The Hit Song of This Life Is Revenge - Chapter 69

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The hit song of this life is revenge.
69
“A cup of chrysanthemum tea, please.”
Park Jeong-cheol settled into a chair at the table set in the broad courtyard and finished his order.
The moment the server turned away with the menu, the surroundings grew even more hushed.
Park Jeong-cheol leaned his back deeply against the chair.
The courtyard and stone path filled his entire field of vision.
Tree branches hung down beyond the wall.
It was hard to believe they were in the heart of the city — here, even time seemed to have stopped its feet.
To gaze quietly at such a view.
It was almost his only form of rest.
‘The weather’s nice too.’
He was just letting his thoughts slow with the sunlight as it traced a line across the landscape, when—
Scrape—
The sound of a chair dragging across the floor.
An unnecessary friction, out of place with the quiet of this spot.
Park Jeong-cheol’s head immediately turned forward.
The person before him was an unfamiliar woman.
A deep-brimmed hat pulled low, with an oversized hoodie pressed down on top of it.
The intent to conceal her face was blatant.
Wariness rose instinctively.
Park Jeong-cheol spent a moment pretending to straighten the lapels of his formal jacket with composure.
“I think you may have the wrong table.”
His voice fell low over the previously quiet table.
“I knew you’d be startled. I apologize first for choosing this method. Director Park Jeong-cheol.”
Her tone was polite and courteous.
Yet the attitude behind it carried not understanding but the rudeness of a statement, not a request.
Worst of all, she had used his name exactly right.
Park Jeong-cheol’s eyes narrowed incrementally.
It was as if a gust of tension had swept in all at once during the space where he was steadying his breath.
“That’s… quite unpleasant.”
A word he’d selected from his mind.
A single phrase carrying rejection, wariness, and warning all at once.
“I’m truly sorry. But we needed to have this conversation somehow.”
Yet the woman before him didn’t budge.
Instead, she responded calmly, as if granting him time to collect himself.
Park Jeong-cheol stopped blinking and ran his eyes across the woman’s silhouette.
Who is this person to be so reckless?
Just as his gaze was following the exposed lower half of her face, the woman lifted her hat brim slightly.
“Lee… Jae-i?”
“You recognized me.”
How could he not.
That program had turned the entire company upside down.
Which meant this situation was all the more unwelcome.
There shouldn’t even be a reason for them to meet.
Park Jeong-cheol slowed his speech and brought the situation to a calm close.
“I have never encountered Lee Jae-i, nor have we ever met. I’ll excuse myself now.”
“YU will fail soon.”
Park Jeong-cheol’s head snapped back toward Jae-i completely.
There was no explicit violence in the words.
Yet that single phrase physically pinned him in place.
At the same time, an inexplicable revulsion layered itself upon him.
It felt as though even his next breath had been stolen.
The woman, having observed the ripple she’d created, continued speaking without moving her head an inch.
“If Yoo Young-jae becomes CEO, it will definitely happen.”
Park Jeong-cheol’s throat went rigid.
It was as if the thin layer of earth that had covered the sincerity written into those truths had blown away in a sudden wind.
A confusion, as though inner thoughts he had kept hidden were suddenly laid bare without his knowing.
His body reacted even though he hadn’t spoken the words himself.
What followed from the woman was beyond boldness — it was absurd.
“You won’t believe me, but I don’t want that to happen.”
It grew more ridiculous by the moment.
The most galling thing was the sincerity woven into her tone.
Instinctive rejection and fierce curiosity began a tug of war.
What kind of situation was this?
It was enough to create the strange illusion that the ground beneath him was softening.
The surroundings found quiet again.
But this time it was not simple silence.
Tension and understanding aimed at each other were tangled together.
“Before it’s truly too late, I came to tell you what you can change with your own hands, Director Park.”
The woman’s words were quiet.
Yet the phrase “before it’s too late” echoed a second and third time in his head.
Park Jeong-cheol couldn’t easily open his lips.
