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His steps were relentless as he entered the magnificent building. The info desk staff saw him and rushed out in surprise, but he paid them no mind and quickly passed through the building as if it were his own house.
He walked past the exhibition hall and down a long corridor, his feet following a familiar path on their own.
He came to his senses and realized he was at the art center. The thought of needing to see her had filled his head like a fever, and he was entranced, heading straight to Wonju. If he hadn’t, he felt like he would have crashed into something.
He only had one thought: he had to see Yoon Yi-seo again before that happened. Since the last time, she had completely cut him off. She wouldn’t answer his calls or texts, so he knew exactly where to find her.
His steps, like a madman’s, cut across the interior. As he turned a corner, just as he had expected, Yi-seo was standing in front of “Paradise,” which occupied an entire blue wall.
The moment he had first seen her here overlapped with the image of her now, standing tall and slender in a high-waisted mermaid skirt in a creamy yellow tone.
Unlike the first time, when she stood gracefully like a ballerina in a sheer dress that revealed her shoulders and arms, the clothes she wore now hinted at the season, but the moment Yi-seo came into view, he was completely captivated.
Yi-seo stood blankly in front of the artwork that captured a golden sunrise, as if she had walked right out of Paradise itself.
She looked like a single flower that had barely bloomed on a cliff. As if she knew her fate was to live tenaciously, even as she swayed precariously in the sea wind until all her petals fell. Oddly enough, he also felt a sense of relief in the serene way Yi-seo was just staring blankly at it.
The reason Yoon Yi-seo yearned for “Paradise” so much.
The beach in Ushuaia, which was captured in the painting, was a place where anyone could be happy. He had found out about it because she was so obsessed with “Paradise,” as if she were desperately praying for it.
“Anywhere but here.”
He remembered Yoon Yi-seo’s face when she had said that, looking as if she were dreaming for a moment.
He had thought that the moment he saw Yi-seo, the festering feelings that he couldn’t get out of his chest would burst out like a torrent, but seeing her standing there so peacefully, he couldn’t easily take a step forward.
He took a moment to take in every detail of Yi-seo, from her head to her toes, and then she, who had been standing still like a statue, slowly turned her head.
As if she had to look at something because of a familiar presence, she turned her head, drawn to it without realizing it. Her gaze stopped. Cutting through the air, their eyes met. Time seemed to have stopped.
Even though they were more than twenty steps apart, the looks they exchanged were clear to each other.
His sunken heart slowly began to beat again, then it pulsed violently.
Yoon Yi-seo, who wanted to be happy.
Yoon Yi-seo, who couldn’t be.
Yi-seo, who was trapped and couldn’t go anywhere, finally came into his sight. Tae-jo took a deep breath. The air filling his lungs felt like it was freezing. His wavering heart was freezing over, too.
In Yi-seo’s briefly agitated eyes, longing flickered and disappeared like a shadow. Tae-jo walked in a straight line and stood in front of her.
Her face, as they stood opposite each other, was more pristine than when they had first met here. Without a greeting, her calm face was so still, without any wavering, that he hated the coldness it carried, and he opened his mouth first.
“I told you I’d turn the art center upside down if you ignored my calls.”
His choked voice came out terribly. It was the same thing he had said last time when she had repeatedly ignored his calls. Yi-seo, who was silently looking up at him, seemed to have expected such a moment, as she stood facing him surprisingly calmly.
“I know you’re foolish and stubborn. But why are you going this far?”
Her eyes crumpled as she remembered the face that had asked, “Do you hate me that much?”
“I’m the one who doesn’t understand why I have to repeat the same thing over and over again.”
It was hard to face him, who clung to her so persistently every time she tried to cut him off, like a wave that receded when she tried to calm it down and then came crashing back when she pushed it away again. Her resolved heart wavered, and then she was back to square one. She wanted to break this cycle now.
“Am I the only one who doesn’t understand this situation? Am I the only one who’s angry? No matter how I think about it, this isn’t right.”
“Angry? Understand?”
Yi-seo, who had been listening calmly with a face exhausted from enduring everything,’s eyebrows twitched with emotion.
“Why do we need that between us? I don’t understand why you keep doing this. Didn’t we just meet briefly back then, out of necessity? There’s no need to think deeply about it. If you think that way, there’s nothing to misunderstand and no reason to be angry.”
