Chapter 205

Three years ago, at Cheonun Group's founding-anniversary banquet.

Beneath the lavish chandeliers where the heavyweights of Korea's political and business worlds had gathered as one, among hundreds of figures there was one man who drew the eye above all others.

Delinquent-bright blond hair. And behavior even more notorious than the hair.

The one and only son of Bureau Chief Chae Ganghyeon, Korea's number-two in power, and the reigning wastrel of the social circuit.

Chae Junhyeok.

Cheon Sangyeon had brushed past him at banquets a few times before, but they had never properly exchanged greetings.

Not that she needed to — she'd heard the rumors about him enough times to grow calluses in her ears.

Specialty: hell-raising. Hobby: drunken tantrums.

And lately, whispers had been going around that the wastrel had cracked another notch worse.

Cheon Sangyeon, champagne glass in hand, let out an elegant snort.

A piece of trash beyond saving.

She loathed Chae Junhyeok, sincerely.

While she was fighting a war over the group's succession that dried the blood in her veins every single day, that bastard had been born with a diamond spoon in his mouth and was doing nothing but squandering it into thin air.

She was raking her arrogant gaze up and down Chae Junhyeok when—

Father and son Chae approached the cluster where the Cheonun Group family was gathered.

"Ah, Chairman Cheon! Been too long."

"Bureau Chief. I've been waiting, actually. Ha ha."

The two heavyweights clasped hands in a hearty grip.

On the surface it was a warm greeting, but the looks passing between them were pointedly hushed and loaded.

Knowing exactly what the two of them had done in the past, Cheon Sangyeon swallowed a private laugh.

A fine little exchange between accomplices.

Beside them, Cheon Sangcheol slid himself behind his father's back, like a man with something on his conscience.

Cheon Sangmin ignored his little brother's pathetic display entirely, put on the smooth smile of the seasoned CEO, and stepped forward.

"Been too long, Bureau Chief. Father's been waiting — he's got quite a lot he wanted to discuss with you today."

Not to be outdone, Cheon Sangyeon threaded in with a flawless business smile.

"A pleasure, Bureau Chief. Cheon Sangyeon. Thank you for making the trip out today."

Just as she was about to boldly stake her presence, Cheon Sangmin slid his gaze aside and casually stole the reins of the conversation.

"Ah! And this is—"

His eyes swung toward Chae Junhyeok, standing crookedly behind Chae Ganghyeon, and Chae Ganghyeon burst into a hearty laugh.

"Ha ha! My son, Junhyeok."

"Ah! I remember now. We were introduced once before."

Cheon Sangmin lobbed the follow-up smoothly and turned to Chae Junhyeok without missing a beat.

"Been a while since we met at the last banquet."

Cheon Sangyeon clicked her tongue inwardly.

The last banquet? Ah — that party where that wastrel got so plastered he couldn't stand on his own two feet.

That was when it happened.

Chae Junhyeok, who had been staring at the floor with his head slumped the whole time, slowly lifted it and fixed a steady look on Cheon Sangmin.

In that instant, Cheon Sangyeon's shoulders twitched stiff.

…Since when did that bastard have eyes like that?

The Chae Junhyeok she remembered had always burned with a fierce anger at the world, and yet the inside of that stare had been oddly empty — hollow to the core.

But the eyes now looking up at Cheon Sangmin were plainly different.

Empty, yes — same as ever — but what filled them wasn't some shallow rage.

Some unfathomable, chilling thing, boiling up from a place far deeper and damper — from the very bottom of an abyss.

It didn't look like a living human's eyes.

Chae Junhyeok's lips stirred, and a bizarre mutter spilled out.

"Cheonun Group… successor… missing…"

Eyes with no focus. Words with no thread between them.

Cheon Sangyeon felt gooseflesh climb up her spine.

Insane. Has he moved past booze and started taking pills too?

Chae Junhyeok muttered his string of skin-crawling words, then, without so much as a word of excuse, drifted away from the group like a ghost.

The air went cold and still in an instant.

But Chae Ganghyeon watched his son's retreating back and laughed heartily.

"Ha ha ha! Junhyeok must have overdone it a bit yesterday — he seems worn out today. Do forgive the discourtesy."

To anyone watching, the picture of a doting fool wrapping his precious child in cotton wool.

