CHAPTER 182: CHAPTER 181. THE NEXT HUNTING SESSION

It didn’t take a day for the streams of articles to be written and published. Hell--didn’t even need to wait until the exhibition was closed for the first day.

By the time the chairman and Vivian arrived home, almost all media outlets had written something about it, and there was no way to stop them. After all, it happened in a public place. The one who might be able to stop the news was Mirae, but from the look of it, Chairman Kang Jun had no intention to do so.

More than the news about Mason’s violent reaction to Denise breaking their engagement, people flocked to this kind of more dramatic family drama. It sounded like something out of a daily television series that mothers and grandmothers loved to watch during the day, and people were tuning in with all kinds of theories. The internet, especially the social media influencers and content creators, was having a field day.

People were wondering what the real story was, and the financial world was wondering what the future of HS Group would be. Who would be the heir now? Could they really trust the management of this seemingly chaotic family? The stock price of HS, in turn, was fluctuating.

With so much news highlighting the art exhibition as where the drama was unfolding, curious people came over to have that ’it happened here’ moment. The staff did not get rid of the space prepared for Theo, leaving it bare without any artworks so people could compare it to the one in the recordings. But since they were already there, the curious people also looked around the gallery to see other artists’ artworks, which in turn boosted the event’s popularity.

In short, everything that Sarah already predicted.

As expected, Mason’s stuff was sent to his mother’s place, and he was banned from coming to the mansion--so was the chairman’s first wife. There was no more alimony and allowance being paid, although they couldn’t do anything about the shares the first wife legally had when he was married to the chairman.

Still, the dividends wouldn’t be enough to support three people who used to live lavishly. Naturally, the exhibition committee canceled Theo’s participation, and from what Sarah heard, it seemed like Theo came to live with the first wife.

How Mason and Theo could live together after that assault in public, Sarah had no idea. Nor did she care, for that matter.

Her attention lay on something else. Something she had been put on the internet for a while: the allegation against the entertainment complex industry.

She scrolled through the news and social media, looking for any coverage on the construction site. There were not many, but they circulated where it mattered; within the algorithm of people who cared about preserving history and loved to condemn big corporations. The petition to investigate ended up in a clerk’s trash can, but it made those concerned about it turn into internet sleuths digging up oast controversy from both involved companies.

Some of the people who did that were Sol’s crew, and they were good at anonymously writing sharp, hateful comments that got into the radar of an entertainment company’s employee doing overwork screening on what the public thought about them.

That employee, upon reading the sudden influx of insults despite none of their affiliated entertainers’ involvement in an ongoing scandal, had to do some investigation to find the root of this hatred.

And that was how, on a certain afternoon when the executives were gathering at the hill to check on the progress of the project, Henry’s secretary came running in panic.

"Sir, you have to see this!" the man said agitatedly while hurriedly shoving a tablet in front of Henry.

"What?"

Henry frowned and read what was shown to him in annoyance, but the more he read, the deeper his brows furrowed. It got the others--the Daesung executive whom Sarah saw inside the club--to approach curiously. In the end, Henry widened his eyes and gave the Daesung executive the table with a pale face.

"What the hell?!" the executive gripped the tablet hard when he got to the part about the burial place of soldiers and the pictures of it. "How could people take a picture of--is there a mole within the worker?!"

"How would I know?" Henry snapped--but much more timidly. "But more importantly, is this true?"

The executive turned toward his junior, who was in charge of watching over the worker while the project was ongoing. There hadn’t been any construction yet, merely cutting out the trees and cleaning up the soil before digging up the land to build the foundation.

"I...don’t know, Hyung-nim..." the junior shook his head. "We haven’t dug everything yet, but I swear there’s nothing like this where we’ve already dug."

The cleaning had just finished last week, and they had only been digging in one side of the hill where they were planning to build the front office of the entertainment complex.

"We should check this first," Henry bit his lips, finally able to think clearly after his initial panic subsided. "Maybe it’s just people trolling to get us confused. You know how good people are at editing photos nowadays."

