A curse burst out.
“Why would I watch that?”
“I apologize. It was a thoughtless remark.”
Jang Young-hee immediately bowed deeply, but Seo Seung-hyun’s anger did not subside easily. He breathed heavily, grinding his teeth. His strong eyebrows twitched, and deep creases formed between his brows.
Seo Seung-hyun had no interest in that damned sex video. Of course, he had no intention or found it worth watching. What he cared about was the bastards who filmed it and the motherfucker who orchestrated it. And also, where and who had the original now.
“Report to me once it’s handled.”
“Yes.”
The straightforward response came back.
Seo Seung-hyun turned his gaze outside the window. His eyes, darkened, watched the Seoul cityscape swiftly passing by through the tinted car windows. His mind raced with numerous words and numbers describing Lee Young-jin. Among the multitude of fake identities starting with various birthdates, none contained his real identity.
Twenty-five-year-old Lee Young-jin had died seven years ago, right before he was to receive his adult identity card.
Only a single line of death record for eighteen-year-old Lee Young-jin remained.
Seo Seung-hyun thought of the Lee Young-jin who died at eighteen.
The young and tender boy with dewy eyes who had disappeared seven years ago.
The arrow of causality reached back to his normal-type mother, who had been cremated long ago, his biological father of unknown status, and his normal-type grandparents, also reduced to ashes and stored in a columbarium long ago.
Normals and variants.
The two subspecies of Homo sapiens.
Most interspecies unions between these two result in incompatible pregnancies leading to natural miscarriages or stillbirths. After millions of years of empirical attempts and millions of in-vitro cultures, scientists discovered that only unions between variant alpha males and normal females can produce viable offspring. These hybrid offspring manifest dominant normal traits while potentially carrying variant genetic markers, or, like mules, emerge as sterile partial variants. And only in the hybrid third generation, the second-generation crossbreeds, does a variant manifest phenotypically in extremely rare cases.
This is the known scientific fact about interspecies breeding.
Seo Seung-hyun snickered.
Whatever complex and mysterious actions the gametes that created him undertook within the human genome, which is still 99% shrouded in mystery, he was born a slightly different kind of variant.
Just like Lee Young-jin.
Alphas and omegas of a type never before seen, created from the entangled and intertwined 3 billion pairs of nucleotide sequences.
Seo Seung-hyun recalled how he had repeatedly told Lee Young-jin that he wouldn’t be knotted, wouldn’t go into heat.
If the other wasn’t Seo Seung-hyun, that certainly would have been the case.
‘Complete quacks.’
Seo Seung-hyun cynically laughed at the doctors who had diagnosed him with an underdeveloped pheromone sensory organ.
‘What? Underdeveloped? Completely wrong.’
He remembered Lee Young-jin’s intensely sweet pheromones. Methylphenidate. The blade-like heat stirring his body. The sensation of an endocrine secretion tingling through every pore of his skin for the first time.
‘It was just a different species.’
Just as a variant feels nothing for a normal, Seo Seung-hyun was simply the same.
And all the chemical reactions that occurred between Seo Seung-hyun and Lee Young-jin proved it.
Just as the first alphas and omegas split from Homo sapiens to form a new species millions of years ago.
Millions of years later, Seo Seung-hyun and Lee Young-jin met now.
Seo Seung-hyun wanted to turn the car around immediately and rush back to Lee Young-jin, left alone in that house, to ask him. Did you feel the same? Did you feel it like I did? And if he said yes…. At that moment, the traffic light at the intersection changed, and the limousine came to a stop at the stop line. Seo Seung-hyun’s thoughts jumped in a different direction.
‘I should have him tested for pregnancy first.’
Seo Seung-hyun emerged from his deep reverie with that thought.
“Young-hee.”
“Yes.”
Responding immediately to his boss’s call, Jang Young-hee looked up. Seo Seung-hyun turned to look at his chief secretary, his face returning to its usual cheerful smile.
“You need to take a trip to Yokohama.”
“Itsuko Trading?”
“Yeah. Tell President Izawa we might be slightly delayed in bringing in the goods. But in exchange, I’ll add my own money to the 2 billion yen to make it exactly 10 kilograms.”
“…Do you think President Izawa will accept that?”
“Well. I’m filling at least half a kilogram with my own money, so it’s not a total loss for them. If not, try bowing deeply. That old man likes that kind of stuff.”
“How much of a delay should I tell them?”
“Say it won’t exceed three days. Just in case, take a sturdy team from security with you.”
“Understood. I’ll arrange for a flight this afternoon and depart.”
“Good. How’s it going with Keiyo Corporation?”
“I’ve scheduled a meeting for tonight.”
“Tonight? What time?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Huh.”
