TIN 77

I knew that it was a reckless gamble. But I decided to bet on the chance that Chairman Joo wouldn’t believe my words.

I hoped he would laugh it off like Lee Yuna calling me crazy, or curse like Joo Do-hwa asking what my scheme was. That he would dismiss it as nonsense, saying it was impossible for a dead person to come back from the grave.

What else could I do? If I quietly took the pills and went back, who knows what Joo Do-hwa would do to me. So whether it worked out or not, I had to pretend to be the real hyung. At least so I could excuse myself saying ‘I did what I could.’

“…”

I didn’t know what my behavior looked like to the older man, but Chairman Joo didn’t react for a long time. His fiercely shining eyes were sharp as if peering into my innermost thoughts. As I tensed up, not knowing what reaction would come, a small breath escaped from his lips.

“…Ha.”

Ahaha, a loud burst of laughter broke the silence. Just like Lee Yuna had done before, he started laughing as if he’d heard a really funny story. Although the boisterous laughter should have lightened the mood, for some reason it made me feel more and more creeped out.

Then suddenly stopping his laughter, Chairman Joo spoke in a subdued voice.

“Trembling like a little mouse…”

There was still laughter in his eyes, but his gaze toward me was nothing but cold. His well-honed gaze was excessively threatening. My heart beat anxiously in my chest, causing me to secretly clench my fist tightly.

“Is this how you tease an adult?”

With just one sentence, he returned to his previous expressionless face. His relaxed and arrogant face was full of contempt, as if saying ‘How could someone like you deceive me?’ Chairman Joo curled up his lips leisurely with a deflating sound.

“Did Do-hwa tell you that much?”

“…”

The tension eased from my stiffened shoulders. I had worried about being caught, but Chairman Joo didn’t seem to have noticed at all. Rather, I could tell from his clicking tongue that he thought he’d been had.

“I’ll give you credit for that much ability.”

As it turned out, this person didn’t recognize me. No, he didn’t even know I was still alive. He didn’t suspect that I was the real one, but instead concluded that Joo Do-hwa and I were close to this extent. It meant he was certain of my death without a doubt.

“…”

I belatedly raised my head and looked straight at Chairman Joo. As the fear within me subsided, I felt like I could finally see the man before me properly. His forehead without a single hair out of place, his clean eyes without a single wrinkle, and his attire without even a hint of dishevelment.

People who were obsessed with perfection tended to dislike admitting they were wrong. If they had a belief, they usually wouldn’t break that belief easily. Especially if he had concluded with certainty that he had killed me with his own hands, he probably couldn’t even imagine that a child he thought was dead would come back alive.

There was no way I was going to be caught.

As soon as I realized this, I felt relieved.

Come to think of it, I didn’t need to be afraid of Chairman Joo. I was just Joo Do-hwa’s toy, and right now the atmosphere didn’t suggest that Chairman Joo was about to kill me. He just summoned me here because he heard the news about Joo Do-hwa causing a stir over having  beaten Wang Wei up.

Curiosity and interest—he just had that level of attention in the end. A relationship where my life wouldn’t be threatened as long as I didn’t do anything bothersome.

Except for one possibility—that such interest might be directed elsewhere.

“The eye color is a shame…”

His wavering eyes were overflowing with lingering attachment. Like when he was scrutinizing my face earlier. Or when he stood up calling me Yoon Ji-soo. He seemed to be projecting someone onto me and missing them at the same time.

‘She’s father’s first love, Yoon Ji-soo.’

Such a romantic word didn’t suit this person at all. Although my mouth was dry, I managed to blink as if nothing was wrong. I didn’t forget to maintain an expressionless face as if I didn’t understand what he was saying.

“Let me ask you one more thing.”

He narrowed his eyes as he broached the subject. A hint of expectation flashed across his cold face.

“What’s your mother’s name?”

“…I don’t know.”

