The chandeliers in the Schloss Rosenhof Grand Hotel glittered like ice -cold, sharp, and expensive as hell.
Every time the light hit them just right, they threw off shards of color across the marble floor and the shoulders of men who wore their power like bespoke suits: tailored, polished, and never out of place.
Kim Min-jae would've already left the damn place if it weren't for the fact that his father had not so nicely asked him to come.
Waiters hurried through the crowd with practiced silence and polite smiles, balancing trays of champagne as people chattered. Every face here belonged to someone important -CEOs, politicians, heirs to important families, actors and actesses.
And then there was Kim Min-jae, twenty-four years old, standing near a potted orchid trying to make himself as small as possible, which was not easy being 183 centimeters and the son of Kim Dae-ho.
"People need to know my successor." His father had said over dinner, business phone put away as his dark eyes stared at him intensely. Min-jae wasn't sure he wanted to be the successor, he didn't understand or care much about the empire of steel, shipping lanes and silent boardroom coups his father jad created. But fear and filial duty ran deep in his veins, so in the end he suited up and came.
Now, an hour into the party, his father still hadn't arrived. That was odd. The man loved to preach about making connections, the importance of socializing and the front he'd need to uphold to not bring shame to the family's reputation. Yet, tonight, he was missing and his absence was stirring murmors and glances his way.
Min-jae slipped through a side corridor, phone already in hand. No missed calls. No texts. He tried to call but his father's phone was busy, the man was already talking to someone.
He found the private elevator reserved for the Kim family suite and rode it up two floors to the executive lounge. At the far end, near the fire exit, he heard a voice unmistakably his father's.
Min-jae slowed his steps.
"She finally died, " Dae-ho was saying. "That woman that has given me headache all these years finally took her last breath, hah! At the Seoul National University Hospital last night huh, the irony. Well done."
Min-jae's breath hitched.
She? Passed Away? Seoul?
His stomach twisted. In the silence that followed, his mind raced through possibilities, each darker than the last. His mother had died when he was five, officially, from complications after a routine surgery. But rumors had always swirled between the maids and buttlers in their household: whispers of loneliness, of long nights spent waiting for a husband who never came home. And now this, his father, missing an important event to make a call all because of a woman's death?
A mistress.
The word lodged in his throat like glass.
Without thinking, Min-jae pulled out his phone and diaaled Sebastian, his oldest friend and the only person he trusted implicitly, technically his "right-hand man," though Sebastian hated the title.
"Hey," Sebastian answered on the second ring, voice muffled by what sounded like street noise. "You ghosting the party or actually surviving it?"
"Dad's not here," Min-jae said, keeping his voice low. "I just overheard him on the phone. Talking about a woman who died last night at Seoul National University Hospital, you think you can get your hands on the hospital's records?"
A beat of silence. Then: "I will try but...-"
"I need to know who she is," Min-jae cut in. "Please, for all I know she is a past mistress and bastards will show up. There's a lot at stake here."
Sebastian exhaled sharply. "Min-jae—"
"Just do it."
"Fine. Give me twenty minutes."
Min-jae ended the call and leaned against the cool wall, heart pounding. Below, the party continued, laughter, clinking glasses, the orchestrated harmony of power pretending to be joy. Up here, in this sterile hallway, everything felt fragile, like the world might crack open if he breathed too hard.
Twenty-two minutes later, his phone buzzed.
Sebastian:
Found her. Ji-sook Park. 68. Died at Seoul National University Hospital last night. Worked there as a maternity nurse for forty-two years. Retired in 2015. Also… cross-referenced birth records. She was on shift the night your mom gave birth to you. Delivered you herself. Held you before your mom even could. There's a note in the file: "Attended Kim family privately for weeks postpartum. Requested by Mrs. Kim.
Min-jae read the message three times.
Then he looked down the hall, where his father still stood, shoulders slumped, staring out a narrow window at the German skyline glittering below.
Not a mistress.
But, something else.
He pocketed his phone, straightened his cuffs, and walked forward.
"Appa," he said softly.
Dae-ho turned, a sharp glint and furry.
"What are you doing out here, how much did you hear?!"
"Hear? Were you talking to someone out here? I thought you're alone. What are you doing outside, come inside, everyone is waiting for you."
Min-jae smiled, he could not let his father know, but inside his curiousity was burning strong. What was the woman's importance?
Kim Dae-ho did not concern himself with trifle things. Whoever that woman was was important, and Min-jae would find out for certain about it.