TOIGC 42

Chapter 42 …

Pruning the Branch (1)

Though Oh Jung-sun’s desperate yells didn’t reach the laborers, the panicked screams of his lackeys echoed loud and clear.

[We’re not commies! We’re not! It’s a massive misunderstanding! That bastard over there put us up to all of it!]

Back in the 1980s, getting branded as a communist meant you were lucky if you came out half-crippled, and dead if your luck ran dry. Realizing a catastrophic disaster was unfolding, Jung-sun’s cronies dropped him without a second thought. They had never stuck together out of loyalty in the first place—it was purely because cooperation had served their interests.

“Shut your traps! Drag them out! Move it, you bastards, do you want me to help you along?”

The captain lashed out with a combat boot, kicking a lieutenant’s shin. That chain of abuse cascaded straight down to the enlisted soldiers and ultimately landed on Oh Jung-sun’s crew.

“Agh!” “Argh!”

Pummeled mercilessly over the head and torso with rifle butts until they were practically beaten to a pulp, Oh Jung-sun and his lackeys were dragged away by their ankles, their upper bodies scraping raw against the rough dirt.

To the working laborers, the spectacle was pure terror—until Kim Jeong-sun stepped forward quickly, helping to smother the rising flames of panic before it could spread.

“Hey, hey! The rest of you have nothing to worry about! The department store we’re building right now isn’t just any ordinary commercial building—it’s a vital project tied to the ROK-U.S. alliance. But what did these punks try to do? They went right ahead and mixed foreign impurities straight into this critical foundation. Look at this concrete for yourselves right now!”

The workers crowded around the section of fresh concrete Jeong-sun was pointing at.

“Watch closely and see what comes out of here.”

Jeong-sun scooped up a shovel full of unhardened concrete, flung it onto the ground, and pried it open with the edge of the shovel blade. Twigs, branches, and assorted impurities spilled out in a messy clump. At the sight of it, the workers gasped in utter shock. Though they were casual day laborers scratching out a meager living, they hadn’t lost their basic human decency.

[What a bunch of absolute psychopaths.]

Knowing better than anyone what kind of disaster that concrete would cause in the future, the workers instantly stripped away any lingering sympathy they might have felt for Oh Jung-sun’s crew.

“You all saw it for yourselves, right? And these rigged spots aren’t just isolated incidents. We need to go back and rip out the work in those sections to rebuild them properly. Normally, prioritizing those repairs would mean slashing our labor force down to a fraction for a while. But our Director Ryu insisted that wouldn’t be fair to the workers who trusted our site enough to stick with it, so he ordered us to run the repairs alongside the main construction simultaneously. So come on, let’s give it our all, alright?”

[Yes!]

If the workload had been scaled back immediately, over three hundred laborers standing on this site would have been left twiddling their thumbs with nothing to earn for weeks. Because of that, Jeong-sun’s strategically massaged words instantly ignited the workers’ drive, driving efficiency through the roof.

“I like what I’m seeing.”

Inside the construction office’s breakroom for staff, Yoongi praised Jeong-sun’s handling of the situation. Through the window, he watched Jeong-sun addressing the crowd. Among the sea of laborers standing around him, Yoongi thought he could catch a faint ghost of his past self.

“Well, Uncle’s got the competence for it, which is why I didn’t hesitate to recommend him to you, Boss.”

“True enough. Say, Secretary Ryu, care for an ice pop?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Unlike Oh Jung-sun’s crew, who were currently being hauled off to endure a full course of military-style interrogation and torture, Yoongi and his inner circle enjoyed an atmosphere of boundless peace.

Snip! Clip!

Dead, useless twigs fell from the bonsai tree, making sharp, crisp little snaps.

“Cheol-min.”

At his father’s calm utterance, Choi Cheol-min lit up and spoke eagerly.

“Yes, Father!”

“Haven’t I told you a lot about bonsai trees over the years?”

The tone was unnervingly gentle. Choi Kihyun’s soft cadence—almost matching the warmth he used when speaking with Park Yeon-ji or Yoongi—would have immediately screamed “wrong” to anyone who knew his real personality.

