Only absolute silence enveloped the penthouse, a silence so complete that it seemed to eat sound itself. Cha Seongjun stood against a wall of reinforced glass, looking down at the twinkling city of Seoul just like a spilled chest of diamonds. At this height, the Han River slipped, black serpent and a multitude of lives below reduced to an impersonal crawl of headlights and taillights. Such was his kingdom, the throne of Sungjin Group. Yet, all that remained was the cold glass on his fingertips.
Tall, impossibly dressed in a charcoal suit that was paid for more than most people's rent, his features were sharp and had perfect arrangements that made them seem more of a work of art than a living, breathing face. He looked dark, penetrating, and warm-less brown. The unsparing observer searched the horizon, both cold and relaxed. At twenty-nine, he inspired jealousy and terror in men much older; tonight, however, that seemed more chains than a cloak.
His dealings from the supper were still fresh and bitter in his mouth. It was an intimate gathering of just thirty people to witness the completion of a merger extending Sungjin's hold into the European markets. But the main act had been a carefully choreographed performance featuring him and Choi Yura, the daughter of a powerful political family. Their marriage had been assured in the minds of their families for months now, yet its official announcement was still pending.
Yura was beautiful, polished, and massively connected. She had spent the evening delicately prone to his grandfather's jokes, possessively waving her hand on Seongjun's arm. But there was that one moment on the terrace alone when the mask slipped.
"Once the merger is complete, Father expects you to appoint my brother to the board," she said, branded voice dropping its sickening sweetness, shifting to tones so much more transactional. "And the penthouse in Singapore…I think it would be a suitable wedding gift, don't you? It needs something more than dreary here. "
Seongjun just stared at her, feeling his heart grow colder. He had never hoped for love; he had long since accepted that his marriage would be a corporate alliance. But at least some semblance of humanity, a flicker of something real behind the avarice, was hopeful. In Yura, he found only a reflection of his own gilded cage.
"You seem quiet tonight, Seongjun."
From behind him, that gravelly voice of age and authority spoke. Chairman Cha Manho walked into the living held up with the polished ebony cane. Even at seventy-seven, the Chairman was all an enigmatic figure, completely sharp in everything. Like Seongjun's eyes, his missed nothing.
"Successful night, Grandfather," Seongjun answered with an even voice, showing none of the storm within.
"So successful is your business? Manho mocked him by standing next to him. "At least it's a useful thing. The Choi family will come in handy. Yura is... good enough."
"Good enough," echoed Seongjun. The word tasted like ash.
Manho turned his intimidating glare toward his grandson with steadfast determination. "What is your problem? She's beautiful, comes from a good family. What more do you need, huh?"
Seongjun hesitated, this presence was white and terrible, the Chairman. But tonight's events had ripped away his usual persona. "I wonder if I would be as 'acceptable' in her eyes, if my last name were Kim, not Cha. If I worked in a mailroom instead of executive suite."
There fell a deadly silence over them, and it was more solemn still. Manho's expression hardened. "Don't be naive. Our name is our power. That's your identity. Without it, you are nothing."
"Is that it? Just a name and a title?" Seongjun's question barely left his lips but echoed on in the high-ceiling room.
He had built Sungjin from the ashes left by war into this national empire. Sentimentalities were not his luxuries, nor did he intend that it be that way for his heir. "This conversation has ended. Engagement will be announced next month," he told her.
But fate seemed to have its own design. It was that evening that his personal phone buzzed with messages from Manager Hong, his simple, anxious secretary.
"Oh, there's a problem sir," strained Hong's voice. "It's about Ms Choi."
Hong had blown the cover on a string of inside jobs. Yura had hideously been accumulating funds into a private outside account. Digs showed how she sold the capital-secret plans of Sungjin to Jang Dohoon-the ambitious heir to their rival, Daehan Group. For her, the engagement was just a simpler route to garner intelligence.