Yi-seo’s voice, which was trying to calmly organize the situation as much as possible, was as steady as usual, without a hint of tremor. It was a stark contrast to Tae-jo, who was in a chaotic state, turning cold and burning up several times a day.
“So you’re saying you’re fine with all this?”
“Yeah, I’m fine with it.”
There’s no way you’re fine.
Yi-seo suppressed her aching heart and turned her gaze away. She had deliberately said it more coldly, but her tightly closed lips were twitching slightly. But now was the time to draw the line. She couldn’t let herself be confused and swayed by an ambiguous emotion forever.
“Isn’t this what you wanted? No messiness, no being pathetic with each other. You said anything more than that would just be annoying.”
It was their third meeting. In the past, when he didn’t know what ferocity was, she threw his joke-like words back at him, and his eyes, which had been rising with some kind of emotion, became stunned.
“That was…”
“This is the ending that suits us, Ryu Tae-jo.”
Looking at him, who was speechless again, she was surprised and dumbfounded by her own meticulous memory that even held onto such a memory. She didn’t think that even a single word like that would remain so vivid. Seeing that she had even etched that in her mind, it must have hurt her back then.
“You and I are just going back to where we came from. We were just a fling, weren’t we?”
“What?”
Yi-seo, who was trying to cut him off and draw a line, was colder than usual, as if she didn’t want to leave any room for hope, trying to bring it to a complete end.
A hollow laugh escaped Tae-jo’s lips. Yi-seo’s words that they had simply gone back, just like the game they had planned to have sex once and end, sounded so heartless to him.
Tae-jo took another step toward Yi-seo. His face was colder than ever, and his gaze, which was boiling hotter than ever, pierced right through Yi-seo.
“You’re the only one who went back.”
“…”
“Just you.”
He was still here. He hadn’t been able to say anything yet. Unlike his expression, which was suppressing his breath as he spoke, an emotion that seemed ready to do something at any moment dangerously surged in his eyes.
“Call off the engagement. It’s not too late.”
The man, who had a crumpled face from pondering over his incomprehensible words for days, finally realized it. In the end, he couldn’t accept the end, so he came to her and was trying to shake Yi-seo, who had barely managed to find her balance, once again.
But the woman had decided not to waver. Her eyes that met his were as solid as a shield.
“Are you going to break it, or should I?”
“What right do you have? Don’t act on your own.”
Yi-seo spoke as calmly as possible, as if she had already made up her mind.
“This is a promise. I won’t break it, and you can’t break it either.”
“Anyway, that engagement wasn’t your will, was it?”
“When was anything my will? It doesn’t matter.”
Her calm tone, as if asking if he didn’t already know, made him feel as if his heart was sinking, as if she was saying that her meeting with him hadn’t been her will either. At the same time, a dizzying heat rose in Tae-jo’s head.
Was his heart beating so fiercely at the sight of an unwavering Yi-seo just an obsession with something he couldn’t have? He found himself acting so emotionally to be absurd. But he couldn’t stop.
“Are you okay with throwing your life away like that? Why didn’t you just reach out to me for help? There was nothing else to hold onto but my cousin?”
“Reach out to you for help?”
It was such a relaxed thing to say, as he didn’t know what she was going through or what she was enduring. With her breath slowly rising, Yi-seo took a deep, rough breath. Even so, her eyes looking at him were emotionally shaken.
“What was I supposed to trust you with? You who made a bet with me to have sex, how could I trust you and hold your hand?”
“What?”
Tae-jo’s large shoulders flinched and stiffened, as if he hadn’t known that his past actions would come back to bite him. He stopped as if rooted to the spot just as he was about to step closer.
Yi-seo, who had always said she was fine, wasn’t fine back then. The face that had said “I’m fine,” “it’s nothing” like a habit, overlapped with the face in front of him now.
“I told you that was a mistake.”
“Yeah. You did say that.”
Yi-seo, who was smiling bitterly, looked like she didn’t expect anything anymore.
“That’s why you gave me a bracelet and all that. Your feelings weren’t in it, either. You’re just regretting it now because you feel like you’re losing it.”
It felt like a large nail had pierced his chest and gone through his back. At the accusations she was pouring out in a calm voice, Tae-jo’s voice finally sharpened.
“That’s not it!”
“You’re selfish to the very end, Ryu Tae-jo.”
If he had even a slight idea of what she was going through and what her life was like, he shouldn’t have appeared and shaken her like this.
