Chapter Text
Chas'e Regal.
At first glance, it was exactly what it claimed to be—an ordinary, if slightly too polished, financial firm. The kind that prided itself on clean records and cleaner reputations. Everything was where it should be.
Tax return documents? Filed and indexed.
Website? Maintained, updated, polished with glowing client reviews that felt just a little too consistent.
Client list? Long. Impressive. Untouchable.
It was perfect.
Too perfect.
Gihun leaned back in his chair, the screen’s cold light reflecting faintly in his tired eyes. He exhaled slowly before bringing the cigarette to his lips, the tip glowing briefly in the dim room. Smoke curled upward, lazy and unconcerned—unlike him.
“I don’t buy it,” he muttered under his breath.
His gaze drifted from the laptop to the wall in front of him.
Photos. Names. Connections. Scribbled notes that only he could understand.
A mess.
But a purposeful one.
Pinned at the far left corner—
Kang Daeho.
Low-level intern. Early twenties. Harmless on paper.
Gihun had already gone through everything on the kid. Social media, tagged posts, even old school pictures buried under years of digital clutter.
Useless.
Absolutely useless.
All the kid ever posted was—
Iced lattes.
Matcha.
And those irritating, borderline aggressive “motivational” captions.
Gihun clicked the image open again, squinting at the screen.
“Helped in navigating important client discussions today with my mentor.
Hope to keep improving every day. Hwaiting! 💪✨”
A finger heart. A wink.
And of course—his coffee cup positioned perfectly in the frame like it was the main character.
Gihun stared at it for a long second.
“…what does that even mean?”
He zoomed in anyway.
The paperwork on the desk in the background came into focus—blurry, angled wrong, mostly blocked.
Nothing useful.
He clicked his tongue in irritation and leaned back again, dragging a hand through his hair. This was going nowhere.
He had tried everything.
Employee forums. Anonymous threads. Complaint boards.
Anything where someone—anyone—might slip up.
Because no company this big was clean.
It just… wasn’t possible.
There had to be:
Resentment
frustration
someone willing to talk
But instead?
He got this.
Babyyy_kitten3412:
“omigoddd!! i know i should definitely never be saying this but mr hwang’s biceps?? that suit should be illegal. how is he allowed to walk around like that and expect us to focus 😭😭
this forbidden romance will unalive me one day. i can only dream to look up at his executive office from the bottom rung… alas!!!”
Salesss_fisherr124:
“i may lose my job for this but i will say whats true. mr hwang’s deep gaze and scary face makes me weak in the knees. he looks at me like im trash but i cant help but swoon over his harsh rugged beauty. my salary might be underpaid but my heart is always overflowing with love.”
Gihun froze.
Then very slowly leaned back in his chair.
“…I need new eyes.”
He shut the tab immediately, like it had personally offended him.
That was ten minutes of his life he wasn’t getting back.
All he wanted—all he needed—was one trace of something real.
A complaint.
A slip.
Anything.
Instead, he found employees writing borderline love letters to their boss like it was some kind of tragic office romance.
“Unbelievable.”
Still…
That name kept coming up.
Mr. Hwang.
Again. And again.
And again.
Gihun hesitated for a moment before reopening the browser.
“…fine.”
If everyone was so obsessed with him, then he had to be important.
A quick search.
A few filtered results.
Then—
There it was.
Only one match in upper management.
Hwang Inho.
Age: 42
Status: Single
Position: CEO
Gihun clicked.
The profile loaded.
And for a brief second—
He forgot why he was even looking.
The photos weren’t excessive. No flashy poses. No unnecessary smiles.
Just—
Controlled.
Sharp.
Composed.
Everything about him felt… deliberate.
Even through a screen.
Gihun frowned slightly, leaning closer without realizing it.
“…yeah, okay. I see why they’re all losing their minds.”
He clicked through another image.
Same expression.
Same posture.
Same—
Something.
He couldn’t quite name it.
Then he caught himself.
And immediately leaned back like he’d been burned.
“Nope.”
Absolutely not.
He was not getting distracted by some corporate pretty face.
Not now.
Not when—
His gaze flickered, almost unconsciously, to the corner of his board.
A name, circled twice.
Underlined.
Pressed deeper into the paper than the rest.
Sangwoo.
The room felt quieter after that.
He stared at it for a long moment.
Then looked back at the screen.
At Hwang Inho.
And this time—
There was no distraction.
“…this all leads back to you, doesn’t it?”
Gihun’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, but his mind wasn’t on the screen.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the last time he had actually seen Sangwoo—before the debts, before the disappearances, before everything went wrong.
He should have noticed sooner.
He should have seen it in Sangwoo’s eyes, the tension he was hiding.
But he hadn’t. And now… now it was too late.
He went back in his memory, to that last meeting—the one that had seemed so ordinary at the time, but had been anything but.
He had been wandering aimlessly, loitering like he often did after being dismissed from his latest job, cigarette in hand, leaning against the chipped railing of a building he’d passed a hundred times before.
Smoke spiraled into the evening air like restless ghosts. He had no plan, no sense of direction, and the world around him blurred into monotony. Every clink of a glass door, every muffled conversation, seemed distant—until he noticed Sangwoo.
