Chapter Text
The Choi name was enough to open every door that existed in this world and even those that did not.
Choi Dynasty.
The largest conglomerate in the world. A titan. A colossus. A behemoth. An empire unto itself.
At the very heart of it stood two men who had raised the Choi enterprise from a powerful family business into an untouchable global powerhouse.
Choi Tae Jun - the patriarch of the Choi family and chairman of Choi Dynasty.
And his only son, Choi Seo Jun - the president of Choi Dynasty and the man destined to inherit everything his father had built.
Then, in August of 1995, the Choi bloodline welcomed a new life.
A son.
A heir.
The child who would one day inherit the name that could open every door in the world.
Choi Seungcheol.
By the time Seungcheol turned three, Choi Tae Jun decided that no daycare in all of South Korea was worthy of his grandson, not when it came to building the right connections.
So, within six months, a brand-new daycare came into existence.
It was designed specifically for Choi Seungcheol, with every detail carefully tailored to suit the heir of the Choi Dynasty. Even the children who attended were handpicked: toddlers born into families of comparable wealth, influence, and social standing; heirs to conglomerates, corporations, and dynasties of their own.
Seungcheol made his first friend on the very first day.
His name was Kim Mingyu, the son of the largest construction company in Asia.
Unlike Seungcheol, who was quiet unless he had something worth saying, Mingyu was a completely different story.
He said whatever came to mind without hesitation, without a second thought, and without the slightest concern for whether what he was saying made any sense.
“SEUNGCHEOL! LOOK! I FOUND A ROCK! IT’S A DINOSAUR EGG. WE SHOULD HIDE IT FROM THE TEACHER.” - Kim Mingyu
And somehow, within a single day, the quiet Choi heir and Kim Mingyu had become friends.
By the time Seungcheol turned five, he and Mingyu had become best friends.
Obviously, Choi Tae Jun approved of the friendship. Mingyu and Seungcheol spent almost every day together. They went on vacations together, celebrated birthdays together, and spent countless afternoons running around each other’s homes.
Their mothers had become close friends. Their fathers had become business partners.
What had begun as a carefully arranged friendship between two heirs had slowly grown into something neither family had planned for.
Mingyu and Seungcheol had become an inextricable part of each other’s lives.
And once again, Choi Tae Jun decided that nothing in South Korea was worthy of his grandson.
So, he built him a primary school.
* * *
Yoon Jeonghan was born in October 1995 to Yoon Junhyuk and Yoon Seoyeon.
Yoon Junhyuk, the ambitious chairman of Yoon Media Holdings, an entertainment and media empire with subsidiaries spanning the globe.
Yoon Seoyeon, an actress who had graced the covers of thousands of magazines. She had been the most sought after and highest grossing actress of the 1990s.
They should have been happy when Jeonghan was born. But they weren’t. Especially Seoyeon.
Her career, once at its peak, had come to a standstill after giving birth.
Seoyeon eventually arrived at a simple solution.
If Jeonghan was the reason her career had come to a standstill, then she would simply remove him from the equation.
Without even discussing it with her husband - who was rarely present anyway, too consumed by his empire and his ambition to make Yoon Media Holdings the number one media company in the world - Seoyeon made the decision herself.
When Jeonghan was just nine months old, she sent him to the United States under the care of a private caretaker.
She didn’t send him away because she couldn’t afford to raise him. She sent him away because she believed that, without him in the picture, she could finally return to the career she had lost.
And so, while Seoyeon returned to the spotlight in South Korea, her nine-month-old son began his childhood an ocean away from her.
When Jeonghan first learned to speak, one of his first words wasn’t Mom or Dad.
It was “Seoyoon.” Or, at least, that was how his tiny voice pronounced Seoyeon.
His nanny had taken to playing the television whenever he became restless, hoping the moving pictures would keep him entertained. More often than not, Jeonghan would stare at the screen whenever his mother appeared.
He didn’t understand that she was famous. He didn’t understand what an actress was. He only knew that the woman on the screen was his mother. So, he learned her name before he ever learned to call her Mom.
Seoyeon.
The name he heard whenever she appeared on television.
The name that, to a little boy growing up thousands of miles away from her, became the closest thing he had to his mother.
