"10 billion after taxes. Honestly, I’d like to just pile on much more while I’m at it, but the kid scares easily. He’d freak out about it being a burden, so for now just that much… Then the things he’s been agonizing over would be resolved, and this miserable worrying would end too."
"…Huuh. I see…."
So it wasn’t just 10 billion — it was 10 billion after taxes.
Even with that point clarified, he was still so dumbfounded he kept going huuuh-huuuh, and Cha Muyoung lost patience and snapped.
"Haa… you’re loud. Are you a seal? Stop going huuuh-huuuh."
"…Hey, that’s really harsh…."
Cursing the license he’d gleefully accepted back when he was drunk on the prestige of finally becoming a professional after long, tedious studying — when Cha Mu had proposed, "Be my personal lawyer" (the license here read as "curse") — Park Minho pressed his throbbing temple.
"Fine, say I’m a seal. Then explain it again, in more detail, so even a seal can understand and accept it?"
Setting aside the particulars of a dominant alpha third-generation chaebol, Cha Muyoung was the most fastidious and inscrutable bastard among everyone Park Minho knew.
Hearing how that lunatic had devoured that tiny kid all this time, how things had gotten tangled, and how clueless that poor kid was through it all, Park Minho once again cursed, with all his heart, his past self for signing on as Cha Muyoung’s legal counsel.
But what was done was done.
For now, he pulled up the standard contract template on his tablet as his client demanded and held it out. He was about to explain actual cases of special contract marriages from other chaebol families and inform him that the highest dowry on record was around 1 billion — when Cha Muyoung, scanning the contract first, had his expression rot terrifyingly.
"THIS is the standard?"
"That’s what I’m telling you. What, what’s bothering you now…?"
"Are you kidding? Even a quick glance shows it’s packed with clauses disadvantageous only to the Eul."
"Ah… well, that can’t be helped. Obviously the side receiving the money has more to abide by than the side giving it, right?"
"You call this shit legal…? Isn’t something seriously fucking wrong with the world?"
"Excuse me, third-generation chaebol dominant alpha CEO Cha Mu. Since when have you cared so tenderly about the Euls?"
"Cut the crap and hand me a pen. There’s no way with a contract like this."
Muyoung beckoned with his hand, demanding the stylus as if it were his own tablet. Park Minho let out a hollow laugh but expertly produced his dedicated stylus and handed it over, and Muyoung, brow deeply furrowed, began tearing through the contract’s clauses one by one.
"What, why are you even fixing stuff like that?"
"Seo Eunwon would feel bad reading it. He’s marrying me AND bearing my child — what do you mean, Eul?"
That the very first thing — flipping the client to "Eul" and the entrusted party to "Gap" —was, relatively speaking, cute, practically adorable, was something Park Minho would only realize a little later. And the assisted-reproductive-technology clause he’d quickly and tactfully added to suit the man with omega aversion and mysophobia — Muyoung scratched it out with harsh strokes, and what he said, with the most serious face in the world, as he revised it, was quite the spectacle.
"Direct sexual intercourse," "sexual relations," "sex"?…
Then, in the clause addressing the entrusted party "Gap’s" residence during the contract period, he boldly changed the location to something like "the Eul’s home:".
And watching him write out the detailed clauses at practically a confinement level — "just stay quietly at home" — was, for a legal professional, truly enough to leave him speechless and dumbfounded.
"Well, CEO Cha. As your lawyer, might this humble one offer a few words of careful counsel regarding the current situation?"
"Go ahead."
"Hey, Cha Muyoung, you right now—"
"Your tone suddenly got cocky."
"Don’t act up, just listen. I’m saying this as your friend. No matter that this is a dowry-paying contract on the alpha’s side, if you hand over a contract written like this, you’d have nothing to say even if you got arrested. Who in the world writes something like this into a special marriage contract? What, have sex every day until natural pregnancy is achieved through unlimited attempts…? It’s disgusting, disgusting… and wait, isn’t the kid already pregnant in the first place?"
"Just in case. It’s not 100 percent. More like 99.5 percent."
"…And why set a curfew on top of that. He has to be home by 7 PM, no exceptions…? Advance notice and accompaniment for going out? This is supposed to be a marriage contract where you just exchange money without love — why the hell do you need things like that…" *Why wouldn’t there be love between me and Seo Eunwon?*
Muyoung was about to retort, but ended up only chewing his lip, and after a long silence answered.
"…Then should I just leave the kid out roaming around this dangerous world?"
