After we finished eating, Joo Seunghyuk continued showing me around the mansion.

“There are so many rooms. How many are there in total?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never counted.”

He answered with the kind of indifferent expression only someone truly rich could pull off. Still, I couldn’t blame him—just standing in the hallway, I could already see dozens of doors. No wonder he’d lost track.

“Managing all of this must be a hassle.”

“Most of them are empty. Only a few are actually used.”

True. With this many rooms, just furnishing and maintaining each one would be a full-time job.

“Have the furnishings been here since you were a kid?”

“Yeah. They’re from the previous owner.”

“I see.”

So Seunghyuk hadn’t designed any of it himself.

“I considered replacing everything, but left it as is. I didn’t want to waste my energy on a place like this.”

He spoke with a cold voice—not the way one would talk about a home full of childhood memories.

So he had wanted to change it. It made sense. The ornate ceiling, marble floors, elaborate light fixtures, wallpaper, and furniture—it was all far too gaudy and clearly not his style.

“Where are the other staff members?”

While touring the mansion, I hadn’t seen anyone besides Yoon Jeongyeon.

“Why? Do you want to meet someone other than me?”

He bristled immediately. His eyes blazed with jealousy.

I shook my head quickly. The last thing I needed on my first day out was to hit one of his obsessive triggers.

“N-no, I was just wondering... since there’s nobody around.”

“Don’t go looking for anyone else. Just me.”

“Okay. I won’t.”

I soothed his sour mood and hurriedly changed the subject.

“But Seunghyuk, what’s that room over there?”

Among the many doors in the hallway, one in particular caught my eye—it was larger and more imposing than the rest.

“That’s the library.”

“The library?”

“Want to go in?”

Had he put it together himself? I was curious what kind of books Seunghyuk had chosen to fill it with.

“Yeah.”

I nodded right away. He opened the door and added briefly,

“Don’t expect too much.”

The moment I stepped inside, I was speechless.

The library had two floors—far larger than it looked from outside. But it wasn’t the size that stunned me.

Sure, it was huge for a private library, but it couldn’t compare to public institutions.

What shocked me was the books that lined the shelves.

Every single one was old.

“Ten Changes Red Lunhua Will Bring to the World”

“The End of Ranking Systems”

Just from the spine designs and fonts, it was obvious these were from a bygone era.

“Disappointed?”

“No, just surprised. It feels like I time-traveled to the past.”

The old books and antique furniture combined to recreate the height of the Red Lunhua craze—like stepping into a snapshot of that era.

“Were you interested in Red Lunhua?”

It wasn’t just the period. Nearly all the books were about Red Lunhua. Not only domestic publications, but foreign ones too. Several shelves were dedicated to printed theses and academic papers on the subject.

“No. It wasn’t me. It was Joo Gyeongchan who was obsessed.”

“Joo Gyeongchan—as in your uncle?”

Joo Gyeongchan was the older brother of Chairman Joo Wanchan, and biological father of Joo Junghan and Joo Taehan.

“Yeah.”

Because he was a Non-Ability User, Joo Gyeongchan was pushed out of the Sungan Group’s succession race and only inherited Sungan Pharmaceuticals.

During the Red Lunhua boom, Sungan Pharma had also begun developing a new drug based on it.

“That’s impressive. Even for a company owner, that kind of passion isn’t easy to sustain.”

“It wasn’t about business. It was personal greed.”

Seunghyuk’s tone was icy.

“Personal greed?”

“He convinced himself that if the new drug succeeded and he awakened, he could take over Sungan. And when the research failed, he killed himself.”

“He committed suicide? I thought it was an accident.”

The official story was that Joo Gyeongchan died in a drunk driving incident. That’s what the original novel had said too.

“It was suicide. Not a typical one, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“When the Red Lunhua research collapsed, he drank undiluted extract and had a seizure while driving. They covered it up by calling it a DUI.”

Undiluted Red Lunhua extract was essentially poison.

If he drank that, it meant he either wanted to die—or was willing to risk death for a chance at awakening.

Back then, as the side effects and failures mounted, pharma companies around the world went ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) bankrupt one after another. The public, who had once pinned their hopes on Red Lunhua, turned bitter and angry.

Sungan Pharmaceuticals was a small part of the group overall, but the fact that the chairman’s brother—also its president—had killed himself by drinking Red Lunhua? That couldn’t be allowed to go public. So they lied.