Seongjun brought the proof to his grandfather in the sharp, grim silence of the Chairman's office. Manho's rage was not of hot volcanic explosion; it was a cold, icy, petrifying fury that froze the air.
"She was using me," Seongjun said most obviously and unbelievably startling. "Money was her goal. Access."
Chair Manho stared at the papers for some time. It was only when he turned his eyes back up that Seongjun saw the strange, calculated glimmer that he could not understand. The anger was still there, only it seemed to have been mixed with something else-disappointment and a radical thought.
"Engagement terminated. The Choi family will be dealt with," said Manho, a voice of iron. "But this... this incident seems to have revealed a significant gap-not in our security, but in you."
Seongjun stiffened. "Sir?"
"The heir of Sungjin in the future is you. You must become immune from everything. You must be able to see through the lies that will constantly surround you." Manho leaned forward, the cane tapping sharply on the marble floor. "Do you question whether you are more than your name? Very well. That will be put to the test."
He laid out his ultimatum with the cold precision of a surgeon making an incision.
"You will find a wife. A suitable one. You have one year."
Seongjun started to protest, but Manho cut him off. "The condition is this: she must love you for your character, not for your wealth. She must not know you are a Cha."
The world tipped on its axis. Seongjun could only stare in disbelief.
"You will disappear," Manho continued, ruthless smile touching the lips. "You will become . . . Kim Seongjun. An ordinary man, with an ordinary job, with meager salary. You will bring that woman to me only after courting her. Then, and only then, you will have proven that you are fit to lead-that you can command loyalty not through fear and money but through who you are."
It was madness. A cruel, impossible game. But in his grandfather's eyes, Seongjun saw that there was no room for negotiation. This was his punishment for weakness, a moment of sentimental folly. It was a challenge he had, in a way, laid upon himself.
"And if I fail?" Seongjun asked, his voice echoing with hollowness.
"Then you will marry whomever I want from now on, and you will never speak of this again," Manho said flatly. "You will accept the fact that you are, and will always be, just a Cha."
Two weeks later, Cha Seongjun was erased from existence. His penthouse, his drivers, his tailor-made suits were all left behind. Hong Manager, pale and nervous, gave him a set of cheap keys and a wallet containing a new ID card for one Kim Seongjun, a low-level data analyst at a small, subsidiary Sungjin-affiliated company. His monthly paycheck was listed, a sum so meager that Seongjun had to read it twice to comprehend it.
He found himself standing on a street outside a dilapidated five-story building in a neighborhood that buzzed with a life he had ever observed only from afar. Lines of laundry crisscrossed between buildings, the smell of frying kimchi and exhaust fumes hung in the air, and the sound of toleration between children and shouts from vendors made a symphony of chaos. His new home was a tiny *oksangjutaek*—a rooftop room—accessible by a rusting metal staircase.
He climbed each of the protest groaning steps. The room was exactly as Hong Manager had described: a single sparsely furnished space with a linoleum floor, a foldable table, and a mattress on a raised platform. A single, grimy window looked out over a sea of similar rooftops.
He put down his one and only, worn duffel bag on the floor. Here, the silence was not like in the penthouse. This was not an empty silence; this was waiting, with muffled sounds of new neighbors. Cha Seongjun had, for the first time in his life, truly and utterly been alone. The heir to a trillion-won empire had now become a man hiding from the sun, finding in the most basic of lies a love that was supposed to be real.
He walked to the window and looked out. The sun is setting, throwing orange and purple across this gritty landscape. Below, he saw a woman battling her way up the street, arms heavy with bags of groceries and cheerfully scolding an older woman at the fruit stand. Her laugh rang out piercingly bright and clear, cutting across the evening haze. For a moment, Seongjun watched her, an unfamiliar, odd ache stirring in his chest-curiosity, perhaps, or the gossamer long-echo of yearning. Then he turned away, marble mask settling back into place. The game had begun.