Seoul, 1987 (Morning)
Jin Do-jun ate breakfast like a boy.
That was the first discipline.
The second was to speak less than necessary.
His mother—Lee Hae-in—watched him with careful eyes, the eyes of a woman who had learned the safest way to survive a chaebol household was to never be the reason anyone's mood changed.
"Do-jun," she said gently, "your grandfather called the family today."
Grandfather.
In this house, that word meant only one person:
Chairman Jin Yang-chul.
Do-jun nodded and swallowed without hurry.
His father—Jin Yoon-ki—didn't look at him much. Not because he didn't care. Because caring openly was expensive in a family where attention could become ammunition.
In the car to the main house, Do-jun watched Seoul pass like a documentary he wasn't supposed to know the ending of.
1987 was a hinge year. History was loud.
But Soonyang didn't move by history.
It moved by ownership.
They entered the Jin family residence through a gate that didn't announce power.
It assumed it.
Inside, the staff bowed in practiced angles. The corridor swallowed sound. The air smelled of polished wood, expensive tea, and decisions made behind closed doors.
At the entrance to the study, Lee Hang-jae appeared again—exactly the same posture as before, as if time travel had simply repositioned him earlier on the board.
Lee Hang-jae's gaze passed over Do-jun like a scanner.
Then he opened the study door and said softly, "Chairman. The family is here."
They entered.
Jin Yang-chul sat behind the desk, the kind of desk that didn't exist to be used. It existed to remind you that the person behind it wasn't temporary.
His eyes moved slowly across his sons, his daughter, his grandchildren.
They stopped on Do-jun.
Not warmly. Not cruelly.
Accurately.
"Sit," Jin Yang-chul said.
Chairs moved at once.
No one chose their seat. Seats were assigned by invisible gravity.
Do-jun sat where the youngest grandson belonged: not near the center, not near the exit, in the safe zone reserved for people who were allowed to exist but not to matter.
Jin Yang-chul spoke about the country for a moment—only enough to show he understood it.
Then he dismissed it with a single sentence that cut through everything:
"Governments change. Soonyang doesn't."
Do-jun kept his face blank.
He recognized the type immediately.
Jin Yang-chul wasn't a grandfather. He was a founder.
A man who built something big enough that even his children had to kneel inside it.
The Chairman's gaze shifted.
"Succession isn't about who talks well," Jin Yang-chul said. "It's about who keeps the machine running when everything else shakes."
His eldest son—Jin Young-ki—smiled too smoothly.
His grandson—Jin Seong-jun—sat like he already owned tomorrow.
Do-jun didn't look at them for long.
He didn't need to.
In this room, the most dangerous thing wasn't hostility.
It was certainty.
Jin Yang-chul leaned slightly forward.
Then he asked, casually, as if he were asking about a school grade:
"Do-jun."
Do-jun raised his eyes.
"What do you want?"
The room went quiet.
This wasn't affection. It was a test.
If Do-jun answered like a child, he would be dismissed.
If he answered like a rival, he would be crushed.
Do-jun chose the only answer that created value without creating threat.
"I want to learn," he said, voice small, "where Soonyang loses money without noticing."
A faint change crossed Jin Yang-chul's face.
Interest, not approval.
Lee Hang-jae's eyes narrowed by half a millimeter.
The others—the uncles, the cousins—reacted with small expressions: contempt, amusement, irritation.
Do-jun didn't care.
He had said the truth in a way that sounded boring.
And boring was the best camouflage in a house that hunted the unusual.
Jin Yang-chul's fingers tapped the desk once.
"Good," he said.
Then he added, flat as a stamp:
"Then I'll put you where you can't lie."
The room chilled.
Do-jun's father stiffened. His mother's hands tightened slightly in her lap.
Lee Hang-jae stepped forward with a thin folder, already prepared—as if the assignment had been decided before the question was asked.
Do-jun saw his own name on the tab.
He didn't reach for it.
Not yet.
Because he understood something now, perfectly:
Jin Yang-chul wasn't asking who Do-jun wanted to be.
He was deciding what kind of suffering Do-jun would have to endure to become useful.
The Chairman looked at him one last time.
"Remember," Jin Yang-chul said, voice calm, "Soonyang doesn't raise children."
He let the silence hang.
"Soonyang raises successors."
Lee Hang-jae placed the folder on the edge of Do-jun's space—close enough to be unavoidable, far enough to feel like a thrown bone.
Do-jun lowered his gaze and bowed.
"Yes, Chairman."
But inside, behind the obedient face, his plan formed cleanly:
If they were going to put him somewhere low and dirty, somewhere forgotten—
then he would build a silent empire there.
And the hidden door inside him—Holder Resources—would make one thing possible that no one in this room could imagine:
He could control what Soonyang's "machine" needed most…
without ever asking permission.
The folder waited.
Do-jun reached for it.
And the chapter ended right before he opened it.