Meanwhile.
Vincent, who had even had the chance to name the label taken away from him, was looking dejected.
Not only that….
The humming he had recently been doing out of habit stopped short.
And the steps that had been more spirited than usual had lost their strength.
But because there was something important he had to take care of before that, he forced a calm expression and crossed the lobby of the office building.
Thud, thud.
The lobby of the Unice Music Group building, where he had spent years, was the kind of place whose scale made your shoulders lift just from walking through it.
Grand, and majestic.
But Vincent had already lost interest in a lobby like this.
‘No, it’s fine.’
In that moment, Vincent soothed himself, telling himself to think positively. Yeah, VINCIS isn’t bad either.
It’s like my name, it’s good. Right, of course.
‘At least it starts with VIN.’
And then.
Imagining the enormous “VINCIS” logo that would hang across the lobby of the building he would establish, he moved his steps.
Thud, thud!
He swung his legs again, strength flooding back into them, and was just about to turn the hallway corner in one go.
“Ah.”
At the same time, because of someone who came out, Vincent’s steps faltered and stopped.
“Watch where you’re going.”
It was Sarah Stewart. On her pretty but sharp, cat-like face, irritation was piled thick.
“You of all people, with big eyes, how about you watch where you’re going properly?”
Vincent shot back at her right away, but she wore a face that didn’t care much.
No, she looked excited, if anything.
Today—yeah, today of all days! The first person he ran into the moment he came to the building was Sarah Stewart!
Sarah Stewart looked at him strangely for a moment.
“Fuck…”
As always, she muttered a curse out of habit and passed by him.
“Ah, right.”
As if he had no intention of letting her go, Vincent called her to a stop in a subtly suggestive tone, as if he had thought of something.
“Congrats?”
At that, Sarah Stewart stopped dead and only twisted her head to look at him.
With eyes that seemed to say, What’s wrong with this bastard?
“The song you wrote climbed to No. 3 on the Billboard chart.”
“Ha, at this rate I’m gonna be drinking misutgaru and have it come out my nose today.”
And then she muttered something he couldn’t understand.
What is that, some new-style joke?
“It kept getting pushed down by other songs and just hovered around No. 4.”
At his words, Vincent saw her brows crease slightly.
But Vincent’s mouth showed no intention of stopping at that, and he immediately continued.
“But I looked at the newly updated chart, and you finally jumped to No. 3, beating out that song Mateo sang.”
“Yeah, so it wasn’t congratulations, it was picking a fight.”
“No, I’m really congratulating you, why are you being like that?”
Sarah Stewart, as if his playful smile curling at the corner of his mouth was even more annoying than his attitude.
“Did you seriously eat something wrong today?”
She swept her eyes over his face with a strange look and asked again.
“Did you eat spoiled misutgaru or something?”
He didn’t know why she kept linking everything to misutgaru.
“Geez, you don’t even understand a senior’s heart.”
Anyway, Sarah Stewart’s pretty eyes had sharpened fiercely, so he intended to stop around here.
Ah.
I forgot to say this. It’s a bit childish, but…
“Anyway, that’s all thanks to HS’s ability and popularity, so be grateful.”
“What?”
“From the next album on, try preparing it with only your own ability for once. You’re a singer-songwriter in name, aren’t you?”
“I’ll handle it myself.”
“Yeah, good luck, and I’ve got a meeting with Austin, so I’m going.”
With those words, as Vincent passed by Sarah Stewart…
Smirk.
A faint smile of someone who had seized the upper hand hung on his face.
Jeon Nam-il was looking down at the scenery of Seoul, with a bluish darkness settling over it.
“Hmm….”
He suddenly had a thought. His office—the CEO’s office—seemed to be positioned in a direction that was very good for taking in Seoul’s view at a glance.
Like the direction of his life, it spread out very high and majestically.
It wasn’t like that from the beginning.
Life, as it is for anyone, isn’t only beautiful. Jeon Nam-il’s life was like that too.
Nineteen.
The point when his not-beautiful life began to change was one day before he became an adult.
‘There’s no place for me.’
Jeon Nam-il had been an orphan from birth. Since he was left in front of an orphanage, the orphanage was his hometown and his parents.
One adoption, and one dissolution.
That record held Jeon Nam-il by the ankle and made it so he could never leave the orphanage.
The reason for the dissolution was simple.
“‘The kid isn’t kid-like at all! It’s not just that he’s precocious, he’s so gloomy that it gives you chills when you look at him!’”
He tried to blend in with his new family, but he couldn’t help it.
What can you do?
He was an orphan from birth, and the orphanage was not as beautiful as people thought.
Like a simple law of the wild, it was a place where only the strong survived.
Jeon Namil was always a target of the other orphans because he wasn’t good at fighting and his build was small.
But he fought them like hell, and no matter what he had to do, he beat them down and made them submit.
That didn’t mean he went around playing the bully.
It was just…
If they coveted his food, or interfered with him, he responded without mercy. To survive.
But there was one problem.
That orphanage life, where he had quietly reigned like a king and lived comfortably, had to end once he became an adult.
