Jongin’s POV

The alarm clock woke me up, like every morning, at 6 am. It had done so for the past two years, since I took over both the company in both South Korea and Japan. My father’s health was not what it had been, so he had given me most of the responsibilities while he remained as my guidance. But after running the company in Japan for five years, I was confident that I knew the world of business from the inside out. I got up from my comfortable bed and walked out to the kitchen. I no longer lived at the company at least, which felt quite good. I lived in a flat in downtown Seoul, alone. I had just turned 24 but had no real interest to find someone who I wanted in my life with me. The only relationship I had made an effort in had been with my assistant, Arisa, but I dumped her not long after, finding it impossible to balance work and a relationship. Every time I thought about that it reminded me of the very first relationship I had experienced that actually meant something to me; the one I had in my teens with my sister’s best friend, Mi Song. On and off, I still thought about her in connection to wondering how my sister was doing. It had gone years since I last heard from her; being a letter in form of a disappointed scolding for not coming to her wedding ceremony. Yet I wanted the courage to go to her home, knock on the door and just ask her how she was doing. She might not have known it, but since I got that letter a void had been filling me up. Work had really become a drug after that letter. I began to work as hard as I could because that was the only thing I felt that could somehow ease the guilt I carried around. I often went about hoping to one day receive another letter with an invitation to a dinner or perhaps even the news of a child? But as the days one by one had ended without a single trace of her, my hope faded little by little, until I doubted I even had any left in me. I had become a robot, not noticing how the days past before me, how I was nearly 25 years old already. Sometimes I wished I had never been born into a rich family, but at the same time, wealth often brought structure and little to almost zero change in how you led your days. In one way or the other, it felt nice to always know what would have to be done this day, what would happen the next day and over one year ahead. However, you lost all the spontaneity, the creativeness in you and, truthfully, the will to live once it got stressful enough, which I realised was coming along more and more often.

Like every morning, I put on one of my many suits, choosing a red tie this particular morning to add one small splash of colour to the boring business outfit, and went to a café around the corner to buy a cup of strong coffee and a sandwich – this was my morning ritual. Usually, I would have taken my bag with the sandwich and my coffee and proceeded to the office, but this morning my assistant must have felt determined to stir up everything in my routine-covered life. “Yes?” I answered while turning to walk out from the café.

“Eh... Mr Kim? We have a tiny issue...” I raised a brow, reacting to the tone of my assistant’s shaky voice.

“What?” I said sternly.

“The... um... Lee Seong Ho... is suing us...” I stared in front of me and sat down on the nearest chair, completely in shock. I had been dreading to hear those news for quite some time. It was a long story how it came to that, but basically, Lee Seong Ho owned one of our rival companies and he had set out to sue us back in the days when the company was controlled by my father because of some inexplicable reason that I had yet to fully understand. The vice president had explained to me that Lee’s father and my father had hated each other for years. And that when Lee Junior took over the company, around the same time as I took over our family company, he had sworn to find a reason to bring the company down. I was certain that this thing, if handled correctly, would not become a huge sensation or affect our company negatively, however this was the last thing I both wanted and needed. I sighed loudly, leaning my head back to the wall.

“All right. Arrange a meeting with my best lawyers today and don’t say a word to my father about this. He’ll have a heart attack.” I mumbled the last thing as if I was afraid my father had put spies on me.

“Will do, Mr Kim,” my assistant replied and then hung up the call. I sighed again and decided to just drink my coffee and eat my sandwich right away. I knew there would be chaos in the office, so I figured it was best to avoid it for as long as I could. I let out a long sigh and took another bite of my sandwich; my eyebrows furrowed in agony. Then, from the table next to me, I heard a small giggle and looked over to see a girl glancing at me. I instantly looked down and drank some of my coffee.

“You look rather troubled,” the girl said, smiling at me. I turned my head to her and noticed that she had short brown hair, going