The rain fell heavily.
It hissed across Seoul's steel-clad skyline like a whispered threat, thin and cold as it sliced through the night. On the rooftop helipad of the Hyunmi Corporation, thirty stories above the glittering veins of the city, Lee Min-jae stood alone. His tailored charcoal coat clung to him, soaked through, but he didn't flinch. Not from the cold. Not from the fall.
He adjusted his tie, an old habit, not vanity. Every movement was precise, composed, detached. Even now, with the storm above and the empire crumbling below, his mind moved like clockwork, drafting contingencies and running simulations. He had once built dynasties in silence, bought senators like stocks, and reduced rival conglomerates to ash with a smile and a signature.
And now, he was the one being dismantled.
Twenty Minutes Earlier
"You're finished, Min-jae."
The words were smooth, polished like glass, spoken by the very man Min-jae had once plucked from obscurity. His protégé—no, his echo—now sat at the head of the boardroom table, wearing the title of CEO like a crown.
He even smiled the way Min-jae used to: sleek, sterile, soulless.
Outside the glass walls, media drones hovered like vultures scenting blood. Inside, security guards braced beside the doors, unnecessary but symbolic.
"Embezzlement. Market manipulation. Bribery," the new CEO listed off casually. "Quite the portfolio."
Min-jae tilted his head, unbothered. "That's rich, coming from the man whose internship I erased to get him into Harvard."
A visible wince rippled through the board. But it didn't matter. The weight of power had already shifted. He saw it in their eyes, those once-adoring gazes now flicking down to legal statements on glowing screens.
He turned slightly, seeking out Sohee, his assistant of six years.
She didn't look at him.
Silence. That was always the first betrayal.
Ten Minutes Earlier
They thought he would go quietly.
Instead, he walked, unhurried, through the building's private elevator, past the guards, through the lobby where junior staff dared not meet his gaze. The rain greeted him as he stepped out, heavy and unrelenting. Phones buzzed, headlines blazed:
HYUNMI SCANDAL. CEO ON THE RUN. ASSETS FROZEN.
He still had the flash drive. Still had offshore backups in Zurich. Still had time.
Until the message came.
We found the villa in Cyprus. It's gone. Sohee gave it up. They've frozen Zurich too.
A slow exhale escaped his lips.
So that was it.
Everything undone, not by his enemies, but by those he had trained to think like him. Loyalty had never been a requirement, only utility. But now he understood. When you teach them too well, they don't just outgrow you.
They erase you.
Now
He stood at the edge of the Yeongdong Bridge, the Han River swirling below in quiet menace. Behind him, Seoul gleamed, bright, indifferent, hollow. A kingdom of illusions.
"Lee Min-jae!"
A voice shouted from the rain. Police, perhaps. Or the press.
He turned, just enough. A drone hovered nearby, lens blinking red.
"Don't run," the voice urged. "Come in peacefully. We can talk terms."
Min-jae smiled.
Not out of sadness.
Not out of fear.
Just tired.
The rain blurred the city into watercolor smears. Wind tugged gently at his coat, as if to coax him forward. He looked down at the river, not with dread, but with clarity.
No courtrooms. No disgrace parade. No slow public crucifixion by people who owed him everything.
He had built himself from nothing.
He would not let them carve him apart.
He whispered to no one:
"Next time… no partners."
And then he jumped.
The cold hit first. Then the silence.
The world above vanished the moment his body broke the surface of the Han River. Water rushed over him, swallowing him whole. The sounds of sirens and voices disappeared, replaced by the heavy, muted pressure of the deep.
Min-jae sank.
His coat, soaked through, dragged him downward like an anchor. He didn't fight it. He didn't move. His eyes stayed open, watching the blue-green blur around him fade into darker shades. A few bubbles escaped his lips. His lungs began to ache.
For the first time in years, there was nothing to fix. No move to make. No one to impress.
Just silence. And sinking.
So this is it, he thought. This is my ending.
Darkness. Then a sharp snap of thunder.
But it wasn't rain anymore. It was mud. And cannon fire.
Smoke. Screams. The iron stench of blood. And the pain of something else, a body too heavy, too raw, too alien.
He was choking on dirt, not water.
A horse screamed nearby. Boots thudded past. Muskets cracked.
And just above him... A leather-bound book hovered in the air like it was waiting.
Its cover was black, scorched at the corners. The sigil of an ouroboros—a serpent devouring its tail—glimmered faintly in red ink that looked too much like blood.
The book creaked open, pages riffling like they were caught in wind only it could feel.
Letters bloomed in glowing script across the page.
To the one abandoned, and left to drown,
Thy war is yet unfinished.
Lee Min-jae, henceforth Captain Alistair Peregrine Finchley.
Status: Disgraced. Relocated. Unexpectedly alive.
Profession: Officer, 5th Dragoon Guards (allegedly competent).
Condition: Morally compromised; spine partially intact.
Immediate Perils: Russian artillery, reputation in ruin, pending court martial.
If one must retreat, ensure it is remembered as strategy.
Let thy cowardice serve a greater calculus.
This contract is now sealed beneath oath, fire, and circumstance.
To falter is death. To forget is treason.
Min-jae blinked. Then ducked just in time to avoid losing his head.
"...What the hell…?"
He staggered to his feet, grabbed the saber beside him, and ran.
Mud exploded behind him.
"Fall back! FALL BACK!" a soldier screamed, voice hoarse and blood-spattered.
Finchley or Lee Min-jae, no, whatever he was now stumbled into a staggered jog, heart pounding, sword hanging awkwardly in his left hand. His body felt foreign, taller, broader, heavier. His boots were soaked, his coat torn at the collar, and his scalp ached beneath a rain-drenched officer's cap.
