The Second Daughter

"Is that thing we discussed last time coming along well?"

"I thought you might be curious, so I've put the materials together."

As if he had been waiting for the question, Kang-hyun drew a thick dossier from his bag and added,

"It's only a draft, so it won't serve as more than a reference for now."

"That's more than enough."

Chairman Baek snatched the documents at once and buried his nose in them with fierce concentration. The indifferent air he had worn moments earlier had vanished without a trace.

These days the chairman was consumed by the next steps he would take with the fortune he meant to extract from Harrington Venture. Of course, every concrete idea had come from Kang-hyun.

When Kang-hyun first returned to Korea, Chairman Baek had been floundering in the gulf between his ambition to remake Paeksan into a respectable enterprise and the grim reality. The fact that the group's reputation had scraped the bottom—unlike the days of the previous chairman—had only deepened the isolation.

And Kang-hyun had driven a precise wedge into that self-imposed solitude.

Once he founded his firm and began operating in earnest, the first reactions came from competitors. A consultant who appeared like a rising star and swept every competitive pitch could hardly look favorable to them.

Yet while most were busy tearing him down, a few scented opportunity and approached.

"We know Representative Tak's abilities are excellent, but taking on major projects alone might stretch your resources thin. How about it? Want us to help?"

Kang-hyun turned some offers aside and accepted others. The sole criterion was whether the party had even the slightest connection to Paeksan.

"Have you heard of Paeksan? They're in the private-lending business, so they can feel a bit unsavory, but they're well known in this circle. The pay isn't stingy either. The trouble is, the work the chairman wants is beyond my own capacity. Care to take an introduction?"

After every possible effort, a bite finally came, and Kang-hyun nodded with the air of a man who could no longer refuse.

"It's been a long time, Chairman. Tak Kang-hyun."

And so, on the day Baek Sang-il walked into the trap of his own free will, Kang-hyun welcomed the visitor with genuine warmth.

"You're really the son of Director Tak?"

"Yes. That's correct."

"When I first heard the name I thought it couldn't be... The world truly is small."

True to his suspicious nature, the old man never fully lowered his guard toward Kang-hyun.

At the time, however, the channel through which he had been bringing laundered money back into the country had suddenly sealed shut, leaving him fretting and stamping his feet. He had no choice but to listen to Kang-hyun with the desperation of a drowning man clutching at straws.

"A former colleague of mine has shown interest in a subsidiary under Paeksan. Once the actuator technology reaches the level he wants, he intends to invest."

Kang-hyun put Core Synapse forward as the means to ease Paeksan's cash crunch, wrapping the offer in the gleaming packaging of Harrington—the very prestige Baek Sang-il had been dying to possess.

As expected, the chairman swallowed the bait whole, never dreaming that the man who had choked off his funding pipeline was Tak Kang-hyun himself.

Having won the chairman's favor, Kang-hyun moved to the next stage of the work. That stage was precisely the thick sheaf of papers the old man was now poring over with such intensity.

Acquire promising start-ups through investment-style M&A, steadily build a reputation as a company that thought about the future, establish a foundation in the chairman's name and pour money into social-return projects.

Every detail was documented so thoroughly it seemed ready to happen tomorrow, ensuring the chairman would never notice he was drowning in a fantasy that would never come true.

"Excellent. If things go exactly like this, I'll have nothing left to wish for."

The satisfied voice gave Kang-hyun fresh confirmation.

"Then I'll take it that we're proceeding as planned and report again once more concrete matters are settled."

Kang-hyun finished the explanation cleanly and began gathering the remaining papers. The business was done; there was no reason to look at that face any longer.

Yet unlike him, the chairman still seemed to have unfinished business. A lingering gaze settled on Kang-hyun's cheek, and the restless tapping of a foot hovered at the edge of his vision.

"There's something else, though."

As expected, the moment the papers were put away the chairman spoke.

