Late on a holiday night, buried under a mountain of paperwork, Seong-ho Kim let out a low groan.

“Hnngh…”

Pressing his left hand to his temple, he lifted his head for a moment.

“This headache just won’t quit.”

As if it were the most routine thing in the world, he opened his desk drawer and fished out a bottle of pills. The headaches had clung to him like a chronic illness for a few years now, and lately the gaps between them seemed to be getting shorter.

He tossed back a painkiller and looked down at the documents again.

But tonight the medicine wasn’t taking — the pain came surging back. He flung the file he’d been reading onto the desk and clutched his head in both hands.

“Did I push myself too hard? …Haah. No point staring at this in the state I’m in. I should grab a couple hours of sleep and pick it up again.”

He muttered to himself, breathing raggedly, and rose to head home — only to crumple where he stood.

Thud.

Dark red blood trickled from the nose of his collapsed body.

Knock, knock.

Just then a knock sounded at the office door, and a young man opened it and stepped inside.

“Managing Director, excuse me. The Chief asked me to bring—”

An armful of documents held to his chest, the man took one look at the fallen Seong-ho Kim and cried out in horror.

“Managing Director! Managing Director! Stay with me, sir…! Someone, call 119—”

Panicking, he yanked out his phone and started frantically stabbing at the number.

Seong-ho Kim’s friends, Byeong-jin Jo and Dae-su Park, arrived at a quiet hospice in Yongin.

Their faces a tangle of shock, disbelief, and fury, the two of them opened the door to the second-floor room and went inside.

“Seong-ho!!”

Byeong-jin Jo stared, wide-eyed, at Seong-ho Kim, propped up against a bed by the window.

Seong-ho Kim, who’d been gazing out at the view, turned his head with effort and forced a smile.

“You got here fast.”

“What is this? What the hell happened?”

Byeong-jin Jo looked him over, alarmed.

“You were perfectly fine three months ago when we met… so what is this?!”

Sure, Seong-ho Kim had looked gaunt and worn out back then, but Jo had chalked it up to the workload. He knew all too well the crushing weight of work that sat on Seong-ho’s shoulders as though it were only natural.

Now, though, the man looked like someone whose death date had already been set — like the last of his wick was burning down.

Byeong-jin Jo and Dae-su Park looked at him as if to demand what on earth had happened.

Seong-ho Kim met his friends’ eyes and gave a bitter laugh.

“The cancer’s spread through my whole body. Nothing they can do.”

“Cancer?! Wait — you didn’t know until it had spread everywhere?”

“I didn’t know.”

“You must’ve had checkups, right?”

“Where would I have found the time for a checkup… You two know it yourselves. I barely had time to sleep.”

At Seong-ho Kim’s bitter smile, Byeong-jin Jo finally lost it and shouted.

“That crazy family ran you like a dog and drove you to this, didn’t they? That’s it, isn’t it? They dumped so much work on you that your body fell apart and you didn’t even notice — that’s how you ended up like this!”

Byeong-jin Jo stared at him, eyes brimming. Dae-su Park, who’d been listening, couldn’t take it anymore and seized a fistful of Seong-ho Kim’s hospital gown by the collar.

“You bastard. What is this? Why the hell did you let yourself end up like this…!”

With a bony hand that could barely summon any strength, Seong-ho Kim patted the fist clenched at his collar.

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for? Huh? What did you do wrong that you’re apologizing for?! The ones who should be apologizing are those Ilhyeon Group bastards!”

Dae-su Park let go of the collar and asked again.

“There’s really nothing they can do…? Surgery? They can’t even operate?”

“Surgery… When they first found it, they were going to try, but later the story changed. I went to three different hospitals just in case — every one of them turned me away.”

“So that’s how you ended up here? Because of those Ilhyeon Group people you couldn’t even get surgery, and now you’re in a hospice — a place people only come to wait out their last days!”

At Byeong-jin Jo’s words, Seong-ho Kim nodded with a bitter smile.

Eyes flooding with tears, Byeong-jin Jo buried his face against Seong-ho Kim’s shoulder.

“You idiot… Isn’t this exactly why I was against it? I told you, not that family… A chaebol’s one thing, but those people are demons — I told you not to go. What is this, you idiot…”

Still pressed against Seong-ho Kim’s chest, Byeong-jin Jo kept talking.

“While Gyeong-eun was alive they weren’t so bad, but the second she died they chained you down, worked you like a dog, and now they’ve gone and killed you… Why didn’t you call me even a little sooner? Why wait until it came to this?”

Watching Byeong-jin Jo tremble and weep, Seong-ho Kim gently stroked his shoulder.

“Look at you. You’re this heartbroken — how could I have told you two any sooner? I’m okay.”

He kept his voice as calm as he could manage for his grieving friends.

“If anything, now that it’s come to this, I feel almost lighter. So don’t be too sad. More importantly — did you bring what I asked for?”

Byeong-jin Jo, who knew exactly what “lighter” meant coming from Seong-ho Kim, let out a deep sigh, and Dae-su Park’s face twisted into a scowl.

“Yeah. Maybe getting free of Ilhyeon Group even like this really does feel like a weight off your shoulders.”