“Yes, thanks to you, I’ve learned a lot. I’m even growing one of my own at home now.”

Without pausing to consider what Kihyun was driving at, Cheol-min remained fixated solely on the bonsai itself.

“Right. In your opinion, what is the single most important thing when it comes to bonsai cultivation?”

“Devotion, of course. Putting in the care to make sure it doesn’t wither and die.”

A deep vertical crease formed right between Kihyun’s eyes.

“No, that’s not what I asked.”

“Isn’t devotion the most important thing…?”

Faced with his second son’s repetitive answer, Kihyun let out a heavy sigh.

“I’ve told you time and time again that you have to skillfully thin out the branches. Useless branches need to be snipped right off like this.”

Snap. Once again, a severed branch dropped to the floor with a dull thud.

“Ah, right, you mentioned that before. Totally slipped my mind. Heh heh…”

Cheol-min’s awkward chuckle looked simple-minded at best and thoroughly unappealing at worst.

“Sigh, Cheol-min.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s try translating this to human society, then. I feel like I’ve explained this before, but do you seriously not understand what cutting away useless branches means?”

“Oh, come on, Father. Do you really take me for someone who wouldn’t get that?”

“So you’ve finally figured it out?”

A flicker of a smile finally threatened to break across Kihyun’s face. Last time, his second son had answered, ‘You mean we should fire useless underlings quickly, right?’—which had naturally earned him a scolding. So Kihyun assumed Cheol-min must have dug up a different, smarter answer this time.

Except—

“You mean businesses operating at a loss need to be shut down quickly, right?”

“Good grief!”

As his father stared at him in utter disbelief, Cheol-min instinctively shrank his neck back into his shoulders.

“Father, wh-what’s wrong?”

Unable to hold back any longer, Kihyun tossed the bonsai shears he was holding straight onto the floor. Striking the ground with a sharp clatter, the shears bounced once and slid right to the tips of Cheol-min’s shoes. Oblivious to the atmosphere, the clueless Cheol-min picked them up and offered them back to his father.

“Father, why’d you throw those down? Did something bad happen today? Are you in a bad mood or something?”

“You absolute idiot!”

Ever since he had taken up bonsai, Kihyun had made a point of never chewing out his son Cheol-min. He had operated under the hopeful delusion that ‘if I explain things patiently and consistently, this kid will eventually get the picture.’

Today, however, Kihyun completely and permanently discarded any remaining expectations he had for his son.

“F-Father, why are you…”

As Cheol-min blinked in complete bewilderment, Kihyun tore away any remaining pretenses and laid out his intentions raw and bare.

“I am never, under any circumstances, handing this corporation over to you!”

“Father!”

Struck by the verbal bombshell, Cheol-min jerked back stiffly like a startled shrimp.

“Aside from graduating from Korea University’s Department of Business Administration, you don’t have a single standout trait to your name! Did you seriously think your turn would come if Cheol-ho wasn’t in the picture? I’d hand the group over to Cheol-kyu before I ever let you touch it!”

“Ghhk!”

As his second son trembled violently, Kihyun stepped forward with desperate, hollow eyes and planted both hands firmly on Cheol-min’s shoulders.

“Cheol-min, get a grip. Even if you inherited the company, you’d never be able to hold onto it. Your older brother Cheol-ho is right there—why on earth are you chasing such a delusional dream? Just swallow your pride and go work under Yoongi. If you get under Yoongi’s wing, you can at least secure the title of president at Samwoo Trading.”

“Get your hands off me!”

Cheol-min violently shoved his father’s arms away and stamped hard on the floor.

“Cheol-min! Are you really going to reject your old man’s sincerity like this?”

Kihyun had laid his inner heart completely bare for his second son. He knew well enough that if he were to drop dead tomorrow, his second son would be treated like trash by the rest of the family. That was why Kihyun had stripped away his usual mask and practically begged him.

Yet Cheol-min lacked the emotional intelligence or wisdom to grasp his father’s true worry.