Growing up, Jeonghan lacked nothing - not materially, at least. He had every expensive toy a child could want, a private nursery, and even a personal chef dedicated to preparing his meals, which was rather absurd for a toddler. Seoyeon made sure he was well provided for.
She didn't hate Jeonghan. Not at all. Somewhere beneath her ambition, there was still a part of her that was a mother. She loved him in her own way.
But Seoyeon was a woman who had always known how to put herself first whenever faced with a choice.
When Jeonghan was four, he learned the word adopted at school.
That evening, he asked his nanny a question that caught her completely off guard.
“Am I adopted?”
His nanny, who had been raising him since he was nine months old, felt a pang of pity for the little boy standing before her. Jeonghan had everything a child could possibly ask for - expensive toys, a private chef, a beautiful home, and a future secured by more money than he could ever comprehend.
And yet, somehow, he had nothing that mattered to a four-year-old.
She couldn't bring herself to tell him that his parents were simply absent. So, she knelt down beside him and gently smiled.
“Everyone has a different way of loving,” she told him. “Your parents just show their love by giving you the things they think are important.”
Jeonghan didn't know what that meant.
He only knew that other children's parents came to pick them up.
His didn't.
His father had already established a trust fund worth nearly fifty billion dollars for him. For all his ambition and absence, Yoon Junhyuk was still a father in his own way, determined to ensure that his son would never have to worry about money.
But what could a four-year-old possibly understand about a trust fund?
Jeonghan didn't know about the fortune waiting for him.
He only knew that his father had surveillance cameras installed throughout the house, cameras through which he could watch his son from wherever he was in the world.
He knew his mother was always busy.
When Jeonghan turned five, something happened at school that he would remember for years.
It was the day of their class performance.
Almost every parent had shown up.
They stood behind the rows of chairs, phones and cameras raised, eagerly recording their children as they performed. Some called their names. Some waved. Some smiled so proudly that their faces seemed to glow.
Jeonghan stood at the very front of the class.
He looked into the crowd.
No one was there for him.
His nanny hadn't been allowed to attend. The parents at the school belonged to a very particular social circle, and a nanny simply wasn't considered an appropriate substitute for a parent at an event like this.
So Jeonghan performed anyway.
He didn't cry.
Somewhere during the years, he had spent receiving expensive toys, extravagant gifts, and everything money could buy, he had learned something far more important.
His parents weren't coming.
Not if he cried.
Not if he waited.
Not even if he needed them.
He had learned not to expect them.
After the performance, a boy around his age approached him.
“Where were your parents?”
Jeonghan said nothing.
The boy laughed.
“You don't have any?”
Jeonghan had grown up surrounded by wealth, servants, tutors, and every luxury imaginable. But he had never been spoken to like that before.
He stared at the boy for a moment.
Then he reached for the pencil lying on the desk beside him and drove its blunt tip into the boy's chin.
The boy immediately burst into tears.
Jeonghan simply stared at him.
And waited for the guilt everyone always talked about. It never came.
What came instead was something warmer. Stranger. Something that made him want to do it again.
Satisfaction.
For the first time in his life, he had made someone else hurt. For the first time, someone had reacted to him.
And for one strange, unsettling moment, Jeonghan felt something he had rarely felt in his own life.
Control.
However, the boy Jeonghan had attacked was, unfortunately, the son of the school's director.
His parents were summoned immediately.
Neither came.
They were both too busy.
With no parent willing or able - to intervene on his behalf, the school had little reason to show Jeonghan any leniency. The decision was made.
Jeonghan was expelled.
When Seoyeon heard the news, her first concern wasn't that her five-year-old son had hurt another child.
It was where she was supposed to put him now.
Even now, Jeonghan remained a problem to be solved, another complication that had been placed in the way of the life she wanted.
Junhyuk's reaction was very different.
His first response was anger: not toward Jeonghan, but toward the school.
How dare they expel his son?
His pride had been bruised.
The Yoon heir had been thrown out of a school.
For Junhyuk, that was unacceptable.
His secretary, a man who had worked beside him for twenty-five years, was the one who eventually offered a solution.
Perhaps it was for the best.
There was the Choi Dynasty Primary School.
