The Chairman's office...Bae Hoon has been summoned. He is standing.... his posture obedient, hands clasped tightly behind his back
The Chairman threw the file containing YERIN's information across Bae Hoon ordering him to pick it up and check inside. Bae Hoon picked it up and found that its contents screaming a truth Bae Hoon already guessed but had desperately hoped the Chairman would not find out. Kang Ji Woo. Adopted by the Kangs. CEO of YERIN. Every detail was a nail in a coffin—not for Bae Hoon, but for the one person he had been protecting all his life.
He had been a fool. On that stage, under the lights, he had let the ghost of Joo Won surface. He had reached for a memory, and in doing so, he had led a wolf straight to his oldest friend's door.
Without a word, Bae Hoon moved. The motion was practiced, automatic. He lowered himself to the cold, polished floor, his knees meeting the hard surface with a soft, familiar sound. He kept his head bowed, his hands resting on his thighs, the perfect picture of submission. It was a role he had perfected, a performance he knew the Chairman craved. It fed the man's insatiable hunger for control, reinforcing the delusion that his puppet was still obediently dangling on its strings.
Bae Hoon knew why he was kneeling today—the gravest of errors unlike so many other times when the reasons had been smaller, absurd.
He had knelt for making tea for a secretary who looked tired.
He had knelt for helping an intern untangle a paper jam in the printer.
He had knelt for steadying the cleaning lady's heavy cart in the hallway.
He had knelt for buying a bouquet of white lilies for the woman he was supposed to call mother—a fleeting, foolish attempt to find warmth in a heart he now knew was as cold as her husband's.
He had knelt for wearing a colorful tie instead of a black one.
He had knelt for daring to suggest a more efficient supply chain route in a meeting, for having a thought the Chairman had not first planted in his head.
Each kneel was a lesson. A reminder that he was not a son, not an employee, not even a servant. He was a thing. A program running one command: obedience. Any deviation—any spark of independent thought, any flicker of human kindness—was a bug to be ruthlessly patched out.
And the Chairman held the code. The strings he pulled weren't made of mere anger or disappointment; they were woven from the darkest kind of blackmail, a threat so potent it could extinguish a life with a single whispered order.
So Bae Hoon knelt. Not out of respect, but out of a cold, calculated survival. He offered his submission like a shield
The Chairman raised his raucous voice at him -----
"You couldn't even win!" he roared, his voice rising to a deafening pitch. "You brought shame onto this family! You let that damn orphan take the trophy?!"
He rose from his chair, approaching Bae Hoon like a shark.
"I told you to behave like Hwang Bae Hoon! But what did you do? You cried! On international television! You let the whole world see that my son is a weak, sniveling sore loser?"
He leaned in, his face inches from Bae Hoon's, his words a venomous spit.
"And that speech? Dedicating your failure to an online gaming friend? 'Solace as a lonely child'? You were LONELY?" he mocked, his voice dripping with contempt. "We fed you! We clothed you! We sent you to the US for studying! We gave you a name and a roof over your head! We gave you everything that street rat couldn't even dream of! And you repay us by humiliating me on a global stage? Ungrateful bastard!"
Bae Hoon kneeled down. He absorbed the Chairman's tirade like a stone absorbing the sea's fury, his face a carefully neutral mask. Before turning to leave, the Chairman leaned down, his voice a venomous whisper only Joo Won could hear. "I hope you did not forget what we discussed earlier."
The words slithered into Joo Won's ear, a cold chain yanking him back into the dark. He didn't need to look up. He knew what it meant—a reminder of the threat that hung over Ji Woo's life, over the only fragment of his past he had left.
Joo Won moved from his kneel, a desperate, graceless shuffle forward on the polished floor. He reached out, his hands closing around the fine leather of the Chairman's shoes, holding his feet in a gesture of ultimate supplication. The action was so raw, so undignified, that the Chairman looked down and smirked—not for the boy, but for the absolute power he wielded over him.
Ah. This was it. This was what he craved. Not just obedience but breaking. The sheer, intoxicating power of it coursed through him.
"....Hoe-jang-nim..." Joo Won's voice was a broken thing, stripped of all pride, filtering up from the floor. It was the first time he had dared to speak without permission, the first time the desperate ghost of who he was overcame the programmed shell of Bae Hoon.
The Chairman said nothing, merely savoring the sound of the plea.
Joo Won whispered, the words tumbling out in a frantic promise. "I swear he will never find out who I am. Please do not hurt him. I will do whatever you say."
He tightened his grip on the leather, as if he could physically transmit his sincerity. He was bargaining with the only currency he had left: his complete and total surrender.
"I promise that I will come up with the best gaming ideas. I will not let YERIN succeed. I will destroy them for you. Since it was my first time... please, forgive me. Give me another chance to show my loyalty."
He was offering everything. His creativity, his ambition, his mind. He was promising to personally dismantle the only friend he had ever had, just to keep that friend alive. It was the most profound act of loyalty and betrayal, all wrapped into one desperate, heartbreaking plea. He was volunteering to become the very weapon aimed at his own heart, if it meant the heart kept beating.
With a sudden, violent jerk, the chairman pulled his foot free, loosening Joo Won's grip as if shaking off dirt, "don't bother coming to the Christmas party this year. I will tell the guests that you are sick." He didn't even look back. Saying this, he straightened his suit jacket, a gesture of restoring order, and marched off with Secretary Baek. As the door clicked shut, Joo Won remained on his knees, alone in the vast, opulent office. He was a puppet again, his strings pulled taut by fear.
This was how Hana often found him when she went looking for her father or, more and more often, for him.
She pushed the heavy door open, her light steps hesitant. Her presence in these halls was a carefully granted privilege, a tool the Chairman used without her knowledge. He allowed the secretary's daughter to roam freely, believing her innocent companionship was the perfect, invisible leash to keep his dog in check. It was an irony he savored; had this been his real son, such a girl would never have been permitted so close.
Her heart clenched, a familiar ache spreading through her chest. "Bae Hoon-ah," she whispered, her voice soft against the oppressive silence.
She didn't wait for a response. Slipping an arm around his, she gently pulled him up from the cold marble floor. He was pliant in her grasp, all the fight and desperation drained out of him, leaving behind a hollow shell. Wordlessly, she led him out, through the gleaming corridors of the mighty Hwang Group to the elevator that descended to office basement before finally driving off to Bae Hoon's penthouse apartment—a lavishly furnished cage the Hwangs had provided. It served a dual purpose: it kept the imposter out of their daily sight who was wearing their dead son's face and maintained the glittering illusion for the world that the Hwang heir lived well.
Inside, the grandeur felt sterile, impersonal. Hana guided him to a plush sofa, her touch firm yet gentle. She fetched a glass of water, pressing it into his hands, noting how they trembled slightly before stilling.
She watched him, a frown etching her features. She could never understand the Chairman's brutal coldness. What kind of father reduced his own son to this... this brokenness? It was a cruelty that defied logic. But Bae Hoon was a fortress, his walls built high and impenetrable. That reserved, distant mask never slipped for long. Who was she, the daughter of a mere employee, to demand he tear it down? Who would ever want to confess something so humiliating, especially someone with a name and a legacy as heavy as his?
So she stayed. She sat in silence with him, a quiet witness to a pain she couldn't name and he couldn't share, her presence a small, warm light in the vast, cold darkness of his gilded prison. It was all she knew how to do.