The Abstinent Tycoon Lives Again and Gives Up Restraint

The male lead was born into a conservative, eccentric family of old money. He doesn't smoke or drink, and premarital sex is forbidden. He goes to bed at 9 p.m. and gets up at 5 a.m. every day, sets aside two hours for exercise, meditation, and journaling, and makes at least three charitable donations or volunteer visits each year. Even his daily food and water intake is measured out.

Disciplined, courteous, and celibate, he rarely shows his feelings and hardly speaks. Aside from his family wealth and looks, he's the very definition of unassuming.

His childhood friend once teased him, "You live like a real monk. Don't you want to be free? Look at that young master. He not only refuses to take over the family business, he even became an actor. He parties and lives it up all the time. Aren't you jealous?"

-

First, the male lead thought his friend had a strange idea of freedom. Second, he couldn't approve of that young master's hard-partying lifestyle.

That young master had been his classmate since high school. He'd even sent him a few party invitations, but they were all scheduled for after 9 p.m., so the male lead had politely declined every time.

After enough refusals, people stopped inviting him. Neither of them thought much of it, but rumors suddenly began circulating at school that the two young masters couldn't stand each other.

The rumors followed them from high school to college. For adults, they were little more than a joke. If they had any effect at all, it was that the male lead would sometimes look up news about the young master when he had a bit of free time.

-

The young master was nothing like him. He smoked, drank, went clubbing, raced cars, had a head of silver hair, and supposedly even wore studs on his clothes. He also seemed to have plenty of casual partners.

On top of that, he chose acting over business, kept an erratic schedule, and was highly emotional. On set, he could burst into tears or laughter at the drop of a hat.

In his spare time, the male lead even made an Excel spreadsheet to compare them. Even the AI said, "Your decision not to be friends with him is entirely reasonable and perceptive."

With such a huge gap between them, being friends would be difficult, and being partners was out of the question.

So the male lead expertly used reason and restraint to suppress that insignificant flutter of attraction. But... every weekend, he still had his assistant gather information about the young master for him to read.

He would look up what films the other man was going to star in, what new brand deals he'd signed, which interviews he'd appeared on, and what behind-the-scenes clips had come out. He even printed out fan comments to browse.

His orderly, conventional life gained a little color only on weekends. Years went by like this, until the weekend before the male lead's thirtieth birthday, when his assistant didn't print out any new information about the young master.

Except for one news story: the young master's death.

-

Thirty years of reason collapsed the moment he learned the other man's fate.

The male lead sat motionless in front of his computer all night, reading the scandalous stories about the young master that flooded the internet. He was certain the death hadn't been an accident.

Until then, his restrained and proper nature had kept him from investigating the other man's private life. As a result, he had only just learned that the young master wasn't the family's biological son.

A little over ten years ago, not long after high school began, the parents finally found a lead on their long-lost biological son overseas. With their own son back after so many years, they couldn't spare much attention for the replacement, no matter how good he was.

Overnight, the young master's name, room, and all the attention he'd received had to be handed over to the older brother who had returned from abroad.

Even so, the older brother remained insecure, often saying things like, "You're so good at school. Mom and Dad trust you more. You know so much about the family company. I'm so jealous of you..."

Every time the older brother said he was jealous, the young master would willingly give something up. Years later, the young master gave up his entire inheritance and even went into the entertainment industry, the field least connected to the family. Only then did their parents belatedly realize that the two "brothers" didn't seem very close.

So the older brother came to him again. "When I first came home, I was immature and worried about this and that. Even though you're younger, you always gave way to me. I treated you badly. Now that Mom and Dad are getting older, they worry we won't get along. How about this? I'll start an entertainment company and bring you in as the second-largest shareholder. It'll be the first step in our working together as brothers, and it'll make Mom and Dad happy. What do you say?"

The young master longed so badly for a complete family.

So, foolishly, he walked straight into the trap that would cost him his life.

-

The male lead regretted everything.

He thought that if he hadn't been so restrained and rational, if he had stayed a little closer to the other man, if he'd even gazed at and kissed him for a long time the way he did in his dreams, perhaps this wouldn't have happened.

The other man would surely still be living boldly and freely on screen, cracking jokes, trying out bizarre new looks, and acting in all kinds of cutting-edge films the male lead couldn't understand.

At the very least, he shouldn't be a cold corpse.

The male lead rushed back to his country to attend the other's funeral three days later. But a sudden aviation disaster sent the passenger plane straight into the sea, and he never got to see the other man one last time.

When he opened his eyes again, he was back several years in the past.

The young master hadn't yet signed with his brother's company.

-

After getting a second chance at life, reason had already crumbled.

Restraint? Chivalry? Celibacy?

In the face of possessiveness, to hell with all of it.

Theme: Walk hand in hand and grow toward the light.