“Hah—”

Drenched in cold sweat, Seong-ho Kim shot upright.

“What on earth were you mumbling in your sleep? Are you all right?”

It was a voice he shouldn’t have been able to hear. And yet it was also the voice he’d longed to hear for so, so long.

At the sound of it, Seong-ho Kim slowly turned his head.

There, looking back at him, was a woman with a face that had once been so familiar — and that had, at some point, faded from his memory.

“Look at you, soaked in sweat. What kind of dream were you having? Here, there’s water — drink some and go wash up quick. At this rate you’ll be late to breakfast.”

“Gyeong-eun… ssi? Is that you, Gyeong-eun?”

“Who else would I be but Gyeong-eun Lee? What, did you dream I wasn’t around?”

Gyeong-eun Lee smiled brightly and held out a glass of water.

Taking it on reflex, Seong-ho Kim still wore a dazed expression.

“Is this… a dream?”

“Hm? Are you still half-asleep? Hurry up and drink, then go wash up. That’ll clear your head. Come on now.”

At his question about whether it was a dream, Gyeong-eun Lee let out a soft laugh and turned away from him.

Only then did the space around him register.

A room as familiar as Gyeong-eun Lee’s face — and just as long-since faded from memory — came into view.

‘This is the Pyeongchang-dong house?’

The newlywed bedroom he’d moved into after marrying Gyeong-eun Lee and coming to live with her family spread out before his eyes.

‘Why am I seeing the Pyeongchang-dong days? And Gyeong-eun, who’s dead… is this really a dream?’

But Gyeong-eun Lee was smiling at him, far too vivid to be any dream.

He had, without question, met his death in that hospice room at the hands of Tae-hun Park, sent by Chairman Mun-jong Lee.

So how, when he opened his eyes, had he ended up twenty years in the past? Seong-ho Kim couldn’t make sense of it.

“If we’re late, Father will get angry, so I’ll head down first. Get ready and come down quick. Oh — and there’s a present for you on the table, so check it later. It’s nothing fancy, so don’t get your hopes up.”

Looking a little bashful, Gyeong-eun Lee dipped her head and left the room.

Thrown by both his dead wife appearing before him and the fact that he’d returned twenty years into the past, Seong-ho Kim couldn’t wipe the stunned look off his face, and simply stared blankly at the door she’d walked out of.

“Why are you coming down so late? A young man, dragging his feet like that — what good are you?”

Seated at the dining table, Seong-ho Kim quietly regarded the man scolding him.

‘So it really isn’t a dream.’

Mun-jong Lee — who in Seong-ho’s past life had been chairman of the Ilhyeon Group — sat there with a face younger than Seong-ho remembered. In this era, he was the group’s vice-chairman.

And it wasn’t only Mun-jong Lee.

Gyeong-eun Lee’s second-eldest brother, Sang-jong Lee, president of Ilhyeon Construction; the eldest daughter and third-born, Jeong-eun Lee, managing director at Ilhyeon Fashion; and the fourth child, Chang-jong Lee, vice-president of Ilhyeon Distribution — all sat there with their spouses, wearing the younger faces of twenty years ago.

“Now that you’re an Ilhyeon, follow Ilhyeon’s rules. If you’re late again, I’ll no longer consider you one of us.”

And then Seong-ho Kim’s father-in-law — Tak-hyeon Lee, chairman of the Ilhyeon Group, the man who had once held the entire Korean economy in the palm of his hand — sat at the head of the table and, in a voice brimming with vigor, scolded the son-in-law who’d only just come down.

‘Even the former chairman, dead more than ten years now — exactly as he was back then.’

After Gyeong-eun Lee had gone down ahead of him, Seong-ho Kim had stayed behind alone, trying to work out just what kind of situation this was.

He’d pinched his arm and slapped his own cheek, but it was no use.

In the end, turning on the TV in the room and poring over the newspaper, he’d become certain: he really had gone back twenty years into the past.