"Right," the executive nodded, handing over the tablet to Henry’s assistant who received it in relief. "Let’s get to this site--hey, call the leader! Where is this site exactly?"

Studying the pictures in those articles, they carefully tried to decipher where it was. Workers were sent to search the other side of the hill that hadn’t been dug, and in the end, someone found a place where it seemed to have been dug before and covered up again.

When they dug the place again, what they were worried about came true: it was indeed a burial place. They dug wider, to see if it was only a regular grave. But the more they dug, the more they found how massive it was, and they hadn’t even found the end of it.

It was big, bigger than just a regular forgotten cemetery, and there was no way it could be solved with just a regular exhumation.

"Shit..."

Henry grabbed his hair in panic. "Damn it--what should we do now?"

"What do you mean? Of course, we should cover this up! Do you want to stop this project now?" the executive clicked his tongue. "Hurry and put the soil back!"

The workers, despite feeling worried about the curses of their ancestors, were more worried about getting beaten up by the bosses, so they hurriedly returned the land to how it looked before, as if nothing had happened.

Still, Henry couldn’t help but groan anxiously. "This means someone is trying to sabotage us, right?"

"It’s fine," Daesung’s executive replied while swatting the air, as if swatting their worry. "I don’t think people take this seriously--I mean, no authorities had contacted us this far, right?"

"R-right," Henry bit his nails, nodded even while looking visibly nervous. "And we can always bribe the city council or the media."

This was just like any celebrity scandal--there were many ways to bury it in obscurity.

"Good; money always solves everything," the executive laughed, the only cheery sound reverberating around the hollow hill. "Meanwhile, I’ll send some of our people to take care of the journalist writing this shit. Oh, hey--" he snapped his fingers to his junior and the chief in charge of construction. "Find out how these pictures could be taken. If there’s a mole, find them and bring them to me."

"Yes, Hyung-nim!"

Contrary to their expectation, however, Henry and the others--and by that the rest of the country--were greeted by not just pictures, but also the videos of them digging around the hill and finding out the burial site but immediately covering it. The videos even came with their voices, a damnable conversation about hiding the fact from the public and bribing the authorities.

This time, it wasn’t only written by a small-time journalist in what seemed like an essay. People had their fun tearing down Lee Mason and HS for a few days, and started to get bored. The media turned to these circulating videos, and those who had a grudge or simply wanted to take down those two companies fanned the flames and made sure the fire spread.

Far enough until the local residents and activists started to stage a protest at the foot of the hill.

"Fuck! Where did this picture even come from?!" Daesung’s executives threw the morning newspaper on the table. If it ended in a printed press, then it would already reach the Boss--err...the CEO. He glared at the junior in charge of investigating. "Don’t fucking tell me you haven’t found the mole yet?!"

"I...I’m sorry, Hyung-nim..." the junior bowed deeply. "We’ve investigated everyone, but no one has acted suspiciously. We also looked around for any hidden cameras, but we haven’t found any--"

"Then look harder, you piece of shit!" the executive smacked the back of the junior’s head, so hard he stumbled forward and crashed against the table.

The junior staggered back up and bowed profusely. "Y-yes, Hyung-nim!"

Henry, who hadn’t even had the time to calm down from the articles before, paced back and forth inside the office. "Ugh...what should we do now?"

"Just keep doing what we’ve been doing," the executive clicked his tongue, swiping his hair back that had been messed up by his outburst. "Protest is useless if the authorities do nothing. We can just say it’s not true and that those videos are an edit or AI shit."

Henry bit his nails. "What if...what if they’re asking to see it themselves?"

"Are you dumb?" the executive rolled his eyes. "As long as the police in our side, no one can go inside the site."

"R-right," Henry nodded nervously. "Right..."

As if laughing at the fake resolve they had in hand, the phone in Henry’s hand vibrated as a call came in. Henry received it in panic before even checking who the caller was, and a familiar voice of the girl he used to go on a date with blasted the room.

[Henry! What the hell is this?!]