Worth Five Hundred Million

Father had probably seen through it — recognized the whole thing as a flimsy cover. But whether he knew or not was beside the point. What mattered was that he had acknowledged Min Chae-yoon. He had summoned her during business hours, at a time when everyone in the company would have no choice but to find out.

And Min Chae-yoon had smiled and gone back to work.

She clearly hadn't given it a second thought. As far as she was concerned, she'd just exchanged a few words with an uncle she'd known since childhood, after a long time apart.

Min Chae-yoon was the type who never got nervous. Didn't people usually shrink a little once they learned about my family's background? Gangju Group was a conglomerate every person in Korea knew by name, and even if she hadn't grasped the scale as a child, she would have had no choice but to understand how enormous it was as she grew up. And yet she had never once shown so much as a flicker of inferiority.

"Your family's pretty impressive, I'll give you that. The whole world's Gangju Group."

"What's with you all of a sudden? Did you eat something weird?"

"We switched out all our appliances. Gangju Electronics. Appliances are Gangju."

"You used something else before?"

"Mom said she liked LG better than Gangju, so..."

"Why are you saying that like you're walking on eggshells?"

"Well, I gotta sell my friend's family products, right..."

She talked about Gangju Group as if it were some neighborhood corner store. Listening to her long enough, you almost started to believe it, which was hilarious. And the moment I laughed, Min Chae-yoon would puff up, triumphant, as if she'd won. It was the same when she got a job at our company.

"I'm your family's servant now."

"Isn't that nepotism? Did your grandfather call my father or something?"

"My grandfather told me not to go to Gangju, actually. Said friends shouldn't do business with each other."

"Oh, for crying out loud."

"If I'm going to be a servant anyway, I might as well serve a great house."

She'd said we should grab a meal together once in a while after she started working there — and then spent years walking right past me without so much as a nod of recognition.

To be fair, I was in the Strategic Planning Division and Min Chae-yoon worked in Marketing. We weren't the type to run into each other much. I was a division head; she had gone from junior staffer to deputy manager, and another promotion would make her a manager. Even if she climbed as high as she possibly could, there wouldn't have been many reasons for our paths to cross.

And yet I remembered every single time we passed each other.

Min Chae-yoon's pale face stood out even from a distance.

At five-foot-seven — tall for a woman — with that small face of hers, she seemed to turn up with strange frequency. I'd find myself wanting to snap at her. Was she even working? Was she just wandering around drinking coffee instead of sitting at her desk? Of course, I was on my way out for a lunch appointment myself.

She had a way of making people laugh with that cool, deadpan expression, so there were always people around her. I'd glance over for a few seconds, wondering if she'd look my way. She claimed she was sensitive — but she never noticed me even when I stared hard enough to bore a hole through her cheek. Dense as a brick.

And even if our eyes did meet, Min Chae-yoon never acknowledged me first. Never offered a greeting.

Even when our gazes locked, she'd scan my face the way you'd look at a stranger, then put on a polite, sunny smile and give a little nod — the same way the man standing next to her would. I'd nod back. I refused to lose. If she wasn't going to acknowledge me first, why should I?

That went on for years.

Rumors needed no feet. The glances sliding my way ran warmer than usual. A mix of mild curiosity and anticipation, vague disgust and twisted envy — plus a new, condescending look, as if they were watching someone who'd become a punchline. So you're that kind of guy after all. Or maybe: Huh. Unexpected. That was how it felt, anyway. I couldn't catch every whispered conversation, so perhaps this was nothing more than my own paranoia.

"You're seeing Chae-yoon?"

The person who'd stopped me was my father's younger brother, Kang Je-hyun. My uncle.

Of course he knew Min Chae-yoon too.

He was the old hag's son as well — a mama's boy who craved her affection more desperately than anyone. It was a grotesque nickname to pin on a middle-aged man pushing sixty, but there was no better way to describe him.

