Description: "How long has it been since I lost myself so completely in a novel?" This is a story everyone knows in theory, but no one has told quite this way. _Jung Yi-hyun (novelist) "Have you ever seen Jay Kang? He's a legend." The story begins with the monologue of Lee Gyu-a, who has just returned to Korea after a period of wandering in New York. Seongsu-dong, the neighborhood she left behind when she dropped out of college, has become one of Seoul's most sought-after districts, dominated by the towering T Tower that looms over the Han River like its own front yard. Drawing on her experience in New York, Gyu-a renovates a house right next to T Tower into a New York-style wine bar. From there, she visits her cousin Yoo Yeon-ji, who lives in an apartment across the river in Apgujeong, and Yeon-ji's husband, Lee Gwang-chae, an old classmate from Seoul National University. Gyu-a feels a distance from Yeon-ji, who grew up sheltered like a little princess, and from Gwang-chae, whose inherited fortune matches his muscular build and even bigger ego — but she senses that in business, there's no avoiding them. Meanwhile, one name keeps coming up around her: Jay Kang, who is said to live in the penthouse of T Tower. He founded the biotech startup Eckleburg, now a global company, and created Eckcoin, the cryptocurrency that soared in value to become the most popular in Korea, making him a national hero. Yet beyond rumors that he graduated top of his class from Seoul National University and Harvard, nothing else is known about him — he remains a mystery. One day, Jay Kang himself visits Gyu-a's wine bar with a proposal to rent it out regularly, and she discovers something astonishing: the mythic figure known as Jay Kang is none other than Kang Jae-woong, her old junior from a college folk performance club. Accepting his invitation, Gyu-a visits his penthouse during a lavish party, where the sight of the man she once knew as Jae-woong now transformed into Jay Kang fills her with both nostalgia and an inexplicable unease. After reuniting with Jae-woong, Gyu-a's life changes completely. At his parties, she meets celebrities and artists, catching glimpses of a dazzling world that both captivates her and draws her cynicism. Eventually, she realizes that Jae-woong sought her out with a purpose: to reconnect with Yoo Yeon-ji, the woman he once loved passionately and even ran away with during their college years — and that everything he had built, including his immense fortune, was in service of that single goal. Kang Jae-woong had never forgotten Yeon-ji. Not only had he not forgotten her, but the image of their reunion had replayed and refined itself in his mind millions of times, until it had become as solid and polished as a marble statue, shaped by countless imagined caresses. He could now examine and touch this statue from every angle — left, right, above, below — as though it were real. His voice, flat as if he had long since forgotten his own obsession, made clear that every step of his mythic rise had been taken with this one moment of reunion in mind. _page 143 In the end, Gyu-a helps Jae-woong arrange a meeting with Yeon-ji. Yeon-ji meets him first at Kingspoint, and later at the penthouse of T Tower, together with Gyu-a. The consequences ripple outward, shaking everyone entangled in their lives. Eventually Gwang-chae, Yeon-ji, Jae-woong, and Gyu-a all come together in one room, and on a midsummer day in an Apgujeong apartment, their conversation erupts into an explosive confrontation, sending the story hurtling toward an irreversible tragedy. "It was the look in the eyes of someone who, in the name of love, had carried an entire era and continents along with him. Standing once more before the very source of hope that had driven everything he had built, on the verge of the ecstatic moment of finally attaining it, I found myself asking him a cruel question — one so devastating that merely thinking it, without even speaking it aloud, could have destroyed him." _page 196 A man who chased an impossible light — and the story of that light. This is His Great Light.