. Before long, a neatly suited man in his late thirties stepped into the parlor.

"Youngest. We finally see each other again and you can't even sit up to say hello?"

The man entered with a tired face, but the moment his gaze flicked over Woo Tae-kyung and one eyebrow arched slightly, he turned to Lee Do-hee—still sprawled out scrolling her phone—and his voice melted into warmth. His face softened along with it, as if the voice demanded nothing less.

"Hi, oppa."

"You took a few days off, but you went to school first?"

Lee Yoon-gyum, Chairman Lee's eldest, closed the distance and reached out to gently ruffle the hair of Do-hee, whose head was propped on a cushion.

"Ah, I told you not to touch my hair."

Strands fell into her face, and Do-hee twisted her head this way and that with an irritated click of her tongue, dodging his hand. Apparently finding that amusing, Yoon-gyum settled down—not on the sofa, but on the carpeted floor—and went right on mussing her hair.

"How bored were you, cooped up all that time?"

"I just ate three square meals a day, every day, like clockwork."

"Nobody gave you any trouble?"

The question was asked tenderly, but underneath it ran a thick current of meaning: if anyone had, I would not have let it slide.

"Everyone was nice to me. Did you tell them to treat me well? Was that you or second brother?"

"We were all worried about you."

With that, Yoon-gyum tenderly smoothed down the hair he'd just ruined. Do-hee accepted the touch as her due without so much as glancing up from her phone. Even though she was the child of a mistress—perhaps because she was his only sister.

Woo Tae-kyung watched Yoon-gyum with mild surprise, genuinely poised to fetch anything Do-hee might want, exactly as she'd claimed. Then, careful not to let his gaze linger too long, he turned his eyes to the enormous mural on the far wall.

"Se-gyum's in Macau right now, and Jae-gyum's in Busan, so they'll be late. Se-gyum says he'll bring you those egg tarts you love from Macau."

"He went there to gamble again, didn't he? So Dad's in a mood?"

"Hard to say. Father's mood swings daily, as always. But he dotes on you."

Without a trace of impatience, Yoon-gyum laid it all out—where each brother was, what they were doing, and what they'd bring back for her. Even in the middle of a gambling trip to Macau, Se-gyum had thought to buy egg tarts. Listening with half an ear, Woo Tae-kyung realized the confidence behind Do-hee's declaration was real: her brothers truly would do anything for her.

"I know."

"You know, and you still go pulling stunts like that?"

She'd killed a person, and it was merely "pulling a stunt." Woo Tae-kyung didn't blink. By that standard, he and Jang Hee-jo had spent years plowing through people like brakeless dump trucks, leaving accidents scattered in their wake.

The first time is hard. The second is easy. And once you know the family will bury it for you, everything goes numb.

Some distant part of him thought he ought to be scolding Do-hee right now, not standing around eavesdropping—but this had nothing to do with him, so he kept out of it. He simply observed them from afar, like figures in a framed family portrait.

"With the Ant Cave gone, things have gotten a bit tiresome, I'm afraid."

Only then did Yoon-gyum lift his eyes to Woo Tae-kyung, as if he'd known all along exactly who he was. A face Woo Tae-kyung had crossed paths with before. He inclined his head in a light bow of greeting.

"Was it really necessary to turn that place into a resort with people coming and going?"

Yoon-gyum asked with the face of a man who knew precisely what his father was discussing with Jang Hee-jo at this very moment.

"Yes, sir."

The moment he answered that Hee-jo intended to build it, the face that had been nothing but gentle toward Do-hee twisted into open displeasure.

"Father isn't fond of the idea either."

"Which is why I got her out faster, sir."

Woo Tae-kyung was taking credit for pulling Do-hee out. As it happened, the prosecutors had been burning with zeal to dig up tax evasion at SC Capital at the time, and Do-hee had spent longer behind bars than anyone expected.

"I've booked you a hospital appointment for next week. You claim you ate three meals a day, and yet you've lost even more weight."

Yoon-gyum murmured it like a sigh as he wrapped his hand around the slender wrist holding her phone. Woo Tae-kyung's little boast was brushed aside without ceremony. Yoon-gyum knew his sister got into less trouble when something had her attention. Apparently the dog they'd brought home had pleased her—the youngest's eyes had sparkled for the first time in ages.

"I'm supposed to be at school on weekdays?"

"Skip one day. How many months has it been? The rest of the family has all had their checkups."

"Aaaargh, if I go they'll run tests on me the whole damn day!"

