A long leg extends through the car door opened by his secretary. Soon, the full figure of Min Seunghyuk, CEO of “Market Delivery,” appears in his classic luxury suit.

His body, honed through exercise without an ounce of excess, radiates an unapproachable aura. His expressionless face exudes aristocratic refinement. His confident stride alone makes it easy to deduce that failure has no place in his life.

Though he’s the grandson of Yeonshin Group’s chairman, Seunghyuk built his company from scratch rather than inheriting an affiliate.

At just thirty-one years old, his track record matches his appearance perfectly. Nothing has ever stood in Seunghyuk’s path.

Today is no different. As he steps out of the car and enters the company’s main entrance, people who had been walking briskly stop and clear a path, bowing their heads to him.

Something out of place catches Seunghyuk’s eye. Perhaps it’s because she stands among people dressed in business suits regardless of gender, but a high school girl in a purple uniform jacket and ivory skirt stands out prominently.

He saw her yesterday too.

He only passed by her, so he didn’t see her face, but yesterday a female student in the same uniform stood in this spot. Of course, it’s possible to see students in uniform in the lobby. But seeing a student in the same uniform two days in a row is rare.

In that brief moment, Seunghyuk senses something is about to happen. Sure enough, like she’s the only one moving in a frozen world, the female student hurries toward him.

Seunghyuk stops walking, but the bodyguard blocks the student before she can reach him.

“CEO Min Seunghyuk.”

His name flows precisely from the student’s lips. Wondering if she’s someone he knows, Seunghyuk looks directly at her face.

The high school girl with fair skin and large brown eyes has a plain, unadorned appearance, but her distinct features are pretty. If he’d seen her properly before, he would remember her face, but since she’s not in his memory, she must be a stranger.

Seunghyuk raises his right hand slightly. It means he’ll hear what she has to say. Only then does the bodyguard step back.

“Do you have something to tell me?”

Whether due to his cold personality or natural disposition, Seunghyuk has had a cold expression since childhood. On top of that, he doesn’t smile, so not only his employees but even his classmates couldn’t approach him easily.

That’s why he’s curious. What does this unfamiliar high school girl want to tell him?

“It’s about Choi Jieun…”

At the name Choi Jieun, Seunghyuk reflexively feels displeasure, his eyebrows twitching upward. This makes his cold face look downright menacing.

At this point, timid people usually back away, but despite looking small and fragile, this girl seems to have quite a bit of nerve. She takes a breath with a “Hup!” and pauses for a beat before opening her mouth again.

“…No, should I say it’s about Min Seungju? I have something I absolutely must tell you. Please give me some time.”

Seunghyuk looks down at the female student who mentions his brother’s name—his brother who died five years ago—with an expression full of tension. His face has already become expressionless.

***

Sohyun sits uncomfortably on an incredibly expensive-looking comfortable sofa, repeatedly swallowing her dry saliva. She has no idea what state of mind she’s in, sitting here right now.

Honestly, she thought she’d be kicked out of the lobby. Seunghyuk’s expression was that cold.

Sohyun immediately noticed Seunghyuk’s expression sour the moment he heard the name “Choi Jieun.” 

So she hastily added the name “Min Seungju,” and that worked. As a result, Sohyun got into the CEO’s office and earned the chance to speak to Seunghyuk.

“I’ll give you five minutes. What do you absolutely have to tell me?”

Seunghyuk, sitting across from her, doesn’t offer her a cup of tea and only gives her five minutes to speak. It’s stingy beyond belief.

“Thank you for making time for me when I showed up so suddenly. I’m Ahn Sohyun, a senior at Cheongsol High School.”

Sohyun starts by giving her name. But Seunghyuk, showing no interest in her name, taps his obviously expensive wristwatch with his finger.

Wow, what a heartless person. Does the time for greetings count toward the five minutes too?

“Geez, it’s so complicated I can’t explain it all in five minutes.”

A groan escapes without her realizing it. The explanation she needs to give now isn’t quite makjang drama level, but it’s about morning drama level. 

How can she explain all that in five minutes—no, four minutes and forty seconds? In times like this, the answer is to start with what’s most important.

“So Choi Jieun gave birth to Min Seungju’s son four years ago. His name is Ahn Hyunho. Choi Jieun married my dad before giving birth to Hyunho. So she became my stepmother.”

Sohyun first makes clear that Hyunho isn’t her biological brother. This is the most important thing.

“Both of them died in a car accident on the same day a few months ago. Neither of my parents had any other relatives, so only Hyunho and I are left, but the social worker says the two of us can’t live alone.”

Both her dad and stepmother were orphans. They had no substantial assets to leave their children. All they had was the jeonse deposit for the old villa in the outskirts where they currently live.

“If there’s no proper legal guardian, Hyunho will be separated from me and sent to a child welfare facility.”

