Seokjin and the Heirs of the Korean Miracle - BOOK 1 ✔

Prologue : the rich boy and the poor boy

Two 7-year-old boys were in the immaculately maintained garden of the huge property. Beside them, an old man, sitting on a small wooden stool, took care of the rosebushes and kept a discreet eye on the children playing behind his back.

His grandson, a child with slightly curly brown hair, was playing football, juggling with unparalleled dexterity for a child of his age. His scratched knees and his clothes – blue shorts and a white t-shirt that was not very white from dragging in the dirt – torn in many places showed that he was used to fall while playing. But he didn't mind as long as he could play freely. A large, candid smile split his beautiful face as he counted the number of juggles and proudly approached the number of one hundred, his eyes continuously glued to the ball.

The other boy, a dark-haired child with slicked-back hair, delicate side-parted hairstyle and luxurious new clothes – a white silk shirt and linen short panties – with no holes in them, didn't have the same happy expression as the first boy. He had a face just as beautiful, but not his candor, as if he hadn't been given the chance to be a child, and he looked at the other boy enviously. He did not know how to play ball like the other boy and the latter had often offered to teach him how to play. But even if he would have liked to learn from him, his pride commanded him to take over the other because they were not equals. After all, the boy was his.

"Give me the ball," he ordered roughly, briefly catching the gardener's attention with his virulence.

The old man knew the child's irritable temper. He was there officially to watch over him, but it was more for his grandson that he worried when he was with the son of his employers. He didn't find it surprising that the boy in the silk shirt didn't have many friends: he wasn't very friendly with any people.

The gardener also knew that if there was one person this child could have fun with without fear of losing his friendship despite his bad temper, it was his grandson who had a naturally sociable temperament. He was never offended by the harsh tone and the meanness he could receive: he was used to it. When he heard his grandson laugh at the other boy's request, the old man, reassured, turned around and resumed his work, cutting the damaged branches of the rosebushes using his secateurs.

"Try to take it from me!" his grandson exclaimed as he stopped juggling the ball, happy to be able to play with the other.

The brunette threw himself on him to take the ball from him but he easily avoided it by dribbling and even giving himself the opportunity to pass the ball under his legs in a small bridge. The other felt humiliated seeing the happy smile that appeared on his face and his crystalline laugh sung in his ears, and turned red with shame.

He wanted to play his way and above all, he wanted to win: there was no question of losing to someone who was inferior to him. But he boy with the torn clothes never let him win. He must believe that he absolutely had to flaunt the only thing he did better than him. He couldn't bear it.

"Stop it," he told him as he still couldn't intercept the ball with his feet.

"I don't want to," the little football player laughed in the most beautiful way, continuing to run around him with his ball, happier than ever.

This enraged the other. Since when did he have the right to argued what he said? His decisions were absolute, even his parents knew it, everyone knew it. How could this child consider that he could do it? He had to punish him.

While the other had returned to his solitary juggling, he frantically turned his head and found, placed in the grass behind the stool on which the gardener was sitting, the small secateurs used to shear roses. He discreetly grabbed it and slowly came back to the other boy who hadn't seen this action, absorbed in his game.