The fluorescent lights of the convenience store buzzed overhead like dying insects.
Han Joon-woo stood behind the counter at 2:47 AM, his reflection caught in the security monitor, tired eyes, cheap shirt, the face of a man who'd stopped dreaming somewhere around his third year of unpaid overtime.
Twenty-nine years old. No girlfriend. No savings. No future.
Just another corporate slave who'd traded his twenties for a company that would replace him within a week.
He should've been in bed. Should've ignored his team leader's message demanding those revised reports by morning. Should've said no, just once, to the endless cascade of "urgent" tasks that somehow always landed on his desk at midnight.
But Han Joon-woo had never been good at saying no.
The convenience store's automatic door chimed. Joon-woo barely looked up as he printed the reports, only half-aware of the hooded figure moving through the aisles. Another insomniac. Another ghost haunts Seoul's sleepless hours.
He heard the footsteps approach the counter.
Heard the slurred voice demand the register.
Saw the knife too late.
The funny thing about death, Joon-woo thought as he hit the floor, was how ordinary it felt. No dramatic music. No slow-motion revelation. Just the cold tiles against his cheek and the distant sound of someone screaming.
Is that me?
The fluorescent lights flickered above him, and in their strobing rhythm, his life didn't flash before his eyes. There wasn't enough worth remembering.
Instead, he thought: I never even lived, did I?
Then... complete darkness.
Then... light.
Joon-woo's eyes opened to silk.
Not the rough cotton of his tiny gosiwon room, but genuine silk sheets that whispered against skin like water. His first breath came sharp and painful, as if his lungs had forgotten how to work. His second breath brought a scent he didn't recognize, expensive cologne, fresh flowers, something clean and foreign and wealthy.
Heaven has good interior design, he thought distantly.
But the pain in his chest said otherwise. Heaven shouldn't hurt like this.
He tried to sit up and failed. His body felt wrong, lighter, younger, as if someone had replaced his bones with hollow reeds. His vision swam, the ceiling above him a pristine white broken by the elegant frame of what looked like a crystal chandelier.
Chandeliers. In a bedroom.
"Young master!"
The voice was female, sharp with panic. Footsteps rushed across hardwood floors, and suddenly a woman's face filled his vision, middle-aged, kind eyes wet with tears, wearing what looked like a crisp uniform.
"Young master, you're awake! Oh, thank God! Someone call Dr. Yoon! Quickly!"
Joon-woo's mouth moved, but the voice that came out wasn't his.
Too soft. Too refined.
"Where..."
The woman, a housekeeper? a nurse? pressed a hand to his forehead, checking for fever with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd done this many times before.
"Don't try to speak yet. You've been unconscious for two days. Your father will be..." She paused, something flickering across her face. Not quite sadness. Closer to resignation. "...informed."
Two days.
Unconscious.
Father.
Joon-woo's heart hammered against ribs that felt too narrow, too young. He turned his head slowly, every movement an effort, and caught sight of his reflection in a full-length mirror across the room.
The face looking back at him wasn't his.
It was beautiful.
Not handsome in the rough, ordinary way Han Joon-woo had been, but beautiful in the way of magazine covers and billboard models. Sharp jawline. Delicate features that somehow remained masculine. Pale skin that had never seen a day of real labor. Dark hair falling across a forehead, smooth and unmarked by stress.
And the eyes, those were different too. Not quite dead, but close. The eyes of someone who'd already given up.
Who are you?
But even as he thought it, memories that weren't his began to surface like bodies from deep water.
Kang Ji-hoon.
Second son of Kang Dae-won, chairman of Kang Group, one of Korea's top five chaebol families.
Twenty-four years old.
Invisible.
Joon-woo's... no, Ji-hoon's head throbbed as the memories came faster now, a lifetime compressed into stuttering images:
A brother's sneer. "Mother always said you should've been a girl."
A father's back, always turned, always leaving.
Boarding schools in Switzerland where his name meant nothing.
A family portrait where he stood at the edge, easily cropped out.
A woman's laugh, bright and cruel..."You? Ji-hoon, you're sweet, but... you're not exactly leading man material, are you?"
And the last memory, the one that made Ji-hoon's borrowed heart clench:
Pills scattered across marble floors.
The bathtub's cold embrace.
A note no one would read.
"Young master?" The housekeeper's voice pulled him back. "Can you hear me?"
Ji-hoon, because that's who he was now, wasn't he? managed a slight nod.
"Ajumma..." The word felt strange on his tongue, but the body remembered it. "How did I...?"
Her expression shuttered. "You fell. In the bathroom. Hit your head on the tub." Her hands smoothed the silk sheets with unnecessary force. "An accident."
An accident.
The lie sat between them, paper-thin.
You tried to kill yourself, Joon-woo thought, the revelation landing with terrible clarity. And you would've succeeded if...
