Translator: Wan ED/PR: Solarin
55. Stalemateless (3)
A few months after Cheon Seong-heon learned the truth, his family[1] was struck by lightning overnight.
It started with an anonymously tipped assemblyman requesting a tax investigation of Cheon Seong-heon’s grandfather’s company from the national tax service director at the parliamentary inspection.
As the result of the tax investigation led by the four teams from the Seoul Regional Office Investigation Office 1, the estimated amount of the tax audit was over hundreds of billions.
It wasn’t just the company that was hit by lightning.
The investigation agency informed Cheon Seong-heon’s family members about summoning as suspects.
— I prepared a defense consul. Come on time, and if you push a picture from behind, the picture will come out.
— Are you saying that he will stand in front of reporters with me?
— Then are you planning to send your son alone?
— …. ah, no, Father, where would I send my son, whose body is unwell?!
— How dare you raise your voice?! From the beginning, if your son did well with management, we wouldn’t be in this situation!
Starting with Cheon Seong-heon’s half-brother, who was a vice director of the key affiliated companies, everyone, excluding Cheon Seong-heon was summoned.
In the end, everyone, excluding Cheon Seong-heon, was prosecuted without detention.
Besides suspicion of tax evasion, price manipulation, bribery, infringement of trade secrets, illegal trade under the Capital Market Law, business malpractice, etc, there was not a small amount of suspicious details, so there was a chance of additional charges based on the results of the investigation.
Soon, in the midst of disturbing rumors about the group of Cheon Seong-heon’s family going to ruin spreading in the financial district, the stock price was plummeting day by day.
There was only one person smiling among the shareholders, Cheon Seong-heon.
‘It’s going smoothly, eh? From the beginning, there was no way that the people who oppressed even me, who had the same blood mixed in, didn’t have enemies.’
The anonymous tip started with Cheon Seong-heon.
Because his half-brother kept him in a firm check, Cheon Seong-heon just avoided revealing his excellency, but he was born with the talent of a businessman.
He had an excellent eye and knowledge to read the state of company operations and its current flow, it wasn’t difficult for him to figure out the ins and outs of the illegal actions.
‘I thought someone would be suspicious of me, but… it seems that I overestimated this family more than I expected.’
Even as this situation went on, no one suspected Cheon Seong-heon.
It was because Cheon Seong-heon didn’t do anything stupid to reveal his hostility in front of them, and even more than that, it was because they couldn’t imagine that Cheon Seong-heon would attack the company, that would become his future.
‘… No one even remember Uisin hyung.’
Ruining Cheon Seong-heon and Jo Uisin’s lives were such a simple matter for them, they didn’t think with what kind of feelings Cheon Seong-heon and Jo Uisin were burning right now.
As such, Cheon Seong-heon’s family couldn’t suspect Cheon Seong-heon, who appeared gentle.
Moreover, they had one more reason not to suspect Cheon Seong-heon.
— You will know it better than me, but I didn’t put my hand in your admission process or grades. Don’t worry.
— Thank You.
— Yeah, the suggestion you made was a bit helpful. I mean about adjusting the share ratio that you suggested previously…
Cheon Seong-heon was also the target of attacks by the press and the police.
Cheon Seong-heon, who didn’t graduate from the university yet was suspected of the illegal admission and grade graft.
As for Cheon Seong-heon, he was admitted to Korea’s most prestigious university with his own talents, but his half-brother wasn’t.
After it was discovered that his half-brother was illegally admitted, Cheon Seong-heon was also naturally suspected and as there was even anonymous tip, he was investigated.
The professors, who personally taught Cheon Seong-heon asserted his innocence and the admission office even offered the documents, but the press remained stubborn.
‘Unlike with cases of others, I was just suspected without evidence, but I didn’t expect it to grow so much.’
Cheon Seong-heon made himself into a chess piece according to this first resolution and moved.
So when making anonymous tips, he didn’t particularly hesitate and sold his name too.
Using the secret of his birth, he put before the press a plausible scenario, ‘Because Cheon Seong-heon was a bastard, they wanted to raise him as an heir after setting him up as an prestigious university graduate’, and the press, who took the bait, attacked Cheon Seong-heon.
As the result, the people lingering around Cheon Seong-heon’s surrounding, disappeared like an ebbing wave.