At first, Sohyun thought simply. She figured she could live with Hyunho if she received government subsidies and worked part-time.

But the social worker thought differently. She judged that Sohyun, a high school senior, couldn’t raise a five-year-old brother and tried to send him to a welfare facility.

Naturally, Sohyun didn’t want to send Hyunho to a welfare facility. After much deliberation, Sohyun decided to seek help from Seunghyuk, the younger brother of Hyunho’s deceased biological father, and came here.

“So the bottom line is… please raise me.”

Having breathlessly finished her explanation, Sohyun hurriedly states her purpose for coming.

“Raise you? Not Hyunho?”

Seunghyuk narrows his eyes and asks.

“I’ll raise Hyunho, so you just need to raise me until I become an adult and can be Hyunho’s guardian.”

“How am I supposed to raise you?”

“If you become Hyunho’s guardian and supplement our living expenses a bit, I’ll manage to grow up on my own.”

Talking about living expenses is difficult, but Sohyun musters courage for Hyunho’s sake. If she can endure a moment of embarrassment, she can raise Hyunho without him lacking anything.

Solving the guardian problem so she can live with Hyunho is as important as solving the living expenses issue. If she could, Sohyun wants Hyunho to grow up without lacking anything. And the man before her has tons of money, so he has plenty of ability to help.

“You won’t have to worry about anything at all—I can grow up just fine on my own.”

She can be confident about this. Since she was ten years old when her mom passed away, Sohyun learned how to grow up alone. Shopping for groceries and cooking, sleeping when it’s time, waking up on her own to go to school, cleaning and laundry.

But now she’s nineteen, isn’t she? Her body and mind have grown this much, so surely she’ll do even better.

“Timeframe?”

She thought he’d naturally ask how much she wants for living expenses, but Seunghyuk asks a different question.

“Pardon?”

“Until when do I have to raise you?”

“Uh…”

Sohyun quickly starts calculating. Sohyun was born in April. It’s May now, so with some leeway, couldn’t she become Hyunho’s guardian in about a year?

“About a year?”

“A year?”

When Seunghyuk asks back in a dry voice, Sohyun glances at him and rolls her eyes.

Is a year not enough?

“Um… a year and a half?”

“A year and a half?”

At his repeated question, Sohyun’s eyes tremble mercilessly.

Why does he keep asking back?

His constant questioning makes Sohyun’s confidence plummet.

Come to think of it, it would be more advantageous if she works part-time and saves up some money, right? But she can’t gauge how long that would take.

“Two years at most?”

That should be enough time to earn enough to raise Hyunho on her own, right?

“If you become the guardian, I’ll naturally write a property waiver too.”

“Property waiver?”

At the unexpected words, Seunghyuk lets out a cold laugh. “Pfft.”

“It’s my way of proving I’m not here because I’m greedy for Yeonshin Group’s assets.”

“Who taught you that?”

Seunghyuk looks at Sohyun with sunken eyes as she speaks capably.

“Which part?”

“The property waiver, proving you’re not greedy for assets.”

She’s not from a chaebol family fighting over assets since childhood, and there’s no way an ordinary nineteen-year-old would know about this. So isn’t there a shrewd adult behind this child?

But what came from Sohyun’s mouth was unexpected.

“From web novels.”

“Novels?”

“It’s a common trope in romance novels. Chaebol families, birth secrets, successor fights, and so on. I really had no idea Hyunho would have that kind of character setting though.”

At first he thought she was joking, but Sohyun explains with a rather serious expression, shrugging her shoulders.

“Based on Hyunho’s character setting, there are many clichés where the family refuses to accept Hyunho because of inheritance issues, or there are bad adults trying to use Hyunho as leverage to grab a share. That’s why I’m telling you in advance.”

“You mean there won’t be any situation where Hyunho takes the family’s assets, or where you demand money using Hyunho as a bargaining chip?”

“Exactly that.”

Sohyun strikes her palm with her fist, seemingly pleased they’re on the same page.

“That’s why I came to you, CEO Min, instead of the chairman. We can resolve this without informing the main family about Hyunho’s existence. Oh right, I haven’t given you the most important thing.”

Sohyun takes out a white envelope from the backpack on her shoulder and places it on the table.

“Here, Hyunho’s hair and toothbrush. For genetic testing.”

“Did you see this in a novel too?”

The kid prepared all sorts of things.

“I saw this in a drama. Birth secrets come up often in dramas too.”

“How did you know the child is my brother’s? Did Jieun tell you?”

“I didn’t hear it, I… read what was written here.”

After hesitating briefly, Sohyun takes out a small notebook from her backpack with determination. It’s a pink notebook.

“It’s my stepmother’s—no, Choi Jieun’s diary. I found it while organizing her belongings.”

“It was written here?”

