“It looks like you’ve fallen for that guy.”

“…”

“How does it feel to have your feelings taken away by the daughter of the revenge target?”

Now, he seemed to realize that he was sincere only to her.

Blinking lazily, Kijoo responded in a calm voice.

“Okay. Like a fool.”

What kind of guy is this? Chairman Song Myunghwan sighed with his mouth wide open.

“This won’t work. I’m resistant to all kinds of torture.”

Torture.

Kijoo silently repeated the word to himself.
Yeah, it was torture to make the decision.

Now, if the problem was that even that had become faint, Kijoo picked up one of the photos spread out on the bar table.

It was a joyful look, as if enjoying a piece of art.

Chairman Song Myunghwan, raising the goosebumps on the back of his neck, asked while shaking it off, “What the hell do you want? Is it the company going under, or seeing me kneeling in front of you and begging for forgiveness?”

“…What I want.”

Kijoo thought deeply. There was something sharp flickering through his mind.

The woman often looked at the sky. When her empty eyes groped the vast emptiness.

Only one conclusion was drawn.

“You want Chairman Song Myunghwan to be out of that woman’s life?”

He muttered vaguely. Yeah, that was the goal now. No, when did it become meaningless?

The chairman looked at him with a bewildered face.

Even without blood relations, Eunchae was his daughter. So, she was meant to be used for her utility.

It was leisurely. When she thought she became even slightly useless, she should have dealt with that woman.

“…I’m sorry for the past.”

Chairman Song Myunghwan, trembling with dry knees, finally kneeled down.

“Sincerely repenting, let’s consider it as if it never happened. As for Park Mooseong’s case, I…”

“It will be like that. It will be.”

Kijoo nonchalantly gathered the photos. Then, he splashed them on the chairman’s forehead.

Chairman Song Myunghwan’s face stiffened with shame and humiliation.

“I won’t stand for this.”

Kwon Kijoo’s expression, with lowered eyes, was chilling.

In the end, he would go all the way.

The chairman looked up at him and ground his teeth.

“I promise… even if I die, I won’t die alone. Think about the time you worked under me.”

Is this his last act of resistance?

Kijoo laughed mockingly and turned away.

Just as he was about to leave quickly, the chairman desperately shouted, “How the hell will you do as I say!”

He looked at the chairman with a disdainful expression.

“I didn’t know knees were so light.”

The chairman clenched his fist.

He averted his gaze from the pale wrinkled back of his hand.

Even if the apology was sincere, there was no enthusiasm.

Chairman Song Myunghwan had to collapse. The one fervently wishing for that was Song Eunchae.

After showering, Eunchae was holed up in the powder room. She spread out the note secretly given by Chairman Song Myunghwan, avoiding Kijoo’s eyes, on the table and stared at it for a long time.

The chairman, who usually signed carefully, seemed desperate, judging by the crumpled writing.

“Piano-playing woman painting. 04171225. Laser 10 seconds.”

Eunchae read the crooked letters and contemplated again. It started around sunset and continued until the sun completely set.

Finally, a decision seemed to be made, and she stood up from her seat.
Her pupils, crossing the darkened room, were soaked with an indescribable fear. Dispelling the last hesitation, Eunchae took a step.

She opened the door, walked through the corridor, stepped down the stairs. Her hand, reaching for the handle of the ownerless study’s door, trembled slightly.

If she couldn’t do it today, she wouldn’t be able to do it tomorrow either. She would create a justification for what she hadn’t done and rationalize it.

Eunchae calmed her trembling breath, grasped the doorknob, and turned it. The air in the study, neglected and left alone, was chilling, even if it had been cleaned on time.

The desk where Chairman Song Myunghwan had sat studiously glowed lonely under the cold moonlight.

To avoid attracting Kwon Kijoo’s attention, Eunchae decided not to turn on the light. Instead, she closed the door and stood there for a while, adapting to the darkness.

She looked at the spot where the one she harbored resentment and suspicion towards used to be. From the day she first saw Chairman Song Myunghwan until now, the time passed like a phantom lantern through her mind.

“Would you call me Dad?”

At first, he was a gentle father.

“You’re clueless when you’re young.”

That act didn’t last long.

“Be thankful I put an unknown woman on my family register.”

Eunchae received a wound in her heart from Chairman Song Myunghwan’s thrown dagger.

“Continuing to make people sick of you is still your specialty.”

It didn’t take even a year to reveal his true self to his mother.

As emotions deepened and deepened, it seemed that eventually, she would suffocate and die in those emotions.

Chairman Song Myunghwan disappeared, and that too so simply.

People are unpredictable.

Eunchae looked away from the desk without any regret and stared at the picture frame hanging like a background behind it. A woman playing the piano. She didn’t seem to have any secrets at first glance.

Approaching her, Eunchae blindly groped with her hands. After wandering for a few minutes like that, Eunchae boldly took the frame off the wall. As she did, the depressed part of the size of the frame was revealed.

Putting her hand inside and feeling around, when she pressed the bulging part with the palm of her hand, it moved back and disappeared below. In the place where the wall disappeared, there was a safe.

Without hesitation, Eunchae looked at the numbers she had inadvertently memorized. Pressing them one by one, seeing the flashing red light, she immediately stepped aside.

Finally, with a click, a sound was heard, and the safe’s door automatically opened. Inside the safe, there was a gold bar that seemed to have weight and an envelope sealed with documents.

Surely he didn’t intend to give her this.

Eunchae bowed her waist and scrutinized the inside with more attention. A rectangular box came into view.

Without hesitation, guided by intuition, she reached out with her arm toward that box. Taking it out and opening the lid. When she did, a bizarre breath escaped her.
The cardigan was a plain, sky-blue color.

What caught Eunchae’s gaze, who was about to turn around with a disappointed expression, was a button. Among the total of six buttons, one of them had a slightly different shape.

At that moment, a distant memory came to mind. Shaking her frail mother’s body, she begged for a doll and a button fell.

The button that flew into the air couldn’t be found, and when she returned home, it was the button she picked out with a remorseful heart.

Her mother had smiled and attached that button. It became a fun memory with Eunchae, and her mother used to take it out every winter. At some point, she remembered that her mother had stopped wearing it.

Longing welled up. Eunchae’s face, which had been gently stroking as she slowly unfolded the cardigan, turned pale.

There were bloodstains on the cardigan. It seemed like it had been left as it was without washing, emitting a nauseating smell.

Eunchae, who was frowning, felt an ominous premonition at first.

What could this be?

What does it mean?