Even though the results of the investigation didn’t come out yet, there were numerous people, who treated Cheon Seong-heon as an illegal admission.
‘It’s good that I was able to weed out people with this. I like that it’s quiet.’
In the midst of it, Jo Uisin remained unchanged.
There was no way that he didn’t see the news, but he treated Cheon Seong-heon as a close junior just like before.
Cheon Seong-heon solidified his heart even more with this.
‘I have to pull it off to the end for the sake of Uisin hyung.’
Cheon Seong-heon didn’t plan to stop his revenge on his half-brother.
Even though his half-brother was said to be buried, as long as that half-brother and the family connected with him by blood had power left, it was unknown what they would do.
Cheon Seong-heon didn’t want them to have the power to play with someone’s life.
— What kind of nonsense is ‘defense consul revealed an intention to withdraw’! There is no way that means a court-appointed attorney, right?
— Who the hell moved behind the scenes?!
— It wasn’t a long time ago when that fucker director Choe, scratched my insides, so I’m going to look into him. That bastard might have used his hand.
— You left Your cousin out of succession rights before and had a big fight, perhaps…
Exactly like the meaning of 疑心暗鬼, which meant in a suspicious heart is a dark ghost, the family turned into chaos, as if there was a ghost.
Even when watching the family running towards the catastrophe, Cheon Seong-heon didn’t have any particular fun with it.
‘I can’t show any careless mercy. One day that mercy would behead me.’
Cheon Seong-heon said it over and over, close to a compulsion, while he thoroughly ruined his family.
They say that a rich family can go on for three years, even if ruined, but Cheon Seong-heon didn’t plan to let that family go for another three years.
When the legal battle was going under to the point where the defense consul team was revealing their intention to resign one after another, Cheon Seong-heon’s stepmother made the worst move.
— There is a hospital called ‘hotel’. Father, I plan to place our child there.
— We said we will fight this legal battle until the end, but…
— If it goes like this, we will be sentenced, and we will be put under court custody, unable to escape! I plan to send him to the hotel, so he can cool his head.
Cheon Seong-heon’s stepmother didn’t want her son who was paralyzed from waist-down to be imprisoned.
There existed a disabled specialized correctional facility for the disable prisoners in Korea, and if he was the son of chaebeol, it was obvious he would be treated much better than other prisoners, but from the standpoint of a mother, she couldn’t be satisfied with it.
So she hatched a plan to explore a law loophole and pull her son out of it.
— While hospitalized, You can delay the carrying out a sentence. With this child’s body, it will be an easy matter to make him hospitalized.
— All the medical records were submitted during the army service matter, so it would be difficult to get him hospitalized.
— There is a neuropsychiatry department that is good at making up diagnosis, so I plan to ask them.
Cheon Seong-heon couldn’t watch the person, who became the trigger for executing this revenge to live in luxury.
After learning of the step-mother’s plan, Cheon Seong-heon quietly moved.
Cheon Seong-heon decided to admit his half-brother to another hospital, not the ‘hotel’.
It was a place that accepted people that were difficult to show to the society for money.
The stepmother, who didn’t know that the hospital name changed in the middle, gave money and shoved her son into hell.
The half-brother was stripped from all communication devices and shoved into a mentally-ill ward in a straitjacket, but the stepmother didn’t know that and was just proud of protecting her son.
— Did You send off that child?
— Yes, that’s a place that is difficult for the police and reporters to get into. It will be difficult to contact him for a while.
Probably around the time it was possible to contact, this house would be completely ruined, so she wouldn’t have the power to take her son out.
No, they would be imprisoned in detention centers or correctional facilities, so what power of the house would matter?
And after a year Cheon Seong-heon resolved to take revenge.
Around the time when the interest on Cheon Seong-heon, who was the only one to be declared innocent from all suspicions, cooled down, Cheon Seong-heon declared he would go his own way and fled home.
All Cheon Seong-heon’s family members were imprisoned, so there was no one catch him.
The distant relative, who grabbed the management rights, was rather happy with Cheon Seong-heon leaving.
No longer belonging to the chaebeol family, the place Cheon Seong-heon headed to was a certain gosiwon.
— … Seongheon-ah, what are you doing here?
Jo Uisin, who finished the part-time job and came back, looked at Cheon Seong-heon, sitting behind the gosiwon’s counter, with a surprised face.