There was no need to hesitate. Knowing his intention in asking, there was only one attitude I could take on.

“No one ever told me.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie. No one had ever told me my mother’s name, and I had never called anyone ‘mom’ even once before.

“I don’t know who my father is either.”

Chairman Joo wasn’t disappointed by the truth I calmly stated. He just nodded his head as if he had expected this much.

“Yes, it’s a common thing.”

Hundreds of children were born every day, and most of them were abandoned on the streets. The poorer the people were, the more children they tended to have that they couldn’t take responsibility for—that was the reality in a nutshell. So not knowing who your parents were wasn’t that particularly special.

“It seems you have no intention of doing what I ask…”

Chairman Joo smiled languidly and tapped the glass bottle he had placed on the desk. The tilted bottle rolled toward me.

“You can go back now.”

“…”

Henry, who was nearby, let out a sigh. I realized it was similar to the kind of relief I was feeling. It seemed he had been unusually tense while waiting silently like a shadow this whole time.

“Let’s meet again, Bada.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘understood’ to Chairman Joo’s final words. I just stared at the transparent glass bottle with my mouth tightly shut.

I had a feeling that this wouldn’t be the end of my meetings with him.

* * *

On the way back to the mansion, neither Henry nor I spoke. We had nothing to say to each other, and we weren’t close enough to engage in casual chatter anyway. Although he glanced at me a couple of times with complicated eyes, he didn’t say anything until we arrived back at the mansion.

Henry parked the car in the garden and once again personally opened the passenger door for me. It seemed more like a habitual action than special treatment, but the look in his eyes as I got out of the car was incredibly disrespectful. Although his suspicious glances were annoying, I pretended not to notice and walked past him toward the entrance.

“…How did you do it?”

However, before I could take three steps, Henry finally spoke to me. I had a rough idea of what he was asking, but I feigned ignorance and asked him back.

“Do what?”

“How you…answered like that there?”

Surprisingly, Henry willingly elaborated on his question’s intent. If someone as robotic as him was initiating conversation, my handling of the situation must not have been wrong. Judging by his furrowed brow, it must have been quite convincing.

“If I didn’t know you were supposed to be dead, I would have been fooled.”

Despite his blunt tone, his expression suggested he was a bit creeped out. Perhaps mimicking a dead person seemed that strange to Henry’s eyes.

But I’m telling you, I didn’t die. It’s amazing how someone’s fabricated death could blind others’ eyes to this degree.

“…How, you ask?”

There were many ways I could have deflected. I could have said it didn’t make sense for Joo Do-hwa, who had been sick, to have not taken medicine for nearly 16 years since that child died. So either the medicine was unnecessary from the start, or he didn’t take it back then either.

It wouldn’t matter if that conclusion was wrong. Chairman Joo wouldn’t have known whether Joo Do-hwa took the medicine or not anyway. How much could a person who didn’t even live in the same house know about their child’s private life? At best, he would have heard things second or third-hand, so even if I claimed “Do-hwa didn’t take it,” there would be no way to verify it now.

Furthermore, crucially, Chairman Joo said that that child “fed” the medicine to Joo Do-hwa. A young child wouldn’t do such a thing voluntarily, which naturally implied that Chairman Joo had ordered the child to do the same thing. Given how casually he mentioned it, he probably didn’t intend to hide this aspect.

So, the things I said there were contents that could be easily guessed even if I wasn’t the real one. I didn’t mention any details that only the real person would know. For instance, that Chairman Joo gave me a week’s deadline, or that he ordered his secretary to kill me if I couldn’t do it, or that I ran away after three days because of that.

“You heard it too earlier, Mr. Assistant.”

However, I felt no obligation to satisfy Henry’s curiosity. I wasn’t generous enough to explain everything to someone who had arranged an unwanted meeting in the first place. Especially when he was regarding me with such suspicion as if seeing a ghost.

“I told you, he asked me to do the same thing back then.”