But Cheon Sangyeon's razor-sharp eye caught, perfectly, the flicker of emotion that crossed Chae Ganghyeon's face for the space of a breath.

Contempt.

The undisguised revulsion of a man looking at something less than a bug.

Cheon Sangyeon knew that look well.

It was the exact look her own father wore when he looked at their youngest.

So the rumor that Chae Ganghyeon dotes on his one and only son… turns out it's a lie.

Just as she was narrowing her eyes at this interesting revelation, Chairman Cheon cleared his throat and smoothly changed the subject.

"Ahem. Bureau Chief, there's still a bit to discuss on that other matter — how about a word?"

"Of course. Too many ears here. Shall we take it to a private room?"

The two heavyweights moved off to the VIP wing beyond the chandeliers' reach, off to whatever it was they'd come here to hatch.

Cheon Sangyeon fixed her eyes on the empty space Chae Junhyeok had left behind, then drained the champagne in her hand in one pull.

Meanwhile, Cheon Sangmin had already vanished into the sea of networking, hunting down other CEOs, and Cheon Sangcheol — being the incorrigible piece of trash he was — had bolted off to wherever the women were gathered as fast as his legs would carry him.

Left alone, Cheon Sangyeon swallowed her irritation.

I'd rather be back at the lab logging one more line of results than stuck at some revolting banquet like this.

But to seize the ultimate goal she was after, networking with political and business figures was non-negotiable.

She pinned her arrogant nature down hard, put her elegant smile back on, and cruised the hall in search of prey.

Soon enough, she found what she was looking for.

A tucked-away corner of the banquet hall.

Wedged into it, watching the crowd with a dark, brooding stare, the blond man.

What is that lunatic doing now?

Cheon Sangyeon's brow furrowed a fraction.

But wastrel of the worst grade or not, the title of "sole heir to the Bureau Chief of Awakened Management" was still a lifeline well worth grabbing.

She wiped her face clean of expression, fixed a perfect business smile in place, and approached.

"We didn't get a proper introduction earlier, with the elders there. Cheon Sangyeon."

The polished manner, the hand extended for a shake.

But nothing came back.

"…"

Chae Junhyeok didn't so much as glance at the offered hand, staring at the empty air with murky eyes.

Soon, a bizarrely cracked voice slid out.

"Great fissure… deceased… was he an Awakened…?"

What in the hell is with this madman.

Skin crawling at the string of nonsense words spilling out of him, Cheon Sangyeon began to edge back a step.

She had just decided he was not a human worth engaging with — when—

Snap.

Chae Junhyeok's head jerked up like a machine coming out of a stall.

For a beat, sharp, lucid reason flared into his hazy eyes, and then a flawlessly carved business smile settled onto his mouth.

"You're Cheon Sangyeon, aren't you. A pleasure. Chae Junhyeok."

The man who moments ago had been babbling like a lunatic was, without a trace of transition, greeting her like a perfectly ordinary person.

"Care for a word? Somewhere out of sight."

At the extreme flip in bearing, Cheon Sangyeon's guard shot up razor-sharp.

What is this? Why the sudden change?

Sensing something wrong, she moved to decline smoothly and slip away.

"An honor, but I'm rather busy at the moment—"

"Your lab's been short on funds lately, hasn't it."

"…!"

"Your brother Cheon Sangmin is deftly working the board, so I imagine you're on edge."

How does he know that…! Don't tell me he's joined hands with Cheon Sangmin?!

Unable to hide the hostility and wariness on her face, she stiffened — and Chae Junhyeok murmured, low.

"No need to be on guard. If anything, you ought to be glad to see me. I can help you."

"And why would I believe that?"

Cheon Sangyeon bristled, edge in every syllable, and Chae Junhyeok twisted the corner of his mouth up.

"Well — no interest, no problem. I'm not the one who's short on options. Unlike you, Miss Cheon, I've got one more choice in reserve."

As he said it, he cut a sidelong glance across the hall at Cheon Sangmin, chatting easily with the crowd on the far side.

In the end, it was Cheon Sangyeon who was cornered.

She ran a quick internal check on the self-defense artifacts tucked in her clothes, then, as the man turned to leave without a shred of hesitation, caught him urgently.

"Why the hurry."

She spoke through her teeth, low.

"Fine. The private room."

The perfectly soundproofed VIP room off the banquet hall.

The heavy door shut, and Chae Junhyeok cut straight to the point.

