ALL NOVEL chapter 0
0 – Prologue
I was quietly at home when things took a turn.
“You bastard!!”
An unexpected, swift slap from a middle-aged man in hiking attire.
With each turn of my head accompanied by a cracking sound, it felt like my soul was slipping away.
‘What the hell is going on, seriously.’
In truth, compared to what I’ve been through before, this was nothing.
Whether it was getting hit by a thrown ashtray from my aunt, who had swindled my father’s fortune, or facing harassment from a victim support group after fake news spread that I was my father’s embezzler, or surviving an encounter with a lunatic armed with a monkey wrench – I had managed to live through it all somehow.
Especially in recent years, thanks to being vigilant in my surroundings, I had avoided crises.
But this time, the person who showed up was quite strategic.
Without any urgency, he casually knocked on the door of the management office a few times, saying it’s about maintenance. When I checked through the front door camera, a man casually flipping through documents caught my eye. No doubt, he was the office guy.
‘All this fuss just to slap me a few times on the cheek?’
Perhaps it was because I helplessly took the hits, but the emotions pouring out from the hiking guy became increasingly intense.
Neck grabbing, curses, and incomprehensible lamentations.
“Sir, calm down for a moment.”
“Calm down!? You son of a b****, get my daughter up…!”
Words wouldn’t work. Luckily, within arm’s reach, there was a taekwondo trophy. In a hurry, I grabbed it and swung with all my might.
Thud! The sound echoed as it hit his head. It felt satisfying.
Still, to truly calm him down, one hit seemed insufficient, so I was about to strike again when…
“…Wait! Just wait!”
The surrender was faster than I had expected.
It meant that he hadn’t come to me to make a deal from the beginning. Seeing the middle-aged man, who was looking around with a hesitant posture, I felt not anger but… what should I call it? A sense of emptiness welled up. I wondered why I had to be slapped.
“How much did you lose in the end?”
“What…?”
“Father… No, that bastard Choi Hee-joon, the one who was beaten, right? But what’s incomprehensible is that he’s now in Anyang Correctional Facility. He’ll be eligible for parole next year, but… ah, if it’s him, he can still operate remotely.”
“……”
“How much did you lose to go to such lengths? 100 million? 200 million? …But sir, I really didn’t manage Choi Hee-joon’s slush fund. On the contrary, I even cooperated with the Southern District Prosecutor’s Office to investigate him. If it weren’t for me, he would still be out there.”
The middle-aged man just awkwardly nodded his head in response to my words. The momentum that made him even slap me out of nowhere seemed to have disappeared, as he even took a step back.
Could it be that I misunderstood?
If that’s the case, it was unexpected. Until now, every person who came after me was a victim who had been deceived by Choi Hee-joon and suffered harm.
The swindler Choi Hee-joon.
A financial criminal who made numerous victims using the South Korean stock market as his playground.
He had a record of similar fraud, special reception of transmissions, manipulation of stock prices, and more. There were even fans who once idolized him as the “300 billion super ant,” but now he was just a criminal.
Because of that man, eight companies went bankrupt and the number of people who suffered losses was countless. He was a veteran player who had been active since the dot-com bubble.
Choi Hee-joon had a method he enjoyed using to save face.
Provoking the victims he had deceived to go beyond the line.
It was so cunning that he himself would escape with a suspended sentence, and there was even a case where he had put the representative of the victims’ group in jail. It was a routine for him to make the victims write petitions.
Like the trash among trash, he didn’t care at all who would get burned in the process.
Even I, his own son, was not an exception. Who else would spread the false rumor that I was managing Choi Hee-joon’s criminal profits? It was all his doing or his cronies’.
“Unless it’s Choi Hee-joon, could it be because of Mom?”
That side… There was a possibility. Even though my mother wasn’t famous, she had a criminal record that could rival Choi Hee-joon’s.
If Choi Hee-joon’s major was economics, my mother’s major was politics. In her younger days, she worked for a multi-level marketing company, but after divorcing Choi Hee-joon, she switched careers and became a political broker.