Why he’d come to be here, of course, he had no idea.

But that thought didn’t linger long.

Dream or afterlife, whatever it was — the fact that a chance for revenge had come was already pulling his whole mind into the here and now.

Seong-ho Kim silently studied the Ilhyeon Group family, seated exactly as they’d been twenty-odd years ago.

Gyeong-eun Lee assumed he was too flustered to speak.

So she rose, went to his side, and rounded on everyone at the table.

“Why are you all like this? It’s his first time here — of course he’s not used to it yet and could be a little late. And it isn’t even seven o’clock! He’s not late at all.”

Firing back at their scolding, Gyeong-eun Lee took Seong-ho Kim’s hand.

“It’s fine, so don’t let them get to you.”

Leading him by the hand to his seat, Gyeong-eun Lee told him to sit and turned once more to the others.

“If anyone gives Seong-ho a hard time, I won’t let it slide. So don’t even think about scolding him.”

At her words, Hyeon-ju Bang — Mun-jong Lee’s wife and the eldest daughter-in-law of the Ilhyeon Group — smiled and said,

“Oh my. Little sister, who’s scolding your husband?”

Undeterred even by that, Gyeong-eun Lee turned to Tak-hyeon Lee.

“Father, you were the one who told us to live here even after the wedding, so we went along with it for now. But don’t look down on my Seong-ho. If you do, I’ll walk right out of this house with him, Father’s word or no.”

“You — watch your mouth. What kind of way is that to speak to Father!”

Chang-jong Lee, the brother directly above Gyeong-eun Lee, said this while carefully gauging Tak-hyeon Lee’s reaction.

But Gyeong-eun Lee ignored him and stressed it once more.

“Get this straight. Seong-ho is the man I chose. So don’t disrespect him.”

“Fine, I understand, so sit down already. You’re being loud.”

At Tak-hyeon Lee’s indifferent reply, Gyeong-eun Lee’s lips quivered.

She had plenty she wanted to say, but not daring to let it out, she gave a low sigh and took her seat.

Watching this, Min-yeong Oh — the wife of the second son, Sang-jong Lee — swept her gaze over Tak-hyeon Lee and the others at the table, then smiled at Seong-ho Kim and said,

“You must be a lucky man, brother-in-law. To have your wife look out for you like this.”

Hearing Min-yeong Oh’s barbed remark, Seong-ho Kim laughed to himself.

‘Exactly the same.’

The very first family meal he’d attended after coming back from the honeymoon was playing out precisely as it had.

And now he noticed things he’d been too nervous and frightened to see at the time.

The in-laws who openly looked down on him, the Gyeong-eun Lee who tried to shield him from them, and Tak-hyeon Lee, watching his children’s squabble with detached, almost amused eyes — all the things he couldn’t see back then were now laid bare before him.

Seong-ho Kim looked at Gyeong-eun Lee, who was holding his hand.

Drained, as if she’d poured everything into protecting him from her father and brothers, she was looking at him with a gaze that asked whether he was all right.

Unlike twenty years ago, Seong-ho Kim gave her a light smile and squeezed the joined hands to say he was fine.

‘Back then I was so cowed because I had no idea what was going on. But it’s different now.’

Warmly clasping Gyeong-eun Lee’s hand, Seong-ho Kim ran his eyes once over the Ilhyeon Group family gathered at the table.

Twenty years ago, these were people he’d been too afraid to so much as look in the face.

But now it was different.

Their dirty secrets — the ones he’d come to learn over his long years at Ilhyeon — and all that hard-won experience meant they no longer frightened him.

“Let’s eat.”

When Tak-hyeon Lee picked up his spoon and told everyone to eat, his children followed suit.

Seong-ho Kim, too, released Gyeong-eun Lee’s hand and took up his spoon, stealing a glance at his father-in-law, Ilhyeon Group chairman Tak-hyeon Lee.

‘But there’s one other, too.’

Seong-ho Kim watched, out of the corner of his eye, as Tak-hyeon Lee wordlessly ate his soup.

