My Company Is Black

#031

While Lee Gyo-ha was lost in his thoughts, Hwi-kyung was surprisingly calm.

If he had one-sidedly beaten Sung-ha, it would have been considered unilateral assault, but Hwi-kyung made sure to take a couple of hits from Sung-ha. It wasn’t that he couldn’t avoid them. He did it to risk only a civil lawsuit and avoid criminal charges.

Of course, an ordinary person wouldn’t waste their body like this just to make a settlement easier. But Jung Hwi-kyung was fine with this level of injury. If things went wrong, he could just regress.

When he saw Marcia being hit, he could no longer practice patience. Hwi-kyung’s thin patience always hit rock bottom in such unjust situations.

Especially when facing older women, Hwi-kyung unconsciously recalled his mother. The white face looking down at him, half-consumed by shadows under the kitchen fluorescent light, was hard to forget.

In fact, Hwi-kyung’s parents weren’t very responsible adults. They were closer to the type who, if sent to a parenting solution program, would end up as clips on YouTube, globally criticized.

Both were far from violent, but they showed little interest in their child. Their relationship was so cold that it was unclear why they had married, making it difficult for them to care for Hwi-kyung, born between them.

Moreover, Hwi-kyung’s father had been having an affair early on. When Hwi-kyung learned that his father was living a double life, he was only in third grade. If a ten-year-old could notice the affair, there’s no way Hwi-kyung’s mother hadn’t.

Yet, Hwi-kyung’s mother didn’t fight with his father, raising her voice. She maintained that strange household until Hwi-kyung became a high school student, solely to fulfill her ‘responsibility’.

She was always eerily calm. To Hwi-kyung, who expressed his anger at his father’s infidelity, his mother said:

‘There’s no need to get angry. I’ve won this marriage.’

Hwi-kyung couldn’t understand these words. How could she say she won when they were separating? From his perspective, there were no winners in his parents’ marriage. It wasn’t normal to consider relationships in terms of winning and losing in the first place.

‘If I leave you now, who could blame me? It’s all your father’s fault…’

That calm and cold face. The shadowed smile saying ‘I’m sorry to you, though’ while sitting in the dimly lit kitchen with one fluorescent light out. These things persistently followed Hwi-kyung throughout his long life.

From then on, Hwi-kyung started living with his grandmother. His mother left for a foreign country, telling him never to contact her again, and his father officially married his mistress, hiding the fact that he had a grown child.

His grandmother tried to raise Hwi-kyung without lack. She struggled to support her grandson, ensuring he wouldn’t grow up wrong as a child left behind by his parents. That’s why Hwi-kyung realized early on that none of these separations were his fault.

However, the world is a place where being faultless doesn’t guarantee happiness.

Blood is thicker than water. Hwi-kyung thought he resembled his mother. Jumping into fights he thought he could win, thinking he had won even after being beaten – it was clear he took after his mother in all these aspects. Even the bad habit of thinking he had won to maintain composure when everyone was a loser.

“Hwi-kyung-ssi, are you okay?”

“Ah, yes.”

“I can’t bear this. What happened to your handsome face.”

Compared to Hwi-kyung, who had a large gauze on his temple and was in a cast due to a stretched ligament, Marcia was relatively unscathed. She gently brushed Hwi-kyung’s face with a worried hand.

“What were you thinking? You know how nasty the eldest young master’s temper is.”

“…”

“What if something had happened to you? I could have ended it with just one hit…”

“It’s better that I got hit.”

“Huh?”

“I’m saying it’s better that I got hurt.”

It was a great relief that Marcia hadn’t broken her nose like Sung-ha, or lost teeth from a bad hit to the face. Already in her 40s, Marcia wouldn’t recover from bruises or broken bones as easily as Hwi-kyung.

However, misunderstanding Hwi-kyung’s response somehow, Marcia grabbed him and shook him with an exasperated expression.

“Hwi-kyung-ssi, do you have nine lives or something?”

“…”

“Why are you so reckless? Do you wish for an early death?”

Nine lives? Well, this was his fourteenth life. Wish for an early death? He wished for resignation, not death. If he could resign from life, that would be good too.

“Please take care of yourself!”

“That’s my line. Do you have some kind of injury fetish?”

“So… Oh my, our young master is here.”

“Did you receive proper treatment?”

Lee Gyo-ha’s timing was impeccable. Hwi-kyung looked at Gyo-ha’s stern face as he stood behind Marcia.

What are you going to do staring like that? Even when Hwi-kyung glared back, Gyo-ha didn’t avert his gaze. In the end, it was Hwi-kyung who looked away first.

How can he look at me like that when we haven’t known each other for long? Hwi-kyung found Gyo-ha’s worried expression slightly irritating. Unlike Marcia who didn’t know about his regression, Gyo-ha knew, yet he still worried like this despite being helplessly dragged along when Hwi-kyung regressed. He was quite a foolish person too.

“It’s not a serious injury.”

“What do you mean it’s not! When I got hit once, Hwi-kyung-ssi suddenly rushed at the eldest young master, you know?”

“…”

“I just got a little bloody, but what about Hwi-kyung-ssi’s arm? And what if it leaves a scar on his handsome face?”