Do-hee threw a full-blown tantrum, kicking the arm of the sofa in pure irritation. Once Woo Tae-kyung accepted that she wasn't just acting like a spoiled five-year-old for his benefit—she simply was like this—it made things considerably easier on the nerves. He went back to staring at a painting he couldn't make heads or tails of.

Only when Jang Hee-jo emerged from the study did Do-hee spring upright on the sofa.

She hadn't spared him a single glance when he went in, but now she fixed him with a look of gleaming expectation.

"You absolute lunatic."

Never mind that Chairman Lee doted on Do-hee, never mind that the brother who'd spent the afternoon tenderly petting her hair was standing right there—those were the first words out of Jang Hee-jo's mouth.

"Jang Hee-jo, I'm very grateful you got me out, and grateful is grateful—but Woo Tae-kyung stays. Dad said so too, didn't he?"

"Hey. You actually planning to stay here?"

Jang Hee-jo asked Woo Tae-kyung his intentions, irritation stamped across his face. Suddenly the choice had come back around to him. Not that it mattered much—Woo Tae-kyung could leave whenever he pleased, and the triads in Hong Kong were already calling nonstop.

He'd earned enough money to idle away a lifetime simply by standing next to Jang Hee-jo, but Hee-jo, desperate to pin him down, had even dangled resort shares in front of him. Woo Tae-kyung, who cared little for money, stared back at him placidly.

At that, Hee-jo jerked his chin and pulled him aside.

Out of the parlor, into a corridor of Chairman Lee's mansion, he whispered:

"The resort. The resort. The resort. If you'd just shut up and put up with it for the sake of the resort—"

"I was never interested in resort shares to begin with."

"You insane bastard. When I was talking about resort shares, you didn't say a word."

"Not saying a word isn't the same as being interested."

"...So what, you're off to Hong Kong to follow your throbbing heart? That place is right on the ocean—I'll have you mixed in a drum of cement and dumped off the pier, and there won't be a shred of brotherly loyalty left to come look for you."

Woo Tae-kyung narrowed his eyes and looked down at Jang Hee-jo, who stood a shade shorter than him. Just because Hee-jo wanted to live decently for once didn't mean he wanted the same. It was only that he had no purpose and nothing he wanted to do, and so he'd stayed at Hee-jo's side the way a dog tamed in childhood stays—out of habit, nothing more.

"She gets bored of people fast. Never plays with the same one twice."

"Is this prostitution? What is this?"

"You're being so unbelievably blunt right now. Hey—prostitution?—fuck's sake, you—shit, does your brain only ever roll in that one direction? A person can just hang out, you know. Huh?"

Hee-jo practically leapt out of his skin, and then went pale to the very roots of his hair, as if Woo Tae-kyung had been reduced to complete garbage.

"I'm the one being traded right now, so why the hell are you ranting?"

"That's not what I meant! She just burns out on people, that's all. Keep it moderately boring and—fuck, now you've got me thinking in that direction too."

Hee-jo clawed at his own hair and shot Woo Tae-kyung a glare. Woo Tae-kyung stood there wooden and expressionless, utterly blank, until Hee-jo thumped him on the shoulder.

"It's not going to last anyway. Just until the laundering's done."

"One wrong move and it might not be the ocean off Hong Kong that swallows her. Honestly, she looked capable of making me disappear without leaving a single hair behind."

"Yeah. Don't touch her. She's a genuine lunatic. Lee Do-hee. Do-hee. Trust me, the name wasn't an accident. Stay just boring enough and she'll lose interest on her own—won't even remember you exist."

Coming from the man who'd pounced on him first the moment he showed Do-hee the slightest disregard, the advice didn't carry much conviction. Sensing the dubious look, Hee-jo clicked his tongue.

"Her brain's pickled in dopamine. The way I see it, you won't last a week. Who could stand a boring bastard like you—"

"And if I last more than a week?"

"Then your life is fucked."

Hee-jo fired back the answer without a beat of hesitation.

"Funny. So over a resort I couldn't care less about, you'll nail my life to the floor."

Hee-jo knew full well that Woo Tae-kyung was toying with the idea of Hong Kong, and for a moment his face went rigid. Every flicker of it was readable.

There's another dopamine-addled lunatic in this house, isn't there—that was the face Hee-jo made as he looked at him.

Woo Tae-kyung met his gaze with the same languid, indifferent expression he wore for everything.

"Not her. Get tangled up with her and your life is truly, properly fucked, Woo Tae-kyung."