“Just wait and see. I… I am going to inherit this group no matter what.”

While Cheol-min was stubbornly rejecting his father’s final lifeline, Oh Jung-sun was currently singing like a bird about who was pulling his strings.

“Are you going to tell us who’s backing you or not?”

“I… I… Swear… I-I’m not… a-a-a commie… I…”

Jung-sun tried his absolute hardest to hold out. After all, the dream of ten 500-seat luxury lounges had become his primary source of hope ever since Choi Cheol-min had hired him.

But the interrogation tactics used by the military agents were vicious beyond belief. They didn’t even do the dirty work themselves—they pulled veteran professionals straight out of the police department to take people apart piece by piece. By the third day, even a hardened thug like Jung-sun had completely lost his grip on reality.

“Man, this punk’s got a stubborn streak. Is this bastard actually a red?”

Inspector Han Jeong-su of the Jongno Police Station muttered with an expression of sheer disbelief, turning to look at Inspector Kim Gyeong-gu of the Guro Police Station standing beside him.

“Nah, no way. His background check in that direction is squeaky clean.”

“Even if his record is clean, you never know. Could be a deep-cover sleeper agent.”

As Han persisted, Kim shook his head.

“I doubt it. Anyone can tell this guy was promised a massive payout. Let’s just drop the act and hit him with the real deal.”

“Sigh, this punk has terrible luck. If he’d spilled his guts early on like his lackeys did, he would’ve walked away with just a few broken bones instead.”

With both men snapping latex gloves onto their hands to kick things into high gear, Oh Jung-sun finally white-flagged it, passing out nearly half-conscious.

“My… m-m-my… backer is… Ch-Ch-Ch-Choi… Cheol… min…!”

“Did he just say Choi Cheol-min?”

At Han’s words, Kim nodded slowly.

“Pretty sure he did.”

“Good. Then let’s keep going.”

Right on the brink of complete psychological collapse, hearing the words ‘let’s keep going’ sent a jolt of pure terror through Jung-sun, snapping him back to painful awareness.

“I-I-I already told you!!”

The shriek tore from his throat like a strangled plea. But Han Jeong-su’s response delivered the ultimate psychological death blow.

“We still need to verify if you’re telling the truth, don’t we?”

Beaming with the smile of a literal demon, Han watched as Jung-sun promptly stained the floor beneath him a bright shade of yellow.

Choi Kihyun had eight children in total—five sons and three daughters. Ranging from Choi Cheol-ho, the president of Samwoo Heavy Industries, all the way down to his youngest daughter still attending high school, their diverse careers made getting the whole family under one roof an absolute logistical nightmare.

Yet today, inside Kihyun’s mansion—which felt several degrees chillier than the Siberian tundra—every single child, along with their respective spouses, had been summoned to gather in one place for the first time in ages.

“Hyung, what on earth is going on?”

Choi Cheol-jae, who was currently out on a special military vacation courtesy of JSD’s favor, whispered to his third oldest brother, Choi Cheol-kyu.

“Something major. Just keep your mouth shut for now.”

“Uh… right, sorry…”

Their father still hadn’t emerged from his study, while their second oldest brother and his wife knelt side-by-side in the middle of the living room floor, performing a silent ritual of profound repentance. Everyone knew someone had messed up big time, but not a single soul had any inkling of what the actual crime was.

Click.

The study door swung open, and Choi Kihyun stepped out wearing an expression so rigid it made all his previous stern looks seem warm by comparison.

“You’re all here.”

At the words of their father, father-in-law, and patriarch, every head bowed simultaneously.

“We don’t have enough seats for everyone, so I won’t bother telling you to sit. Do as you like—stand or sit wherever you please.”

As Kihyun took his seat at the head of the room, Choi Cheol-min and Park Gyeong-ja found themselves kneeling directly before him, encircled by the rest of the silent family.

“The reason I called you all here today…”

Kihyun paused for a brief moment before speaking in a voice completely devoid of human emotion.

“Starting today, I am officially striking the pair in front of me from the family registry.”