Donner supposed they were more similar than he liked to admit.

As a child, he, too, had few inhibitions when it came to humanity and using them for his own goals. Those aspirations were predictably childish, but the point stood.

This also meant she was similar to her father.

Ji-hun. He was not looking forward to that meeting. The man was as close to insanity as it was possible to be without crossing the threshold. He truly cared for no one but himself.

In fact, in those moments, the man in question was engaged.

Not for love of the foolish female, certainly, but for love of her money. A silly girl, taken with his charm. The daughter of a chaebol and in line to take his place as her equally foolish brothers squandered everything they had. This company would not last long with any of them at the helm, and their father was almost as bad as they were. There was time to marry the girl, convince her to close up shop, and sell before the whole thing was worthless.

He wasn’t sure what he would do with her yet. He supposed it would be easiest for her to die. A small plane accident should do nicely. He would leave the stage after giving a tearful farewell to his dearly beloved, and turn away into hiding because he could not bear the world without her.

There was nothing important in this life and Helios was gone, dead they assumed, though he wasn't sure about that. Dead or alive, what else did he have to do?

He didn’t follow the man out of loyalty or any such bullshit. It was a way to pass the hours and his plans were grander than those of anyone else at the time. More complex.

Helios wasn’t planning to do things simply. While he was powerful enough to seize control, he was more subtle in his execution and that was what interested Ji-hun. He knew his own psychosis and embraced it. Why should he change? When all of life was meaningless.

He operated under the belief that you got what you took because it was demonstrably true. There were a lucky few born to wealth and importance, but as for the rest of the world, they would have nothing if they did not work for it. Many grew content in their poverty, complicit even.

He never did.

His mother was one who accepted her lot in life and did nothing to change her circumstances, not even for her son. She worked herself to death with a cleaning company. Days and nights she mopped the floors of executive buildings and she was not young or pretty enough to tempt a man. In the end, she left the world barely out of debt and mere months after he’d moved out to live on his own. He supposed her sense of duty kept her going through the years, but nothing more.

The woman did not love him, far from it, but he was her obligation. She was put out by her own family after falling pregnant, herself a first-generation immigrant, by a high school lover who could not cope with the situation and ran away. She dropped out of school herself to start working.

He wondered when he was young why she did not give him away. He never asked, so he would never know. She did nothing as romantic as leaving behind a diary or a final note. She didn’t even have a will.

Her thoughts were never known to him, nor her feelings.

Perhaps that was why he could not find even a semblance of remorse for anything he did.

This world meant nothing and the people in it were worthless. Their lives were dirt, his own included. He would live as he wanted because he would die and none of it would matter.

His mother worked herself to skin and bone to pass in the night, alone, unaware that all were equal in death.

Greed, sloth, virtue. None of it mattered.

It would be better if it all ended sooner rather than later.

The first time he truly wished for that, for the end of all things, a man dressed all in black appeared before him. He thought the stranger Death, but he claimed not to be and though he would not say exactly what he was, or where he was from, he had an air of… Not decay, as that would require something to exist. He felt the void. Soulless eyes.

Ji-hun once thought himself soulless but knew now that wasn’t true. He chose to put his soul aside. The pieces of him that should have concern for others, that should recognize his own actions as wrong, were painted over and burned.

He didn’t know what he lived for but intended to live until he could no longer. He hoped that man would bring with him the end of all things before death claimed his life.

What he offered was a promise.

“Make her ask me to end it and I will.”

“Her?”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“You will know her eventually.”

No description was offered and the man, who he suspected didn’t truly exist, disappeared as silently as he arrived.

That was a year ago and he’d yet to meet the mysterious ‘her’. He did not expect to meet anyone at all. As real as that strange encounter felt, it was also possibly a drug-induced hallucination. He didn’t normally experience effects like that, or any at all anymore, but the Dust could have caused it if it was impure.

Created by crushed crystal and high priced, Dust was not for the faint of heart. Literally. It could cause cardiac arrest.

It was the only thing capable of making him feel anything at all.

Everything about life was numb and nothing meant shit. He could push someone into oncoming traffic and it wouldn’t matter. Everyone was pond scum.

She was talking to him again and he was ignoring her again and she was too stupid to see it for what it was again. He didn’t know how she could be so blind.