His eyes, which couldn’t accept it, stopped and wavered for a moment, then quickly turned pitch black. Looking directly into Yi-seo’s eyes, which were emotionally swirling like a storm, he twisted his lips and smiled.
No matter how much they crashed into each other like a huge wave, what ended up being crushed and covered was just the feelings that had risen so strongly. It was the first time that he had ever held the emotion of love in his immaculate heart, where even the smallest foam that disappeared after being crushed left a scar.
So he was clumsy.
In giving his heart, in expressing and revealing it, in realizing it himself.
And even until the very end.
It was an awkward love.
“You’re right about everything. I’m selfish to the end. I know I’m one-sided and disgustingly good at making you uncomfortable. But Yoon Yi-seo, you’re the same.”
Yi-seo, who had her eyes closed tightly as if to suppress her emotions, slowly lifted her eyelids. Tae-jo, who was huffing and pouring out his anger, continued to speak.
“That’s why you never showed me what was in your heart until the end and stabbed me in the back. You were still getting tangled up with me even after you decided on the engagement, what were you thinking back then? Was it just because it was the last time? Was it a feeling of just having sex and getting rid of it, just like at the beginning?”
Even as she was denying that it was nothing, he brought up the memory of that day to suit his own narrative. That night when they were wrapped up in each other in the car in front of the night sea.
The night he had first said he wanted to do anything for her, and she told him to stop.
He knew that they each had their own circumstances. But he couldn’t judge rationally, so the more he thought about it and the more he chewed on his emotions, the more these were the things they had to confirm with each other before it was too late and he would regret it.
“You slept with me.”
“…”
“…In the end, you even cried out of pleasure. Does that bastard know that, too?”
The reason she was silenced and her lips were sealed was truly despicable. And yet, his expression, which was pushing her, became even more desperate. While she was angry at his words that were deliberately rubbing her the wrong way, her head also cooled down, wondering how desperate an emotional Ryu Tae-jo must be to act like this.
Love was such a fleeting thing, but the heart that was shackled by it couldn’t move. It was a horrible reality.
“You’re just wavering, Tae-jo. Like a child whose toy has been taken away.”
“Am I the only one? You are, too.”
“…”
“You’re lost, too, Yoon Yi-seo.”
“You’re just as lost.”
“Ryu Jin-han doesn’t love you. That bastard can’t give you the life you want!”
“Love? That’s a joke.”
Yi-seo twisted her lips as if she were sneering. Her lips, which were unclear whether she was smiling or about to cry, trembled faintly.
“Did we have sex because we loved each other? Do you think I’m marrying Jin-han because I love him? It’s the same for both of us. Where’s love? There’s no such thing.”
While she was shooting back at him coldly, Yi-seo suppressed the urge to ask him, “What about you?” She didn’t want to show the bottom of her last shred of pride, and she was afraid of confirming that bottom, so she was so pathetically cowardly that she even used the word “we” to give a plausible reason that they hadn’t had sex because of love.
“Yoon Yi-seo.”
“There’s no such thing!”
Her voice, which was like a scream, was as if she was denying all of their assumptions. Yi-seo gasped so much that her shoulders were shaking and clawed at Tae-jo. In the reverberating, piercing voice, the already silent space became even colder.
Tae-jo was frozen, dumbfounded at this side of Yi-seo he was seeing for the first time. The face that was always “fine” and indifferent no matter what he did was unfamiliar and alien.
They faced each other in the air that had risen with self-directed anger and blame. It was for a brief moment. Yi-seo barely managed to calm her shrill voice. The end of her disrupted breath was trembling so much that it was transmitted to Tae-jo.
But soon, she calmed her emotions again with a clear face.
Watching Yi-seo, who was calmly but concisely organizing her emotions, he scoffed at himself for having declared that she was never emotionally agitated.
“Yoon Yi-seo, you… you know how to shout.”
His voice, which came out blankly, was like that of a person possessed by something, as if he still couldn’t believe it. But his pitch-black eyes began to waver.
His eyes, which were awkwardly rubbing his forehead and looking at Yi-seo in confusion, twitched finely. The way he pulled at his tie and chewed on his dry lips made him look somehow anxious.
Was what they had love?
His expression, which had been contorted in an instant, and his momentum, which had been pushing her, both stopped. Then, very slowly, he began to waver. With a face that looked like he had been hit, he couldn’t say a word, yet he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Only the muscles in his grimly clenched jaw twitched roughly.
