By Zephyria 
Tae-hwon wrinkled his eyes bitterly.
Looking back, he had never once defended his future self.
He thought that he couldn’t have done that, or that there must be some kind of mistake, but he didn’t actively try to explain. That’s how uncertain he was about himself. He had guessed that if he lived a lonely life, a solitary life, and ten years passed so miserably, he might turn into such a monster.
But the truth was this.
His self after 10 years, whom he barely faced.
That Woo Tae-hwon was more… okay than he thought.
Ruthless eyes. Strong attitude. Excellent skills and accumulated experience. He was trustworthy and cool. He didn’t have the meanness to betray the Chairman who had taken him in, and he didn’t have the baseness to abandon Kwon Rae-i, who was his salvation in his childhood.
Woo Tae-hwon was consistently Woo Tae-hwon. No different from the current self.
“I was worried about what you would do. It was a needless fear.”
Tae-hwon muttered in vain and slowly reached out his hand.
“I even told Rae-i to tie me up and beat me after my memories came back. I told him it was okay to be ruthless.”
“Are you a coward?”
Woo Tae-hwon, standing in front of him, was ready to accept him. He was no longer afraid of himself. He was not an incomprehensible unknown being, nor was he a time bomb that could explode at any moment.
“I didn’t know what my future was like at the time. I had no confidence in myself.”
“Heh, really? For someone who says he has no confidence, you’ve been using your body properly.”
“What? No, what?”
“Is it good to be intimately attached to a green young boy? Even if the young master rushes at you, you should have stopped him at a reasonable level.”
“How could I… The situation was the situation.”
“To finally fall in love and have an affair, is that because of the situation?”
“That… um.”
“Ha, the efforts that have been pushed back over 10 years have been ruined in an instant. Is there no other way now….”
At those words, Tae-hwon swallowed a hollow laugh. Then, the self in front of his eyes also smiled, twisting his lips. They reached out their hands to each other while smiling.
“Yeah. There’s no other way. In the end, Chairman Kwon Jung-il was right.”
“Tsk….”
“And don’t call him Young Master. Rae-i hates that.”
“Really? Is that so. That guy gets excited no matter what I do.”
“What?”
“Call him when you wake up. Or, should I call him?”
Two hands met in the middle. Like shaking hands.
“Well. We’ll be calling him.”
“Well, I’m you.”
“You’re me.”
As they grabbed each other and pulled strongly, the fragmented memories were connected and attached to each other with a snap. The surroundings began to shine brightly, and the smell of blood faded. He felt a sense of floating in the light and heat.
A seed sprouts, night becomes day, and the seasons flow.
As the time that had been going backwards returned to normal, the confused unconsciousness was finally properly established. He was able to return to his fully upright self.
Woo Tae-hwon. He was now one.
* * *
“Ugh, ugh….”
Consciousness slowly returned. It was as if he was being pulled out of a deep, damp puddle. Along with the dull pain, an ominous energy swirled. He was suffocating.
“Huff!”
Kwon Tae-oh instinctively gasped, trying to inhale air. But the chain wrapped around his neck tightened coldly. His desperate breathing was cut off in his throat, and he felt the chain digging into his skin, pressing down on his flesh, and hot, moist blood flowing down. He couldn’t struggle at all.
Even his wrists and ankles were numb.
It was impossible to tell if the blood wasn’t flowing or if he had completely lost sensation. With the faint feeling that remained, he couldn’t even twitch a finger. His ribs were broken, and his limbs were bound to a chair with thick chains.
The cold touch of metal on his wrists and ankles. The chains seemed to have dug into his flesh, already numbing it.
Kwon Tae-oh struggled, slowly awakening his consciousness.
When his heavy, trembling eyelids finally opened, the first thing he saw was a dim light.
A light too faint to be light, yet a distinct illumination for darkness. A lamp swaying between the rafters of the ceiling flickered as if mocking him.
‘……What is that.’
As the surrounding scenery came into view, a familiar scent finally assaulted his nose. Old books, herbal medicine, tobacco, and the stench of blood. Kwon Tae-oh furrowed his brow and lifted his eyes. His instincts told him where he was.
