Chapter 43

The moment Chairman Joo Tae-baek woke from his long sleep, the first thing he did was ask for his secretary.

How long had he been lying there? Had nothing gone wrong at Dongwoo Group while he was out?

Watching his secretary come rushing in, Joo Tae-baek tried to gauge just how much damage his absence had done.

Fortunately, he’d laid out contingencies for exactly this kind of situation, so the company itself shouldn’t have taken a direct hit.

“…I see. So that’s how it was.”

Joo Tae-baek listened to his personal secretary’s full report, start to finish.

From the fact that Joo Sae-i—his own blood, beyond any doubt—hadn’t been allowed into his hospital room, to the fact that his own son had looked at that very niece and simply turned away.

He didn’t intend to blame the security guards who’d blocked Sae-i’s way too harshly.

If someone not on the approved list tried to get into the hospital room, they were to be stopped by whatever means necessary—that was the protocol he himself had set.

Joo Tae-baek did think of Sae-i, who had been living away from Jaedamjae, as his granddaughter. But he hadn’t expected her to come to him under circumstances like these, and so he’d never added her to the list of approved visitors.

And after she returned to Jaedamjae, he’d been too busy handling the agency’s founding and his duties as Chairman of Dongwoo Group to even think about updating the list. That had been his own oversight.

But hearing that Joo Su-deok—his own son—had seen his niece chased off by security and simply walked past made his head throb.

Something was wrong.

Joo Su-deok was his son, yes, but he was a greedy man. A son who drew a hard, clean line between those beneath him to be used and those above him to be served.

Even so, Tae-baek had been relieved to see him make an effort to look after the niece who didn’t even live at Jaedamjae. So what was the meaning of this?

Joo Tae-baek first had the room sealed off and kept the fact that he’d woken up hidden. He had his secretary dig into everything Joo Su-deok had done where Sae-i was concerned.

Every holiday, every Christmas, he had clearly tried to send gifts to Sae-i’s house in Gyeonggi Province. Even living apart, even if his granddaughter feared him, family was family.

And every time, Joo Su-deok had taken the gifts himself, saying he’d deliver them to his niece personally.

But by the end of the secretary’s investigation, it came out that the gifts he’d assumed had reached his granddaughter just fine had instead gone straight to his son and that son’s household.

The theft had been so blatant that it took less than two hours to uncover. Joo Tae-baek berated himself for not having known until now.

It had been his own complacency, his own failing.

A person could be in perfect health yesterday and gone from this world by tomorrow. He himself could die at any moment, and it would hardly be strange.

And if he did die?

His son Joo Su-deok would get along just fine. He’d call the grandson he’d shipped overseas back to Korea and have him inherit Dongwoo.

His youngest daughter, Joo Jeong-hui, would grieve, but she’d manage. She had the standing and the power to protect herself.

But his late eldest daughter’s child, Joo Sae-i…

If he died, his granddaughter would fall apart easily. She’d left Jaedamjae early, and she had no decent connections, no wealth, no power—nothing.

I need to act.

A day might come again when he failed to protect his granddaughter, the way he had this time. To prepare for that, Joo Tae-baek made his decision.

“Have the contract drawn up.”

The contract he’d been holding off on until her first work was released—the one meant to formally bring her in. Wave Actors, the agency he and the people he trusted had quietly prepared.

It was earlier than planned, but Joo Tae-baek went ahead and had the contract prepared for Sae-i regardless.

If she only signed it—if it made her an actress of Wave Actors—then…

Even if he dropped dead one day without warning, this contract could stand as his granddaughter’s shield.

He’d woken some time ago, but it had taken a good while to grasp the situation and go over the contract in full.

At last, a clean, finished contract was placed in his hands.

Joo Tae-baek read every clause of it closely, then smiled, satisfied.

For a businessman, it was an oddly un-businesslike contract—one focused less on profit than on protecting his granddaughter.

“I need to see Sae-i.”

Having his secretary summon his granddaughter, he set the papers down and looked out the window.

