No wonder I thought he stood out so distinctly among his ordinary-looking relatives when I looked up SW Company. Now the mystery is solved. He had no blood relation to that family, so of course his appearance was different.

Was it also due to subtle discrimination that he was the only one without the generational name in his own, and the only one who completed all his studies in Korea, unlike his cousins who all studied abroad as a matter of course?

And at the same time, I couldn’t help but feel—it was absurd.

But so what?

Why bring this up now?

Adoption – what about that? Are you belittling him like it’s some kind of great weakness? It’s not like he committed a crime like you did.

If anything, it just shows how selfishly you lived your life – blurting out such deeply personal matters without consent, as if you had any right to do so.

Either way, it was too sensitive a subject to overhear without feeling guilty. A conflict arose in me.

Should I leave now?

I looked for a way to slip away, but Lee Seol-won didn’t loosen the arm he had around me to support me, and Lee Jae-hyup, fully aware that I could hear every word, made no effort to lower his voice.

—”He was thrown away by his birth parents, and then by sheer luck he ended up in our family, enjoying wealth and honor that ordinary people can’t even dream of. This bastard of an adoptee should know his place.”

Ah, so that was it.

For Lee Jae-hyup, the adoption must have been Lee Seol-won’s last mistake. And it was obvious – he deliberately spelled it all out to make sure I heard it loud and clear. It was malicious.

He wanted to expose the fact that this man, who seemed so flawless on the surface, wasn’t what they considered “pure”. Childishly so.

—”You chose that engagement because you didn’t want to end your career at the Cultural Foundation. You crunched the numbers and found someone with the right background to take you to the next level. The moment you lose that fiancée, it’s a free fall. Can you handle what comes after?”

Suddenly, I remembered the day I first met him at the Songun Art Hall.

“Why not me?”

“You know why. You have no value to me.”

His answer had been cold, unemotional, thrown out in response to my sad question after losing Eun-sae.

At the time, it had hurt me deeply. I’d been angry, wondering what he thought of Eun-sae.

That one line alone had probably sparked eighty percent of my desire for revenge – the part of me that was determined to bring Lee Seol-won down, even if it meant creating a scandal.

But now that line took on a different meaning.

With cousins his age so openly treating him like an outsider – like a stray stone rolling in – Lee Seol-won must have had to fight tooth and nail just to survive among them.

To do so, he must have come to the conclusion that he needed a wife from a powerful family, someone who could support him with influence. That’s probably why he looked for someone like Heo Yeonseo, someone who fit the criteria and led to a successful engagement.

This meant that Eun-sae, who was a foreigner with no background to speak of, was never even a candidate for the kind of political marriage he was looking for.

It’s heartbreaking that our Eun-sae fell in love with someone she was never meant to be with in the first place.

But this man… his life must have been exhausting as well.

“If you’re so jealous and resentful of what I’ve taken, why don’t you take the position at the Cultural Foundation yourself? Instead of dismissing it as unprofitable and boring. At least my fiancée won’t have to go through the trouble of explaining the broken engagement.”

Although the Songun Art Hall was considered a dream stage, it was only for ordinary artists like us.

From the point of view of SW Company, which had its hands like the arms of an octopus in every commercially promising field, Songun Cultural Foundation was a barren, unprofitable outpost, the least attractive of all its ventures.

That’s why they gave him to the adopted cousin. They didn’t want him, but they couldn’t just throw him away.

Today I understood how complicated his circumstances really were.

And at the same time, I was in awe of his talent – how he took something no one wanted and turned it into a haven for artists.

The remark – “If you think you can, then take the Foundation” – was something only Lee Seol-won could say. That kind of audacity was his alone.

—”Hah! Do you really think you can hand over the Foundation and walk away quietly? If you lose the Cultural Foundation and your fiancée, do you think you’ll still be Lee Seol-won of SW?”

But even Lee Jae-hyup couldn’t deny it outright.

He just kept talking about Seol-won’s background until the end.

I had listened silently the whole time, but now I took a deep breath.

“It’s okay. Even if he’s no longer Lee Seol-won of SW, I’ll take responsibility.”

I deliberately raised my voice to make sure Lee Jae-hyup could hear every word clearly.