The school had been established specifically for the children of the country's most powerful families, and by the age of five, its students were already beginning to form the connections that would shape their futures.
It was, perhaps, exactly where Jeonghan belonged.
Junhyuk didn't need to think for long.
He decided that it was time to bring his son back to South Korea.
He didn't consult Seoyeon.
He didn't need to.
In Junhyuk's mind, it had never really mattered what his wife thought.
Jeonghan was brought back to Korea.
And for the first time, he was happy about the decision.
He didn't care that he had been expelled. He didn't care about the school or what anyone thought of him.
He was finally going to live under the same roof as his parents.
But when he arrived in Korea, neither of them was there to greet him.
There were two cars waiting outside the airport. One belonged to Han Seongho, Junhyuk's secretary, while the other carried several newly hired staff members who had been assigned to serve the young master.
Jeonghan was frightened.
He didn't let it show. But his nanny knew.
She felt his little fingers tighten around hers.
Jeonghan was then taken to the Choi Dynasty Primary School for an assessment. Technically, an interview wasn't necessary. His surname alone would have been enough to secure his place. Still, the school wanted to determine which class would be most appropriate for him.
The assessment didn't take long.
Jeonghan was exceptionally intelligent for his age, although his Korean wasn't quite as fluent as it should have been after spending most of his life in the United States.
The teachers were impressed.
He could begin the very next day.
When Junhyuk heard the report, he felt a rare flicker of pride.
Apparently, some of the best teachers in the country taught at the Choi Dynasty Primary School.
That was enough for him.
When Jeonghan finally arrived at his new home, however, neither of his parents was there.
An elderly woman greeted him at the entrance. She had been responsible for managing the household for years and was, for all practical purposes, its head butler.
She smiled at him gently.
“Your parents aren't home yet, Young Master.”
Jeonghan nodded.
Then he waited.
He waited through the afternoon.
Then the evening.
He was still waiting when his father finally came home.
Junhyuk noticed him almost immediately.
But he didn't call his son's name.
He didn't walk toward him.
Instead, he stood several feet away and looked Jeonghan over from head to toe, silently assessing the child who had spent the first five years of his life thousands of miles away from him.
Then he turned to his secretary.
“Find him the best tutor.”
That was all.
Jeonghan didn't approach his father. There was something about the man that frightened him. He was too cold.
Much later, Seoyeon finally came home.
The moment Jeonghan saw her, he forgot everything else.
He ran toward her without hesitation and threw his arms around her.
For a moment, Seoyeon simply froze. She looked down at the little boy clinging to her and seemed genuinely confused. Then she remembered. Her husband had brought Jeonghan home. Her son. Jeonghan.
For a brief moment, something inside her softened. She wanted to hold him. She wanted to return the hug. But guilt stopped her.
How could she hold him after being the one who had sent him away? Instead, she bent down and kissed his forehead.
Then she turned toward his nanny.
Her voice was calm when she spoke.
“Next time, make sure he doesn't run toward me like that.”
Jeonghan stood there silently. He didn't understand. He couldn't tell whether his mother's words meant she cared about him or whether they meant she didn't.
During dinner, Jeonghan learned that this house was different from the one he had grown up in America. In America, he had eaten alone. Here, there were two people sitting across from him, yet no one spoke.
Conversations didn't flow; they simply didn't happen.
On his first day at the primary school, Jeonghan stood in front of the class and introduced himself in English. The room fell silent.
Most of the children stared at him blankly. They understood almost nothing of what he was saying. Only a handful had already begun learning English with private tutors, and among those few were Seungcheol and Mingyu.
Jeonghan felt strange. He felt as though he didn't belong there. Before he had left for school that morning, his nanny had smiled at him and told him that this was where he belonged. But standing in front of a room full of unfamiliar faces, Jeonghan didn't feel like he belonged anywhere.
He didn't approach anyone. It wasn't pride. What would a five-year-old know about pride or ego?
He simply didn't know how. And no one approached him either.
A week passed, and it was clear that Jeonghan hadn't made any friends.
The children who spoke only Korean made fun of him for not understanding the language, while those who spoke English occasionally approached him, but Jeonghan never seemed interested enough to become their friend.