Unlike other high schoolers, Jeon Nam-il was sharp and quick to calculate, so he made a swift and precise judgment.
Right.
Rather than devising a way to stay longer, he chose to leave this place faster and find another ground where he could reign again.
So.
On his nineteenth birthday, Jeon Nam-il left the orphanage without any plan.
Of course.
It wasn’t his real birthday, but the day he had been abandoned in front of the orphanage.
And one day, when he was hiding his body and sleeping in a building whose lights were brightly on even late at night.
“This isn’t a lodging place.”
A man he met by chance.
“If you sleep here, your mouth’ll go crooked, you punk.”
Meeting that man, his world changed drastically.
No.
Jeon Nam-il found a new ground to live on.
“I’ll provide you food and a place to sleep, so want to do one job?”
“What is it?”
“It won’t be hard right away. You just need to drive well.”
If he could eat without starving and sleep warmly, he was willing to do anything…
But what he demanded was something he absolutely could not do.
“I can’t drive.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“And your birthday passed?”
It wasn’t his real birthday, but his birthday on paper had passed, so he nodded.
“Then tomorrow, go sign up for a driving academy right away. I’ll pay for it.”
And with that, the man solved his problem in one shot.
His name was Lee Duseok.
From then on, as he followed behind him, looking at his back, Jeon Namil learned one thing: strength, ability… is being able to solve something that looks like a huge deal to someone else as if it’s nothing.
And to subdue the things that block your path not with simple physical force, but with power, and clear them out right in front of you.
Right.
With the strength he learned from him as a foundation, Jeon Namil built a new ground.
That was LS Entertainment today.
Having grown to stand tall as one of Korea’s top three entertainment agencies, LS Entertainment wasn’t made overnight.
It was a place Jeon Nam-il raised with his life on the line, with indomitable will.
Since it was an entertainment company founded by Jeon Nam-il, known as Lee Duseok’s favorite disciple, with Lee Duseok—whose bad reputation was rampant in the industry—at the center of it, many places were wary from the moment it was established.
That wariness soon turned into attacks.
Jeon Nam-il fought them the way he had in the orphanage, the way he had learned from Lee Duseok, to survive.
And if he couldn’t make them submit, he cleared them out right in front of him.
Like that, step by step, he ran toward the top.
And finally.
He became able to look down at Seoul’s panorama at a glance.
Snap!
Jeon Nam-il snapped his fingers and tapped the glass, waking from his thoughts.
On the window, because the weather had gotten fairly chilly, droplets from the temperature difference had formed.
Drip.
Just as one droplet ran down the glass.
Knock, knock, knock.
His direct secretary came in with a knock and bowed politely.
“CEO, a guest has come to see you.”
Instead of answering, Jeon Namil looked at the secretary as if asking who it was.
“It’s Composer HS.”
For some reason, the corners of the secretary’s lips drew a pleasant curve as she delivered the words.
Since she had seen over his shoulder that Jeon Nam-il cherished him, she thought it was a somewhat sudden visit, but that he would welcome it.
But Jeon Nam-il’s expression wasn’t very bright. Still, he couldn’t refuse.
“Tell him to come in.”
Right now, in this moment, Lee Duseok’s words suddenly came to mind.
“But until then, just trust him and watch.”
At that moment, the huge door of the CEO’s office opened, and Min Hyunseung walked in.
Others would hardly even meet his eyes, approaching carefully with hunched shoulders.
But he…
Whenever he came to Jeon Nam-il, he strode in confidently, as if kicking the place open.
Right.
That was what had been fascinating at first, what stirred his curiosity.
Then he wanted him, and from some point it began to feel frightening.
And now, reverence wrapped around his body.
One step.
One step.
One step.
Min Hyunseung swung his long legs as he walked toward him.
“It’s been a while since I greeted you, CEO.”
Then, giving a light nod of greeting toward him, he pointed to one of the sofas.
“May I sit here?”
Jeon Nam-il only gave a light nod.
Until now, he had always been the one to call him in, but today was the first day Hyunseung came on his own.
Which meant he must have something important to say.
“Hmm….”
He didn’t know what he was going to say, but just looking at his eyes, it didn’t seem like he had come for simple advice.
But Jeon Nam-il didn’t ask first. It wasn’t about pride.
Clink.
Instead of a question, Jeon Nam-il offered him a teacup filled with tea that had gone lukewarm.
“It’s cooled a bit, but drink.”
Hyunseung only nodded lightly and didn’t even look at the teacup.
His gaze was only on Jeon Nam-il. Just from his blazing eyes, you could tell he had something to say right away.
“What’s the reason you came to see me?”
Jeon Nam-il asked Hyunseung lightly. Of course, it didn’t mean his heart was light.
“It’s not that, but I have something urgent to say…”
Hyunseung trailed off for a moment.
“I have a proposal.”
He added the last words, meeting his gaze directly.
At that moment….
On Hyunseung’s face as he looked at him sharply…
“‘That way, even if that friend says one day that he’ll leave your nest, he won’t bring down the nest you built up and protected.’”
… Lee Duseok’s face overlapped, his face as he had delivered a sharp rebuke toward him.
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