The man who had taken a twentieth-ranked Ilhyeon Group inherited from the previous generation and hauled it up to number one in the business world was none other than Tak-hyeon Lee.

Recalling how, even in his past life, he’d struggled because he could never read what the man was thinking, Seong-ho Kim quietly studied him from the side and lifted his spoon.

After the meal, over cups of sujeonggwa, Mun-jong Lee said to Seong-ho Kim,

“You’ve prepped well for today’s event, haven’t you? Make sure you handle it without a single slip.”

“What’s there to slip on? I just move according to the manual.”

When Seong-ho Kim said it so casually, Sang-jong Lee cut in.

“Kim. Just proceed exactly the way we told you. This is all something we set up to pad your track record, so all you have to do is take what’s handed to you. You know what I mean, right?”

At Sang-jong Lee’s words, Seong-ho Kim wore a faint smile.

Then he tossed back his sujeonggwa in one gulp and answered.

“Yes. Don’t worry. I’ll do it well, just as you expect.”

“Good, good. Just go by the manual. Only the manual…”

Sang-jong Lee let his words trail off and traded a look with Mun-jong Lee.

Just then, Tak-hyeon Lee rose from his seat.

“Everyone, don’t be late — get going.”

“Yes, Father. We’ll be right behind you, don’t worry.”

Sang-jong Lee quickly got up after Tak-hyeon Lee.

Seeing this, Hyeon-ju Bang jabbed Mun-jong Lee in the side, and Mun-jong Lee too rose to his feet, addressing Tak-hyeon Lee.

“Father, ride with me today. There’s something about the China matter I’d like to discuss as well…”

As Mun-jong Lee followed Tak-hyeon Lee out, Seong-ho Kim also stood.

“Then I’ll head up first.”

Sang-jong Lee gazed for a moment in the direction Tak-hyeon Lee and Mun-jong Lee had gone, then nodded.

“Sure. Go on up.”

At Sang-jong Lee’s reply, Seong-ho Kim bid farewell to those still seated and rose from his seat.

As he headed back to his room, a deep smile spread across Seong-ho Kim’s face.

Because he remembered clearly exactly what this “situation” of theirs was.

Back then, knowing nothing, he’d actually believed they were looking out for him — never realizing it was a trap.

But now that he’d come back, he had no intention of walking into it the same way.

The feelings he’d felt that day still sat, whole and undimmed, in his chest.

‘You think I’ll let myself get played again?’

Turning over memories of his past life, Seong-ho Kim returned to his room.

“Seong-ho.”

No sooner had he entered than Gyeong-eun Lee came in after him.

She smiled brightly at him and said,

“You’ll do great. So don’t worry too much.”

Gyeong-eun Lee’s words were meant to bolster his courage.

Seong-ho Kim looked at her with warm eyes.

He’d had no end of fears about marrying the youngest daughter of a chaebol family — but it was precisely this side of her that had let him make such a difficult decision.

Gyeong-eun Lee smiled back at his smile, then turned her head toward the table.

“Huh? You still haven’t opened my present?”

“A present?”

Only then did Seong-ho Kim recall that she’d mentioned a gift before he left the room.

“Oh, come on… how embarrassing. Were you waiting for me to hand it to you myself?”

Gyeong-eun Lee stepped over to the table and undid the wrapped box.

Then she took the gift from the box and held it out to him.

It was an object deeply, achingly familiar to Seong-ho Kim.

“I bought it on Ibiza, where we went for our honeymoon. The vendor said he made the leather case by hand. It looked high-end and was supposed to be sturdy, so I snuck off and bought it while you’d stepped away for a bit. Here. I’m giving it to you so you’ll do well at what’s coming up, so you’d better pull it off.”

Seong-ho Kim gazed quietly down at the diary — the first gift Gyeong-eun Lee had ever given him after their marriage, and the one thing he’d clung to until his very last moment.

(End of Chapter 2)