Perhaps it was her rather low opinion of herself. She was never trusted with anything in the family and she was not expected to do more than hold a ceremonial position in the company. Maybe she would be allowed to approve the color of a handbag. She’d whimpered to him, drunk and weepy, about how favored her elder brother was. That was his in. Having secured himself a place at a swanky party, after setting his sights on the poor, lost spirit, he was strategically within her sights. It didn’t take much. She just had to believe he cared and she was desperate for someone to care.

The fact that he had personal wealth put her at ease; it meant he couldn’t possibly be after hers and that false security worked all too easily with the in-laws, as well. He had his accounts in order, they appeared legal enough, and he had contacts the family could use to form new connections overseas.

They were not magic and were effortlessly suckered into his plan.

By the end of it, they would be selling every last asset and he would be hailed a hero for bringing the corruption to light.

Even he wasn't sure how many would fall with them. They were entangled with bribery and fraud. Politicians, high-ranking intelligence officials, law enforcement, were all embroiled in one way or another. He was under no illusion that those at the very top would tumble, they had too many peons at their disposal for that, but the chaos would reign fire.

There were improperly built buildings, already full of residents, backed by funding from the corporation. Supposedly a charitable outreach. The builders were shotty, the fire alarms didn’t work and neither did the sprinklers, and yet it passed inspection. Somehow.

Kick-backs.

And what if there was a fire? What if the escape doors were blocked by junk left in the stairwell? What if the children cried and screamed and the cameras rolled as smoke billowed black chalk into the blue morning sky?

They were using secondhand materials and child labor in other countries. Sweatshops full of preteens working sixteen-hour days to produce so-called luxury goods. Hand-sewn. Their foolish families believed lies and sent them away, thinking they were giving them a chance to be educated. They were sold a bill of goods. Dazzled by the promises that their children could attend school and participate in an apprenticeship program that would pay for their education.

Their reality was much bleaker. They hungered and bled. They lived where they worked. They were fed rice mush and wilted greens. There were bars on the windows and fencing on the rooftop.

They could not escape. Not even by death.

To expose these socially unacceptable practices would end the family of his pretend lover, but she would be dead by then and would never know. He would even clear her name. Claim she was too terrified to speak, though the truth was she didn’t care.

Her shoes were made by slaves, her food discarded half-eaten, the wrapper left on the sidewalk. She whined and fussed and clung and pouted. She was sure she was the most unfortunate thing the world had ever seen.

He hated her.

He hated her family.

He hated the slaves.

He hated himself.

When he released the evidence there would be an upheaval. Would it topple the government? No. In fact, it would hardly do anything.

After a short time of outrage, the public would forget. They would never consider where their own items of status came from, whose hands had to bleed for the stupid piece of plastic their rotten brat would throw and break. They would never care to know how their habits furthered the slave trade in places they could not, or would not, see. They wanted their chocolate, their lipstick and diamonds. Their homes would not be complete without woven baskets, faux fiddle leaf figs, and wax fruit.

They would not think about where it all came from and what it all truly meant. The cost of it. Not the number on the website, that they would disapprove of as they searched for an even lower price, but the human toll.

What was that forty dollars worth?

Not that he cared.

He wasn’t interested in moral change, no matter the scandal it wouldn’t last. It was the uproar he wanted, fleeting though it may be, and in a little while he would seek to cause another maelstrom because there was nothing else to do to pass the time.

“Sorry, darling,” he said. “It looks like you’ll have to leave ahead of me.”

“What?! No way!”

Such a childish way of talking.

“An unexpected conference call,” he lied. A hand to rub her back. She wore a silk, knee-length nightdress. “I’ll be with you a day later.”

He wouldn't.

Newlywed Heiress Dead in Tragic Small Plane Crash

Groom Left Stunned, Missed the Flight Due to a Conference Call!

‘After a stunning wedding, some say the wedding of the century, Lee Ji-na tragically passed as the single passenger, along with the attending crew members, on the way to her honeymoon destination. Her husband of a few short hours, Ji-hun Smith, a Korean-American businessman, is devastated.

“I-There’s no way this can be real.”

His voice cracked and he broke down in sobs as he managed to give one statement to the press.

“The family is asking for privacy at this time,” was the official response to journalists' calls on the family’s company seeking comment. “They are understandably distraught.”

This tragic event has left the whole country reeling.

“It makes me realize how quickly everything can change,” said a woman, who preferred not to be named. She was interviewed on the street as the news was shown on the big screens of Seoul high-rises.’

Some men were determined to watch the world burn.