“I don’t care if Seol-won is part of SW or not. It’s not that I like him because he comes from a chaebol family. If he feels uncomfortable in front of his family, let’s go to the US together. Seol-won is a capable person. There will be many opportunities for him outside of SW Company. He already has a proven track record, what is there to be afraid of? I’ll be there to help him.”

The more I thought about it, the more certain I became:

Lee Jae-hyup had a serious inferiority complex about his cousin.

Probably both of them did.

If they really thought he was insignificant, they wouldn’t feel the need to keep him in check.

They probably wish he were insignificant – but he’s not. And that’s the problem.

Despite being adopted, Lee Seol-won has a natural presence that grabs everyone’s attention the moment he appears. He effortlessly dominates the room and even his public reputation overshadows hers. Of course, that would rub her the wrong way.

So the one thing he doesn’t have – bloodline – they cling to it like a weapon, talking about him like he’s just some outsider who walked in uninvited.

Maybe that’s why Lee Jae-hyup is so unnaturally obsessed with Eun-sae. Because of Lee Seol-won.

A woman who hangs around Seol-won? He probably felt the need to get her, no matter what. And even after he used every trick he could think of to claim her body, Eun-sae’s heart still belonged to Seol-won.

Even after Seol-won got engaged, Eun-sae still couldn’t let go.

If he was a mature adult, he should have let Eun-sae go a long time ago. But Lee Jae-hup decided to vent his anger instead. Everything he did was petty.

The reason he chose Eun-sae, the way he forced himself on her even though he knew she had no feelings for him, and even his desperate attempts to hold on to her until the end – it was all pathetic.

So I deliberately provoked him.

If Eun-sae gave even the slightest impression that she hoped Seol-won would break off the engagement, Jae-hyup wouldn’t be able to recklessly expose the scandal in those photos.

If Seol-won were to end things with Heo Yeon-seo and choose Eun-sae instead, everything Jae-hyup has done to possess her would turn to dust.

Isn’t that how human nature works?

We worship the stars in the distant sky – but despise the sour grapes right in our grasp.

And when something you thought was within your grasp slips away like sand between your fingers, how bitter must that feel?

“You crazy b*tch, Hey! Hyun Eun-sae! Are you crazy?!”

Lee Jae-hyup shouted through the phone.

Without waiting to hear another word, I tapped the screen and ended the call.

“That impotent bastard with a loose screw…”

His tirade, spewed like a tantrum, was abruptly cut short as the call was disconnected mid-sentence.

After confirming that the call had completely ended, I finally spoke.

“Don’t break off your engagement. Now that I’ve heard everything… it’s really a good opportunity.”

Heo Yeonseo wasn’t just a business partner. She was a survival strategy.

When his own cousins mocked him to his face for being adopted, a man like him – trying to claim his place in that world – had no choice but to make a political marriage, whether he liked it or not.

“I will never say a word about what I just heard, so don’t worry.”

But Lee Seol-won didn’t listen to me.

“What happened to your fingers? Did those bastards beat you?”

Instead, he took my fingers in his hand and began to examine each swollen joint carefully.

It wasn’t just my hand. He also checked my coat – ripped open by the attacker’s knife, the padding spilling out – and looked at my ankle again.

“It just looks bad. I’m not really hurt.”

“Get in the car. We’ll go to the emergency room.”

“I’ll go to the hospital later, on my own. That’s not important right now. We need a plan – if you want to keep your engagement.”

I didn’t know what Lee Jae-hyup, now completely enraged, would try to use against us next.

All I knew was that Lee Seol-won didn’t have much time.

If we wanted to prevent Heo Yeonseo from getting the wrong idea – if we wanted to protect the mission – we had to act quickly.

“Don’t you understand what your priorities should be?”

“I do understand. That’s why I’m saying this.”

“And this is coming from someone who understands? Where’s your professionalism? Look at your hand – what are you going to do about your schedule the day after tomorrow? What about all those out-of-town weekend gigs?”

For a moment, I was at a loss for words.

A man of few words, he fired his rebuke in short, sharp bursts – each one striking like a blow.

The sheer weight of it left me stunned and my head spinning.

Then came the part that made me freeze: he had aimed his words directly at Hyeon Seo-hae.

He had even memorized our orchestra’s schedule down to the last detail.

There was no way he could know her so well if he hadn’t checked our official announcements or fan accounts.