[It’s a mistake if you think you can keep dodging forever]
A message that made him flinch every time he looked at the screen.
And the sender name: [Debt Collector].
“Rowoon, did you… take on some debt behind my back?”
“…How would I know? I have amnesia…! I really didn’t use loan sharks, okay?”
“Well I don’t know either! Before the amnesia you were a kid who wouldn’t even talk properly to me! You always ignored me when I tried to talk!”
The manager’s eyes grew moist, as if remembering the hurt from back then.
“Got it, hyung. It’s in the past now, so let’s not dwell on it.”
“Rowoon… you’re not going to get your memory back, right, hmm? Don’t you dare suddenly recover it one day like in a drama…”
“Okay, okay, calm down.”
At first, Rowoon had only panicked, but now he could keep fairly calm.
Thanks to the manager reminding him of the account balance he’d forgotten about.
“Money really is something you need to have.”
Someone once said you can’t buy happiness with money.
But Rowoon disagreed.
You can’t buy happiness with money, but at least you can avoid being unhappy.
“Hyung. Thinking about it, like you said, I’ve got money. Then can’t I just pay it back?”
“…Will that be okay? If it’s loan sharks, sometimes they deliberately refuse payment and run you around, just to rack up more interest.”
“I think it’ll be fine.”
Rowoon gazed at the manager.
He had a delicate heart, but outwardly he boasted the build and presence to put most broad shoulders to shame.
If he went with the manager, nowhere felt scary.
“Let’s check the messages first. We need to know how much to figure out a plan.”
This was why calm thinking was always important.
Once you panic, you flounder even with problems you could absolutely solve.
“It’s not like in the previous life where I lived leeching off someone else’s name. Why did I worry first?”
The unknown opponent was always what made you afraid.
But if you know the other side and know yourself, the path to victory always shows.
In this case, it was the amount—but anyway.
Tap! Tap tap!
Rowoon’s fingers immediately tapped the glass.
Once he’d set his mind, he saw no reason to keep thinking: he’d check the messages at once.
And then—
“…?”
He froze at an unexpected fact.
“W-why? Is the amount too big? What is it?”
The manager, sensing Rowoon’s strange stillness, fretted and asked.
Rowoon stared blankly at the phone screen and said,
“Hyung. I… think I have a hyung.”
Hyung.
A word that popped out of nowhere while they were talking about loan sharks and debt.
The manager was just as confused.
“Hyung? Why a hyung?”
“No, not you, hyung. An older brother… my real brother.”
“…Huh? Rowoon, you had a brother?”
He looked like this was the first he’d ever heard of it.
Just how bad was the original’s relationship with his family that the manager doesn’t even know the family situation?
The more he dug, the more it was like a ghost story.
“But why is your brother’s name saved as ‘Debt Collector’? Are you… on bad terms with him?”
“I wonder……?”
If he knew that, he wouldn’t be like this now.
Just then—
“Ghk!”
The manager let out a strangled sound.
It seemed “Debt Collector” had been personally watching the message window.
The moment the “1” disappeared as Rowoon checked it, a new message flew in immediately.
[Come home. Before I drag you.]
“It doesn’t seem as hostile a relationship as I thought.”
Contrary to that last, lethal-sounding message, what he saw when he scrolled up was relatively mild.
[Good ad.]
[Your acting seems to have improved a lot.]
[But I’m curious why it had to be Taewoon.]
[Is an ad for Taewoon really what you ran away from home to go and do?]
[I’m wondering if you’re doing it on purpose to salt your hyung’s wounds.]
[Your mother was upset, so at least give her a call.]
[Even if you don’t care about your hyung, comfort your mother properly.]
[The reason you’re living fine after running off like that is because your mother let a lot slide.]
[But I see you’re not checking. No reply.]
[Did you block me?]
[Why aren’t you reading the messages?]
[Oh-ho.]
[Not picking up the phone either?]
[You blocked your hyung?]
[I thought you’d matured, and then you stab me in the back like this?]
[It’s a mistake if you think you can keep dodging forever.]
The further back he went, the more it felt like a gradient of anger. That was the problem.
At first the tone even felt elegant, but the more recent, the rawer it sounded.
“This level is… pretty normal.”
It was rough, but it wasn’t the kind of exchange you’d expect from a relationship shattered to zero contact.
How he knew… he didn’t particularly want to.
“Who knew my previous life would help me like this.”
He wasn’t especially grateful.
“We should probably go, right?”
“Mm… since he told you to come, I suppose you should. He said your mother’s worried too. And your brother also told you to come, so yeah, it seems right to go.”
“I guess so, huh?”
He suddenly started getting excited.
He had thought he had no connection to family, in the previous life or this one.
“So that wasn’t actually true!”
He still couldn’t be sure of anything.
But the mere possibility made Rowoon’s excitement swell uncontrollably.
The problem was, he didn’t know the home address.
“Hyung. Let’s go to the company.”
“The company? Why the company? Shouldn’t we go home?”
