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It starts when he returns to Korea.
Brimming with murderous intent toward his good for nothing father, Han Seok strolls out of the terminal, steps languid but purposeful. It’s going to be a glorious return, he will see to that personally. He’s so caught up in his planning that he nearly misses the stares people are giving him, and the way one group of girls seems to keep glancing his way and giggling.
He watches out of the corner of his eye as one of them begins to approach him shyly. It's all he can do to keep from rolling his eyes. It's no secret that he's handsome, but it gets tiring to constantly have people throwing themselves at him. The well worn rejection of her request for his number or whatever is on the tip of his tongue as she reaches him.
"Look-"
"Are you Ok Taecyeon?" Her eyes are practically sparkling as she asks.
He narrows his eyes in confusion.
"Who?"
-
One of the unforeseen side effects of being out of the country for so long is that pop culture has progressed quite a lot without him. And with that progression came the debut of one Ok Taecyeon. Han Seok squints at his computer screen incredulously. The man smiling back from the group photo of the hugely popular idol group 2PM could pass for his twin.
He flicks through the pictures, scoffs at the 2009 outfits in some of them, and starts to feel vaguely unsettled when he reaches a section that’s only pictures of Ok Taecyeon. The unsettled feeling only increases as he scrolls through the idol’s profile. Apparently he also spent time in the US. The similarities are too many, Han Seok almost feels like somehow he’s been robbed. A scowl settles on his face. Having a doppelganger is already annoying enough, but said doppelganger is also more famous and revered than him, as if to add insult to injury. In a fit of annoyance, he slams shut the computer and stalks off to find Han Seo.
Han Seo, in all his obliviousness, has never heard of 2PM. Han Seok ignores him when he asks if he wants any meetings set up at that time, nodding to himself. Right. There’s no way they’re all that popular. This is probably just a one time thing.
-
It is not, in fact, a one time thing. Han Seok stops keeping track at around the 4th week. It seems like almost every other day some giggly teen or middle aged woman would approach him for an autograph, a selfie, a handshake. Usually Han Seok thrives off of attention, but this is mistaken attention, and it makes him feel patronized and less significant than he would like. He gets tired of brushing off the fans, who keep staring after him even after he assures them that no, he is not in fact 2PM’s main rapper Ok Taecyeon, so he starts messing with them. He’s rude to some of them, hoping to sour their image of their idol in their minds, smiling internally as their adoring gazes turn irritated or hurt. Sometimes he plays along, smiling for their photos. He can never give autographs fully correctly, but he tries anyway, laughing to himself as he thinks of the fan finding out much later that their prized autograph is actually a fake.
On one particularly memorable occasion, he pops into a convenience store one morning to get his sugar fix for the day. He’s so engrossed in choosing what selection of gummy bear flavours to buy that he fails to notice the 2PM song blaring on the store’s sound system. Not that he would have recognized it. It’s not like he has paid any attention to 2PM’s music. At all. He reaches the counter, and unloads the gummy bears onto it, pulling out his wallet. The clerk scans the items in bored, practiced motions, only looking up at him as she reads out the price. Well as she begins to read out the price at least, because the words die on her tongue as soon as his face registers fully in her mind.
“Oh my-” her hand flies up to her mouth. Han Seok fidgets in annoyance, card in hand, separated from his gummy bears by that bastard Ok Taecyeon.
Then the clerk lets out an ear shattering scream and launches herself across the counter at him (which, admittedly, is kind of impressive, considering the height of the counter). He barely has time to react before he has an armful of teenage convenience store clerk clinging to him like her life depends on it, half of her still on top of the counter.
“Oppa! You’re my absolute favourite oh my gosh, I can’t believe I get to see you in person with my own eyes, I’m so happy oh my gosh Ok Taecyeon is in my store, I’m hugging Ok Taecyeon, oh my gosh-”
Han Seok has had enough. He pries the girl off him with perhaps more force than is necessary, and levels her with the glare he reserves for people he is genuinely contemplating killing.
“I’m not Ok Taecyeon,” he says, and he leaves no room in his tone for doubt. He watches how her face falls and reddens as she slides back behind the counter. In her excitement she’d crushed half of the gummy bears, and Han Seok feels his anger multiplying under his skin. The girl seems to feel it too, because she starts to tremble a little, before profusely apologizing.
