The room was still.
Tae-Hyun sat motionless, the faded blanket slipping off his small shoulders.
Only his eyes moved — cold, calculating, the eyes of a boy who no longer belonged to childhood.
He needed to breathe. He needed to think.
He closed his eyes. And began to remember — no, to dissect.
Cheon Enterprises.
On paper, a miracle of modern business.
A phoenix that rose from Korea's turbulent post-war economy, spreading its wings across real estate, shipping, tech, finance.
Pillars of the community. Patrons of charity. Invited to every government gala and political summit.
The newspapers worshiped them. The people envied them.
But Tae-Hyun knew the truth buried beneath the glittering facade.
Cheon Enterprises was born in blood.
Before it was a corporation, it was a crime syndicate — a shadow empire built on smuggled goods, extortion, blackmail, assassination.
Nothing in Seoul moved without the Cheon Family's blessing — or its silent threat.
The founder — his grandfather, Cheon Yeon — was a man who could smile at a senator while ordering a murder with a flick of his hand.
It was Cheon Yeon who had pulled the family from the sewers into the penthouses, laundering their sins until even the government turned a blind eye.
By the time Tae-Hyun had been born, the Cheon name was sterile, polished, perfect.
No one remembered the blood on the stones.
No one... except the family itself.
Tae-Hyun opened his eyes, staring into the cracked ceiling.
His uncles — men who now posed as respectable businessmen — had been raised on brutality.
They wore suits instead of leather jackets, carried tablets instead of knives.
But underneath, they were still wolves gnawing on the bones of the empire.
"Each of them," Tae-Hyun thought coldly, "wants the throne Grandfather built."
His uncles controlled different sectors: shipping, construction, international investments.
Each pretending to work for the good of the family.
Each secretly scheming to crown themselves the next king.
Cheon Yeon — old, but still terrifying — kept them in check.
For now.
But Tae-Hyun knew.
The old man's grip would falter in a few years.
And when it did?
"The bloodbath will begin."
He traced the timeline mentally:
Next Year: Cheon Enterprises will rise up to become a top 10 company in south korea.
Five years from now: Cheon Enterprises would announce international expansion.
Seven years from now: A massive scandal — insider trading, embezzlement — would shake the company's foundations.
Twelve years from now: Cheon Yeon would die.
After that: Civil war among the Cheon bloodline.
And in his past life, Tae-Hyun had been a pawn caught between those ambitions — a disposable piece to be sacrificed when the board grew crowded.
This time?
This time he would be the player moving the pieces.
He flexed his small hand — feeling the bones, the tendons, the pulse under the skin.
Seven years old.
He had time. He had knowledge. He had hatred.
A lethal trinity.
"I know where the bodies are buried," he whispered into the silent room.
"I know every crack in their armor. Every secret they pray stays hidden."
He would weaponize it all.
He would dig into the rotting roots of the Cheon family tree and strangle them with their own sins.