Chapter 01

Do You Like Porn?

“GO!”

That one short word was so firm and absolute that it seemed as though not only the people around him, but even the pine trees that had stood in the same place for decades and the free-floating clouds in the blue sky had to grow and drift according to his command.

As the clay pigeon shot rapidly into the air, Chairman Kwon Tae-woong pulled the trigger without hesitation.

Bang―!

The gunshot seemed to shake the entire world.

It was a sound Do-hyeok had heard often since childhood, yet he still hated it.

But his father, Chairman Kwon, preferred shooting, a sport that reminded him of the barbaric age, over golf, the so-called sport of the aristocracy.

Chairman Kwon enjoyed the exhilaration of watching the pigeon shatter into pieces after being struck by his bullet tens of thousands of times more than the moment a golf ball elegantly rolled into the hole.

As Chairman Kwon loaded another shell into his shotgun, he spoke without even looking at Do-hyeok waiting behind him, as though he were giving an order to one of his subordinates.

“Get engaged to Congressman Choi Geon’s daughter in December.”

At his father’s unilateral announcement, Do-hyeok’s dark eyebrows twitched.

Congressman Choi Geon’s daughter was barely twenty years old.

In other words, Chairman Kwon was telling him to get engaged when the girl returned to Korea for winter vacation. The mere idea of getting engaged to her left Do-hyeok speechless.

Before Congressman Choi Geon could run in the next presidential election and become president, his father wanted to hurry the engagement along so that the two could get married.

Do-hyeok knew his father’s intentions all too well, and he did not like the order.

It was as if his father intended to use his own son as the bullet that would be fired at Congressman Choi at the perfect moment for hunting.

“What are you going to do if I refuse?”

“I suppose I’ll have to tell Manager Park to prepare a dog leash.”

With that, Chairman Kwon raised the loaded shotgun again.

It was a silent pressure that seemed to say there was no right for Do-hyeok to refuse.

Chairman Kwon had taught his son all about power when it came to raising him, and this time was no different. He was being as hardline as ever.

This wasn’t a conversation.

It was a complete command.

It was one thing if it were any other matter, but this was his marriage. Do-hyeok couldn’t simply allow himself to be tied to a dog leash and dragged away.

His relationship with his father had always been like that of enemies at war, each of them having to defeat the other. But this time, the battle seemed fiercer than ever.

His life was at stake.

For his father, the kingdom known as Sejin Group was at stake.

“Please, don’t show me your weakness. Because I’ll bite you the moment you do, just like you taught me.”

His father seemed to find even that threat amusing and shouted toward the shooting range.

“GO!”

Do-hyeok immediately turned around and left the shooting range. Several more gunshots rang out behind him.

Bang―! Bang―!

He didn’t need to look.

He already knew.

Every shot had hit its mark.

Manager Park, who had been waiting by the car, opened the rear door as Do-hyeok approached.

Manager Park was around the same age as Do-hyeok’s father, perhaps slightly older, and had spent his entire life serving as his father’s secretary.

After working as Chairman Kwon’s secretary for twenty-seven years, he transferred to Do-hyeok’s office three years ago when Do-hyeok took over as the CEO of Sejin Construction and became his chief secretary.

Do-hyeok believed his father had sent Manager Park, someone who was practically his right-hand man, to keep watch over his every move.

“If Manager Park is really on my side rather than my father’s, show me something this time. I’m about to run out of patience.”

If Manager Park was nothing more than his father’s man, then the first thing Do-hyeok would do after rebelling against his father was fire him.

As though he already knew what Do-hyeok had heard from his father, Manager Park merely looked quietly at Do-hyeok’s face.

It almost seemed as though Manager Park was worrying about him in place of the father who should have been doing so.

Do-hyeok closed his eyes tightly, shutting himself off from everything.

The Benz carrying him pulled away as smoothly as if it were gliding over velvet.

The night in Hongdae was music itself, alive and breathing.

Rhythm seeped into everything, and even the drunken people staggering through the streets seemed to be filled with excitement.

One woman was hurrying down those Hongdae streets.

She wore a secondhand coat that looked as though she had bought it somewhere in Hongdae, faded jeans, and a white T-shirt, but her body, at the peak of youth, was overflowing with vitality.

