CH 7

Muyeol didn’t react. He knew Jaeho was a psycho whom no one would be able to handle.

The ‘altercation’ started when Muyeol came back from tuition, only to find Jaeho snooping around in his room. He usually wouldn’t have reacted like this, but the exhaustion from the day had finally caught up to him. Every single thing was annoying him, and so he had run out of patience and started raging. He had tried to chase Jaeho out but ended up kicking him when Jaeho provoked him. It was only one hit, but it was more than enough for Jaeho to make a scene.

Jaeho slammed his own head into the flood and screamed loudly before proceeding to slap himself. Really… He was getting more and more skilled as days pa*sed by.

“This is why people never take your side. You need to act immaturely like a normal 13-year-old. It’s so gross if you’re calm all the time. Well, I suppose if dad treated me the way he treats you, then I would have turned into a precocious child as well,” Jaeho spoke softly, then added with a bright smile, “Teach me how to break your limit. I’m your older brother, aren’t I?”

“You did learn a way,” Muyeol murmured slowly.

Jaeho laughed. “If mom hadn’t pa*sed away like that, she would have been the top actress in the entire world, not just Korea. Well, her blood wasn’t wasted, since she pa*sed down her acting skills to me.”

Muyeol scoffed on instinct, ‘Ha! Top actress, huh?’

“You scoffed? Did you just belittle my mother?” 

That was it. Jaeho, his half-brother, really was a psycho.

“Think what you want.”

“You’re laughing at a dead person? What, are you going to impose the social hierarchy on a dead person as well?”

Jaeho would always run wild with anger whenever someone mentioned his mom, however, Muyeol ignored his fiery temper. In the beginning, Muyeol used to think Jaeho was offended because of how much he loved his mother, but that wasn’t the case. It was just an excuse for him to vent his anger.

And people always, always showed him sympathy.

“He loves his mother.”

“Yeah, she must have loved him a lot too.”

“They went through a lot… What a poor kid…” the people around him would say.

But Muyeol had accidentally overheard the truth. Jaeho’s mom was an alcoholic and a man-eater. She would abandon Jaeho at an orphanage every time she got together with a new man, only bringing him back once she broke up with her lover. It wasn’t long before she pa*sed away from alcohol abuse. She didn’t love Jaeho, not even a little bit.

Jaeho was the same. Muyeol knew it because Jaeho admitted it.

“I knew that if I pretended to love my mother, I would get lots of benefits out of it.”

Jaeho was only two years older than Muyeol, but it was as if he had experienced everything there was in the world. Within a month of moving in, Jaeho had attracted the sympathy of all of the employees in the house, to the point that whenever Muyeol and Jaeho fought, they would side with Jaeho.

But that didn’t bother Muyeol. He didn’t care if the others sided with Jaeho. However, after numerous times they had had an argument, Muyeol had come to fear one thing: the punishment Mr. Cha inflicted on him.

The moment Mr. Cha would be informed of the fight, he would blame it all on Muyeol and lock him up in the basement.

“Indeed, we can’t even be compared. Your mother was… um… You already know it, don’t you?” Muyeol was quick to reply, an icy look in his eyes.

“Wasn’t your mother Dad’s fifth woman? And I heard she even snatched away from his lover at that time. No wonder Dad left her. Why didn’t you two just live with the money you were given?” Jaeho mocked in return as he rolled his eyes.

Jaeho was right. Madam Kang, Muyeol’s mom, had told him all about it. 

“I was your dad’s fifth woman. He was seeing someone else at the time, but I broke them up. The woman who I snatched him from was crazy. She thought their relationship was the love story of the century, but it didn’t last long, and I was able to make a profit off of your father’s mistake. With the amount of money I received from him, I never needed to work again.”

Mr. Cha was a philanderer. He never had to put in any effort, women constantly clung to him for his wealth and power, and he didn’t deny them either. And a man like him had divorced Madam Kang all because of a rumor. The truth never mattered to him. The moment he heard it, he concluded it was all her fault.

“I hadn’t done anything, but your father decided that I was cheating on him. He thought the entire world was filled with jerks like him.”

Madam Kang had been just as furious as Mr. Cha, so she didn’t beg him to stay either.

“Your father will never love anyone. The other women, me, you… He has never been in love. All he wants to do is possess people. He has to own his favorite toy, and when he’s done, he abandons them. That’s the kind of person your father is.”