The ledger still floated beside him, flipping pages faster than any book should.
His boots slid in the mud as he darted past a broken cannon, heart hammering in his chest. The screams of dying men chased him, but something else was beginning to claw at him too...something not his own.
A sharp pain bloomed in his temple.
Then it hit.
A rush of images. Emotions. Voices that were too loud and too close. A child crying over a portrait. A woman in a blue dress turning away in silence. A general's hand slamming down a discharge letter. Gold epaulettes stripped from a uniform. Men whispering behind his back.
Coward. Useless. Unfit to command.
He staggered, nearly fell.
He wasn't just inside Finchley's body. He was being buried alive under his grief.
Faces, names, betrayals. Every humiliation carved into this man's soul came flooding in, demanding to be remembered. A dishonored courtship. A best friend's letter of denouncement. Orders rewritten behind his back. And the final disgrace—abandoned by his regiment after trying to stop a suicidal charge.
Lee Min-jae gasped, clutching his head. His own betrayal still burned fresh, but this... this was something deeper. Older. Finchley had died long before the battlefield claimed him.
He had lived knowing he was branded a coward, and yet still showed up for the next war.
He looked around at the trenches, at the dead and dying. The weight of two lives pressed into his ribs.
"Get up, Captain!" someone shouted nearby.
Min-jae looked at the young soldier struggling to drag a wounded comrade. A boy. Barely shaving.
Finchley had known his name. Tommy. From Kent. Min-jae didn't know how, but the knowledge came all the same.
Tommy had trusted him once.
Min-jae's breath caught. His instincts screamed to run, to survive. But Finchley's memories pulled at his spine with something else.
Obligation.
Guilt.
He turned, teeth clenched, and sprinted back through the slush toward the boy.
"Get him over the ridge!" Min-jae shouted.
Tommy's eyes widened. "Captain?"
"Now!"
Together they heaved the wounded soldier up the incline. Another volley of musket fire cracked above them, spitting dirt and blood into the air.
They made it behind a half-shattered carriage.
Tommy collapsed, panting. "You came back…"
Min-jae didn't answer right away. He stared down at his own trembling hands. Not his hands. Finchley's hands.
But maybe that didn't matter now.
He looked at the ledger. Its pages stilled.
Emotional Sync Achieved.
Residual Memory Integration: 72%.
Survival Probability: Adjusted.
Updated Status: Unstable but Active.
Objective: Earn Loyalty. Rewrite the Story.
Min-jae smirked faintly.
So Finchley had been used, just like he had. Tossed aside. Rewritten by men with cleaner reputations and dirtier hands. Different battlefield. Same story.
"Get some rest, Tommy," he said, voice low. "I'll handle what's next."
He stood, saber gripped tighter now. His breath came easier. The panic was gone.
The first plan was simple: survive this war. And to do that, there was only one move left.
Retreat.
He smirked.
"Let history call me a coward—just not a dead one."
A bullet whizzed past his ear. Someone screamed nearby, and a soldier collapsed into the trench beside him, face half gone.
"God!"
Reflexively, Finchley ducked low and scrambled for cover behind a pile of corpses and sandbags. He tried to breathe, but his chest wheezed like a dying bellows.
"Sir!"
A young private slid beside him, barely eighteen and shaking. "Captain Finchley, the flank's breaking. They say you're ordering retreat?"
Finchley blinked.
This was it, wasn't it? The moment. The accusation. The history books would scream "COWARD." This was the infamous decision that would ruin this man's life—and now his.
He could stand and charge forward like a hero and die in five seconds flat.
Or…
He could retreat and save lives.
Finchley nodded once, firmly. "We pull back. Reroute through the southeast ridge and signal the field surgeon to prep the wagons."
"But, sir, the general said—"
"The general isn't here," he snapped. "I am."
He locked eyes with the boy. "If you want to die for glory, charge the cannons. If you want to drink brandy tomorrow, fall back with me."
And he turned, mud-slick, grimy, wheezing, and retreated.
Later that night…
Silence blanketed the camp like ash. The guns had stopped.
Captain Alistair Finchley sat alone on a crate outside the battered surgeon's tent. His coat was torn. His boots had dried with mud crusted into the laces. His saber lay across his knees, untouched.
Inside his tent, the ledger hovered, glowing faintly by candlelight.
⚜ Battle Ledger — After-Action Report ⚜
Strategic Withdrawal Initiated (Unsanctioned)
Casualties Sustained: Twelve souls consigned to memory and mud
Lives Preserved: Thirty-eight, presently breathing
Acquired Spoils:
One Ottoman officer's compass (slightly bloodied)
A silver hip flask (contents unknown; presumed undrinkable)
Pouch of narcotics (opium, battlefield grade)
Reputational Standing:
Designation: "The Coward of Crimea"
Status: Unofficial, yet distressingly persuasive
Dissemination: Spreading like trench rot
Forthcoming Directive:
Present thyself for martial scrutiny.
Finchley ran a hand through his damp red hair and exhaled slowly.
"Same system, different battlefield," he muttered. "And this one drinks laudanum instead of coffee."
He stood up, squinted toward the dying firelight of the camp, and stretched his aching neck.
The soldiers wouldn't meet his gaze.
Behind one tent, he overheard them whispering.
"He ran."
"We should've charged."
"They say he's half-French. Explains the retreat."
"Coward."
"But I'm alive, ain't I?"
Finchley didn't argue.
He simply pulled a cigar from someone else's coat pocket, struck a match, and watched the sparks flicker in the breeze.
"Let them talk," he murmured.
"I'm not dying for an empire that can't balance its own ledgers. I am going to retire."
He took a long drag on the cigar, let the smoke curl like strategy from his lips.
He glanced at the hovering ledger.
[Court Martial Pending...]
---