Ignoring the men on the street who whistled and looked her over, she ran into Hongdae Club ‘Ban.’

“You’re late!”

Dongwoo, who had come outside to wait for her, immediately scolded her when he saw her.

Eun-chae clasped her hands together and apologized.

“Sorry. The team leader started nagging me again. I barely managed to get away.”

The performance was about to begin, so there was no time for a lengthy explanation.

She immediately went into the dressing room and started putting on her makeup.

During the day, when she went to work, she only wore BB cream and lip gloss. But when she went onstage, she painted her lips with the most vivid red lipstick and thickened her eyelashes with mascara.

She also took off her jeans and put on a red dress that went perfectly with her red lipstick.

The red skirt fluttering every time she moved was perfect for stage performances.

Since she always wore intense red clothing whenever she sang, the band had naturally come to be called ‘India Red.’

There was Ryu, whose nationality was impossible to guess; Dongwoo, the wild drummer boy whose cute appearance was completely at odds with his drumming; and Hoya, the handsome vintage-looking man.

Alongside their vocalist, the three knights guarding the singing princess formed the well-balanced core of India Red.

“Wow. You don’t just put on makeup. You transform. How does one person look this different?”

Hoya teased Eun-chae with a chuckle when she came out after getting ready.

But to her, it was only natural.

If she looked the same when she wasn’t singing as she did when she was, what would be the point of being a singer?

There were two kinds of singers in this world.

Professional singers and amateur singers.

A professional singer was someone who could make a living simply by singing.

Eun-chae was an amateur singer.

But in her heart, she was a ‘real singer,’ and simply being able to sing at a Hongdae club gave her all the satisfaction she needed as a singer.

People gathered to hear her sing, and if they got excited along with her music, she believed that was enough to make her a ‘real singer.’

“Hello! We’re India Red!”

At her lively greeting into the microphone, the cheers from the people gathered inside the club seemed loud enough to break through the roof.

India Red was also famous as a visual band in Hongdae, so the audience’s response was tremendous even before they began singing.

“I’ll be your holiday.”

The singing had begun because an ugly little girl who was always scolded at home for being bad at studying and causing trouble wanted to fly freely like a butterfly.

That was why Eun-chae wanted to shine brighter than anyone else whenever she was onstage.

“It won’t be a loss. Everything will be different.”

Drums, guitars, breathing, voices, clinking glasses, the sounds of the city, the sounds of the night…

Her voice seeped into all those sounds, and together they became a song.

Being able to sing like this allowed her to become the real thing.

“I really enjoyed your singing.”

Just as she finished her song and was about to leave the stage, a man in a suit who had been listening from the very front spoke to her.

Because she was standing on the high stage, she naturally looked down at him.

When Eun-chae looked down at him with an expression that clearly said, Who are you?, the man pulled out a business card and held it out.

His name was printed on it, along with the word ‘lawyer.’

“Let’s have a meal together sometime.”

Whether it was a high-school dropout delinquent or a well-educated lawyer, their methods of picking up women were more or less the same.

No, if anything, a delinquent who had played around enough would know better than the lawyer that a singer onstage and an ordinary woman shouldn’t be treated as the same thing.

In any case, he had watched her performance, so Eun-chae accepted the business card without saying anything.

Perhaps taking that as her acceptance, the man smiled confidently, showing his white teeth.

Leaving the man lost in his own delusion behind, Eun-chae headed toward the dressing room.

After every performance, Eun-chae completely removed her makeup, took off her dress, and changed back into the jeans and T-shirt she had worn when she entered the club.

It was time to go home.

After her older sister got married, Eun-chae lived alone with her father.

Cinderella turned into a maid when she got home after midnight, but if Eun-chae came home after midnight, her father hit her.

When she left the club, the man who had given her his business card earlier was waiting in front of it with a foreign car parked nearby.

She walked straight past him without the slightest hesitation.

But even after she passed him, the man didn’t recognize her at all.

Seeing the man like that, the band members who had come out with Eun-chae giggled and laughed at him.

The man only gave them an unpleasant look, completely unaware of why they were laughing.

Mocking the man who was like a blind man with his eyes open, Eun-chae hurried home.

