“Look,” The woman pinched the bridge of her tiny nose, exhaling loudly. “I asked you not to make trouble for me, Sehun. I asked you not to leave the house unaccompanied under any circumstances. Why is it that I constantly have to repeat myself? Where do you get off acting like an insolent teenager?” Her questioning grew increasingly louder as frustration displayed throughout her body.

Sehun answered with a simple shrug. He plopped himself on the sofa in the middle of the living room. “I just wanted to buy some snacks from the corner store. I don’t see why that’s such a big ing deal.”

How could Sehun not see the gravity of his actions? He was a fugitive of the law! Anyone could phone the police and have him arrested within hours.

“Oh, you don’t? So, what I’m understanding is that you want to go back to rotting away in prison?” She asked him quizzically.

“Well, it’d sure as hell beat being stuck in here all day!” Sehun crossed his arms, resting his legs on top of the ivory colored coffee table in front of him.

The older woman scoffed. “You see how ungrateful you’re acting right now? Do you even know how many favors I had to ask for to get you out of there? Do you know how much money I personally invested in you? Why do you think there has been absolutely no news coverage of your escape? You clearly can’t grasp that I got you out of there with my out on the line. Why don’t you act with some sense for once and just listen to me?”

“Ungrateful?” Sehun parroted back to the woman in front of him. “I think I’d be a little more grateful if you told me why you even did that in the first place. Face it noona, before the old man dropped dead you weren’t even looking for me. I could’ve ing died in prison and you would’ve never cared. Enlighten me since I’m so ungrateful and ignorant. Why exactly did you bring me back here?”

It took her a moment to find her mental footing. How easy would it be to confess to such an ill-intentioned break out?

“The board of directors and I all feel that the organization isn’t headed in the best direction. Leadership is weak, morale is low, we’re taking massive blows right and left,” She blurted out. Sehun cocked an eyebrow in response. “We don’t know what Daddy was thinking. We all advised him against making last minute changes to the will, but h-he wouldn’t listen. In the time you’ve been gone our turf has started to close in on itself, our business connections are dying off. Nobody wants to do business with a declining empire. I don’t want the sun to set on the dream we all worked hard for.”

The younger male could only nod thoughtfully. He wanted to laugh, but he refrained from doing so. “So,” He began, carrying the word on for a few syllables longer than normal. “You want me to go to war against our younger brother and take his title? You didn’t want to go up against our little prick of a brother, so you called on me to do it? You want me to against what Dad both verbally said, and what he wrote in his will?”

“Sehun, when you put it like that—”

“Put it like what?” Sehun interrupted her. “Dad used me and now you put your own life and my life at risk, to use me just like he did. The apple don’t fall far from the orchard, I guess. Everyone is the same in this edup family.” His words were full of venom.

“You want all the glory but aren’t going to put in any of the work. Well, here’s what I have to say. No. no. Dad made his choice and now I’m making mine. I want his little empire to crumble and I want to watch our brother be the cause of it. Sometimes, noona, people get what’s coming to them in the afterlife.”

She stayed quiet for a few minutes. “Is this really what you want to do? You just want to sit back and do nothing?” Is all she is able to ask. She couldn’t believe it.

Sehun was in even more disbelief. “Yeah. You’re lucky I’m not trying to get revenge on you or our brother. You know what it’s like to carry a death sentence over your head? You didn’t even send me money while I was in there. You called me twice in three years and now you expect me to be happy? Nobody even told me Dad died. Our brother knows I’m back in Korea and he hasn’t even bothered to send a smoke signal in my direction. And, you wanna call me ungrateful? At the end of the day you get to back to your mansion, your squeaky-clean accountant husband and your daughter. You know what I have? Nothing. Prison left me with absolutely nothing.”

“You have this house…” She shouldn’t have said that.

“Noona, I don’t want to get rude. Please, just see yourself out before I ing lose it. Please. You don’t want to see that side of me.” It was the least he could say to the woman who had been acting as a sort of makeshift mother to him since he had been young.

His older sister did as she was told and escaped through the front door silently.

The nerve of that woman. How dare she?

Upon his arrival in Korea, he had discovered that his homes and personal effects had been repossessed by the government as restitution. His condos, cars, art pieces, even his luxury watches were all confiscated. His sister had vehemently refused to house him: Junmyeon, her non-gang affiliated husband was terrified of Sehun and would hide in the nearest room whenever he was in sight. His younger brother was probably just as terrified to confront Sehun and hadn’t made any attempts to contact him since he got out of prison.

The only place that was able to lodge him was his father’s home, the house Sehun had grown up in. The house Sehun had put all efforts into leaving.

One of the last things Sehun ever thought he’d be doing in his adult life was returning to his childhood home. His childhood was ed, his teenage years were thoroughly ed, and his adult life went to the moment he decided to listen to his father. Now here he was, crawling back to the place that started it all.

The first few nights after his return, Sehun laid in silence in his childhood bedroom. The beaten- up twin bed and dusty action figures were still there, untouched and frozen in time. The room looked straight out of a corny children’s movie. Sometimes he’d get up and look through the large window, noting how the terrifying house must have looked to an outsider.

He’d been banned from going outside at the suggestion of his sister, the risk was still too big. He could be caught and arrested at any moment. The lack of stimulation had resigned him into a drowsy stupor in which he’d only leave his bed to shower and occasion