Kang-hyun set the bag he had been holding back under the sofa and assumed an attentive posture.

"Yes."

"You said you're still unmarried, Representative Tak?"

The question was so far from anything he had anticipated that Kang-hyun had to smooth his expression carefully to keep his brow from furrowing.

Given his age, the inquiry itself was not entirely foreign. He had simply never imagined the person asking would be Chairman Baek.

Baek Sang-il was fundamentally uninterested in other people. He was not the sort who built rapport through personal topics, and he was even less the sort to meddle by offering to introduce some nice young lady.

"That's correct."

Kang-hyun answered in the most even tone he could manage. Prolonging questions about his private life would do him no good.

His effort proved useless. The chairman dropped the bombshell as if he had been waiting for exactly that reply.

"Then what about my second daughter?"

Kang-hyun froze so completely he could not even think to ask what the man meant. Even if William had suddenly pressed a gun to the back of his head, the shock would have been milder.

"Yeo-eun. My second daughter. Baek Yeo-eun."

Apparently finding Kang-hyun's rare failure to mask his expression refreshing, the chairman chuckled and added the clarification—though Kang-hyun had not been surprised out of ignorance.

"I hear the two of you crossed paths once."

"Yes, by chance, once before..."

The only time he had met Baek Yeo-eun was on his first visit to Cheongbaekwon. The fact that the chairman knew of it meant he might already have pieced together Kang-hyun's suspicious movements that day as well.

For a man who had exercised the utmost caution every time he entered Cheongbaekwon afterward, it was a painful misstep.

"My second daughter took a liking to you after seeing you again that day. She's not the type to show her feelings openly, yet she couldn't hide her interest in you at all."

Judging by the chairman's manner, however, the full circumstances of that day had not reached his ears. Instead the conversation drifted in a direction completely unrelated to Kang-hyun's plans—and therefore all the more awkward.

"What's more, I only just learned that she used to follow you around like that even in the past."

"That was..."

When the distant past was suddenly summoned, Kang-hyun could only part his lips without knowing how to answer. He could not begin to guess how much the woman had whispered to her own father.

"No need to look so flustered. What age are we living in? What's wrong with a woman being the more forward one?"

The chairman narrowed his eyes and smirked as if teasing a bashful boy. There was no room even to feel disgust at the oily smile.

"Anyway, only one thing matters. My second daughter likes you, and you happen to have no one you're seeing."

"……"

"What do you say? I think the two of you would make quite a handsome pair."

On the surface it might have sounded like nothing more than a doting father's meddling.

But Kang-hyun detected the trap concealed inside the words.

The chairman had asked whether he was unmarried; he had never asked whether he was seeing someone. Even if Kang-hyun had a lover, the implication was clear: clean it up yourself.

"You're already a great help as you are, but there are certain matters that can only be entrusted to family. And as it happens, I have something in mind."

Instinct told Kang-hyun he was now standing on the chairman's testing ground.

The sweet coaxing might sound like a proposal or a suggestion, yet it was neither. Refuse, and the future would no longer be guaranteed. Everything he had built could turn to foam in an instant.

"Father."

Just as Kang-hyun found himself trapped between advance and retreat, a light knock sounded and a slender voice slipped through the door.

"Ah, perfect timing."

As if he had never been applying pressure at all, the chairman rose without a second thought, looked down at Kang-hyun, and delivered explanation and notice in the same breath.

"The child wanted to see you again anyway. This old man will leave you young people to talk."

Having arranged a blind meeting neither party had known about, Chairman Baek flung open the reception-room door. Baek Yeo-eun stepped inside, smiling back at her father's welcoming face.

He whispered something warmly into her ear for a moment, then exited the room, not forgetting the courtesy of closing the door with his own hand.

Kang-hyun, who had been sold off without even realizing it, stared fixedly at the woman approaching him.

The savage sound of rain roared in his ears—like a warning of some ill omen yet to come.