“The stretched ligament will heal quickly.”

“Why so recklessly… Ah, never mind. I’m sure you had your reasons.”

While Marcia and Gyo-ha were chiding him from both sides, Hwi-kyung just kept his mouth shut. If it had been just Gyo-ha, he might have sarcastically commented, “Hey, your brother’s temper is something else…” but he couldn’t say such things while Marcia was present.

Gyo-ha reached out towards Hwi-kyung’s face, who was looking down. Instead of tilting his head back to avoid the touch like before, Hwi-kyung looked up at Gyo-ha when he felt the warmth.

“Don’t do this next time.”

“…I don’t intend to get involved in violent situations more than twice.”

“No, I mean, next time don’t just let yourself get hit like this.”

“…”

“You didn’t get hit because you couldn’t dodge, right? Lee Sung-ha isn’t good at fighting.”

“I got hit because I couldn’t dodge.”

“Hwi-kyung-ssi, really. You’re not good at lying.”

Lee Gyo-ha, who said he wasn’t good at lying either, withdrew his hand and smiled a bit ruefully.

“I know why you did it.”

Hwi-kyung didn’t like those words. What do you know? Just because they were both regressors didn’t mean everyone experienced the same horrors. You have a lot of money, and no one to repeatedly lose… A surge of emotion welled up beneath his meager pride.

It was thanks to Hwi-kyung being accustomed to enduring that he didn’t let this subtle resentment burst out. While Gyo-ha couldn’t accurately understand what Hwi-kyung was thinking, he didn’t leave the side of his fellow regressor who was biting his lip tightly.

* * *

The news that Lee Sung-ha’s nose was broken spread quickly. This was because the number of people who disliked him was too many to count on ten fingers.

Jung-hye, who heard the news first and blocked gossip magazines targeting chaebol families, also smiled subtly about Sung-ha’s nose-shattering incident. While it was painful that her brother was hurt, when she learned that he had hit someone working at someone else’s house first, she judged it as karma.

Gyo-ha’s new lover seemed to be quite experienced in fist-fighting. Jung-hye became increasingly curious about Hwi-kyung. Who was this person who could call Gyo-ha back to Korea and physically defeat Sung-ha?

In the end, Jung-hye decided to move up the family gathering schedule a bit. She even managed to summon Sung-ha, who had said he wouldn’t come using his injury as an excuse. Both younger brothers expressed dissatisfaction at the sudden schedule change but didn’t dare to resist their sister’s decision.

For this reason, Hwi-kyung was now being dragged out shopping at a department store, held by Gyo-ha’s hand.

“How can a regressor only have a suit for interviews?”

“I get additional suits tailored when I get a job.”

“I thought this in the previous cycle too, but you don’t seem to dress well.”

“…I think it’s normal enough.”

Hwi-kyung inwardly muttered, ‘That’s just because you’re a former model…’ In reality, Hwi-kyung wasn’t bad at dressing. He just preferred plain outfits with no variation.

But to Gyo-ha’s eyes, Hwi-kyung was a fashion terrorist. Wow, he always wears plain sweatshirts and training pants with white stripes on the side. When going out, it’s just sweatshirts in different colors with slacks, and a heather cardigan, that’s all.

Gyo-ha was still unaware that this was considered better than the standard of Korean men’s fashion. By Lee Gyo-ha’s standards, such an outfit was only allowable in the last semester of a doctoral program writing a graduation thesis.

Moreover, Hwi-kyung didn’t wear tailored suits. Seeing Hwi-kyung only buying ready-made shirts despite being taller than the average Korean man, Gyo-ha’s hands trembled. He wanted to kneel down and beg to buy and offer clothes right away.

Why not utilize such a decent physique and neat features? This was truly a waste. Is passing interviews all that matters? Is the interview the most important thing in your life?

If Hwi-kyung had really heard such questions, he would have retorted, ‘What else is important?’ Gyo-ha was truly shedding tears of blood. Hwi-kyung deserved to enjoy better things.

“Well, since we’re going to your family gathering. I’ll wear whatever you choose.”

“…Really?”

“But let’s buy within the budget.”

“If it’s not enough, I’ll buy it for you.”

“No…”

Hwi-kyung looked suspiciously at Gyo-ha, whose face brightened dramatically at his words about wearing whatever was chosen. Hadn’t he been whining just a few hours ago about his sister moving up the family gathering schedule?

But as soon as they entered the department store, Gyo-ha’s face lit up as if the department store was his personal color. Seeing his expression improve even more when Hwi-kyung asked him to choose clothes, it seemed that unlike Hwi-kyung who disliked choosing clothes, Gyo-ha enjoyed this kind of shopping.

“Then let’s go to a boutique I know.”

“What?”

“I want to dress you in a tailored suit.”

“Didn’t we say we’d buy within the budget?”

“Please include my budget in your budget.”

“No…”

“Let’s go!”

Until the moment they got back in the car, Hwi-kyung had been taking shopping lightly. How hard could it be? It’s just buying clothes…

And human original sin comes from not knowing how hard something is until you try it yourself. Poor Homo sapiens (including Jung Hwi-kyung) hadn’t progressed much over time.