But none of this was in the original story. Even if you know the plot, there’s always a hidden side you don’t see...

“So this house belonged to your uncle?”

“Back then, yeah. But now it’s mine.”

Why had Seunghyuk spent his childhood here? If it was Joo Gyeongchan’s house, wouldn’t it have made more sense for his own children to live here? Or maybe... all three brothers had grown up here together?

I wanted to ask about Junghan and Taehan, but it didn’t seem like a good idea.

In the novel, he and Joo Taehan were enemies, but now he didn’t seem close to Joo Junghan either.

Junghan had lied about Seunghyuk agreeing to a political marriage to get me sent to America—to Texas, where his brother lived.

And Seunghyuk referred to Junghan as “that bastard,” not “my brother.” Clearly, their bad blood ran deep. It was nothing like the original.

“Shall we go?”

“Seunghyuk... Can I read here?”

“Here? It’s all old stuff, you know.”

“I’ve always wanted to read books from this era. They’re impossible to find now.”

After the disastrous fallout from Red Lunhua—including mass casualties and global outrage—the government had banned the sale of all books that promoted it.

Libraries, including those at Ability User Academies, purged them from their shelves.

Even publishers and authors erased all trace of those works, treating them as a shameful stain on their past.

That’s why, even in the best-stocked libraries, books from the Red Lunhua boom were nearly extinct.

“If you want to, go ahead.”

“Thanks.”

Seunghyuk smiled softly and gave my cheek a gentle rub.

***

Ever since I was allowed out of my room, I’d been enjoying a modest degree of freedom.

I still couldn’t leave the mansion, but the building was so large that I didn’t feel caged anymore.

Still... I couldn’t allow myself to get used to this kind of peace.

Every day, I went to the library and read books and papers. There was a wide balcony off to one side.

Maybe Seunghyuk would’ve let me step out onto it. But I never even glanced that way.

I was careful. I didn’t want to give him the slightest glimpse into my true thoughts—to tip him off that I was still thinking of escape. Even when he wasn’t around, I stayed vigilant.

Today, like always, I stacked the table with books, theses, and research files, the carved wood inlay glowing beneath them, and got to reading.

Some of it included Sungan Pharma’s internal experimental data from the Red Lunhua drug development days.

That kind of material had to be confidential. I’d asked Seunghyuk if I was allowed to see it, and he had given me permission without hesitation.

Joo Gyeongchan had always been remembered as a “loser,” an incompetent heir who was pushed aside, then died in disgrace in a supposed DUI.

But the materials he left behind painted a different story.

There were meticulous underlines in the margins, pages filled with personal notes and observations. He hadn’t just bought the books for show—he’d read them all.

He wasn’t some idle playboy. He’d been obsessed with Red Lunhua. To a disturbing degree.

But unlike Gyeongchan’s passion, the books and papers themselves were awful.

“A miracle drug that can raise rankings, matching rates, even trigger awakening...”

Reading this nonsense from self-proclaimed experts filled me with disbelief. These delusions had created so many victims...

I closed a ridiculous title—“Red Lunhua Is the Future!”—and opened the research data from Sungan instead.

“You were here?”

Seunghyuk came up beside me and wrapped his arms around my neck, clinging like a magnet.

“Yeah. There’s a lot of interesting material.”

“Interesting?”

“Yeah. According to this data, Red Lunhua did help increase matching rates a bit.”

Experiments to awaken Non-Ability Users with Red Lunhua had been disastrous. They also tried awakening Betas, with little success—one trial even caused participating Omegas to lose their pheromones entirely.

But it had shown some statistically meaningful results in matching rate experiments. Barely—less than five percent. Still, it was something.

Then again, who would accept that kind of risk for a measly 5% increase?

“Is there really no way to boost matching rates without side effects?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“If there is a way, maybe we could fix your guiding rejection issue.”

“Why would we fix it?”

Even though it was about his own condition, he sounded completely uninterested.

“If it persists, it’s dangerous.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’ll ever need guiding from someone else.”

“Still...”

I’d assumed either his rejection had already healed, or he’d eventually find a new Guide. But... what if he couldn’t? What if no one else could guide him after I left?

“If you’re that worried, just imprint me.”

“...What?”

“Become my Imprint Guide.”

“Imprint...?”

“Yeah. Be my bonded Guide.”

Seunghyuk had talked about imprinting before—but only in the context of Alpha–Omega dynamics.

This was the first time he’d asked me to imprint as his Guide.