Currently, Joo Seunghyuk was an excellent cook.

In the original, he was a man with not the faintest connection to the “c” in cooking.

Could this also be related to Joo Junghan?

When Joo Junghan began poisoning the food, Joo Seunghyuk realized it and started cooking for himself.

If even someone like the publicly recognized next successor of Seonghan—acknowledged as Chairman Joo’s biological son—had no choice but to prepare his own meals, then the original Joo Seunghyuk would have had no way to cope.

In Guide’s Swamp, Joo Seunghyuk was in complete isolation, and even his exclusive guide, Lee Yeonsu, only ever tried to use him.

On top of that, the original Joo Seunghyuk was a drug addict.

He avoided drugs that affected mana, like Dust, but it was possible that without his knowledge, Joo Junghan mixed in Red Lotus Flame extract.

Maybe his very descent into drugs had something to do with Joo Junghan.

By taking in drugs containing Red Lotus Flame extract through food or narcotics, Joo Seunghyuk’s mana had already been contaminated, and that was why he failed to notice Aaron’s Dust.

Of course, none of this ever appeared in the novel.

But the original never mentioned Joo Seunghyuk’s wretched childhood either.

Just because it wasn’t in the original doesn’t mean it never happened.

It would be more accurate to think that Joo Junghan had prepared everything so discreetly that no one outside noticed.

The Nemershield Necklace, which could raise matching rates by 30%, drew worldwide attention and fetched an astronomical price.

But if a new drug came out that could boost matching rates by an even greater margin, the world would be thrown into chaos.

The stock price of Seonghan Pharmaceutical would hit the upper limit day after day.

Its value could even surpass that of all other Seonghan affiliates combined.

Yet despite knowing that, Joo Junghan did not reveal the existence of the drug.

That meant he hadn’t solved the problem of side effects.

Even Lexington Pharmaceuticals, currently ranked first in the world in Red Lotus Flame research, had not released any new drug containing the extract due to the risks of side effects.

Even if results were promising, if massive side effects occurred as in the 1990s, the company could go bankrupt.

Joo Junghan must have worried about that as well.

Or perhaps the special Red Lotus Flame drug only worked on a very small number of people.

For example, someone with a special constitution like Kim Jun, who recorded unusually high matching rates with every Esper.

The one behind the recent attempt to kidnap Kim Jun was likely Joo Junghan.

He must have wanted to experiment on him with the Red Lotus Flame drug, and when Kim Jun refused, he tried to take him by force.

And he must have made the same attempt in the original.

Joo Junghan proposed to Kim Jun that he could raise his matching rate, and Kim Jun—scorned at the Ability-User Military Academy as an F-rank—succumbed to the temptation.

By the second semester, Kim Jun and Joo Seunghyuk’s matching rate exceeded 90%.

And Joo Seunghyuk, who had suffered under Lee Yeonsu’s disgusting guiding, became fixated on Kim Jun, who showed him such a high rate.

Perhaps this too was not a one-sided obsession on Seunghyuk’s part but a plan from the start.

Joo Junghan might have used the special Red Lotus Flame drug to raise Kim Jun and Joo Seunghyuk’s matching rate, and even awaken Kim Jun as an omega.

In return, he could have demanded—or outright threatened—him to approach Seunghyuk.

In the original, Kim Jun acted differently only toward Joo Seunghyuk.

With others, he was always on the receiving end, but with Seunghyuk, he met him head-on without backing down.

Even under confinement and violence, he never once bowed.

I had thought until now that he acted that way because he was “thick-skinned,” but perhaps he had been given a script by Joo Junghan and was moving according to plan.

It wasn’t cluelessness—it was all deliberate acting.

In Guide’s Swamp, Kim Jun eventually resigned himself to whatever Seunghyuk did, and in the eternal confinement even felt a kind of peace.

Could it be that he accepted that confinement because his guilt over approaching Seunghyuk deliberately and his sense of liberation from Joo Junghan’s threats overlapped?

That guilt might have been the reason why, even after falling in love with Seunghyuk, he never confessed his feelings.

If that assumption was true, then Joo Junghan’s goal was obvious: to diminish Seunghyuk’s abilities as an Esper and weaken his influence within Seonghan.

An Esper as capable as Seunghyuk obtaining a high-matching-rate S-rank Guide was like putting wings on a tiger.

If Lee Yeonsu awakened as an omega and his mana rose, there would be nothing to stop them.

Even if Yeonsu were driven away, if Seunghyuk found another outstanding Guide, it wouldn’t matter.

So Joo Junghan intentionally pushed the F-rank Kim Jun toward Seunghyuk.

No matter how high the matching rate, the limits imposed by rank were absolute.

No matter how outstanding Seunghyuk was, if he continued to receive guiding only from an F-rank, he would find it hard to fully demonstrate his strength.