It was three in the morning.

Yet Do-hyeok still couldn’t fall asleep.

His insomnia had begun before he even entered school.

For someone who had been born with everything he could possibly want, the one thing Do-hyeok didn’t have was sleep.

Perhaps because he had been taking sleeping pills for too long, there were times when even medication no longer put him to sleep.

It seemed he would have to visit the hospital again, so Do-hyeok called his personal doctor.

“I’ll be there at seven tomorrow. Clear the hospital.”

It was an inconsiderate way of speaking, without regard for the other person’s circumstances, but the doctor didn’t take offense.

[Has your insomnia gotten worse again? Did something happen?]

Perhaps his problem with his father had something to do with it, but Do-hyeok didn’t want to tell anyone about that.

Not even his psychiatrist.

After making the appointment and hanging up, Do-hyeok walked toward the classical music records covering an entire wall of the living room.

They were the records he usually played on nights when he couldn’t sleep.

They were also the only belongings he had brought with him when he moved out of his family home.

What Do-hyeok liked most about classical music was the lack of human voices.

To Do-hyeok, music meant instrumental performance.

It was his belief that a singer’s voice could never be as precise as an instrument.

His favorite composer was Brahms.

Even if Brahms wasn’t as grand as Wagner or as dazzling as Liszt, his restrained music possessed a condensed power.

Even if Brahms wasn’t the greatest musical genius, and even if he hadn’t written the most famous pieces, Do-hyeok liked his stubborn devotion to music.

So he chose one of Brahms’s records.

Listening to the weighty sound created by a Romantic classicist who valued balance and restraint, Do-hyeok looked down at Seoul from sixty-four floors above the ground.

The enormous city lay beneath his feet.

But the only thing he desperately needed right now was a handful of sleep.

Just like Cinderella becoming a maid after midnight, Eun-chae had to turn from a Hongdae singer back into an ordinary office worker when morning came.

Her father had always wanted her to give up music, become a normal office worker like everyone else, and live on a steady paycheck.

Even if she had to starve, she would have been happy living by singing alone.

But she didn’t want to get beaten to death by her father, either.

So Eun-chae went to work again that day.

“Do your best! If you quit this job too, you’re really going to get it!”

After receiving her usual threatening farewell from her father, Eun-chae left home.

Her current workplace, which might have been her umpteenth job, was a home-shopping call center.

Because she couldn’t give up music, Eun-chae always grew tired of office work easily and never stayed at a job for long.

It was practically employment under false pretenses.

[I raised it for a whole year, and you’re saying it doesn’t recognize me! Why did I even keep a pet?! Give me a refund right now!]

A woman who had bought a turtle from the home-shopping channel because she hated having animal fur everywhere had spent thirty minutes angrily demanding a refund for the turtle she had raised for an entire year.

“Then maybe you should’ve gotten a dog.”

Unable to hold herself back any longer, Eun-chae muttered that one sentence.

The female customer became even angrier.

[What’s your name?! Is this how you talk to customers?! I’m filing a complaint right now!]

The woman latched onto Eun-chae’s words and seemed almost delighted, as though she had been waiting for Eun-chae to make a mistake.

In the end, the woman received a refund for the turtle as an apology, and Eun-chae had to endure another endless lecture from her team leader.

Her father still finished things quickly with a single beating.

At work, perhaps because one beating wasn’t enough, the nagging never seemed to end once it started.

“What on earth are you thinking, Eun-chae, coming to work like this?! Why is it that complaints only come from the customers you take calls from?!”

It felt as though every pathetic person in the world had stopped going to church to confess their sins to a priest and instead chose female call-center employees.

And Eun-chae didn’t have enough devout faith to put up with it.

Still, she kept her mouth firmly shut in front of her team leader.

If she said even one word about how unfair it was, the thirty-minute lecture would turn into an hour.

“If you work in customer service, being kind is the bare minimum! If you’re going to treat customers the same way just because you’re in a bad mood, don’t work in customer service. Go work at a courthouse!”

Even if she wanted to work at a courthouse, what could she do when she didn’t have the ability?

She had been too naïve to think that because she liked singing, a job involving her voice would naturally suit her.

“Treat customers like you would your family.”