A latticed window. A space densely surrounded by bookshelves. A heavy wooden desk in the middle of a room with a folding screen. A place that had held authority and power for a long time.
This was where he had murdered his father.
And the chair he was bound to was the same chair his father had been sitting on when he died.
His heart clenched for a moment, and that night, so terribly persistent, came to mind.
That night when torrential rain poured down. The day he pointed a gun at the head of the Gyeongjeong’s chairman, his stern father. The impulse, the elation, and the chilling murderous intent of that time were revived. Kwon Tae-oh gritted his teeth and swallowed hard.
Then, from afar, he heard someone slowly walking.
Kwon Tae-oh was in a position where he couldn’t move an inch, but he reflexively listened to the footsteps.
Slowly, leisurely, the footsteps approached him. It was like the visit of a grim reaper come to take his life. Perhaps that wasn’t a wrong assessment.
Soon, a black shadow seeped into his vision. A form congealed in darkness was visible beyond the paper door. The pitch-black shadow was terrifyingly huge. The figure standing tall seemed to pierce the sky, followed by an overwhelming presence and pressure.
Kwon Rae-i. The one who was ridiculed as a lowly son of a concubine, the one who was neglected for being sickly and born with albinism, was now revealing his true nature.
Even just facing the shadow reflected on the paper door, it was as if he could clearly see the claws and teeth he possessed. Inevitably, fear crept up.
‘Was he called a dragon whelp?’
That was wrong.
‘Not a whelp, Kwon Rae-i is already…….’
At the moment when fear spread out in strands, the closed door opened silently, and the man’s face was revealed. The pale face witnessed under the light was more mature than Kwon Tae-oh knew, and it showed the appearance of a fully grown man.
Hair as thin and white as silver thread, and blue-gray eyes with colors like the mixture of sea and ice. Even his eyebrows were white, and every time he blinked, a cool energy seemed to spread from the tips of his eyelashes, and his bloodless lips created a chilling atmosphere.
He was like a mystery in the form of a human. Even Kwon Tae-oh felt that way the moment he properly faced Kwon Rae-i. Every time he moved, he seemed to slip away like a ghost without a trace, and in his eyes, a mechanical, chilling ruthlessness could be glimpsed.
A heavy gaze settled. Kwon Rae-i was looking at him as if Kwon Tae-oh was not even worth considering.
The eldest son of Gyeongjeong, the legitimate heir, the rightful successor, as if such things were useless from the start. As if he could take the blood-stained, cruel throne and the great Gyeongjeong with years of history whenever he wanted. To Kwon Rae-i, Kwon Tae-oh was not even an opponent.
It was only after reaching the edge of a dead end that he saw it.
From the beginning, Kwon Rae-i was up there. Above the high clouds. In the distant sky.
“……How?”
Kwon Tae-oh asked quietly, swallowing his anger. Blood boiled in his throat.
“Park Chan is a guy I brought to Gyeongjeong myself. He has no family to be taken hostage. How did you entice him to betray me?”
Kwon Rae-i drew a languid smile. The moment he curved his lips to smile, an unrealistic beauty and cold threat that made the viewer shudder were felt.
Park Chan had been working as Kwon Rae-i’s right-hand man for a long time. He was a proper confidant, not some scrub written in the list Kwon Tae-oh had been given. He had been conveying Kwon Tae-oh’s every move to Kwon Rae-i, and it was also Park Chan who had given false information to Byun Jun-seok, who had been killed by Kwon Tae-oh. But there was no reason to tell him these facts.
“You’re being naive. Isn’t betrayal an opportunity open to anyone in this world? You shot your father so easily, didn’t you? And you won’t even regret it.”
“What do you want to hear from me……? Do you want me to confess?”
“Well. I don’t think it’s necessary. Too much trouble.”
Kwon Rae-i’s smile deepened. He folded his beautiful eyes long and crooked, took out a pad, and placed it on the desk in front of the chair where Kwon Tae-oh was tied. The screen was streaming a live video. Against the backdrop of a wide gray factory, a chilling scream was echoing.
-Hia, aaaaack……! Hheuueub……. Keok! Keok!