The tiniest of pauses followed by a somewhat warmer, "Well, I'm still very proud of you. Not everyone would do what you do, with what you have."

Proud of him? She had no hand in raising him, where does she get off on being proud—

He should not be angry. It's an act. She's trying to put him at ease and pull on some heartstrings she thinks might be there. They were there, actually, until approximately thirty seconds ago. Actually meeting her has been a dose of cold, hard reality in a way no amount of thinking about it and preparing beforehand could give him.

"I like to think that most people would," he says, quietly, almost to himself. "Maybe it's idealism, but... I work with espers every day. They're normal people, people who were plucked out of their lives, who had other things going on, and they chose to go out and help others and put themselves in harm's way for the greater good. I think lots of people can do a lot of good, if you let them." Then he turns a little bit rueful. "Although I suppose that given the way I used to act when I was younger I can't fault you for not having the greatest impression of me. I sure didn't make it easy to be liked."

Two can play this game. He doesn't need his powers to act.

"Oh, I've been young, too. We all make mistakes, but so long as we grow out of them and learn from them they can make us stronger."

That was completely contentless. Jaeha supposes she wants him to get on with whatever he came here for and get out of her hair.

"One thing that was not a mistake, though, was my decision to—"

There is a very quick knock on the door followed by it being immediately opened, without waiting for Hee-seo's leave. The person who walks in with the tea isn't the secretary that was there a minute ago, though. It's a younger person, someone Jaeha hasn't seen in a long time, either.

"Mother, I—oh," says Kang Dal-seo, Jaeha's younger sister. "My apologies, president-nim. I didn't realise you were busy."

She stands up, all smiles again. "I assume you must've completely ignored Kim Yoon-seul when she tried to inform you of this. But it's no matter. Here, Dal-seo, when was the last time you saw Jaeha?"

"Jaeha—oh. Jaeha-oppa?"

He's standing up, too, but he's frozen in place, a bit taken aback. She can call Nam Hee-seo "mother", of course. She doesn't even use the honorific. She gets to have a mum.

He shakes his head and smiles. "Dal-seo, it's been too long. How have you been?"

"Oh, great, great, yeah, I've been pretty good. I started working here last year and I'm, you know, climbing the ranks." She's a lot less good than either Hee-seo or Jaeha at hiding her feelings, though, and she clearly wants to flee immediately.

"That's good. We should meet up someday for coffee, catch up." An act, all of it an act. She'll say yes, and then it'll never happen, and that'll be that.

"Oh, yes, that sounds good to me."

"Did you need something, Dal-seo?"

"Ah, no, it can wait." She walks over to her mother to give her the tea, then bows. "Once again my sincere apologies for the interruption, president-nim. I'll see myself out."

"She's a good girl," says Hee-seo once she's gone and they're sitting down again. Her tea's still seeping, and she's blowing on it gently. "A hard worker. She'll go far."

Unlike me, you mean?

"You must be proud of her."

"I am, very much."

She sounds exactly the same—of course she would, if her acting were distinguishable from when she's genuine it wouldn't be very good acting, now, would it—but it stings, a bit, to know that this time she means it.

"Nam Hee-seo-nim, I'll try to be brief. Do you know what Kang Jaehyuk plans to do in case I never accept being his heir?"

This seems to take her by surprise. She doesn't have an immediate response, at any rate, and she spends a second scanning Jaeha's face for clues as to what he's expecting of her. "Your father is, ah..."

"I mean the question genuinely. He and I aren't on the closest of terms, as I'm sure you must be aware, and of course whenever the topic comes up he refuses to give me anything. Of course he expects that if I think he has no option other than me I'll eventually cave, or that in any case it's not to his advantage to tell me that he has a replacement in mind until it's a surer thing. But if he plans to get a new heir the old fashioned way, he would need your consent and participation, which I can't imagine you'd be glad to give him."

Something does change in her demeanour, as Jaeha speaks. She seems to have decided that warmth isn't what this conversation needs.

"You speak with a lot of candor about such a delicate topic and it does not inspire me with confidence that it's in my interests to answer your question," she eventually says. Despite the harshness of her words, though, her tone is open, as if she's willing to be convinced otherwise.

It really, truly does not matter. She is going to come off the way she wants to come off, and nothing she does is very strong evidence about how she feels as much as it is about what she wants Jaeha to think she's feeling.

"I speak with candor because I don't think it's in my interests to participate in the game you and Kang Jaehyuk play. I would lose. I do not have your experience or skill, the time I could have spent acquiring them was spent foolishly as a teenager and less foolishly but no less irrelevantly as an adult, if I try to do business and trade secrets I'll always end up losing. So instead I want to just tell you what I want and why, directly, and you can decide what you want to do with that, if anything."

"Very well. So what do you want, Kang Jaeha-shi, and why?"

"I want to not be Kang Jaehyuk's heir. Rather, I will not be Kang Jaehyuk's heir. You may think this is immature, and that I will grow out of it, or that I am being irresponsible and shirking my duty to my family. But I personally don't believe in unearned loyalty, and Kang Jaehyuk has not earned mine. He had years to do it, and he failed. Now, as an adult, I can see how he could've succeeded. It wouldn't even have been difficult. There is a path he could've taken that would've made me want to stick with him, not bring shame to his name with all of the indiscretions I got up to as a teenager. But Kang Jaehyuk is not a good manager, and he has not instilled loyalty in me, and there are better things I can do with my life, worthier things, than inheriting my grandfather's legacy.

"I don't want to screw him over. I've done enough of that in my life. I just want to cut my ties with him, I want to not own any shares in his companies, I want to be an esper and nothing more."

"And what's stopping you from doing just that?"

"The fact that I do not want to condemn another child to be raised by that man and if you were planning to give me a new dongsaeng I would need to do something about that." Oh that came off more snappish than he'd intended it. Well, whatever, he means it.