Her job involved connecting politicians and donors, manipulating internal party elections, and in return, engaging in various forms of solicitation.
It may seem like a strange profession, but she had considerable influence. She even had involvement in the presidential special pardon list last year.
“So, you’re the one who suffered because of my mother, huh? Surprising. Unlike Choi Hee-joon, I didn’t expect you to hold grudges and work in that style.”
“How… How do I know your parents?”
She also denied being my mother. Then who could she be?
A mentally ill person? That thought crossed my mind as I looked at the face of the man who was staring at me. I could sense his confusion, as if he himself doubted whether he had gotten the wrong address.
At this point, a certain presence flickered in my mind.
It was something I didn’t want to imagine, but if it wasn’t because of my parents, there was only one person left.
Choi Ye-rin, my younger sister. Her profession was a club MD. She was also a promising piece of trash for the future, but she managed to get along with me relatively well. But could it be?
“Ye-rin. Do you know that name by any chance?”
Only then did the man’s gaze return to me with a hint of a firearm.
I wished it wasn’t true, but it seemed like my sister, whom I considered to be the only family I had left, had betrayed me.
“Ye-rin was friends with our daughter… When I asked, she said that her brother suddenly appeared at a gathering of friends and forcefully offered strange drinks, and, huh? She said it seemed like there was something mixed in it! And that’s something you did!”
“Take it slow. So, what happened to our daughter?”
“She’s been in a pentanyl overdose for a week now, unconscious…”
“I’ve never even seen pentanyl before. If you don’t believe me, you can have a confrontation with my sister.”
“What…?”
“Mixing dru*gs in drinks is your business tactic, isn’t it? Maybe you tried to involve your daughter, but things went wrong. Either way, it wasn’t me.”
The man, unable to retort, sent me a pitiful glance. I thought he would explode with anger for not admitting his misunderstanding, but surprisingly, he remained calm. It must be because he wasn’t intimidated by my Taekwondo trophy and because he had opened up about his family.
“Huh?”
With those foolish words, he left my house, staggering as if he had been hit on the head.
“Just leaving like that?”
Even if I were to receive an apology, what good would it do? Just by seeing his actions, it was clear that he was not in his right mind because of his daughter. After a week of excessive drinking, it would be difficult for him to wake up in a normal state.
I should have chased after him, but somehow, I lacked the motivation. I could only let out a bitter laugh.
Me, who had been slapped by a stranger for the first time at my own front door,
My family, who were planning a crime even at this very moment,
And the fact that we could never escape from this situation, it all seemed laughable.
In the past, whenever I experienced something like this, I would struggle to break free. I had appeared on the Lekka Channel, declaring my isolation from my family, and I had even cooperated with the police in an investigation. There was a time when I went to Choi Hee-joon with a bat and confronted him.
But ever since I realized that no matter what I did, I couldn’t escape from the shackles of family, not even anger could arise within me.
“It’s useless. Those people won’t change.”
I stood there dumbfounded for a while, then suddenly decided to visit a novel platform. It wasn’t because I wanted to read something specific, but rather out of habit.
But as soon as I logged in, a thought came to mind.
Instead of enduring this nonsense, wouldn’t it be better to possess someone else’s body?
It was a thought that occurred to me whenever I played games or read novels, but today, the idea of possession felt particularly appealing. I never expected even my younger brother to be like this.
Since there’s no harm in trying, I decided to ask a writer for support while sponsoring them.
The work I chose was a romance novel called “I Want Even the Underdog to Be Loved”.
The protagonist, who had been hiding her abilities for some reason in the academy, gradually revealed them as she entered her second year and started getting close to the popular students. It was the mildest taste among my previous works.
“Please send it to me. I want to live.”
In a world where I don’t have to see the faces of my family forever, how wonderful would that be? With a sense of urgency, I pressed the comment input button.
…
“If I had known it would be like this, I would have asked sooner.”
A wish that was realized much easier than expected.
For some reason, I found a worn-out Morning Star in my hand.