He could have ended this conversation by taking a single step away as things were.
A calculated approach, explicit insinuation, and a name pinpointed with precision.
‘It’s dangerous.’
Yet from the opposite direction, another thought was putting down roots.
Lee Jae-i was a singer with a known face.
She was someone with no reason to throw herself at him so recklessly.
Yet that she had come this far meant it could not be dismissed as mere impulse — the explanation fell short.
‘Is this something I absolutely must hear?’
In the end, only one thing remained.
A feeling leaning oddly toward this woman.
It defied logic.
A clarity confused enough to be sharp held Park Jeong-cheol fast to that spot.
Then it came.
The server approached with a teacup cradling a delicate fragrance.
Park Jeong-cheol took a very brief breath.
Without moving from his seat, he opened his mouth to Jae-i.
“Would you mind if I recommended a cup of tea?”
A choice to linger in this place a while longer.
The most tactful acceptance that he would listen to her story.
“I’d be grateful.”
From the woman’s lips came an answer pointing in the same direction.
* * *
The commute was always the same.
Park Jeong-cheol turned his wheel into the Underground Parking Lot of YU Entertainment.
A dull headache still hadn’t faded.
‘This is why I don’t….’
Last night he’d drunk whisky he couldn’t even remember receiving.
An alcohol scent hiding within the heaviness.
It was as if the moment he’d met Lee Jae-i had been distilled and pressed into that fragrance.
As the sharp scent came alive with each exhaled breath, the woman’s sentences that had arrived with that same sensation came alive again.
‘I’m not trying to force anything.’
‘The choice is yours, Director Park. Whatever you decide, I respect it.’
Park Jeong-cheol set the gear to P and rested his head against the headrest.
Then he squeezed his eyes shut and slowly shook his head.
‘Have I grown too old to tell right from wrong?’
It was a provocative subject.
Industrial espionage. Embezzlement.
Compelling enough to catch the ear, but it lacked reality.
Most of all, it made no sense.
The very premise that a singer knew things even he, the financial director, didn’t know.
Lee Jae-i’s face wavered and then crystallized in his mind.
Park Jeong-cheol’s eyes flew open.
“Something’s off….”
Not a single thing about her was ordinary.
In all the years he’d spent in this industry, he’d already seen enough people to be tired of them.
Ambition, deception, calculation.
Faces so transparent you could see right through them with even a brief glance.
But Lee Jae-i.
She stood wrapped in a youthful audacity, yet something was different.
Her speech cadence wasn’t clumsy, nor was where her gaze lingered.
As if she were someone who had prepared for this very moment.
“It’s unfamiliar.”
A person of a different grain.
He pushed away the fact that her words kept coming to mind by blaming it on that difference.
That’s why they still lingered in his memory.
‘That must be it.’
He had to organize it that way.
The moment he believed even a little in what she said, the very ground he was standing on would shatter.
Park Jeong-cheol took a deep breath and closed the driver’s side door.
The elevator heading to the Office.
Past the Underground Parking Lot, the movement stopped briefly at the Lobby level.
The person who stepped in was Yoo Young-jae.
“Hello—”
Yoo Young-jae cut off his words while brushing his hands.
His cell phone was held to his ear.
Park Jeong-cheol noticed the call in progress and closed his lips.
Just as he was accepting this—
— …Jae-i…. …is happening.
Park Jeong-cheol’s brow twitched.
‘Jae-i?’
He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop.
Yet in the quiet of the elevator, there was nowhere for his ears to escape.
The voice embedded in the silence was unusually distinct.
Floor 9.
The button Yoo Young-jae pressed glowed red.
As the elevator doors opened, Park Jeong-cheol turned his body and bowed his head before exiting.
Yet Yoo Young-jae offered a brief nod in place of a greeting.
The elevator doors closed.
Park Jeong-cheol’s gaze remained fixed on the floor where Yoo Young-jae had gotten off.
‘Why is he getting off there…?’
The 9th floor was the CEO’s Office.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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