The limousine was a vault on wheels, shielding Kang Jihun from the agony and chaos of Seoul. Outside was a screaming symphony of ambition, a future he could already taste; it was sharp and metallic, like the edge of a newly minted coin. Inside was the epitome of silence, coolness, and the scent of polished leather. His kingdom opened up before him, waiting.
Jihun drummed silently on his knee, a prelude for the life about to begin. In seventy-two hours, he would graduate. The ceremony was boring enough to just be a photo op in cap and gown. The real thing would be afterward, in the study of his grandfather. The signing of papers. The handover of an empire worth a billion won. He had spent eighteen years preparing for it. Now he was counting seconds.
The car did not drive through the traffic; it simply parted it like a sleek black shark among lesser fish. It glided through iron gates into a world of curated silence, before coming to a standstill in front of a house so stark and modern it felt more a fortress than a home.
"The Chairman is in his study, young master," said the driver in a voice as habitual as sunrise.
Jihun nodded and moved on. He swept through enormous halls, his shoes echoing on the marble. Staff bowed and he did not see them. They were but ghosts in the machine of his life. He opened the heavy oak door to the study expecting the usuals: a grim old face of the grandpa, a folder fat with corporate prophecies, and a long lecture on legacy.
The old man sat arching ominously against the full-length window, the entire skyline of Seoul bent low against him. The desk was stark empty except for a single sheet of paper.
"Jihun." The sound of his grandfather's voice was like gravel ground underfoot.
"Grandfather." Jihun took his usual place, the supplicant before the throne. He allowed himself a glance at the city. *His city. Soon.*
"We must discuss your... ascension."
Jihun's pulse thudded in victory. *Finally.*
"From nothing I have built something," the Chairman began, and his eyes, sharp as broken glass, focused onto Jihun's. "A legacy. And I shall not hand it over to a boy who knows the price of a yacht but not the value of a single honest day's work."
The air froze in that room. Jihun's carefully crafted poise cracked. "I've excelled in every measure that you set. My grades, my languages, my—"
"Your arrogance," his grandfather interjected, the word a whip-crack. "It is a cancer. And I will not allow it to inherit my life's work." He slid one single page across the vast empty desk. "These are the new terms."
Jihun read the document. The words were simple, legal, sterile. And utterly insane.
*…must complete final academic year at Samil High School, Samil-ri, Gangwon-do…*
*…must graduate from said institution…*
*…full inheritance contingent upon fulfillment…*
"Samil-ri?" The name sounded foreign and foolish on his tongue. "What is this? A joke? Where even is that?"
"It is an education," his grandfather said, his voice firm and final. "One you desperately need. You will leave tomorrow. You will live there. You will receive no special treatment. You graduate from that school, you come home a man, and you claim your birthright."
The world, tilt on its axis just a moment ago, now suddenly tilted forward. "You're sending me away to some, some mountain village? My university is here-my whole future is here!"
"This *is* about your future!" For the first time, raw emotion crossed the old man's face. "This is how you make it. Refuse, and your estate share is gone. Dissolved. Cut off." He gestured toward the open door that led to an empty world. "Everything."
*Nothing.* The word echoed in the silent room. He would be a ghost. A nobody. The prince exiled on the eve of his coronation.
He craned his neck. "Why?" Jihun's voice strained a little.
The chairman looked past him, through him, to some memory or regret Jihun couldn't see. "Because a man who has never felt real ground beneath his feet will never truly understand how to build anything that lasts."
Deceptively simple, the choice sounded like an ultimatum bundled within threat, delivered with the clinical precision of a surgeon's knife.
***
A small, quiet car took him away two days later. It did not part traffic, it was swallowed by traffic. Jihun stared through the window into his city-the glittering, breathing monster of birthright-and blinked as it blurred, then disappeared from view, replaced by fields, forests, and finally the relentless climbing into snowy mountains.
The air grew thin and sharp. The silence was no longer curated; it was immense, pressing in on the windows. His phone, his lifeline to everything he knew, became a dead weight in his hand as the signal bars flickered and died.
Finally, it stopped shaking and came to a halt outside a brick box that looked like it had been drawn by a child. Below sprawled the town of Samil-ri, a handful of buildings huddled together against the cold, connected by a single ribbon of asphalt. Only the wind whipping down from the peaks, carrying the scent of pine and woodsmoke, broke the silence.
"Young master, your apartment is upstairs," replied the driver. "The school is that way. Five hundred meters."
Jihun stood on the cracked pavement, his designer duffel bag an obscene splash of color in the gray landscape. The cold bit through his jacket, a rude, physical shock. He turned his head down toward the empty street of concrete toward the short, functional structure that would serve as his prison.
Pure, untainted fury welled up in his throat, bitter enough to taste. This was a test. A game. And he was a player who refused to lose.
He would not tell the quiet street-the streets were easy to turn against. He knew that this was the future to come, alley made of pitiful towns and people who could stand in his way, but they could not touch him.
He climbed the stairs to his small anonymous apartment. Each step sounded like a hammer blow against the future that had promised him everything. Kang Jihun was adamant about not letting this place change a single thing about him.
He had no idea that the first crack had already started to form.