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Join the ServerHowever, the reply was different from what he had expected.
Hye-gang, who had been lying face-down sobbing, lifted his head. “What?”
A young man stood in front of him with a faint smile. The way he sat, his expression, and his gaze were unmistakably those of Cha Seol-young, the reaper who had once been a coldly handsome man. But his body was now slender and pretty.
Not that the Seol-young inside it was completely gone. A blurred afterimage of him lingered. That made the disconnect even worse. Hye-gang’s premonition was not good.
“Just bring me 1 billion won.”
Sure enough, the demand fell like a thunderbolt.
“1 billion won?”
“Didn’t you say you’re the chairman of one of the leading chaebols in the country?”
“I mean, even a chaebol chairman can’t just produce that on demand. Do you think 1 billion won is pocket change?”
“Wasn’t it easier than pocket change for you? How much did you spend to bring over a celebrity for a one-night fling?”
Hye-gang had raised his voice without even realizing it, he was so flustered. His face crumpled again. But Seol-young stayed perfectly composed, resting his chin on his hand and looking down at him.
“Think about it. Would you rather spend 1 billion won that isn’t yours and keep it secret, or have Dong-cheon and the deputy head reaper find out and never let it go?”
The threat was blatant. Hye-gang’s mouth fell half open. He nearly asked whether the person in front of him was really the old Cha Seol-young.
So much for the stern integrity of a warrior. This man was sly and mean. For two hundred years, he had known him, yet he’d never seen this side of him. A wasted life. A truly wasted life.
“Reaper Seol-young… I recently stepped down from my chairman position. Things aren’t looking good for me.”
Hye-gang swallowed all his complaints and pleaded, but Seol-young paid him no mind.
“You still have money. Why the song and dance?”
“Song and dance? My son is so suspicious that he has a tight grip on all the purse strings. He won’t let me spend a single cent.”
Seol-young looked at Hye-gang, whose face was all scrunched up with frustration, and beckoned him to get up. Hye-gang muttered nonsense about his poor joints, then quickly got off the floor and sat down on the sofa with a quiet posture.
“Must be nice. You even got yourself a son out of nowhere.”
“Nice, he says! That little monster is dying to devour me! You can only say that because you don’t know him, Reaper Seol-young. He puts ghost-catching reapers to shame!”
At the thought of his son, Hye-gang lost his mind all over again and shouted, completely forgetting that the man in front of him was a ghost-catching reaper.
“I have never seen such a vicious brat in my life! His energy is nothing like an ordinary person’s, he has no decency, and he even dragged his own father down from the chairman’s seat!”
Hye-gang let out a long sigh as if the ground were caving in. Then he started moaning again about how his son gave him a headache.
“But why does your son suspect you?”
Seol-young picked up a piece of fruit from the table spread and asked with an air of unconcern. Hye-gang’s shoulders slumped.
“They say this chairman suffered severe depression three years ago. His wife died of an illness four years before that, and he fell into depression. At some point, he stopped meeting people and shut himself in his room. It looks like he took his own life.”
“They must have been a close couple.”
“They were lovebirds, they say. They say Chairman Lee never looked at another woman his whole life. That says it all. But after I started living as this chairman… well, I lived a little differently. People put it down to memory and personality damage from the depression, so they let it slide. Only that son of his wouldn’t let it go.”
Seol-young clicked his tongue as he listened.
‘Of course it would be different.’
Lee Chang-seok may have been the head of a large company, but he was a plain, upstanding man. He cared for his employees, gave generously to society, and was a model businessman respected by everyone.
He was also a man who had looked only at his wife all his life. When she died of illness, he fell into depression and hanged himself. How could a man of that nature be anything like Hye-gang, who wanted to sneak around and have a young celebrity wait on him?
Seol-young hid his thoughts, lowered his gaze, and pushed another piece of fruit into his mouth. It wasn’t as good as the banana milk he’d drunk earlier, but the sweet-and-sour taste was pleasant. As he was briefly lost in that taste, a sensation he had long forgotten, Hye-gang began to complain about his unfair lot.
