The Kim family sat around the luxurious dining table at eleven a.m. that Thursday. A mere six and a half hours was all it took for both the father and youngest of his four sons to sober up enough to participate.

“Boy, have you graduated yet?” the man said, words slurred due to his face being stuffed with pancakes and syrup. Ever since he partially retired, giving most of the control of his top tier conglomerate over to his eldest son Minseok, his social etiquette has been on the decline. As well now nearing sixty, he stopped caring about personal appearance quite a while ago.

“No,” was the simple reply Jongin gave. He sat on the far end of the table, moving the western breakfast around his plate with a fork, playing with his food like a child.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

The father’s hand slammed down on the table, rattling the elder three, even making their step-mother jump. Jongin kept his composure, not affected by the so sudden tension, still spinning the fork around the now mashed pancake.

“Are you slow, son? You need a tutor? How many courses are you in? My second youngest boy, you, get the little one some tutors already.” It often seemed like the man had a second family somewhere with how rarely he called his children by their own names, as if he forgot them or never even paid attention to what they were. Nonetheless, the father calling Jongin slow made the other three chuckle. Because they knew it was true.

“Of course father,” Jongdae answer. Being in graduate school studying to become a college professor made him the go to for anything academic in the old man’s mind.

“Junnie, how are things at the hospital?” their step mother, Barbara, asked. She was a foreigner who originally came to South Korea as an international news correspondent for a major media company. Her Korean skills weren’t the best, but she always made sure to put in effort to connect with her stepsons as if they were her own.

She was Mr. Kim’s fifth wife, but the longest lasting marriage yet. Usually the man got married and divorced in less than a year after his first wife passed away twenty years ago. But Barbara had been around for over a decade now, and she didn’t seem to be going anywhere soon.

Junmyeon held up a sausage on the fork, biting into the end rather than taking the time to cut it up into smaller bite sized pieces. “It’s stressful as always. But seeing people recover makes it worth it. “ He stated, half lying.

Being a surgeon was well paying and a career of high status, but barely suited for the second in line to inherit a billion dollar company. His upbringing was full of power-plays and fake friendships with people who only had dollar signs in their eyes. Becoming someone who heals people rather than professionally taking advantage of them seemed like the lifestyle change Junmyeon wanted. However it turned out to be a different kind of stress all around.

“How is managing my legacy, mini-me?” Mr. Kim asked Minseok, having called the son his mini-me ever since he was born. Even to strangers it was obvious they were related. If you took a current picture of the eldest boy and held it up next to a photograph of his father from thirty years ago, yo