He didn’t think he’d waited very long, but already he could see his granddaughter running toward the hospital entrance in the distance. The sight filled his chest without warning.

He heard hurried footsteps, and then the hospital room door opened. And then—

“…Grandfather!”

Her eyes soaked with tears, his granddaughter threw herself at Joo Tae-baek. His eyes went wide as he caught Sae-i in his arms.

Grandfather, she’d said.

The child who, even after they were reunited, had kept calling him “Chairman”… had just called him Grandfather.

“At last.”

The instant it registered, Joo Tae-baek felt as if his breath had stopped. He had never been happier.

“You called me Grandfather. Finally…”

Patting the back of the child catching her breath against him, Joo Tae-baek quietly swallowed his tears.

Seeing my grandfather sitting up straight in the hospital bed, my vision blurred.

The fear that I might lose him earlier this time than in my previous life let go all at once, and the tears just came.

That was why. Why I’d called him Grandfather without even realizing it.

In my previous life, we’d lived apart for so long that, honestly, the name Joo Tae-baek had conjured up the image of the Chairman of Dongwoo Group far more than it had my own grandfather.

After I came back to the past, I’d felt grateful toward this grandfather who was kind to me… but saying the word “Grandfather” out loud had felt too embarrassing.

So I’d kept calling him Chairman the whole time.

And now, finally, he was glad I’d called him Grandfather.

So he’d noticed, all this time, that I called him Chairman. What had he felt, waiting for the day I’d call him Grandfather again, the way I used to?

My chest ached. All the more so when his trembling hand stroked my back.

I stayed in his arms and cried for a long while.

When I pulled back and steadied my breathing, my grandfather held out the folder he’d set down beside him. I rubbed my eyes and looked over the documents.

“This is…”

I opened my mouth, unable to believe what I was seeing even as I read it, and my grandfather only nodded. As if to say it was exactly what I thought it was.

It was a strange contract, truly.

However much my grandfather loved his children, he was still a man who valued profit—yet this read as though it had been drawn up entirely, thoroughly, for my sake alone.

“It’s a contract. Those clauses will protect you from now on, even without me.”

Back when I’d first decided to make my grandfather my ally, I’d been fully prepared to let him use me.

I’d meant to keep proving my talent, to keep showing my worth, so I could survive inside Wave Actors.

But that wasn’t what this was. Now my grandfather was trying to use Wave Actors to protect me instead.

The plan had gone sideways. My grandfather’s love for me was becoming the key that would twist the future itself.

Was there any reason to put it off further? I reached to sign right then. The one who stopped me was my grandfather himself.

“There’s something I need to set straight before we sign.”

He spoke in a low, firm voice. There was something like guilt buried in it.

“…I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Why was he apologizing to me? What had he done wrong? He’d changed this much for my sake, and yet…

“I sent gifts through your uncle, all this time. But it turns out none of them ever reached you. I threw away years like that.”

“…”

“I only just found out. Your foolish grandfather only just realized it.”

I couldn’t say anything.

That my grandfather had been sending me gifts all along was news to me.

If what he said was true, then my uncle must have intercepted them along the way. In my previous life, I’d gone to my death never knowing that.

“It’s a father’s fault, for raising his son wrong. I should have paid closer attention…”

“…”

“I’ll step in myself, so even Su-deok won’t be able to touch you. He shouldn’t be allowed to, either.”

My body froze.

Would my uncle really stop touching me?

He was more than capable of it. I knew that much just from how, until the day I died, he’d driven a wedge between my grandfather and me.

If I told him now that it was my uncle who’d ordered my death in my previous life, would he believe me?

The truth I couldn’t bring myself to say circled on the tip of my tongue. I only looked at my grandfather quietly, then slowly nodded.

Right now, all I could do was lean on this contract.

My grandfather took out a pen and pressed it into my hand. My hand trembled, but I wrote my name on the document, letter by careful letter.

It was the moment I became Wave Actors’ very first actress.