“People can change! He’s over sixty, so his head can go a little fuzzy! Other people are crying tears of relief that the depression went away and that he’s up and moving around again. Why is that son of mine the only one who keeps suspecting me and trying to bring me down?”
“How would I know?”
Seol-young answered flatly. Hye-gang ignored it and kept bad-mouthing his son.
“Before I even lasted a year, that brat kicked me out of the chairman seat and blocked all my authority! There isn’t a single thing I can do as I please, with money or anything else. Does that make sense? Why do you think I chose this old body in the first place? And on top of that, he watches me day and night. That man has no blood or tears! I’m not even living a life.”
Hye-gang pounded his chest in frustration. He was so busy venting that he forgot he was talking to Seol-young. That was natural. He had never been able to tell any of this to anyone before.
“Do you think I would have secretly called in a celebrity if I weren’t that desperate? I was stressed. I just wanted to let off some steam. A chairman with a famous face can’t go anywhere freely, and my son is glaring at me on top of that. I was about to burn up…”
“…”
“I’m sorry. Calling an escort was entirely my fault.”
But when Seol-young’s eyes turned cold, Hye-gang snapped out of it and bowed his head. Seeing him like that, Seol-young could roughly picture the situation. When a kind-hearted chairman suddenly turned into a lecherous scoundrel, how was the son supposed to take it? It must have driven him up the wall.
Seol-young found himself on the son’s side more than on Hye-gang’s. He clicked his tongue once more.
‘That son. I don’t know who he is, but he’s clever and steady. The chairman raised his child well, it seems. If the son hadn’t stood against Hye-gang so firmly, the company and the household might both have gone to ruin.’
“All right. I understand your situation.”
“Thank you for understanding, Reaper Seol-young!”
“Still, you should have at least 1 billion won on hand.”
“Yes. Huh?”
Hye-gang blinked blankly, his eyes wide. He had just explained until his throat was raw, yet Seol-young asked as if he had heard none of it.
“I’m not asking for 5 billion won or 10 billion won. It’s only 1 billion won. Why all the long-winded bellyaching?”
Seol-young also knew, though, that Hye-gang was hardly someone who could be pushed around easily, no matter how awful he said his circumstances were.
In the world of the living, Hye-gang had written poetry until his late twenties. After dying from the epidemic that was going around at the time, he became a reaper in the underworld. For two hundred years, he worked under Cha Seol-young and Dong-cheon, both famous figures in the underworld. That alone made people nod and say Hye-gang was no ordinary man.
Of course, he didn’t have as strong a will as Dong-cheon or Seol-young. But he knew how to read the room, adapt, and take good care of his seniors. When handed a difficult job, he would grumble, but he would still pull it off.
That was why even the talkative Dong-cheon cut Hye-gang some slack. Seol-young didn’t dislike him either. In fact, he was rather fond of him. Hye-gang was someone who could find his place and stretch his legs anywhere. So why was he sulking now?
Even if he claimed he had to tread carefully because of his heartless son, the fact that he’d called in a celebrity as an escort said more than enough. It meant he could still do whatever he wanted behind closed doors.
“One more thing. From now on, you’ll be my sponsor.”
“What?!”
Hye-gang’s face turned ashen before the words fully registered.
“No way! If my son finds out, I’m dead that day!”
“You’ve been a reaper in the underworld for two hundred years. Would you really die because of a brat whose blood hasn’t dried yet?”
“I mean it, Reaper Seol-young! That’s only because you’ve never met my son…”
“1 billion won. You can get it by tomorrow, right?”
Seol-young cut him off sharply, not caring whether Hye-gang started crying or not. A shriek came back instead of an answer.
“Also find me a good lawyer. Ah, and a doctor would be useful. And later, just in case, you should make some connections in the entertainment industry.”
He didn’t have the slightest intention of letting Hye-gang go now. Why else would he drag his tired body all the way there?
The excitement doesn't stop here! If you enjoyed this, you’ll adore Eat Me, Sweetie. Start reading now!
Read : Eat Me, Sweetie