Han Seok would usually say something sharp or threatening, but he’s beginning to get a headache, so he asks her to replace the gummy bears instead, and stands massaging his temples as she hurries to get them. She’s quiet and subdued as she calculates the total, but Han Seok still catches her glancing at him from time to time in disbelief. He gives her a sardonic smile that is too unsettling to be friendly the next time she looks, and she doesn’t do it again after that. He pays for the gummy bears and leaves without another word, irritation still simmering in his veins. He reaches into the bag of gummy bears and pulls out a packet to calm down. It’s the wrong flavour. Han Seok throws the packet into the distance with as much force as he can muster.
Should he just kill Ok Taecyeon? Be done with all this once and for all? He stops and seriously considers the idea for a moment. It wouldn’t be too difficult. The man may be famous, but that doesn’t mean he’s invincible. The aftermath would be a mess, though. Eventually it may be tied back to him, since they have the same face and all, and the secret bosses of big and shameless pharmaceutical companies are more likely to be targeted by hitmen than kpop idols are. And incurring the wrath of millions of people around the world would probably be bad for Babel’s stocks. And he doesn’t want fans mourning the loss of their idol clinging to him on the streets because he looks like him. The train of thought makes his mood even worse, and he practically stomps all the way back to his house.
-
If he’s going to be seen as someone else all the time, he’d rather it’s on his own terms. And so he creates Jun Woo, growing out his bangs and perfecting the role of the bumbling intern. On his first day of work at Wusang, he’s put under the supervision of Hong Cha Young, one of the firm’s best partners.
She squints at him like she’s seen him before somewhere as he introduces himself with exaggerated cheerfulness. She doesn’t say anything about it though, merely greets him in a brisk but not unfriendly way, and sets him to work immediately.
Over time she warms up to him more, and he finds that he enjoys her company a lot. With her, it’s fun to just be the bumbling intern, and she takes him along on her investigative exploits and client threatening sprees. He also finds that she thinks that the fact that he’s identical to Ok Taecyeon is hilarious. She pokes fun at him about it fairly regularly, and sometimes she plays 2PM songs in the car, cheering him on to do Taecyeon’s parts. He hates it, but he does it for her. If after 4 months of being Hong Cha Young’s intern he knows at least half of 2PM’s discography by heart, including songs Cha Young didn’t show him, no one has to know.
Ok Taecyeon’s shadow follows him even when they’re out investigating. Cha Young is pulling out her best theatrics as they try to wheedle the clerk of a local motel into giving them information about one of the motel’s guests. The clerk is adamant that it’s against company policy, even in the face of Cha Young’s argument that it’s such a small motel that it doesn’t really matter anyway. He doesn’t say much, echoing Cha Young from time to time and nodding enthusiastically at everything she says, but the clerk keeps glancing at him. He’s sure he can guess why.
"By the way, you look kind of familiar," she says, eventually, looking him up and down and confirming his guess.
Cha Young pounces on the opportunity. "He's our very own Ok Taecyeon look alike. You know? Ok Taecyeon from 2PM!" She smacks him on the back heartily, and Han Seok does his best to smile.
The clerk's eyes widen in recognition. "Oh! I see it now! He's basically identical! I used to be a bit of a 2PM fan back in the day, actually."
She's looking at him like she's seeing him for the first time, and Han Seok tries his absolute hardest to swallow the biting comment that struggles to tear its way out of his throat. He will not blow his cover because of Ok Taecyeon of all people. Instead he puts down his backpack, collects every bit of energy Jun Woo is supposed to be bursting with and, starting from Taecyeon’s part in the pre-chorus, launches into a performance of 2PM’s 10 out of 10, choreography and all.
Cha Young watches him with thinly veiled amusement, and the clerk stares like he's hanging the stars in the sky for her personally. When he’s done he shoots her an award winning smile, and Cha Young gives him a hidden thumbs up. With that groundwork in place, Cha Young grabs the chance to chat with the clerk about the good old days and the more recent 2PM comebacks. She gradually leads the conversation back to the motel guest, and this time it goes down a lot better. The clerk seems to recognize a kindred spirit in Cha Young, and they leave with more information than they thought they’d get.
Once they’re out, Cha Young jabs him lightly with her elbow.
“You know what, maybe you should have tried to debut instead of going to law school,” she says, laughing. “That performance was definitely 10 out of 10.” She does the signature 10 out of 10 hands as she says it, and Han Seok both wants to laugh and cry. He opts for the former, because Cha Young seems happy and that’s always good, and he has always been one for theatrics anyway.