If what? If a corporate slave from another life hadn't somehow woken up in your abandoned body?
This was insane.
This was impossible.
This was...
The bedroom door opened without a knock. A man entered, tall and sharp in a three-piece suit that probably cost more than Joon-woo's entire year's salary. His hair was silver at the temples, his face all hard angles and colder eyes.
The housekeeper immediately bowed. "Chairman."
Chairman Kang Dae-won looked at his second son the way one might look at a disappointing stock portfolio, with mild irritation and the calculation of whether cutting losses might be the better option.
"You're awake." It wasn't a question. It wasn't quite a statement either, just an acknowledgment of an inconvenient fact.
Ji-hoon felt the old memories rise... years of trying to earn this man's attention, his approval, his love. Years of failure.
But Han Joon-woo had died once already. He'd spent twenty-nine years bowing and scraping and swallowing his dignity for people who never saw him.
He was done with that.
"Father." Ji-hoon's voice came out steadier than expected. He didn't sit up, couldn't yet...but he met those cold eyes without flinching. "Thank you for coming."
Something flickered in the chairman's expression. Surprise, maybe. The housekeeper had gone very still.
"The doctor says you'll recover fully." Kang Dae-won adjusted his cufflinks, a man already mentally moving to his next appointment. "Your mother is in Milan. I've informed her of your... accident. She may call later this week."
May.
"I see."
Another pause. The chairman seemed to be waiting for something, tears, perhaps. Apologies. The usual broken promises of a suicidal son.
Instead, Ji-hoon simply looked at him.
Really looked, with eyes that had already died once, and found they had nothing left to lose.
"I won't trouble you again," Ji-hoon said quietly. "I promise."
The chairman's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "Dr. Yoon will check on you this afternoon. Ajumma Lee will see to your needs." He turned to leave, then paused at the door. Without looking back, he added, "Your brother is closing the Hannam acquisition today. The press conference is at four."
Your brother is succeeding where you never could.
Your brother is the son I wanted.
Your brother is real, and you are a ghost.
The door closed with a soft, expensive click.
Ajumma Lee's shoulders sagged. "Young master, you should rest..."
"What day is it?"
She blinked. "Pardon?"
"The date. What's today's date?"
"March 15th. 2025."
March 15th, 2025.
Joon-woo's mind raced, pulling up memories that belonged to a different life, a different death. In his world, the world where Han Joon-woo had bled out on a convenience store floor...it had been March 13th, 2025.
Two days ago.
The same year.
The same timeline.
This isn't reincarnation, he realized with growing clarity. This is a second chance.
And if it was March 2025, that meant...
"Ajumma," Ji-hoon's voice came out sharp now, focused. "I need my phone. And my laptop. And..." He paused, thinking. "What happened with the Hannam acquisition? What are the terms?"
The housekeeper looked at him as if he'd started speaking in tongues. "Young master, you've never cared about business before."
"I'm caring now." He managed to prop himself up on one elbow, ignoring the way the room spun. "Please. The acquisition terms."
She hesitated, then moved to a dresser and retrieved a slim phone, the latest model, naturally. "Your brother is acquiring Hannam Construction for 3.2 trillion won. The announcement is today. It's being called the deal of the year."
3.2 trillion won for Hannam Construction.
March 15th, 2025.
Joon-woo's heart raced for a different reason now. Because Han Joon-woo, poor, invisible, soon-to-be-dead Han Joon-woo had still read the news. Had still watched the financial world spin from his place at the bottom.
And he remembered what happened to Hannam Construction.
He remembered the scandal.
The collapsed building in Busan.
The investigation revealed decades of corruption and corner-cutting.
The stock that went from premium to worthless in eighteen days.
And Kang Group, having just acquired them, is taking a hit that would shake even their massive foundation.
His brother's "deal of the year" was a ticking time bomb.
Ji-hoon looked at his reflection again...this beautiful, tragic, invisible boy who'd been so ready to die.
You gave up too soon, he thought.
Then, to himself, to the ghost of Han Joon-woo, to whatever cruel god had granted him this impossible second chance:
Let's try this differently.
"Ajumma," he said, and his smile was nothing like the sad, sweet expression Kang Ji-hoon had been known for. "Cancel whatever's on my schedule for the next week."
"You... you don't have anything scheduled, young master."
"Perfect." He swung his legs over the side of the bed, ignoring her protests. His body was weak, but it would strengthen. "Then no one will notice when I start."
"Start what?"
Ji-hoon stood, wobbled, and caught himself on the bedpost. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Seoul sprawled before him, glittering, ruthless, beautiful.
A city that had chewed up Han Joon-woo and spit him out.
A city that had ignored Kang Ji-hoon in silence.
"Everything," he said.
And meant it.