The Definition of Truly Living “Sir.. Sir, please wait.”   “Kim Heechul does not wait.”   “Sir, you can’t just walk in there!”   “Well as long as the door isn’t locked I can walk in there just fine, thank you.”   “Sir, please!”   Kyuhyun listened to the conversation between his best friend and his new housemaid amused. It was always funny when a new house worker met Heechul. Heechul doesn’t really take note on rules, and while most old workers at the Cho household are updated about this, new workers aren’t yet. The girl that was trying to stop Heechul from marching into Kyuhyun’s room was hired just 2 days ago. She was probably terrified about losing her job.   The Cho family is not really known for their kindness. And that is not that strange actually, knowing that they run one of the biggest business company’s in the world. Its name is Ujujin Corp.   Ujujin had started out small. Kyuhyun’s great-grandfather made beautiful wooden items by hand, and started selling these on the local market in the small town he was living in. In a few years it grew into a small company. When Kyuhyun’s grandfather took over the company, he modernized everything. Hand-made wooden items soon became machine-made wooden items. When the company started to make a national name as well, they expanded. They started to focus on more different items, which were more asked for on the national but also global market. Now-a-days, Ujujin produces and sells a whole variety of different items. From baby-clothes to weapons. Their shops and factories can be found all over the world. The main office, however, is still located in South-Korea, Seoul. It must speak for itself that running a company as big as this, does not leave much space for kindness.   Kyuhyun’s door was suddenly slammed open, but because Kyuhyun was expecting this to happen, he was not startled at all. Heechul came walking in with his usual stride, while the housemaid ran after him, bowing to Kyuhyun on her way as an apology.   “I’m so sorry sir!” She said to Kyuhyun, as soon as Heechul stood still in front of him. She came standing next to Heechul and got a hold on his sleeve. For a short moment a victorious glance went over her face, until Heechul lifted up his shirt a little and the girl’s eyes noticed a gun that was sticking half into Heechul’s pants. She instantly let go of him and ran away, not even sparing the 2 boys in the room another look, no longer caring if she would lose her job or not.   “You don’t even feel safe with me?” Kyuhyun asked Heechul, with a slightly insulted tone in his voice. Heechul stared at Kyuhyun for a minute, not changing his facial expression what so ever. It’s not that Heechul didn’t had the ability to show his feelings through his face, he just learned to avoid doing it. That was the price for his way of living. The way of living he didn’t choose for to begin with, but the way of living he would never want any different either. The only person he could still be himself with was his youth friend Kyuhyun.   “You know I can’t walk around without it Kyuhyun, I’m not safe anywhere.” Kyuhyun stood up and walked towards his friend to give him a small slap on the back of his head.   “Stop being so serious.” Heechul gave a small and restrained smile at Kyuhyun’s reaction, before walking over to the latter’s desk. The desk Kyuhyun was sitting at only a few seconds ago.   “Look who’s talking.” Heechul said, pointing at the huge pile of books that were lying on the desk, and the opened economics book that was laying on the front. Kyuhyun showed his best I’m-innocent face before walking to a cabinet to grab an old newspaper. It was about a week old, on the front page was written in huge screaming letters: “Shim Changmin murdered in bright daylight, is the mafia to blame?”.   Shim Changmin was a person who used to help the mafia with money laundering, so the news article claimed. Shim Changmin went to the police 2 weeks ago, and said he was willing to help with testifying against a few arrested mafia members, in return for protection. The police agreed with the request and promised him the best protection as soon as he testified. People are still speculating if the mafia is behind the murder or not. How could the mafia have found out about the fact that Changmin was willing to testify? Do they have a spy at the police? No-one was sure on who was behind the murder on Shim Changmin, but Kyuhyun was about to find out if the mafia had anything to do with it or not.   “Did you do this?” He said, and he handed over the newspaper to Heechul. Heechul took one glance at it before giving it back to Kyuhyun.   “I had no choice.” Kyuhyun stared at Heechul with an I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-hearing look written all over his face and Heechul started explaining. “It weren’t my members he was going to testify against. Though, my members feared that if he had testified, we would be blamed, and that would have resulted in a mafia war. We couldn’t just walk into their territory to tell them either, so we took care of this Changmin person ourselves. I’m sorry for him, but if we hadn’t done it, someone else would’ve. And they wouldn’t have been satisfied with only his death.”   “Did you.. you know, do it?” Heechul nodded. Great, Kyuhyun thought to himself. This would mean that he now had a murderer as a friend. It’s not like Kyuhyun hadn’t known Heechul would someday kill someone, but he just hadn’t expect it to happen this fast.   Kyuhyun and Heechul had first met when they were respectively 5 and 9 years old. Their fathers had some kind of business thing they needed to talk over, and Kyuhyun and Heechul were put in a room together. This happened quite frequently, and that is how they became friends. It took Kyuhyun only 2 years to find out that Heechul was the son of a mafia boss. Not that the 7-year-old Kyuhyun understood what it meant, but at least he knew it since then. A year ago Heechul’s father got iced by another mafia group. There are more local mafia families located in Seoul, and it’s a constant battle for territories. After Heechul’s father died (his mother died when he was 7), Heechul was the person to take over the boss position of his father.   “What did you come here for anyway?” Kyuhyun suddenly asked after deciding to just not ask about the murder-thing. The less he knew, the better it was.   “I came to check on my best friend.” Heechul answered, his face showing a slight sign of relieve that the subject changed this quickly. “I read in today’s newspaper that you are going to take over the main office of Ujujin in a few years. Why didn’t you tell me!?”   “I forgot.” Kyuhyun answered and Heechul laughed, knowing that Kyuhyun was the last person to ever forget anything. Kyuhyun smiled in return, he really missed Heechul’s laughter. Heechul used to be a very happy and cheerful kid. But ever since his father died he was nothing more than a serious person. Kyuhyun understood though.   Heechul stayed at Kyuhyun’s place for a few more hours before he left. For a moment they both forgot about the responsibilities they had, and for a small moment they could truly be happy.     --------------------------------------------------------------♫♪♫♪♫-------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------♫♪♫♪♫--------------------------------------------------------------     “Goodmorning sir!”   “Nice to see you sir!”   “Goodmorning mister Cho!”   Kyuhyun smiled and nodded to everyone who greeted him. Even though Kyuhyun didn’t feel like responding to any of them at all, his father learned him that a friendly boss would result in happy employees. And happy employees result in faster working employees. Therefore both Kyuhyun and his father took good care of the boss-employee relationship.   Kyuhyun is an underboss at the main office of Ujujin, he runs a small department on floor 18. Their job is to keep an eye on the finance of about 500 companies which run under the name of Ujujin. Next to that, Kyuhyun is also part of the council of the main-office and joins all meetings they have. It’s a busy job, but Kyuhyun loves doing it nevertheless.   “Goodmorning Kyu!” A young man greeted him happily while walking by. Kyuhyun forgot to nod and smile, but the man didn’t seem to notice and had already left.   The man’s name is Kim Jongwoon. He started working at the main office 3 years ago, around the same time that Kyuhyun was promoted to boss of this department. Kim Jongwoon decided that, because he is older than Kyuhyun, he didn’t need to use formalities. While Kyuhyun was annoyed by this the first year, he got used to it in the end. Because, as Kyuhyun’s motto was, a happy employee is a fast-working employee, and Jongwoon obviously enjoyed talking to Kyuhyun without formalities. And it’s not that any other person would dare to talk to Kyuhyun that way, so Kyuhyun eventually decided to not pursue the matter.   When Kyuhyun finished greeting all the people at the department, he went straight to his office to work on the huge pile of papers that was stacking on his desk. After a few hours of en