2. Regression (2)
“Ack!”
His pounding heart pressed against his ribs. The palm he had unthinkingly pressed against his chest flinched away reflexively, startled by the rapid, galloping vibrations of his heartbeat, and feeling this, Jang Doyun breathed roughly and tried to calm himself.
“I’m alive…… huh?”
Alarmed by his confusion, he realized something and turned his head this way and that. If he had been rescued, he should have been lying in a hospital room, but the bed he lay in had neither a respirator nor even an IV drip attached to it.
Flustered by that surreal situation, he squeezed his eyes shut and caught his breath. If his heart, pounding as though he had sprinted at full speed, was not lying, then he was unmistakably alive.
But could he really be so unharmed after such a terrible accident?
Confused by those two contradictory facts, he raised his eyelids. He decided that, first of all, he needed to figure out where this place was.
And a short while later.
Jang Doyun opened his mouth with an expression of disbelief.
“……Sanggye-dong?”
He turned his head this way and that. A strange feeling born of a mixture of disbelief at the situation and absolute certainty that he knew where he was gripped his mind.
“That’s right. It’s Sanggye-dong.”
Jang Doyun staggered with dizziness. It was a place of memories he had not visited even once since joining the Taeseong Group, yet he remembered every scratch and scar because he had lived there for seventeen years.
Stumbling, he pressed his hand against the wall and was surprised by yet another fact. It was because of the size and position of the hand that touched the wall.
He swallowed dryly and picked up the mirror with a trembling hand.
“Crazy.”
Barely keeping his grip on the mirror, he closed and opened his eyes once more, but the face reflected in the mirror was no different from before.
Jang Doyun swept his face down with his left hand. For a moment, he even wondered if he had gone mad.
No, perhaps everything he had experienced until now might have been a dream.
That was a far more rational answer than having returned to the past.
But Jang Doyun himself knew that answer was not correct.
“…….”
Jang Doyun placed the mirror down on the bed and shook his head. It was not easy to accept this surreal situation that had befallen him.
He struggled, trying to deny the unreality forced upon him by the mirror and the calendar hanging on the wall.
How could he come to terms with the fact that he, who had died past the age of forty, had become a seventeen-year-old high school student?
But no matter how much he denied the situation, nothing changed. Crushed by the pressure of reality, Jang Doyun grabbed his throbbing head and lay back down on the bed.
It was then.
“Doyun.”
Jang Doyun reflexively opened his eyes and was struck with shock once more. Though his head understood it well enough, seeing his mother looking far younger than in his final memory made the reality of his return to the past weigh down on him even more heavily.
As he tried to gather his wits, Jang Doyun’s mother hesitated and opened her mouth.
“Mom has something to tell you…….”
***
An old man with white hair stopped wiping the porcelain and raised his head. His expression was filled with displeasure, as if he had heard something absurd.
“Say that again.”
“I said I wish to bring Sohyun to the main house.”
“Hah…….”
The old man set down the porcelain. If he had not, he felt he might throw this piece, evaluated as being national treasure-grade.
After exhaling once, he looked at the man before him and opened his mouth.
“Listen here, President Choi Minjae.”
“Yes, Father.”
“We barely survived the IMF. We took every manner of slander and barely protected the group.”
“Yes…….”
“Never has there been such a disgrace. It was the most humiliating time in Taeseong’s fifty-year history.”
“…….”
“And in this situation, you want to bring a mistress into the household and invite even more scorn? Are you out of your mind?”
Choi Wonchang, Chairman of the Taeseong Group and Vice Chairman of the Federation of Korean Industries, glared at his son, who was trembling faintly. He had never dreamed that even such an inadequate son would say such a thing at a time like this.
He looked at his silently trembling son a moment longer, then picked up the porcelain again and continued.
“I know you don’t like your daughter-in-law. It is an undeniable fact that your in-laws’ power has been halved…… no, quartered.”
Choi Wonchang gripped the cloth he had been using to wipe the porcelain. It was an act born of being unable to bring himself to throw the artifact.
After steadying his breath once, he glared at his son and raised his voice.
“But! You, who are my son! The one who will become chairman of Taeseong Group, would abandon his first wife to bring a mistress into the main house?”
“……I have a daughter.”
“So? So what?”
“Yeonsu already knows.”
“You worthless child!”
Choi Wonchang finally threw the porcelain he had been about to wipe again. It was a treasure worth hundreds of millions of won, but he would not have regretted it one bit if it could knock some sense into his detestable son.
The porcelain worth hundreds of millions shattered with a sound like a cheap clay pot breaking, and Choi Minjae, who had frozen at the sight, came to his senses at his father’s voice piercing his eardrums.
“An illegitimate child! An illegitimate child—why must you take responsibility for her! All you needed to do was give her some money and send her away, yet why have you raised her like this!”
“…….”
“Yes. You have three sons, so I understand you wanting a daughter. But if that is the case, you could have raised her outside and visited occasionally! Why did you have to make such a mess!”
Choi Wonchang, having even thrown the cloth he used to wipe the porcelain, gnashed his teeth with a flushed face.
“Suppose you drive out your daughter-in-law and accept that wench as your spouse. Then if you have a son, what will become of the group in your generation…….”
“She cannot bear children.”
“What?”
“She says she can no longer have children.”