When Eun-chae did something wrong, her father dealt with it by beating her.

Then if a customer spouted nonsense, was she supposed to replace the switch with sharp words?

But if she did that, she would obviously get fired immediately.

Having to think about how her father treated his family and endure it was a dilemma for her.

“Looks like this company isn’t working out either?”

The moment her brother-in-law Jinwoo saw her open the door to the examination room and enter, he asked with a sympathetic expression.

He was a doctor who was a source of pride for her father, the most devoted husband in the world to her sister, and a good brother-in-law whom Eun-chae could talk to whenever she felt frustrated.

Maybe by marrying a man like Jinwoo, her sister had used up all the luck their family possessed.

Especially on a day like today.

“Do you have any patients left?”

Work had been so exhausting that Eun-chae had come to the hospital intending to ask her brother-in-law to buy her a drink.

“Oh! The last patient said they were coming at seven, but they haven’t shown up.”

How incredibly inconsiderate of a patient to keep a doctor waiting.

“I’m already late anyway. Should we just cancel and go have a drink together?”

Jinwoo’s suggestion hit her feelings exactly.

Eun-chae grinned.

As if he really intended to do it, Jinwoo stood up and took off his doctor’s coat.

Rrrrrrrr―. Rrrrrrrr―.

Just then, Jinwoo’s phone, which was lying on the desk, rang.

He said he would step outside to take the call and left the examination room.

Judging by how carefully he was tiptoeing around, it must have been her sister calling.

Whenever Jinwoo answered her sister’s calls, he looked like a devout believer straightening his clothes before praying to God.

Since it looked like the call would take a while, Eun-chae comfortably sat down on the sofa.

Then her eyes fell on the doctor’s coat Jinwoo had taken off.

I’m bored. Should I try it on?

She had been bad at studying, so she did have a certain awe for people who were good at it.

But there was absolutely no chance she could study hard enough to become a doctor.

She wondered what it would feel like to wear a doctor’s coat, so Eun-chae got up and walked over to her brother-in-law’s desk.

As neat as Jinwoo himself, the doctor’s coat was so clean and wrinkle-free that it looked as though it had just been washed.

Eun-chae took it off the hanger and carefully slipped it on.

If there had been a mirror, she would have checked what she looked like.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t one in the examination room.

So instead of a mirror, Eun-chae checked her reflection in the large window.

She was brushing her hair behind her ear when the examination room door opened.

Naturally assuming it was her brother-in-law, Eun-chae turned around.

Then she saw the man standing in the doorway and her eyes widened in surprise.

It wasn’t her brother-in-law.

The luxurious suit looked as though it had been made by a famous European craftsman, while his polished shoes seemed never to have touched an ordinary street.

They matched his haughty appearance perfectly.

His gaze was so intense that once you met his eyes, it felt as though you would be trapped there.

His nose was elegant, and his lips were firmly closed, as though they held countless secrets.

Even a man this handsome has a mental illness? What a waste.

He looked so perfectly fine that he practically seemed like a noble young master.

Yet if he had come to see a psychiatrist, there had to be something wrong with his mental state.

The saying that no one in the world was perfect was perhaps the truest truth of all.

She was pretty and sang well, but she was stupid.

Her brother-in-law was smart and sharp, but he had terrible taste in women.

And this man was handsome and seemed rich, but apparently had mental problems.

“Are you the new doctor?”

At the man’s question, Eun-chae was surprised for the second time.

Does that mean I look intelligent enough to be a doctor? What a miracle!

In reality, she should have immediately told him that she wasn’t a doctor and that the real doctor would be back soon.

But before she knew it, Eun-chae was already reaching out her hand.

“Please sit down first.”

Her common sense was screaming that she shouldn’t do this, but the man was too handsome for her to control herself.

She had always had the bad habit of poking at things even when she knew she couldn’t have them.

Following Eun-chae’s instructions, the man sat down on the sofa.

The way he crossed his legs was incredibly intimidating.

Not at all like a sick person.

Usually, people who were ill tended to be somewhat timid.

But this man showed none of that.

“Go ahead and tell me. I’ll listen to everything.”

Her eyes were practically broadcasting that she wanted to know his physical measurements, but the words that came out of her mouth still sounded vaguely like something a doctor might say.