Seo Seung-hyun clicked his tongue.
“At nine o’clock, it’s not just for a quiet dinner and drinks, right? Where is the location?”
“Cheongdam.”
“Ah, one of those places? Well, I expected as much.”
Seo Seung-hyun made a face that showed his lack of interest.
“Anyway, I’ll handle that myself, so once things are settled with Itsuko Trading, head straight to Gimpo for your departure.”
“Should we roll back the last 150 million pounds?”
“Hmm. No. There’s something I need to buy with that. Leave it as is. Also, I need to talk to the new workshop manager in Manila, so clear my schedule for a moment after the morning meeting.”
The conversation naturally drifted to the former Pochon workshop manager, now unexpectedly transferred to Manila—a situation that would have made him cling to Seo Seung-hyun’s coattails, wailing and rolling on the ground if he knew about it. Seo Seung-hyun ended the conversation there.
As the discussion concluded, the limousine pulled up in front of the prestigious SH Financial Building on Teheran-ro. A security guard approached and opened the limousine door as they stopped in front of the glass building entrance, elegantly landscaped with five pine trees valued at 200 million won each and yellowing grass.
Before getting out of the car, Seo Seung-hyun personally slid open the limousine’s partition and spoke politely to the driver.
“Driver Kang, once the morning meeting is over, Manager Jang will be leaving for the airport, so please stay around here for a bit, and we’ll meet you later.”
“Chairman, I can move separately…”
“It’s fine. Take the car. Driver Kang, Manager Jang, or another secretary will contact you later. And I’ll be going home alone, so please bring my convertible to the downstairs, and then you can head off.”
“Understood, Chairman.”
As Seo Seung-hyun stepped out of the car, Jang Young-hee, who had emerged from the opposite door, quickly caught up and followed a step to his right. The revolving doors spun as a few employees wearing blue-lined ID badges bowed to Seo Seung-hyun. He quickly passed through the lobby. The elevator ascended floor by floor.
The elevator doors opened to a space adorned with thick off-white carpets and white marble tiles, brightly lit by the dazzling morning sunlight pouring in through the full-length windows.
He moved directly to the meeting room.
The spacious meeting room was already filled with the participants of the daily morning meeting.
All were as conservatively dressed in well-fitted suits as the CEO himself. In this modern space defined by clear Pantone colors and pristine white, people of various ages—either younger, less young, or older—sat on Herman Miller’s white mesh chairs, typing on their laptops or peering into their smartphones.
Someone greeted him warmly.
Seo Seung-hyun lightly waved back at the nodding executive and took his seat.
The aroma of coffee wafted over the kidney-bean-shaped off-white table.
The Investment Planning Team’s executive director, clad in a skirt suit that tightly hugged her slender waist, stood up.
“Now that the Chairman is here, let’s start. I’ll go first.”
She looked around with a trembling smile.
Clearings of throats echoed tensely around the room.
Seo Seung-hyun nodded.
“Let’s start with Director Park’s report.”
With the Director holding a sleek and slim tablet computer, the SH’s daily meeting began.
Thanks to Seo Seung-hyun’s dislike for beating around the bush, the meeting always ended before an hour passed.
“Alright. The Investment Planning Team will proceed as discussed, and the Finance 3 Team, compile the loss processing by the end of the day and report to me. Consulting 1 Team needs a bit of a push. Ha-ha. Let’s push them moderately. No issues with the rest. Let’s start today energetically. Good work everyone.”
With that, Seo Seung-hyun stood up.
Jang Young-hee gathered a few written reports and followed him out.
“We really should do something about Consulting 1 Team. We have a lot of client contracts expiring next quarter, and it’ll be hard to turn things around by then.”
“Hmm. Arrange a meeting with Director Kim sometime tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“First, Itsuko. Did you get through to President Izawa?”
“Chief Lee Jin-hee just connected with President Izawa a moment ago. They’ve arranged a place for us.”
“Good. Then leave for the airport right now. Take a good number of security personnel with you.”
“I’ll bring three.”
“That new guy, what’s his name, the one who went to Shanghai with us. Make sure he comes too.”
At Seo Seung-hyun’s unexpected addition, the stoic bear-like chief secretary’s face briefly registered a question mark but quickly cleared. He bowed politely, about 25 degrees.
“I will do so.”
After Jang Young-hee departed for Gimpo, Seo Seung-hyun immediately took out his smartphone. His fingertips slid over the gleaming AH-IPS display, and a call screen popped up.
[Detective 4 Moon Hee-kyung]
Soon, the call was picked up from the other end.
Seo Seung-hyun cheerfully continued.
“Detective Chief Moon, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Ah, no particular reason, but I have some interesting information… How about Cheongdam tonight?”
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