His face resembled my father's, only with more flesh on it, and today it looked especially puffy. Every time I looked at my uncle, I thought of Pigsy.

"So you two are like that?"

"Uncle."

"I had no idea! Does Teacher Min know about this, hmm?"

My uncle was enthusiastic, loud, and impatient.

It was a personality that stood in sharp contrast to my relatively quiet father, but that was the result of scrambling to stand out somehow beneath the shadow of an exceptional older brother. He clapped my shoulder with a hearty laugh.

"Anyway, I finally get to hear that Kang Sa-eon is dating someone! It's true, right? It is true, isn't it? I heard you even introduced her to your father yesterday!"

"It's true."

"You could've said something sooner. Here we were, trying to find you a match, looking like fools..."

"I thought Chae-yoon would feel pressured. In matters like this, you listen to the woman if you want to avoid trouble, don't you?"

My loud-mouthed uncle was a useful megaphone.

"Well, a man should listen to his woman. A peaceful home makes for smooth work, that's right."

"Exactly."

He leaned in, pretending to drop his voice to a whisper.

"I thought maybe you were... you know. That you weren't interested in that sort of thing."

His voice was still so loud that everyone could hear. I could see the secretary's ears perk up.

"That's absurd."

It had been three years since I'd seen Min Chae-yoon walking arm in arm with a man. I finished a rough calculation and said,

"We've been together for over two years now."

"Well, well. You kept your mouths shut for over two years? That Chae-yoon — she's something else."

Min Chae-yoon would never imagine that my uncle — the Vice Chairman of Gangju Group — was calling her name with such familiarity in a room she wasn't even in. I smiled faintly.

She really was dense.

"We should go. We'll be late."

"Right, let's go. Ah, Secretary Choi — where's Min-hyeong?"

"The division head headed to the conference room five minutes ago."

"That's my boy. He's always been particular about punctuality..."

The pride on his face was unmistakable.

Kang Min-hyeong was my uncle's eldest son, a year younger than me. He'd been promoted last year to Head of the Marketing Division. As was typical of chaebol families, ours filled key positions with blood relatives.

"Min-hyeong is exceptionally capable, of course."

"Yes, I know. Very manly, very sharp..."

The way he emphasized manly while looking me up and down was obvious. I pretended not to notice, urging him along while privately laughing at him. My uncle played at being friendly, but he was a hungry ghost of a man who lit up at the chance to sniff out my flaws. I wasn't unaware that he was the one who'd given weight to the Hyungwon Foods daughter's claim that I was gay.

Society was conservative, and chaebol families even more so. If I were someone who couldn't marry and produce a child, he would have shoved his own son into the Strategic Planning Division without a second's hesitation.

It had been the same when my mother ran away.

My uncle had gone to his own mother and pleaded.

Even through that blood-vomiting rage and resentment, the old hag hadn't so much as twitched an eyebrow. And I had been expected to greet the uncle who'd argued for abandoning me with perfect politeness.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad. If I'd gone to an orphanage, I would have been freed from the torture of seeing the old hag every week.

When we entered the conference room, Kang Min-hyeong, who'd arrived ahead of us, greeted me and his father. Mine hadn't arrived yet. A few executives came over to talk. They sneered at gossip as a vulgar hobby, yet they loved rumors more than anyone. Men were more honest about this than women. Women at least pretended to hush things up; men made no secret of wanting to mock you to your face.

"She ran off with a man, didn't she?"

"He assigned her a young, well-built bodyguard. Kang Cha-hyun did something stupid, tsk tsk."

"How badly did she need it that she couldn't even wait until her husband was busy and just went at it?"

"Guess Kang Cha-hyun doesn't have much left in the tank in his wife's bed, either."

"Probably spent it all outside before coming home."

"A real man, after all..."

Vile. Filthy. Min-hyeong tapped my arm.

"Hyung, I hear you're seeing Chae-yoon."

"......"

Min Chae-yoon was famous.

She was worth every bit of that five hundred million won.