"If anyone else saw this, you’d be on the front page of the papers. Even if a real husband did this, people would call it a sponsorship contract from a nymphomaniac obsessive lunatic —no, a confinement contract. You’d get called a perverted freak in a heartbeat."
"…"
With Cha Muyoung pressing his lips shut, having nothing to say back, Park Minho let out a deep sigh.
"No. First, let’s talk about the 10 billion won after taxes. Do you really want to pay that much in taxes? To hand over a full 10 billion through that contract, 20 billion has to leave your account. Why waste money like that?"
"Money doesn’t matter."
"I know you’re rich enough to do all kinds of crazy shit with money… but still, if there’s a way to save, why not? I think if you just change one single idea, everything gets solved."
"How?"
"Why put the word ‘contract’ on it at all? What you want is just the easy road, nothing more."
"Tell me more."
"Look, if you put together all these insane conditions you wrote down, it comes down to this. You want to live in the same house as Seo Eunwon, nag him a little, keep tabs on his schedule, have sex — er, relations — with him every single day without fail, make a cute baby and give birth and raise it together, all lovey-dovey with love. Right?"
"…Right."
"In our society, Mr. Cha Muyoung. Since long, long ago, we’ve decided to call that kind of relationship… just ‘marriage.’"
"What kind of special contract marriage is that? So just write up the money part like a prenuptial agreement. All you need on paper is a single marriage registration. Don’t even breathe the words ‘special marriage’ — just scribble up a prenuptial agreement, put a ring on it, and propose. Then everything’s solved, okay? Then you don’t even need to hand over the money."
"Once you’re married, you hand over that enormous black card of yours. And the 10 billion you’re dying to give — later, if you ever divorce, you can handle it then as alimony or property division, no problem at all. Right? While the marriage lasts, you just take care of whatever money he needs yourself."
"…So what you’re saying is, get ‘really’ married?"
"Exactly. You were going to announce the marriage publicly anyway, for the company’s image and the family’s dignity. It looks way cleaner to say you overcame the family gap and status difference and married for the love of the century but divorced over personality differences or whatever, than to let the rumor go around that you brought home a poor omega, paid for him, and had him bear your child. And later, when you remarry, it’ll be better for your image as a divorced alpha too."
"I’m not worried about that. I’m never divorcing or remarrying."
"…Yeah, well, that’s your business… anyway, what do you think of my proposal? Isn’t this way better?"
"Of course, convincing Seo Eunwon, not you, is going to be the bigger job."
Park Minho reached for his water bottle to wet his parched throat after laying out his airtight solution — and froze at the sight of Cha Muyoung.
Cha Muyoung’s eyes were sparkling — no, gleaming with madness — completely different from a moment ago, and it sent chills down his spine.
"…Why are your eyes like that?"
"What’s wrong with my eyes?"
"You look like you’re thinking something seriously sinister."
"No, I was just thinking I chose my lawyer friend really well." Cha Muyoung said it with a bright smile. In the fifteen-plus years he’d known him, it was a smile Park Minho had never once seen — utterly radiant and utterly creepy.
Park Minho creaked his neck around to gaze through the window at the secretarial office. He could see Seo Eunwon’s back, head still bowed in misery.
Seo Eunwon, with whom he’d never even shared a meal thanks to Cha Muyoung’s overprotection and ironclad guarding, but with whom he’d somehow built an inner closeness without realizing it. A thick guilt washed over him — had he just shoved that poor little lamb into the middle of an antlion pit with its jaws gaping open, the demon named ‘Cha Muyoung’?
"Don’t look at Seo Eunwon. You’ll wear him out."
"Yeah… I was just apologizing in my head." But the feeling didn’t last long.
Well… what could he do.
He was Cha Muyoung’s lawyer, not Seo Eunwon’s, and all he’d done was give professional advice in the most efficient, most legal direction to protect his client’s assets and reputation.
"Then shall I prepare the documents in this direction, sir?" Having neatly finished the urgent quest thrown at him by the most difficult and temperamental human being he knew, Park Minho decided to think only of the satisfaction and sense of accomplishment, and smiled the smile of a salesman steeped in capitalism.
Eunwon’s eyes went round when he realized the stack of documents he’d been handed after waiting so long was not a ‘special marriage contract.’
A ‘prenuptial agreement and marriage registration form’?
With no idea what was going on, he could only blink, and then Park Minho — who had already persuaded Cha Muyoung once with astonishing logic and eloquence — stepped forward again.
"It will be announced to the public that the two of you married after a passionate romance, born of your special relationship since childhood and the affection and love that naturally built up over that time."
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