In the original, when Aaron came to Korea, Joo Junghan sided with Lee Yeonsu, saying he should remain loyal to the one who had guided Seunghyuk for so long.

But wasn’t that actually to use Yeonsu to keep Aaron in check?

After all, forming ties with a world-famous Guide from an S-rank family would boost Seunghyuk’s standing.

Joo Junghan had been keeping him in check for years.

But that in itself was somewhat unnatural.

No matter how capable Seunghyuk was, there were limits to his bloodline.

Without being the chairman’s biological son, seizing the Seonghan Group was, realistically, difficult.

Of course, the original Seunghyuk shattered those realistic limits through his ability, devouring Seonghan at a terrifying pace—but that was when he had already reached adulthood.

As a child, Seunghyuk had nowhere to turn.

Though he had awakened as an S-rank, after years of abuse he was just a child who hadn’t even learned to read Korean, let alone received proper education.

And yet, Joo Junghan must have felt threatened by him even then—to the point of secretly feeding him a drug made from Red Lotus Flame.

Could it be that Joo Junghan had known from the start that Seunghyuk was the chairman’s biological son?

In the original, Joo Junghan was depicted as a benevolent figure who pitied the twisted, warped Seunghyuk.

In the latter half, he even suggested to the chairman that they conduct a genetic test between him and Seunghyuk.

People praised him for making such a suggestion despite knowing it would narrow his own position.

But if Joo Junghan had known the truth from the beginning, the story changes.

He would have been trying to hide it by any means.

But the more time passed, the more Seunghyuk came to resemble his biological father, the chairman, and the chairman had begun to suspect it as well.

Perhaps the chairman had decided to run the genetic test again, and Joo Junghan realized this.

Knowing he could no longer hide it, he might have been the one to bring it up first, pretending to have no interest in the successor’s position.

In the original, Seunghyuk never truly loved Kim Jun until the very end.

And he also bared his fangs toward Joo Junghan, the only person who had treated him kindly.

Maybe that wasn’t because Seunghyuk was a warped lunatic, but because he had known the whole truth.

Piece by piece, I was fitting together the puzzle of the differences between the original and reality when Kang Inho’s voice reached me.

“Yeonsu, we’re here.”

“Huh?”

Startled, I looked up.

At some point, the car had stopped in front of Joo Seunghyuk’s house.

“What were you thinking about that you didn’t even notice we’d arrived?”

“Oh, just...”

“If you’re not feeling well, let’s go back to the hospital.”

“No. I just need to rest at home.”

When I tried to undo my seatbelt, a wave of dizziness made my hand slip.

Kang Inho reached out to help me.

“No, I’ll do it myself.”

I didn’t want kindness from anyone other than Joo Seunghyuk.

I undid the belt on my own and stepped out of the car, but my legs wobbled.

Kang Inho hurried over and supported me.

This, at least, I couldn’t refuse.

With his support, I entered the house and pointed to the living room sofa.

“Here, right here...”

“You should go to the bedroom.”

“I’m fine. But I think I need to take some fever medicine.”

“Got it.”

Kang Inho sat me down on the sofa as I wanted.

“I’ll get you some water.”

“Ah—Inho, sorry, but I have a particular bottled water I drink. Could you get that for me?”

“Where is it?”

“In the basement shooting range. Calypse, green label.”

“All right. Wait here a bit.”

Kang Inho went down the basement stairs.

Calypse was a foreign brand of bottled water famous among ability-users.

But neither I nor Seunghyuk drank it, and of course there was no such bottled water in this house.

Looking for something that didn’t exist would take him time.

I waited until Kang Inho had gone all the way down before rising from the sofa.

Steeling my trembling legs, I climbed the # Nоvеlight # stairs to the second floor.

My thoughts were still only speculation.

And even if every one of them was true, the questions weren’t fully answered yet.

In the original, as part of seizing Seonghan, Seunghyuk pursued a political marriage with Lexington Pharmaceuticals.

But when Kim Jun strongly opposed it, he gave it up.

Was that purely Kim Jun’s will?

Or was it an order from Joo Junghan?

Right now, Joo Junghan was strongly pushing for Seunghyuk’s political marriage.

Was that his true intent?

And who was the real culprit in the Nemershield incident? 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Who ordered Park Geonwoo’s car accident?

Why had Joo Taehan reawakened as an S-rank, unlike in the original?

In fact, I already had a fair idea of the answers to all these questions.

Even the reason why Seunghyuk had been arrested now.

But no matter how certain I felt, it was still speculation based on speculation.

This alone wouldn’t clear Seunghyuk’s name.

I couldn’t explain a theory based on the original novel to anyone else.

To save him, I needed decisive evidence.

I stopped in front of a room on the second floor.

Seunghyuk didn’t care where I went in this house, except for this room—he had strictly forbidden me from entering it.

And if my guess was right, this was where the evidence would be.