The teahouse was a quiet anachronism nestled in a bustling Insadong alley, a place of dark wood, worn cushions, and the fragrant scent of brewing herbs. It was a place Yoo-jin hadn't visited in over a decade, but one he knew his sister still frequented. It was a bridge to a past they no longer shared, and he had chosen it deliberately, hoping the ghosts of their shared childhood might grant him some small measure of grace. He was wrong.
Han Ji-young was already there, seated at a low table in a secluded corner, a cup of untouched jujube tea steaming in front of her. She looked older than he remembered, the sharp, ambitious energy of her youth replaced by a palpable aura of weariness and quiet disappointment. She was dressed in a simple but elegant blouse, the uniform of a competent, mid-level manager who had long ago given up on climbing the corporate ladder. She looked like a woman who had made peace with being passed over by life.
Yoo-jin approached the table, his heart a heavy, awkward drum in his chest. He slid onto the cushion opposite her, the silence between them thick with years of unspoken resentment.
"Ji-young," he said, his voice softer than he intended.
"Yoo-jin," she replied, her tone perfectly neutral, her eyes giving nothing away. "It's been a long time."
The initial conversation was a painful, stilted dance around a minefield of unspoken history. They exchanged hollow pleasantries about their parents' health, the changing seasons, the quality of the tea. Each sentence was a carefully constructed wall, designed to keep the vast, messy truth at bay. It was the conversation of strangers who shared too much history to ever be comfortable with one another.
Finally, Yoo-jin could bear the artifice no longer. He had not come here for small talk. He had come for penance. He broke the fragile truce, not with an accusation, but with the one thing he had withheld from her for a decade.
"Ji-young," he began, his voice quiet but clear in the hushed teahouse. "I came here because I wanted to apologize."
Her eyes flickered, the first sign of genuine emotion he had seen. She didn't speak, her stillness a silent demand for him to continue.
"For what happened ten years ago," he said, forcing himself to meet her gaze. "At Stellar. With the debut project. I was wrong. I was arrogant, and I was cruel, and I never acknowledged what my ambition cost you. I am so sorry."
The apology, heartfelt and long overdue, did not bring the catharsis he had hoped for. It did not bridge the gap between them. Instead, it lanced a wound that had been festering for ten years, and the poison came pouring out.
A bitter, painful scoff escaped her lips. It was a sound of profound, weary cynicism. "Sorry?" she repeated, her voice dripping with a decade of curdled resentment. "You're sorry now? After ten years of silence, you show up and you're sorry?" She shook her head, a mirthless smile playing on her lips. "You have no idea what you cost me, Yoo-jin. No idea at all. It wasn't just a project. It was my career. It was my future."
She leaned forward, her eyes finally igniting with a cold, hard fire. "You didn't just win that day," she hissed, her voice low and venomous. "You salted the earth behind you. You went into Chairman Choi's office and you didn't just praise your own team; you systematically dismantled mine. You made me look incompetent. You made my artists look like a bad investment. You made sure Chairman Choi saw me as a failure, as someone who foolishly backed the wrong horse. After that day, I was poison at Stellar. And you… you were the golden boy."
Yoo-jin sat there, taking the verbal blows, knowing he deserved every single one. "I know," he said quietly. "I was wrong."
"You were a shark," she corrected him. "And you were good at it. I was just the first fish you ate." She leaned back, some of the fire receding, replaced by a chilling detachment. "It doesn't matter now anyway."
"It does matter," Yoo-jin insisted. "It matters because of Nam Gyu-ri."
Ji-young's expression didn't change, but a flicker of something—satisfaction, perhaps—danced in her eyes. "Ah," she said simply. "So you finally figured it out. I was wondering how long it would take."
"Why, Ji-young?" he pleaded, the question raw with pain. "Why would you help her? You know what she's doing."
"Of course I do," she replied calmly. "She came to me about a year ago. Found me in the Stellar archives, a forgotten relic managing re-release schedules. She remembered me. No one else did. She remembered my team. She remembered what was taken from us." Ji-young took a slow, deliberate sip of her now-lukewarm tea. "She told me she was going to burn down the whole corrupt system that rewards people like you and discards people like us. And she told me she was going to start with the man who built his entire throne on our ashes. You."
She placed her cup down with a soft click. "She offered me a front-row seat. A chance to finally see some justice in a world that had offered me none. And you know what, little brother? It felt good. For the first time in a very long time, it felt like balance."
The coldness of her confession was more chilling than any outburst of anger could have been. She had made her choice, not in a fit of passion, but with the cold, considered logic of a woman who had nothing left to lose.
"The lawsuit against Da-eun's father," Yoo-jin said, his voice flat. "The Prime Dispatch article that almost destroyed us. You gave her that information. You're helping her hurt innocent people."
Ji-young's smile was thin and sharp. "Innocent? There are no innocent people in this industry, Yoo-jin. Only winners and losers. You were the one who taught me that lesson, remember? Those artists of yours, they're just pieces on your board, the same way my trainees were pieces on mine. Don't sit there and pretend you're some kind of saint now that you have a fancy new company. You're just better at playing the game than I was."
The chasm between them was absolute, unbridgeable. He had come seeking a flicker of remorse, a shared sense of family, however frayed. He found nothing but a void filled with a quiet, patient hatred.
She stood up, smoothing down her blouse. The meeting was over. "It was good to see you, Yoo-jin," she said, her voice once again devoid of any warmth, the polite tone of a stranger. "Nam Gyu-ri sends her regards."
She paused at the edge of the table, delivering her final, parting shot. "She said to tell you she's just getting started."
And with that, she turned and walked away, leaving him alone in the quiet teahouse, the apology rejected, the war formally declared, and the battle lines drawn not by a corporation or a rival, but by the unbreakable, unforgiving bonds of family.