At that moment, she genuinely felt generous enough to listen to even this man’s shortcomings.

But the man simply stared at her for a moment.

From Do-hyeok’s perspective, the woman wearing a doctor’s coat was the more suspicious situation.

There was supposed to be Jinwoo sitting there, yet some completely unrelated woman was in his place.

She didn’t seem like a nurse.

And if she really was one, then the nurse herself needed psychiatric treatment.

The treatment Do-hyeok had come to receive was a psychiatric consultation where confidentiality was the highest priority.

Considering that, it would have been normal for him to be angry first at this outsider who had suddenly barged into the consultation room.

But before that, he was simply curious about what this woman was.

There were no interns at this private clinic, so if she was wearing a doctor’s coat, she had to be a specialist herself.

But she looked far too young for that.

Mid-twenties at most?

And she absolutely did not have the face of someone who was good at studying.

What the hell? Did Seo Jinwoo have an affair?

Seo Jinwoo was one of those rare men who had married his first love.

He was so obsessed with one woman that Do-hyeok had often thought Jinwoo must have become a psychiatrist who treated abnormal people because he himself was abnormal.

And now that man had another woman?

It was actually more interesting than his own insomnia.

“Go ahead and tell me. I’ll listen to everything.”

The woman spoke to him with sparkling eyes.

She didn’t particularly smell like a mistress secretly meeting a married man.

She simply felt like an immature girl who had grown up physically but not mentally.

Watching the woman with a look that asked, Just who the hell are you?, Do-hyeok casually threw out a statement.

“I’m a sex addict.”

The fake illness he had invented carried the feeling of You’d have to be at least this messed up to need psychiatric treatment.

The woman’s eyes visibly shook in confusion.

Then her face flushed red as if she were about to explode.

It was rather amusing to watch.

“Then, do you like porn?”

At the woman’s question, which she had thrown out in an attempt to keep playing doctor until the very end, Do-hyeok almost burst out laughing.

“Pfft.”

Manager Park turned his head at the short but unmistakable sound of laughter coming from the back seat.

But Do-hyeok was staring coldly out the window as though he had never laughed.

Manager Park wondered if he had imagined it and turned back around.

Still, Do-hyeok’s sharp atmosphere seemed somewhat calmer than usual.

Manager Park didn’t know why, but since it wasn’t a bad thing, he looked forward again with a pleased feeling.

He really was an all-purpose secretary.

When the boss he served was in a bad mood, he was in a bad mood too.

When his boss was in a good mood, he became happy as well.

“What is this?”

When Manager Park placed a CD on his desk, Do-hyeok looked at him questioningly.

“It’s a limited-edition album from an indie band.”

So what? Is he telling me to buy it?

Do-hyeok’s eyes grew dull, and Manager Park cautiously explained why he had brought it.

“At the Chairman’s instruction, I bought every copy that was released.”

Do-hyeok narrowed his eyes.

His father, who was cold-blooded, merciless even toward his own family, could never possibly be a music enthusiast.

And he listened to minor music rather than mainstream music?

Impossible.

Do-hyeok looked carefully at the music CD again.

The woman in the album photo was wearing a red dress.

It wasn’t a particularly elegant outfit, but red suited the woman like a second skin, making him think of the sweltering heat of summer.

More than anything, her face looked familiar.

She was much more glamorous and dynamic than the woman in his memory, but if she removed her heavy makeup and wore ordinary clothes, she seemed to resemble the fake female doctor he had seen at the hospital.

As Do-hyeok studied the album photo, Manager Park carefully watched his expression.

“Don’t tell me my father had another child besides Doyeon and Dojin?”

At his dangerous question, Manager Park looked troubled and somewhat disappointed.

“I can’t tell you something I don’t know. I’m only telling you because this was the only instruction Chairman Kwon gave me over the past three years.”

His father wasn’t the kind of person who would buy something like this for no reason.

And Manager Park wasn’t the kind of person who would bring him something trivial and meaningless.

Do-hyeok pointed at the woman in the red dress in the photograph.

“Bring this woman to me.”

Whether she could become the bullet he would use to shoot his father or not, there was no harm in deciding after he met her.