Choi Wonchang’s eyebrows twitched. He seemed displeased that the heir to the group, who should be cold-hearted, was making such a fuss over something so trivial.
After glaring at his son for a moment, Choi Wonchang raised his voice again.
“You disgust me! Get out!”
“……Yes.”
“Consider it a blessing from heaven that you have no brothers!”
Choi Wonchang bellowed at his son’s retreating back. He even went so far as to blurt out that if his son insisted on this, he would bring in an illegitimate child and hand over the group instead.
Even after that, he gnashed his teeth for a long while before turning to the man standing beside him and opening his mouth.
“Director Seo.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know?”
“…….”
“I am asking if you knew!”
Unable to contain his anger, Choi Wonchang struck the armrests and shouted. He was so furious that he did not care if his voice leaked outside.
The man standing before him answered with his head bowed.
“We had investigated the matter. But we did not expect him to take it this far…….”
“Tell me everything you investigated.”
The man called Director Seo took out a file and slowly read the contents of the investigation.
The documents contained everything about Choi Minjae’s mistress and the circumstances surrounding her.
Having heard the full report, Choi Wonchang opened his mouth with an incredulous expression.
“So, my son fell for a woman who already has a child and lost his mind?”
“That is correct.”
“Crazy bastard.”
Choi Wonchang raised his right hand and pressed his forehead. His face was so flushed that if he had suffered from high blood pressure, he might have already collapsed.
Breathing heavily, he barely regained his composure and asked.
“Surely she is not a married woman?”
“We understand that she was widowed from her previous husband eleven years ago.”
“……At least that is a small mercy.”
He gnashed his teeth for a while, then let out a long breath and continued. The fact that he had to consider that a mercy was utterly absurd.
“That Minjae brat is not half as capable as I am, but twice as stubborn. No one could break his stubbornness except his dead mother.”
“…….”
“How did the daughter-in-law react?”
“She indicated that she would step aside if given Taeseong Chemical as alimony.”
Hearing the report, Choi Wonchang bit his lip. It was what he did when suppressing anger.
Trembling with his fist clenched tight, he slammed his hand on the desk and raised his voice.
“That wench! She dares to covet Chemical!”
“It seems the madam considers Chemical to be the dowry she brought.”
“Dowry?”
“Yes.”
“……Yes. It is not entirely wrong.”
He nodded lightly. When considering how Taeseong Chemical, originally a subsidiary of another group, had come into their possession, it was undeniable that it was thanks to the political power of his in-laws, who had been close to the ruling regime.
Choi Wonchang opened a drawer and took out a cigarette. It was a time when voices were slowly rising to ban indoor smoking, but to Choi Wonchang, who had smoked in the chairman’s office all his life, such claims were nothing but hollow words.
Lighting it with a lighter, he continued speaking as he exhaled white smoke.
“But have I ever once handed over something that came into my hands just like that?”
“You never have.”
“Right. Never.”
Choi Wonchang nodded. He had occasionally given away unneeded things as charity, but he had never taken something and handed it over simply because someone else wanted him to.
Was he not the one who had gained benefits through negotiation even under that fearsome military regime?
“She covets Chemical—dares to covet Chemical.”
He ground his teeth. Setting aside the trillions in capital and revenue that Taeseong Chemical possessed, the intention behind demanding Chemical, which held 18.6% of the holding company’s shares, was obvious to anyone.
Though the borrowed-name stocks held by his daughter-in-law’s family might not amount to much, if she got her hands on Chemical and succeeded in mobilizing the National Pension, there was a possibility she could wrench Taeseong away from the Choi family.
“If she had asked for Electronics instead, I might have laughed and called it audacious.”
Choi Wonchang let out a hollow laugh and narrowed his brow. The displeasure he felt toward his daughter-in-law, who had openly revealed her intention to drive the Choi family out of Taeseong Group, seemed to cool his anger toward his son.
Taking the cigarette from his mouth, he stubbed it out in the ashtray and continued.
“Do as Minjae wishes.”
“……Yes?”
“That son of mine is as detestable as can be, but what that wench of a daughter-in-law is trying to do goes beyond displeasure—it is intolerable.”
“But if you do that, the grandchildren will…….”
“They are all grown up now, are they not? The youngest is a high school student, so they are old enough to understand.”
Director Seo’s face showed bewilderment. It was not that he did not know of Choi Wonchang’s greed, but he had not thought it was to the extent that he could tolerate shattering his own son’s family.
“I do not believe the opposition party will sit still, either.”
“It is fine. The in-laws are all but dried-up husks with their connections nearly severed now, are they not? And those old men who entered politics thanks to that gentleman’s favor should all be dying off by now anyway.”
Director Seo said nothing. It was tacit agreement.
Glancing at him, Choi Wonchang also gave permission for methods to be carried out if necessary.
“If problems arise, send some apples. Delivering a few truckloads of apples is a far better bargain than losing Chemical.”
“Understood.”
Having received the order, Director Seo headed outside. There was much to arrange in order to move slush funds.
“Ah. Director Seo.”
“Yes.”
“Did you say that wench’s name is Yang Sohyun?”
“That is correct, but…….”
“Bring her here tomorrow.”
Choi Wonchang took out a new cigarette and put it in his mouth, lighting it again as he continued.
“I ought to see for myself just what this wench looks like.”