By the end of the week, the children had begun to find Jeonghan strange. They didn't know how to call someone arrogant yet. They simply knew that there was something different about him.
Mingyu, however, had noticed everything. And being Mingyu, he decided to do something about it.
He walked straight over to Jeonghan's desk, picked up one of his crayons and announced,
“I forgot mine.”
Jeonghan immediately frowned. He didn't like that Mingyu had taken his crayon without asking, so he pushed him.
Mingyu stumbled back, stared at him for a second, and pushed him back.
It happened quickly.
Seungcheol, who had been quietly drawing at his desk, looked up.
He saw Jeonghan reach for a pencil.
Before Jeonghan could do anything with it, Seungcheol was already running toward them. He stepped between the two boys.
The pencil struck the corner of his shoulder.
Seungcheol didn't cry. For a five-year-old, it was strange.
Mingyu, on the other hand, immediately panicked. “Seungcheol!” Mingyu stared at the pencil, then at the small wound, his face paling as he looked around frantically for a teacher.
Meanwhile, Jeonghan didn't move. He simply stared at Seungcheol. He was observing him. Waiting for him to cry. But Seungcheol didn't. And for reasons Jeonghan didn't understand yet, he couldn't look away.
The teacher panicked. This wasn't just any student who had been injured. This was the Choi heir.
Seungcheol was immediately taken to the nursing room. Thankfully, the injury wasn't serious, but the staff were still terrified. No one wanted to be the person responsible for calling the Choi family and explaining that their heir had been stabbed at school.
Fortunately, Choi Tae Jun was out of the country. Had he been in Seoul, the school administration knew there would have been hell to pay.
Both families were called.
Choi Seo Jun dropped everything and arrived with his wife. Jeonghan's mother, however, was unreachable. His father was eventually informed that his son had injured the heir to the Choi Dynasty.
He was furious. Not at Jeonghan. At the school. But he still came.
By the time everyone gathered in the principal's office, Seungcheol, Mingyu, and Jeonghan were seated together, with Seungcheol's parents and Jeonghan's father standing nearby.
Seungcheol's mother was the first to speak. A woman of effortless grace, she looked at her son before turning toward the others.
“Children fight all the time. It's alright. Thankfully, Father isn't in the country.”
Her husband said nothing. He simply watched Seungcheol. He had expected his son to be frightened. Perhaps even to cry. Instead, Seungcheol sat quietly, refusing to break down in front of everyone. His father wasn't disappointed. If anything, there was a flicker of approval in his eyes.
Jeonghan's father finally turned toward his son.
“Apologize.”
Jeonghan looked at him.
He didn't understand why he should.
“Mingyu used my things first without asking me. I'm not apologizing.”
His father's voice hardened.
“Jeonghan.”
But the five-year-old remained stubbornly silent.
He wasn't ready to apologize for something he didn't believe was entirely his fault.
Before the tension could grow any further, Seungcheol's mother intervened.
“It's alright. They're children. What would they know about apologies? About what's right and what's wrong?”
Then she looked toward Seungcheol.
“Are you hurt?”
Seungcheol shook his head. “I'm not hurt.”
That was enough to break the tension in the room.
The matter was settled. Jeonghan wasn't expelled.
But Jeonghan had learned something that day. The boy he had stabbed was important. Important enough that even his own father cared more about what had happened to him than what had happened to Jeonghan.
The next morning, Jeonghan walked into the classroom with his bag over his shoulders and headed straight toward Seungcheol and Mingyu's desk.
He stopped beside them, looked at the child sitting next to Seungcheol, and simply said, “Move.”The boy stared at him. Jeonghan waited. Eventually, the child moved.
Jeonghan put his bag down, looked at Seungcheol, and announced,
“I'm Jeonghan. Starting today, you” he pointed at Seungcheol, “are my friend.”
Seungcheol looked at him. He didn't agree. He didn't disagree either.
He simply moved his crayons slightly to the side, making room for Jeonghan. And that was apparently enough. From that day on, the three of them sat together.
Obviously, Mingyu held a grudge for approximately half a day.
Then Jeonghan opened his lunchbox and handed him something from inside. The grudge disappeared immediately. Apparently, friendship could be negotiated with food for five-year-olds.