The first time Yoochan met Minwoo in this life, he noticed two things: the faint scent of blood on his knuckles, and the way he didn't bother to hide it.
Minwoo was the Kang family's skeleton—buried but never deep enough. He didn't care for power or politics. He cared for debt, danger, and control.
Yoochan respected that.
Which made betraying him all the more difficult.
---
It started with a warehouse.
Not just any warehouse, but Changgok 17—a private holding Minwoo used for off-the-books arms trading with Southeast Asian cartels. It was supposed to be invisible. Unregistered. Untouchable.
Yoochan made it visible.
He leaked GPS coordinates to the NIS and paid off two underpaid customs officers to "accidentally" find a missing shipping manifest tied to Kang Logistics.
By dawn, the warehouse was national news.
The footage was damning—AKs, grenades, stacks of heroin bricks stamped with the Kang crest. The scandal broke harder than Soomin's.
Kang Industries stock plummeted another 8%. The board issued a gag order.
And Minwoo?
He vanished.
---
For three days, he went dark.
No calls. No sightings.
Then Yoochan's burner phone buzzed at 3:14 a.m.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
You want war? Let's talk.
Yoochan sent him coordinates: an abandoned subway tunnel beneath Gangnam, repurposed as a Cold War bunker. The same place Yoochan had once hidden after his first failed attempt to kill Joonho in the old timeline.
He waited there for 20 minutes.
Then Minwoo arrived—hood up, boots soaked, pistol at his side.
He didn't bother with pleasantries.
"You burned my warehouse," he said flatly.
Yoochan nodded. "Had to make it look real."
Minwoo laughed once. "Real? You painted a target on my back. Do you know what those cartel bastards do to snitches?"
"You're not a snitch," Yoochan said. "You're bait."
Minwoo's eyes narrowed. "For who?"
Yoochan stepped closer. "Joonho's watching us. Every camera, every move. The only way you and I get out alive is if we fake your fall. Just like I faked mine."
Minwoo stared. Then pulled the gun.
"Give me one reason not to shoot you."
Yoochan didn't blink. "Because you want revenge more than money. And I know where the body is."
That stopped him.
"Whose?"
"Your mother's."
---
The next day, they visited the private mausoleum where Kang Daehyun claimed to have buried Minwoo's mother.
It was pristine. Polished. Empty.
Yoochan handed Minwoo a flash drive. "These are the real records. She was cremated. Dumped in an unmarked grave with the housemaids."
Minwoo's face was unreadable.
Then he laughed—cold, hollow.
"So he lied to me. Even in death."
"Your father never saw you as a son," Yoochan said. "Only a leash. I'm offering you scissors."
Minwoo lit a cigarette with shaking hands. "What's the play?"
"You disappear. Let the world think you've been disowned. In six months, you'll walk into Kang Tower again—but not as a son."
"As what?"
Yoochan smiled. "As my knife."
---
Three weeks later, the headlines confirmed Minwoo's "fall from grace."
"Kang Minwoo Expelled Amid Criminal Probe!"
"Ties Severed Between Kang Industries and Mafia Prince!"
"Minwoo Vanishes After Public Shaming—Cartel Retaliation Feared."
Behind the scenes, Yoochan forged a new identity for him—new passports, burner phones, crypto wallets. He gave him a silent apartment in Vladivostok. Paid for the best digital ghosting money could buy.
And before Minwoo boarded his private jet, he turned back one last time.
"If you're lying to me," he said, "I'll gut you slow."
"If I'm lying," Yoochan said, "you'll already be dead."
---
In Kang Tower, Joonho paced the glass corridor of his war room.
"Minwoo's gone. Soomin's gone. You're telling me this is all coincidence?"
"No, sir," his security chief muttered.
"Then FIND OUT WHO'S NEXT!"
Silence.
Joonho's reflection stared back at him from the window. The lights in the skyscraper opposite flickered once—Yoochan's old office, now repurposed into archives.
He kept seeing ghosts.
Especially that one.
---
In the shadows of the annex, Sooyoung handed Yoochan a list.
"Seojun's moving. He's filed a formal petition to audit Kang Tower's legal division."
"Finally growing a spine," Yoochan muttered.
"He's got teeth now. And a conscience."
"Dangerous combination."
Sooyoung hesitated. "He's your only sibling who still believes in justice."
"Then he'll be the hardest to break."