Byeong-jin Jo nodded, then opened the bag he’d brought and drew out a diary in a worn leather case.

The diary was so smudged with age and frayed at the edges that it was hard to tell what it had originally looked like.

Byeong-jin Jo carefully set it on the bedside table in front of Seong-ho Kim.

“It was in the drawer by your headboard, just like you said. But what is this, that you had me bring it all the way here?”

“My diary.”

At his answer, Byeong-jin Jo and Dae-su Park wore baffled looks.

“A guy waiting out his last days — what do you need a diary for?”

“It’s just habit. Thanks.”

Seong-ho Kim managed the word of thanks and gently ran his hand over the diary’s cover.

This diary had been the first gift Gyeong-eun Lee ever gave him after they married.

From the day he received it, Seong-ho Kim had jotted down whatever happened whenever something came up, and even after Gyeong-eun Lee died he never threw it away, writing in it day after day.

By now it was such a habit that he couldn’t let it go, not even with death staring him in the face.

Dae-su Park, stuck in a provincial prosecutor’s post, came whenever he could; Byeong-jin Jo, who worked at that same Ilhyeon Group, visited the hospice every single day from the next day on.

The two of them did their best to keep Seong-ho Kim company and lift his spirits.

But watching him grow more gaunt and lifeless by the day broke their hearts.

About a week had passed when, for the first time, a visitor other than Byeong-jin Jo or Dae-su Park came to Seong-ho Kim’s room.

“Hang on. I’m going to run home and be right back.”

Having come to visit as always, Byeong-jin Jo gave Seong-ho Kim’s hand a light squeeze and left the room.

“…”

Seong-ho Kim was in such bad shape now that he couldn’t even manage a “see you soon.”

About ten minutes after Byeong-jin Jo left, two men in black suits came to Seong-ho Kim’s room.

“Is this the one?”

The first man through the door checked the figure lying in the bed and nodded with a smile.

“Yeah, this is it.”

The second man to enter kept glancing nervously toward the door, urging him on.

“Let’s hurry up and get out. If we take too long, someone might come in.”

“Relax. Managing Director Kim’s friend — that Jo fellow — lives in Eunpyeong-gu, so it’ll take him a good three or four hours to get home and back. And that prosecutor, Dae-su Park, can only stop by on weekends, never weekdays. And above all, the man’s already got a death sentence hanging over him, so the hospital couldn’t care less about him.”

“Still, if anyone does come to the room—”

“Oh, come on. I said it’s fine.”

When the first man glared, the one who’d been nagging couldn’t push any further and turned his head away.

Snorting out a laugh, the man walked over to the bed where Seong-ho Kim lay.

“Aigoo, Managing Director. Why’d you have to go calling your friends and making life so tiring for so many people?”

“Sec… retary… Park…”

Seong-ho Kim’s eyes went wide at the sight of Tae-hun Park — secretary to Mun-jong Lee, chairman of Ilhyeon Group and older brother of Seong-ho Kim’s dead wife, Gyeong-eun Lee.

Tae-hun Park gave a light laugh at the look in his eyes and nodded.

“Yes. It’s me. Tae-hun Park.”

Tae-hun Park cast his gaze around the room and said,

“How nice it would’ve been if you’d just quietly slipped away on your own. Without making all this trouble for so many people.”

He picked up the pillow at the foot of Seong-ho Kim’s bed, punched the center to fluff it, and went on.

“The Chairman asked me to pass along a message. You’ve worked hard all this time, so head on up and take goood care of his little sister for him.”

“You… mmph!”

With that, Tae-hun Park pressed the pillow down over Seong-ho Kim’s face.

Seong-ho Kim was a man already marked for death.

But his brother-in-law, Ilhyeon Group chairman Mun-jong Lee, had no intention of waiting that long.

Because it had struck him that Seong-ho Kim — with a death sentence hanging over him — might spill the group’s secrets to Byeong-jin Jo, who knew the company inside and out, or to that friend Dae-su Park, a prosecutor, even if he was buried in some provincial backwater.

As his breath grew short, Seong-ho Kim felt his mind drifting away.

‘You can’t even wait for me to die on my own? I gave Ilhyeon Group everything all this time because Gyeong-eun asked me to… and you couldn’t spare even a moment — you gave the order to kill me…!’

Just as his resentment and rage reached their peak, a fathomless darkness swallowed Seong-ho Kim whole.

And so the resentment and rage he left behind filled the room.

After holding the pillow over Seong-ho Kim’s face for a long while, Tae-hun Park lifted it away and checked whether he was dead. Once he’d confirmed there was no breath, no pulse, he nodded.

“Definitely dead. Hey, Ju-yeong Lee — it’s done, so quit shaking already.”

Ju-yeong Lee, still eyeing the door anxiously, came over to Tae-hun Park and asked,

“His breathing’s really stopped?”

“Yeah, let’s go. Anyway, I’m starving — want to grab some gukbap on the way out?”

After the two of them left, tears streamed from the eyes of the coldly stiffening Seong-ho Kim.

And his last lingering obsession, together with the resentment and rage that filled the room, began to seep into the old leather diary.

(End of Chapter 1)