The archive room beneath Kang Tower wasn't listed on any floor plan. Accessed by biometric scan and voice pattern, it was built in the 1980s at the height of the dictatorship years—a vault meant not to preserve history, but to bury it.
Yoochan stood alone among shelves of decaying folders, ancient VHS tapes, and hand-written ledgers bound in leather. Even the AI servers couldn't parse half the information stored here. This was the family's true memory: untouched by revision, uncluttered by digital fingerprints.
And somewhere in this tomb of secrets lay the key to Jiwoo.
He set down a duffel bag of caffeine pills, water bottles, and painkillers. He wasn't leaving until he knew everything.
---
It started with a single name: Kang Hyesu.
His father's mistress—low-born, unrecorded, erased.
She had given birth in Busan in 2003 and disappeared a month later. The medical record bore the infant's name: Jiwoo. The father's name was blank. But Yoochan knew the handwriting on the form.
It was Daehyun's.
He stared at the shaky characters, the looping signature that had once signed billion-dollar contracts. The old man had acknowledged Jiwoo—if only on a form never meant to be found.
Why hadn't he said anything?
Why keep Jiwoo a secret even from his most trusted allies?
Because he was scared, Yoochan realized.
Because Jiwoo wasn't just a bastard.
He was a threat.
---
A knock echoed behind him.
Yoochan turned sharply.
Sooyoung stepped into the dim light. She looked drawn—her dark circles deeper, her suit wrinkled from sleepless nights.
"You've been down here twelve hours."
"I'm close," he muttered, holding up a dusty black journal labeled 1979–2004: Contingency Offspring.
"Contingency offspring?" she repeated. "What does that mean?"
"It means Daehyun prepared for failure. If we turned out weak, if we disappointed him… he had backups."
She stepped closer, scanning the pages over his shoulder.
One entry stood out.
> Jiwoo
IQ est. 140+ — Shows anti-authoritarian tendencies. Raised without resources to test potential. Surveillance discontinued after 2014.
Note: Child resembles Yoochan. Possible duplication?**
"Duplication?" Sooyoung whispered. "What does that mean?"
"It means…" Yoochan's mouth went dry. "Either cloning—which I doubt—or the same woman had both of us. And they separated us."
"No," she said firmly. "Your mother was Miyoung. You have her features. Her DNA's in the company records."
Yoochan nodded, but unease gnawed at him. "But what if he—Daehyun—played with more than just legacy?"
"You think he used her… more than once?"
He didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
---
The deeper they dug, the darker it got.
Jiwoo hadn't vanished—he'd fled.
In 2014, a surveillance memo flagged an orphan in Mokpo who had broken into a Kang shipping depot. No items stolen, but he left graffiti in blood-red paint: "Sins of the Father." A psychological profile listed the boy as "brilliant, anti-social, possibly violent."
The report was buried. Discontinued.
Yoochan's fingers trembled as he flipped the page.
A grainy photo: a boy in a hoodie, standing over a burning crate, expression unreadable.
"Same eyes," Sooyoung said softly.
"But colder," Yoochan replied. "He doesn't want the empire."
"What does he want?"
"Justice."
He looked up at her. "Or revenge."
---
Two floors above, chaos brewed.
Joonho had finally resurfaced—but not in person. Instead, his assistant sent a lawyer with a court injunction against Yoochan's internal lockdown. Attached was a psychiatric evaluation—clearly forged—claiming Yoochan was suffering from paranoid delusions, making him unfit to manage Kang Industries.
Yoochan laughed bitterly when he read it.
"Your brother's throwing stones from a glass tower," Sooyoung said.
"He thinks I'm losing my mind."
"Are you?"
Yoochan stared out the window, eyes rimmed red from fatigue.
"If I am," he said, "then Jiwoo's already won."
---
That night, Yoochan went to visit Yuna.
The hospital was under guard, swarming with loyal Kang security—but it felt hollow. The walls whispered. The floors echoed. Even the nurses avoided looking Yoochan in the eye.
Yuna was awake.
Barely.
Her mouth had been freed of its stitches, but she still couldn't speak. The damage was partial, the doctors said. Nerve trauma. Maybe temporary, maybe not.
He sat beside her, reaching for her hand.
She blinked slowly.
"Do you remember who did it?" he asked gently.
She nodded.
He showed her photos—Minwoo, Soomin, Joonho.
She shook her head.
Then he held up a drawing. A sketch generated by AI based on Jiwoo's blurry footage.
Her eyes widened.
Yoochan leaned forward. "Is this who attacked you?"
Tears welled.
She nodded.
Yoochan closed his eyes.
Confirmed.
---
By the time he left the hospital, the city had turned.
Protests flared outside the Tower gates. Workers from the Jeju site, factory union reps, and whistleblowers—all emboldened by the video Jiwoo released. Yoochan watched from his penthouse, the crowd below a roaring ocean of banners and chants.
"Blood for blood," one sign read.
Another: "The Ghost Kang Lives."
He turned from the window.
"You can't win this in the boardroom," Sooyoung said behind him. "He's not playing by those rules."
"I know," Yoochan said, voice like steel.
He opened a drawer and pulled out a burner phone.
On it was a single contact: The Cleaner.
"I need to find Jiwoo," he said. "And when I do…"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't have to.
The war had begun.
---