It was so cold and painful. No—agonizing.
And yet, tomorrow would come again. Just like it always had.
Sohee, trembling and curled up in a ball, sobbed without even thinking to wipe her tears and closed her eyes.
A vague silhouette surfaced and then faded away across her retina, veiled by her eyelids.
Suddenly, a thought came to her.
Did she appear just as pitiful in that man’s eyes?
* * *
Gye Won-ho, with his sleeves rolled up to his forearms, lit a cigarette while staring out the hotel’s large front window. Beyond the slowly dispersing smoke, the hazy glow of dawn was beginning to rise.
The humid air of Shanghai carried a strong fishy stench. But that wasn’t the only thing unsettling his mood.
The scent of fabric steeped in the rawness of youth—the fresh, green fragrance that clung stubbornly in the narrow space—kept invading his thoughts without pause.
An urge surged within him—to devour the slender nape of her neck, to consume the soft, pale skin of her hands and feet entirely.
With a low sigh, he took a deep drag from the cigarette, his cheek hollowing, and his dark eyes gleamed with a cold sheen.
“Sir, I think it’s about time we wrap things up.”
Han Geon-hui stepped up beside Gye Won-ho. In just three hours, they were scheduled to sign an MOU with JC Group, China’s largest construction company, at a hotel just across the street.
Gye Won-ho stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray piled high with butts, then moved toward the lounge area of the suite. There, his team members—who had worked through the night—sat buried in towering stacks of documents, their faces still showing clear signs of fatigue.
Excluding Gye Won-ho and Han Geon-hui, there were six members in total. Each one was a specialist in M&A or affiliated sectors of the group, handpicked and gathered by Gye over more than ten years of effort.
From designing the takeover of Taekang Group to managing the paper companies used to circulate funds and acquire borrowed-name shares, everything flowed through them.
Even Chairman Gye Myeong-oh and Mayor Choi Jung-pil were unaware of the existence of this organization. To maintain absolute secrecy, all contact with them occurred only during overseas trips.
Despite having worked together for years, Gye Won-ho did not trust any of them. Instead, he had created systems to ensure no one could escape: each member’s most compromising personal secrets, family ties, borrowed-name accounts—even their lives if necessary—were all held firmly in his grasp.
“We’ve secured Jang Taek-gi’s shares, so we’re not far from the target now. That’s assuming Mayor Choi Jung-pil keeps backing us. Though, with the presidential election coming up, he won’t be making any bold moves anytime soon.”
Song Jin-young spoke as he pulled out a copy of the stock transfer agreement signed before Jang Taek-gi’s death.
“President Gye Hyung-jun has been going back and forth to Hong Kong lately. Chairman Gye probably ordered him to retrieve the power of attorney for one of his borrowed-name accounts. Check on the private equity side again.”
“Understood, Executive Director.”
Gye Won-ho loosened his tie with one hand and tossed it onto the sofa, then stood in front of the whiteboard outlining the share structure of Taekang. At the center of the key list was his master—Mayor Choi Jung-pil.
Mayor Choi had bought Gye Won-ho long ago from an orphanage known for trafficking children and raised him as his own dog. After partnering with Chairman Gye, who was infertile, Choi had Gye Won-ho adopted as his legal heir. He had ordered his dog to serve a new master.
With Chairman Gye’s organization as his backing, Mayor Choi gained fame by leading massive redevelopment projects to success. All the illegal dealings and corruption that occurred along the way were handled by Taekang and Gye Won-ho.
Mayor Choi and Chairman Gye had a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship—but one deeply rooted in distrust. Gye Won-ho was the link between them, a bridge that also served as a means to keep each other in check.
As Taekang expanded, cracks began to form in the relationship. The company that had once been mocked as a gangster-run construction firm grew into a full-fledged conglomerate with multiple affiliates—something neither Mayor Choi nor Chairman Gye had foreseen. They had never imagined that Gye Won-ho, whom they’d brought in merely to clean up their messes, would be capable of achieving so much.
With that, Gye Won-ho’s influence had grown. More and more people began to follow him. It was Gye Won-ho who had built Taekang into what it was today. The only one who couldn’t accept that was Chairman Gye Myeong-oh.
The chairman detested Gye Won-ho—his own legal son and Choi’s link to him. His protégé had grown far too big. By now, most of the key personnel inside Taekang were aligned with Gye Won-ho.
Sensing danger, Chairman Gye brought in his nephew, Gye Hyung-jun, and installed him as president to counterbalance Gye Won-ho. Hyung-jun lacked ability, but he was obedient and easy to manipulate—a perfect puppet. But even that, unintentionally, ended up playing into Gye Won-ho’s hands.