-
When he gets himself made a partner at Wusang, he immediately uses it as an excuse to see Cha Young. She’s at her father’s law office, with that Italian lawyer, but even that can’t dampen his mood. After so long being the energetic Jun Woo, the dramatic twirl and slide across the floor come almost naturally to him, and he finishes the series of moves with a line from 2PM’s Heartbeat.
Cha Young rolls her eyes at him, which is fine, but then Vincenzo lets out a scoff, and Han Seok feels a flash of irritation.
“Whatever. I bet you have 0 dance skills,” he taunts, childishly, and watches delightedly as the Italian turns to glare at him.
Cha Young stops Vincenzo before he can say anything. “Don’t challenge him to a dance battle or anything stupid like that. It’d be an automatic loss for you.” Vincenzo looks terribly offended, and Han Seok tries really hard not to laugh.
A few days later Cha Young shows him a hot topic on one of those gossip forums with tears in her eyes from laughter. “Ok Taecyeon dating, confirmed?” the post title reads, and below it is a picture of him and Cha Young leaving a convenience store, with him handing her an ice cream. The poster goes on in length about how they had seen the duo come out of the store together, and how he walked her to her car.
The comments are full of people arguing about whether or not the rumors are true, whether it’s actually Taecyeon or not, and who the woman with him could be. A few people are even insulting Taecyeon for betraying them. When he laughs he does so from the heart, as Han Seok and not Jun Woo, because this feels like a nice bit of revenge on Ok Taecyeon for making his life like a series of clips from a bad reality TV show about celebrity look-alikes.
-
The real revenge comes when he reveals himself as the real Babel chairman. Being recognized as Taecyeon has begun to sting a bit because it takes him back to the time before the ringing in his ears after Cha Young’s slaps, before the rage he feels whenever he thinks about the fact that she chose Vincenzo over him.
So it’s nice to finally be himself again, in the public eye, technically above Ok Taecyeon in terms of importance. He stands out as a chairman that’s young and handsome among the usual old men that usually head companies this big. Han Seo doesn’t count because Han Seo was never good at owning that kind of thing, even after Han Seok forced him to completely revamp his image. Han Seok is though, and he uses it to his advantage, because a face this handsome is a weapon. It’s also a face identical to that of one of the country’s top celebrities, so his face reveal has brought with it a veritable landslide of conspiracy theories.
He still visits the gossip forum Cha Young used to show him sometimes, and reads discussion topics in the 2PM section in amusement. Unsurprisingly, the hottest (pun intended) topic is the new Babel chairman and how uncannily similar he looks to Taecyeon. There’s all kinds of theories floating around, from them being twins separated at birth or parallel universe doppelgangers, to them secretly being the same person. Someone even suggests that they may be clones of each other. Someone else writes a mini thesis on interdimensional space travel and the chance of one of them being a traveller from another dimension.
Stories also start to surface from people who had allegedly met him and mistaken him for Taecyeon. Han Seok doesn’t doubt some of them are true, especially after he sees one post recalling an encounter with a scary Taecyeon look alike who was trying to buy gummy bears.
Interestingly enough, he appears to be gathering a few fans of his own. There’s a group of fangirls who have become regulars at his public appearances, few as those may be. There’s something really funny about spotting a gaggle of excited looking teenage girls struggling to get a look at him from behind the gaggle of press that usually frequents these kinds of things, craning their necks as he talks about stocks and the plans for Babel Electric.
After the whole pigs blood thing, Ok Taecyeon’s agency releases a statement denying all the conspiracy theories, stating firmly that their idol had absolutely no affiliation with the Jang family, Jang Han Seok or Babel Group. That doesn’t stop the ‘Jang Han Seok is secretly Ok Taecyeon’s cousin or brother or secret twin or alternate self from a parallel universe’ theories, and honestly Han Seok still finds it hilarious. He says as much to Han Seo, who just seems confused. The poor guy hasn’t been the same since Han Seok forced him to watch a whole 2PM concert with him, he spent the rest of the week staring at Han Seok when he thought he wasn’t looking like he’d never seen him before.
There even comes a day when someone approaches him on the street to ask for his own autograph, rather than Taecyeon’s. He gives it with a flourish, and claps the fan on the shoulder amicably. He sees her post about it on the forums later, and his following starts to grow.