“Exactly.”
For the manager, bewildered by the rapidly changing topic, Rowoon kindly explained.
“I’m going to look up the home address.”
Rowoon remembered what the manager had said before and hadn’t forgotten it.
[Rowoon, you really hated talking about family. Ah, the CEO might know. The CEO handled your contract personally. You joined the agency when you were a minor… so the CEO might know about your family.]
If he didn’t, they’d just find someone who did.
Rowoon began to get giddy with anticipation.
Family.
The warmth that word carried had been like a mirage for Rowoon.
You’d get your hopes up however you pleased, and once you realized the reality was an illusion, you could only be disappointed.
That was why it was just like a mirage.
“But it’s not wrong to have hope, is it?”
Even if what remained in the end was only emptiness.
But this time was different.
“They actually seemed closer than I expected.”
He didn’t know why the original avoided and kept his distance from his family.
But at least it didn’t seem like the original’s family disliked him.
“An address? It’s not hard to give you that. But why all of a sudden?”
When Rowoon arrived at the company, he asked the CEO for the address.
Thankfully, the CEO readily agreed.
“Ah, my brother told me to come.”
The CEO’s indifferent gaze changed after Rowoon answered like that.
“Your brother?”
Looking him over with keen interest, the CEO snorted.
“You lose your memory and now I’m seeing all kinds of things. To think I’d hear you call that guy ‘hyung’ with your own mouth.”
The CEO had once casually mentioned Rowoon’s brother before.
When he’d heard about the amnesia and yet there’d been no contact, he’d thought Rowoon had no family luck and let it go.
“Are you… close with my brother?”
“Close? Hmm. Hard to say. Feels like we might be and also might not. He doesn’t keep many people around him.”
An enigmatic answer.
“What matters right now isn’t me, is it. If it’s just the address you’re curious about, you’re set, right?”
He’d gotten a clue that things were better than he’d thought, but he still couldn’t be sure.
Rowoon decided not to let the chance slip by.
“Are my brother and I… not on good terms?”
“Were you not?”
The CEO rubbed his jaw, thinking.
“Let’s see. Rather than being on bad terms, you were the one who one-sidedly avoided him. You could even say you hated him. I don’t know why.”
Strange.
He felt an uneasy sensation like he was missing something very important.
But there was no way to find out.
Putting away the misgiving, Rowoon asked the CEO,
“Then did my brother dislike me?”
“Him? You?”
The CEO snorted as if it were ridiculous.
“How do you think you got into this place?”
“Ah. Could it be?”
“Well. You probably think you got in on your own merit. But you know, don’t you? Just how garbage you were in the past.”
That was true.
“You’re probably the only one who doesn’t know how fiercely he cares about you.”
A missing link he hadn’t expected snapped into place.
“I wondered how the original got into an agency this big…”
It seemed the original’s brother had personally introduced his little brother to his friend’s agency.
Apart from the swelling anticipation, Rowoon grew curious.
The original, who’d hated his brother.
And the family who looked after him, without him knowing, for that original.
What kind of story was tangled up here?
“Whatever. I’ll know somehow when I go.”
Now Rowoon was about to go find out.
“Amnesia. I used to think it was not just clichéd but stale as a subject. From now on, I might just accept any project that comes in with it. Who knew it’d be this interesting.”
So saying, the CEO took out an elegant fountain pen and scribbled down an address.
“…?”
Rowoon checked the address written on the paper, then looked up at the mansion before his eyes, and back and forth.
“This is… a house?”
From the address alone, he’d thought it was unusual.
“If this is a ‘house’, we owe other houses an apology.”
He could feel from the address that it wasn’t ordinary.
But to this degree—
Over the high, high wall, only the corner of the house peeked out as if in greeting.
The anticipation that had swelled up began to quietly deflate.
Beep.
He spoke his name into the intercom, and with a beep the gate opened.
“I’ve only seen this in dramas…”
The kind with chaebol families.
“…Is this really a house?”
Beyond the gate it was even grander.
A broad lawn like a sports field spread out endlessly.
It felt less like a house and more like a museum or an art gallery.
It seemed they were richer than he’d thought.
Surely it wasn’t a chaebol household?
“If it is, that’s even worse, isn’t it? Succession of management… war of heirs……”
Rowoon recalled the headlines he’d seen on the news and front pages, the ones that sounded difficult just to hear.
And then he snorted.
C’mon, as if. Why would someone from a chaebol family be an entertainer?
Besides, the messages sounded far too friendly to have come out of a savage family like that.
Maybe it was just a wealthy house.
But the moment Rowoon set foot inside the modern, museum-like home, his expectations were smashed to pieces.
“…”
“…”
What greeted him as soon as he entered was a handsome man with a cool impression.
Maybe just thirty.
Though still quite young, the pressure wrapped around his whole body more than made up for any lack of years.
Looking at him, Rowoon thought,
Chaebol family… seems about right.
If that man wasn’t a chaebol, then no one in this world could be.
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