Sangwoo was perched at the ledge of grimy alley stairs, the kind of place Gihun usually avoided. He sat upright, shoulders squared despite the dirt and shadow pressing in around him, staring into space like he was trying to memorize it—or maybe memorize nothing at all.
There was a stillness, almost unnatural, to the way he carried himself, as if he were waiting for something, or someone, that might never come.
He looked out of place. Pristine. Pressed suit. Deliberately arranged hair. Not a single strand out of place. Every crease, every line in his clothing spoke of discipline and control. And yet… there was a sense of dread about him, a faint unease that prickled at Gihun’s chest, impossible to ignore.
Gihun shook his head. He couldn’t allow himself to make comparisons—but he did anyway.
He could never measure up. Never. Not when he himself had stumbled through his own victories and failures, crying and laughing in equal measure at Sangwoo’s graduation from SNU, flowers clutched in his hands, standing beside Mrs. Cho, Sangwoo’s mother, the air perfumed with pride and celebration.
Sangwoo had always been destined for brilliance—how could he be here, sitting in this grimy alley, looking… lost?
Sangwoo’s head lifted at the sight of him.
Alarm flitted across his features, almost imperceptibly, before he froze. He looked ready to run, but something stopped him.
“Hyung,” he said, clipped, his jaw tightening. His bespectacled eyes didn’t meet Gihun’s. They drifted past, fixed somewhere in the distance, unseeing.
Gihun stepped closer, hesitant, unsure how to breach the wall Sangwoo had built.
“Hey… what’s wrong?” he asked softly.
But Sangwoo didn’t answer.
Not yet.
That stubborn bastard.
Gihun could see it now. Every subtle twitch, every hesitation, the way Sangwoo’s hand twitched against the railing, as though holding onto something intangible.
It had been more than a month ago, the last time he’d actually seen him.
Since then… silence.
Mrs. Cho had tried to reach him. Every call, every message, unanswered. Unusual. Even for Sangwoo. He had always checked in, sent money home, updated his mother, ensured she didn’t worry. But now… his phone was disconnected. Bank accounts frozen. No activity. Nothing. Like he had evaporated into the thin night air.
Gihun had spoken with Mrs. Cho. Her voice trembled with despair.
“Gihun-ah… my baby… my Sangwoo… you have to help him,” she cried, clutching the receiver as though she could keep him on the line forever.
Gihun tried to rationalize it. Maybe Sangwoo had taken a trip? Maybe it was work? He tried to tell himself he was overthinking. But Mrs. Cho’s tears told him otherwise.
Sangwoo had always been proud. Distant. He had never been one to lean on anyone, to show weakness.
Even as children, Gihun remembered him trying so hard to be responsible, mature, almost like he carried the world on his small shoulders. Gihun had always found ways through those layers—persistent, stubborn, caring—trying to be the hyung he knew he needed to be, even when Sangwoo tried to push him away.
And now…
It was more urgent than ever.
Gihun’s chest ached, his throat tight. He had no siblings, no cousins, not even a father. Just his mother, aging, but still alive and needing him.
Sangwoo was everything that had grounded him as a child, the one steady constant he could cling to, even through drifting years. He had tried to hold onto whatever fragment of Sangwoo remained, trying not to think about how time and distance had pulled them apart.
But this—this disappearance, this silence, this shadowed unease—could not be ignored.
Gihun’s mind snapped back to the present.
The alley, the smoke, the way Sangwoo had stared past him—it all came rushing back.
And then it clicked.
All the dead ends, the suspiciously “perfect” company records, the endless streams of simping employees on forums—it wasn’t random.
This wasn’t a clean, well-run firm hiding nothing.
It was carefully curated… too perfect, too organized.
And now, after seeing Sangwoo like that, everything made sense.
This wasn’t just corporate obsession.
This was a company that left no trace.
Employees disappeared. Accounts frozen. Phones cut off. No record, no leaks, no complaints.
And Sangwoo… had he been drawn into this?
Had that pristine suit and that terrifying calm demeanor in the alley been part of something bigger?
Gihun pulled up the company profile again. Chas’e Regal. At first glance, it was ordinary. Polished. Posh. The kind of firm clients bragged about to friends. But Gihun’s instincts screamed at him.
There were patterns. Hidden in plain sight:
Several employees had stopped appearing online at the same time as “financial discrepancies” popped up in forums.
Rumors of missing employees were whispered, but every trace had been scrubbed.
Sangwoo’s name, his last activity, his sudden disappearance—they all converged in one place.
And at the center of it all was one name: Hwang Inho.
CEO. Organized. Controlling. Handsome. And terrifyingly meticulous.
It wasn’t just about loans, debts, or financial manipulation anymore.
It was something darker.
Something deliberate.
Something that could take a bright, proud, stubborn young man like Sangwoo—and erase him from the world without leaving a mark.
Gihun stared at the photos on the wall. Each picture, each note, each circled name—it all suddenly formed a pattern.
Employees. Disappearances. Debt. Control. The perfect company mask hiding… something else.
He lit another cigarette and exhaled slowly, the smoke filling the room in lazy spirals.
He knew what he had to do.
He had to dig deeper.
He had to trace every transaction, every connection, every shadow.
Because somewhere in the midst of all this, Sangwoo was trapped.
And Hwang Inho—the charming, devilishly handsome CEO—was at the center of it.