Seunghyuk taps the notebook with his index finger half-heartedly.

“Yes. My dad remarried when I was fifteen. Hyunho was born a few months after they got married. People around us think my stepmother got pregnant so they hurriedly got married, but I could tell.”

Perhaps because she lost her mother at a young age and lived with her dad, Sohyun was perceptive.

“They didn’t know I noticed, but neither my dad nor my stepmother ever once said Hyunho was my dad’s son.”

Being perceptive and enjoying romance novels and dramas, the fifteen-year-old girl understood the couple’s circumstances in her own way with novelistic imagination and pretended not to know.

That’s why Sohyun wasn’t shocked even while reading her stepmother’s hidden diary, which seemed to be written whenever she missed Min Seungju.

What shock? She shouted “Eureka!” and found a way to solve her current problem through this diary. This diary felt like a lifeline her stepmother left for Hyunho.

“I learned through the diary. The circumstances that forced my stepmother to leave Min Seungju, and that Min Seungju passed away after they broke up.”

It really was a diary straight out of a novel.

“So you concluded it would be better to find me using this diary and your knowledge from novels?”

“Yes. Based on what I inferred from the diary, it seemed Yeonshin Group wouldn’t welcome Hyunho.”

Her stepmother’s love was faithful to clichés. The diary didn’t include how they met and fell in love. This diary was written after Hyunho’s biological father passed away.

But it did include why they broke up. The chaebol family pressured her stepmother, an orphan, to leave Hyunho’s biological father, and her stepmother did so for Min Seungju’s sake.

Her stepmother learned she was pregnant after Min Seungju died in an accident. Thinking the family wouldn’t want the child when the father wasn’t even alive, her stepmother didn’t inform them of Hyunho’s existence.

“But right now I desperately need a legal guardian for Hyunho. I know that just because I’m asking for help doesn’t mean you have any obligation to help me.”

“What will you do if I refuse? Will you go to my father?”

“No.”

Sohyun shakes her head vigorously like she heard something absurd.

Sohyun retraces the process of meeting Seunghyuk. 

Yesterday, Sohyun came to the company to meet him too. She lingered in the lobby and saw Seunghyuk entering with many people behind him, just like today.

Even from a distance, the intimidation he radiated made Sohyun’s heart pound and her body shrink. Her body froze and she couldn’t take a step toward him. That’s how she lost him right before her eyes.

After coming to her senses much later, she went to the information desk. When she said she wanted to meet the CEO, the receptionist asked with a kind expression if she had an appointment. 

When she said no, they told her to make an appointment first. When she asked how to make an appointment, they said to call and arrange a meeting.

But how can she arrange a meeting when she doesn’t even know his phone number? The receptionist was kindly telling Sohyun she couldn’t meet the CEO.

Sohyun stayed up all night with her eyes open, blaming herself for losing him even though he was right in front of her. But she can’t just give up like this!

So today she came back to the company and waited for Seunghyuk to pass by, and after all that, she got this chance to meet him. Sohyun considers even this lucky.

“It’s this hard to meet you, so how much harder would it be to meet someone higher up?”

“Or a lawsuit?”

“Huh? A lawsuit?”

Sohyun jumps in surprise.

“I’ve never even thought about it.”

A lawsuit against a chaebol family—just thinking about it is scary.

“Then what?”

At Seunghyuk’s question, Sohyun lets out a long sigh.

“If you refuse, I’ll have to look for another legal guardian who can help us live together. If I still can’t find one…”

Just thinking about it makes her chest feel stuffy and her throat choke up. Sohyun pauses to catch her breath.

“…I’ll have no choice but to send Hyunho to a welfare facility until I become an adult, but I can’t give up without even trying.”

“As you said, Hyunho is a child even his own bl＊＊d turns away from. So why are you trying so hard for this child? He has nothing to do with you.”

“What do you mean nothing to do with me? Hyunho is my brother.”

Sohyun’s eyes widen as she shouts indignantly.

“There’s even a saying, right? A close neighbor is better than a distant relative. We’re family, for goodness’ sake. Even if we’re not connected by bl＊＊d, Hyunho was born as my brother. So as his older sister, I’ll raise Hyunho well in place of our parents.”

It’s a passionate speech that would have moved anyone else, but the heart of the impressive man sitting across from her seems hard like stone. His expression as he looks at his wristwatch is cold and dry.

“Five minutes passed a while ago.”

“Ah!”

Sohyun, who had been speaking heatedly, snaps back to reality like cold water was dumped on her. Looking at his expression alone, she can’t tell if things went well or not.

“Leave your contact information with my secretary.”

“Pardon?”

“I’ll contact you after the genetic test.”

Seunghyuk glances briefly at the envelope.

“If he’s confirmed to be bl＊＊d-related, you’ll become Hyunho’s legal guardian?”