It all reaches a climax one day when he’s on a walk without his usual entourage, and out of nowhere a girl rushes at him with what looks a lot like a knife, yelling something about him ruining her Taecyeon’s reputation with his dirty company. He barely reacts fast enough to catch her wrist before she can stick the knife into his stomach, and the anger that flashes through him is sudden and white hot. He twists back her wrist until he hears a crack and she drops the knife with a gasp. Absently he notes the watch with a worn strap and a 2PM logo on her other wrist, and wonders if he should add it to his collection.
The girl has started to cry at this point, and he decides against it. He’s been having a good day so far, no need to complicate it because of one insignificant crazy fan. He gives her wrist one last harsh twist for good measure and then drops it, watching as she sags to the ground.
“The role my dirty company plays in the economy does more for your precious 2PM than you ever will,” he says, straightening up and brushing dust off his clothes. Then he stalks off in the direction of his house without another word.
Rumors begin to circulate after that about the dubious morality of his character. He tells the Daechang Daily people to up their pro-Jang Han Seok propaganda, and decides to forget about it. There’s very little a bunch of gossiping idol fans can do to harm him or his company’s stocks.
It is then that, in the most anticlimactic fashion, he meets the actual Ok Taecyeon. It’s in a convenience store of all places, at the back where the drinks are. Han Seok is taking his time looking for the most sugary soda he could find, and someone stops next to him to peer into the fridge. He spares them a cursory glance, and has to do a double take. Though his face is half covered by a mask, the man next to him is basically his spitting image. The man looks up at him and freezes as well, and Han Seok finds himself face to face with Ok Taecyeon himself.
He’s sure by now the idol has heard of him. But it’s one thing to hear about your doppelganger and another entirely to meet him. They regard each other in silence for a moment, each sizing the other up. Han Seok has always thought that he’d fight the man on sight if he ever met him, but now he finds that he’s mostly just curious.
“Wow, you really do look like me,” Ok Taecyeon is the first to break the silence, and Han Seok notes absently how weird it is to have someone with a face and voice almost identical to yours speaking to you. “Do you have any idea how many scandals I’ve had to deal with because of you?”
“Well maybe it’s you who looks like me,” Han Seok counters. “And imagine living a life where someone mistakes you for someone you aren’t nearly every day. You may have signed up for the giggly fans, I most certainly didn’t.”
Taecyeon narrows his eyes at him. “What makes you think people don’t mistake me for you?” Han Seok raises an eyebrow at that. It had crossed his mind before, but unlike Taecyeon, he doesn’t have a dedicated fanbase, so he’d doubted it had ever happened. That had made him kind of annoyed though, so it’s funny to hear that it does apparently happen.
“It wasn’t very pleasant, if I’m honest,” Taecyeon continues. “There was this guy who stopped me on the street the other day. He said some stuff in Italian. It sounded kind of threatening.”
He gives Han Seok a vaguely suspicious look. “He seemed kinda murderous. Your enemies are weird.”
Of course the only person who’d mistake a world famous kpop idol for his mortal enemy would be Vincenzo. Han Seok lets out a sharp laugh.
“Don’t mind him. He’s not long for this world anyway,” he says nonchalantly, ignoring the way Taecyeon’s eyes widened at that. “One of your fans tried to stab me the other day,” he continues, changing the subject.
The idol flinches at that, looking disturbed, but not surprised. “Oh. Sorry about that. There are a lot of crazy fans out there, death threats are surprisingly common.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Han Seok says, shrugging. The mafia is hunting him, what threat does a teenage girl with a knife pose? His attention is beginning to wander back to the soda he came here for. He opens the fridge and grabs one of the bottles filled with brightly coloured liquid.
“Wanna exchange autographs?” he asks, setting the soda on a nearby shelf and turning back to face Taecyeon, who blinks at him blankly. Han Seok doesn’t wait for a response, producing a pen and a notepad from his jacket pocket and scrawling his signature on a page.
“Congratulations. You’ve met Jang Han Seok. An immense honor, if I’m honest,” he says, holding the signed page, the notebook and the pen out to his doppelganger. He takes it after a moment and signs a page, handing the notebook and pen back and keeping the page that Han Seok had signed.
“Well congrats to you too, I guess.” Taecyeon smiles cordially, and holds out his hand for a handshake. Han Seok briefly considers ghosting the handshake, but decides not to, clasping the 2PM member’s hand and shaking it firmly. A good reputation is good for the stocks, after all. The two say their goodbyes and Han Seok leaves to pay for his soda.
Now if only he could brag about this to Cha Young. He’ll have to make do with Han Seo.