With high approval ratings, Mayor Choi was all but guaranteed to get the result he wanted in the upcoming presidential election. A nobody without backing or money, now standing as a presidential candidate—Mayor Choi was a card Gye Won-ho could make good use of.
At the moment, Mayor Choi was weighing whether to support Chairman Gye or Gye Won-ho. And Gye Won-ho was doing the same.
Checking the time with a tilt of his wrist, Gye Won-ho lightly kicked the wheel of the whiteboard with the heel of his shoe. From behind it, a man flinched violently and coughed up blood.
“Ugh… guh…”
Jo In-beom slowly opened his sunken eyes. They barely opened at all, swollen with pus and blood. Through his blurry vision, he could faintly make out a massive figure. Even with the haze, the man’s presence was unmistakable.
With a cigarette between his fingers, Gye Won-ho knelt down in front of Jo In-beom. The sound of the Zippo lighter’s lid snapping open and the flare of flame rang out with a chilling finality. Instinctively, Jo In-beom begged for his life.
If he wanted to live, it had to be through Gye Won-ho’s mercy.
“S-sir—no, Executive Director… please… please spare me…”
Gye Won-ho let out a dry, mocking laugh and blew a stream of smoke straight into Jo In-beom’s face. No matter how polished a corporation might look on the outside, even with multiple subsidiaries under its belt, its roots were still those of a thug-run company.
There were things money simply couldn’t change—things like origin and nature. The method for executing a rat was no different.
“Hey, In-beom.”
Speaking in a gentle tone, Gye Won-ho calmly watched as a wet stain spread between Jo In-beom’s legs. In-beom was one of the gang members working under him, but also a mole planted by Jang Taek-gi. They had spent many years together as part of the same crew.
But that’s just how things were in this world. Everyone was always eager to slit each other’s throats, and words like trust were worth shit.
Gye Won-ho had known all along that Jo In-beom had been planted by Jang Taek-gi, but he let him be—waiting until the fool took the bait he’d casually thrown out.
“If you were gonna run, you should’ve had the balls to go farther.”
Jang Taek-gi, one of Taekang’s founding members and Chairman Gye Myeong-oh’s right-hand man, had put up quite the fight when it came to handing over his shares. Most of the executives had already taken Gye Won-ho’s side, but Jang—full from all the years he’d fed off the company—chose instead to plant someone like In-beom to spy on him, like a blind fish desperate for control.
Jang used Jo In-beom to gather information on Gye Won-ho, likely planning to pass it all on to the chairman. But Gye Won-ho moved faster.
By the time enough evidence had been gathered, they captured Jang Taek-gi.
Though the old man couldn’t see far ahead, he was sharp when it came to reading the moment. While the gang members torturing him stepped out for a break, Jang bit off his own tongue and killed himself before they could extract a confession.
His death was an inconvenience—but thanks to Jo In-beom’s actions, Gye Won-ho was able to easily absorb his shares. Out of consideration for their past years together, he had been willing to let In-beom off without much trouble. But once Jang died, In-beom ran off with documents related to Gye Won-ho, using them as a safeguard. He had fled here—to Shanghai.
“In-beom’s doing something stupid and digging his own grave.”
“S-sir… no… it’s not like that. You’ve got it wrong. I… I was only doing it because Jang Taek-gi threatened me…”
“I’m a bit busy, you know. I should be getting back early.”
Cutting him off mid-plea, Gye Won-ho opened the briefcase that had been sitting nearby.
“Because of you, I’m wasting precious time.”
He transferred the cigarette from his fingers to his lips and pulled out the documents, stained in blood, from inside the bag.
Most of them were planted intentionally. With a flat expression, he flipped through the pages until his eyes settled on the photo inserted at the bottom of the last page.
It was a picture of Gye Won-ho and Yoon So-hee standing side by side on the rooftop of her apartment.
“Mm.”
His thumb brushed over her round, pink-tinted ear in the photo. A trace of hunger suddenly appeared in Gye Won-ho’s gaze. He ran a rough hand over his throat, parched with a maddening thirst, then tore the photo free and tucked it away.
Flicking the wheel of his Zippo, he lit the corner of the documents on fire. As the half-burned pages curled in the flame, he tossed them onto Jo In-beom’s body and gave a quiet command to Han Geon-hui.
“Clean it up.”
* * *
The cold wind, sharp against her skin, followed her weary steps.
After finishing her tutoring session, Sohee got on the bus headed home and took out the cold medicine and birth control pills she had prepared in advance, swallowing them down with bottled water.
To be continued….