"I'll help you take the next chairmanship of Cheonun Group."

Casual speech, dropped without warning.

This bastard—?

Cheon Sangyeon flared for an instant, but the overwhelming presence radiating off him — utterly unlike the state he'd been in moments before — strangely made her unable to work up any anger.

"…And how would you help me?"

"Cheon Sangmin's slush-fund ledger. I know where it is."

Cheon Sangyeon nearly sucked in an audible breath.

The slush-fund ledger!

The one weak spot that could sever Cheon Sangmin's windpipe in a single stroke.

The item that, despite the spies she'd planted and the countless things she'd tried, she'd never so much as caught a trace of.

"And how, exactly, do you know that?"

"I'll prove it later. First, you'll do something for me."

The nerve of him, pushing his demand without laying down a single shred of proof.

It was absurd — and yet, unnervingly, the pose suited the man down to the bone.

Pressed under that presence, robbed even of the moment to fire back, Cheon Sangyeon found herself answering as if under a spell.

"…What is it?"

She swallowed hard and asked.

"It's…"

At that instant, Chae Junhyeok — mid-sentence — dropped his head clean forward.

Like a marionette with a taut string suddenly cut, a strange, unnatural movement.

A minute, two minutes… an eternity crawled by, and just as Cheon Sangyeon's patience was scraping the bottom of the barrel—

"Excuse me — Mr. Chae Junhyeok. What is it you want me to help with?"

The moment she couldn't stand it a second longer and opened her mouth again—

Chae Junhyeok's slumped head snapped upright.

The cool, sharp-witted man of a moment ago was nowhere to be seen. In his place, the face of a perfect madman goggled at her with rolling eyes.

"What are you doing here…?"

"What did you—"

"Why are you alive?! You died!! You were torn to pieces!!"

Thrashing like a demon, Chae Junhyeok launched himself at her like a beast.

Full-on ready to close his hands around her throat.

"You out-of-your-mind bastard?!"

Terrified out of her wits, Cheon Sangyeon whipped a high-voltage artifact out on instinct and drove it into Chae Junhyeok's solar plexus.

Thwack—!

ZZZZAP—!!

"Nnngh—!"

Chae Junhyeok crumpled on the spot, foaming at the mouth, and the guards, drawn by Cheon Sangyeon's scream, hauled him off like a piece of luggage — and that was how the secret meeting ended that night.

"Grrrrr…"

Cheon Sangyeon ground her teeth hard, dredging up the awful memory.

But she couldn't exactly spill the slush-fund ledger business in a room with Cheon Sangmin sitting right there.

She brushed off the curious looks of the rest of the party with a shrug.

"Nothing much. Trash acting like trash. He suddenly went off and lunged at me, so I zapped him with an artifact."

Cheon Sangyeon added coolly.

"Frankly, the fact that that lunatic is currently walking around perfectly fine, playing research director and pulling deputy guildmaster duty on top of it, is a miracle to me."

At that, Cheon Sangcheol — who'd been fuming a moment before — flew off the handle.

"What?! That crazy bastard went off on you too, back in the day?! I'm telling you, that lunatic came at me too—!"

Cheon Sangcheol's rant cut off with a strangled hup.

Cheon Sangmin, who on any normal day would have coldly sneered at his little brothers, was pushing his glasses up with a distinctly stiffened expression and pointedly avoiding eye contact.

Watching the scene, Cheon Sangyeon's eyes narrowed.

Don't tell me… Chae Junhyeok pulled the exact same routine on those two, too?

A reasonable suspicion — but now was not the moment to dig up old truths.

She shook the thoughts off and steered back to the matter at hand.

"Anyway, past is past. How the hell are we supposed to pull off this crap escape stunt? If we fail, we all die in here — you get that, right?"

"That's right, damn it! How is this ridiculous plan supposed to work?!"

With Cheon Sangcheol jumping in and thrashing around too, Han Jewoon — who had been sitting with his arms folded, thinking — spoke up in a weighty voice.

"I've got an idea in mind…"

A desperate huddle to survive.

The night of the bizarre castle deepened.

Meanwhile.

Lee Sea-ah, Seo Jihyeok, Leo, Kang Taemin, and Kim Sihyeok — through the New door.

"…"

Stepping through the dark, they came face to face with the scene laid out in front of them — and, as if by silent agreement, froze in place, thoroughly at a loss.