Cheon Seong-heon smiled from the depths of his heart after a long time and replied.
— Uisin hyung, from today on I’ll work as a floor manager here. Please take care of me.
Jo Uisin didn’t ask anything and treated Cheon Seong-heon as a junior just like before.
He wanted to bring Jo Uisin out of the gosiwon, even right now, but knowing that he wouldn’t agree to it, he decided to take care of him as a gosiwon floor manager.
‘Now hyung will find work. He will leave gosiwon and… at that time I also should stop.’
Now there were no people interrupting Jo Uisin’s job seeking.
There would be no people from service companies threatening landlords to throw out Jo Uisin.
But Jo Uisin one day started to lock himself up in his room.
‘… What happened? Did Uisin hyung failed because He had a 1-year gap? What HR team would drop Uisin hyung? Are everyone’s eyes rotten?’
Unlike Cheon Seong-heon’s worries, after his half-brother’s pressure disappeared, Jo Uisin safely succeeded in getting a job.
Cheon Seong-heon couldn’t imagine that when getting health check up documents for application, he received a terminally ill diagnosis.
‘As He had been busy, and it was difficult, He should have a break. He said that He kept working even during vacations, so it wouldn’t be bad even if He takes a break before seeking a job.’
Cheon Seong-heon thought that Jo Uisin was just greatly hurt because of failing to get a job, and brought him snacks and cough medicine, while indirectly comforting him.
Even then, Jo Uisin was the first to worry about Cheon Seong-heon.
— You haven’t graduated yet, right? When are you going to return to school? Professor-nim also asked me about you.
Cheon Seong-heon ended up taking leave of absence in the last semester because he was engulfed in the university admission corruption controversy.
The suspicions were all cleared and his academic advisor also offered Cheon Seong-heon to return to studying, and Jo Uisin also indirectly recommend returning to studying.
Moreover, Jo Uisin also introduced him to a part time job other than gosiwon floor manager.
— The old student introduced me to a tutoring position, will you take it?
— Hyung won’t take it?
— … I’m busy with preparing for the job seeking.
The pay for the tutoring part-time job, Jo Uisin introduced him too, was much bigger than the pay of the gosiwon floor manager.
Jo Uisin didn’t say it openly, but he clearly wished that he would stop being a gosiwon floor manager.
Cheon Seong-heon gradually became uneasy.
‘… These days, His coughing becomes wetter, so shouldn’t I take Him to the hospital? But hyung is somewhat strange.’
Cheon Seong-heon couldn’t find an answer.
In his head, all kinds of hypotheses and suspicions shoot up, but he couldn’t come up with anything but extremely negative things.
Then one day, the PMH’s final chapter was updated.
‘I can’t disturb Uisin hyung, but…’
He couldn’t disturb the huge fan Jo Uisin, who would play PMH for a long period of time, so he didn’t speak up, but his heart kept feeling strangely uneasy.
When he cleaned a few times around Jo Uisin’s room and loitered around.
— Cough, ough, cougeek, cough…
He heard Jo Uisin’s coughing from behind the thin door.
Usually, he would cough a few times and stop, but it was particularly long.
At the end of his worries, Cheon Seong-heon knocked.
“Uisin hyung, this is Cheon Seong-heon. Are You alright?”
— Cough, cough, heugh, euhg, cough!
Instead of a reply he heard the coughing grew stronger.
Cheon Seong-heon felt that something was truly wrong.
“Hyung, open the door!”
The door he urgently opened and entered were full of light.
After the light faded, he saw a smartphone and folder full of notes laid out on the bloodied bed in the small room.
But Jo Uisin was nowhere to be seen.
The eyes of Cheon Seong-heon, who looked around the room with a stupefied face, landed on the white envelope.
‘This…’
The envelope had Cheon Seong-heon’s name written on it.
The content was a will.
*~*~*
[1] family — didn’t mention it in the previous chapter, but whenever Cheon Seong-heon’s ‘family’ is mentioned, the word used is ‘집안 (jap-an)’ literally meaning in-the-house. Which refers to intimidate, close family members, those living under one roof. I often translate it as ‘house’.
Translator’s note: No mercy, huh? Oh, Cheon Seong-heon… ㅠㅠ
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