It felt as though his reason, which had been half gone, was finally coming back into place at Yi-seo’s voice. The strange fact that the word “love” had come out of his own mouth first. The realization that he was doing this crazy thing so late because he couldn’t control his emotions.
Because it was love. Because this damned emotion that he wanted to chew up and swallow was love. But seeing Yi-seo silently suppressing her clear emotions that were boiling over, his mind became distant.
“…Let’s stop. I’m tired.”
“I’m not finished talking yet.”
“That person said that if I marry him and live with him, he might be able to love me. He said he could do that, even if it’s not now. So I’m going to marry him.”
In the end, it was the desire to be loved. The desire to find rest by the side of a person who would offer her warmth like that. Even putting aside these lie-like excuses, Yi-seo had no courage to back out now. She hadn’t learned how to be that courageous. So she couldn’t go forward just to have a love that would only hurt her.
“If the love that ‘isn’t now’ could be me instead.”
“I told you it’s funny for you to say something like that.”
“You said it before. Why bother doing something immoral? You said there’s no reason to be consumed by a mere emotion, and no reason to devalue yourself with such things. But we’re doing just that. If this isn’t love, what the hell is it?”
Tae-jo opened his mouth a beat late. Yi-seo’s lips, which had been moving as normally as if she were reciting something she had practiced several times, didn’t move at all. Yi-seo stared at Tae-jo as if she had heard something she shouldn’t have, forgetting to breathe.
It was a conversation they had when they didn’t even know what love was. Tae-jo, who was even bringing that up, was surprised by the power of the emotion he had just awakened, and he barely managed to suppress his heart that was about to burst.
“You’re going to marry someone else with that kind of feeling? By deceiving your partner and deceiving yourself to the very end?”
“What do you want me to do then!”
In the end, he makes a person so cowardly.
He drove her into a corner she couldn’t escape or go back from and devoured her heart. Yi-seo was surprised and horrified by the fact that she was revealing her emotions to this extent.
She had never revealed her emotions in front of others, and she never knew they would be this ugly. She was ashamed, as if her greed and desires that she had hidden at the bottom of her heart had been exposed, and she resented Ryu Tae-jo for constantly scratching at those feelings.
Even as her heart was boiling and she was furious, the subtle sense of liberation she felt was shocking in another way. She had to suppress it. Because she couldn’t mess everything up just for this one moment.
“In the end, this will just be the past, too. The only thing we could have had was up to a bracelet.”
Yi-seo decided to leave only one thought in her mind.
Don’t waver.
You can’t waver, Yoon Yi-seo.
Her stubbornly closed lips and her eyes, which were more resolute than before, and her voice, which seemed to have been moved there, were the epitome of deep despair.
“I’ve lived my whole life being pointed at and called the daughter of a dirty bar girl. The daughter of a mistress, an outsider my father brought home. Even though I didn’t mean for it to be that way, I’ve lived my whole life atoning for my existence. How could I, like that, rush into anything? Me? It was already hard enough just to live my whole life in silence, do you think I have the courage to do that? Even if you call me cowardly, I can’t help it. I lived my whole life without being able to hold my head up, feeling guilty for even breathing, and I… I…!”
She thought she had started calmly, but her voice cracked again and her breathing trembled roughly.
With a face that was more pathetic than when she had once poured out how unpleasantly her existence had sprouted, Yi-seo vomited her true feelings. Her face, which had poured out her emotions, was soon crumpled as if she were about to cry. Her eyes turned red and the tip of her nose was red.
But as if she would never cry, as if she would not be swept away by the emotions of the moment, Yi-seo suppressed her rough feelings and let out a sharp breath.
“You know better than anyone that the half-world I’m caught up in isn’t that easy to deal with.”
It was a promise between families that had their entire lives on the line, even before the individuals’ promise. As Jin-han had said, it was a relationship entangled with the duties of obligation and more.
“If I had enough opportunities to choose, and my heart was the most important thing in that choice, I wouldn’t have gone on dates to meet potential spouses in the first place.”
“I’ll do it for you. Whatever you want.”
Her face, which was struggling to calm itself, was still shaking with confusion. If he touched her a little more, Yi-seo would become more emotionally turbulent than before. Tae-jo wouldn’t miss that opportunity.
“A ring? Do it with me. Love? You can do that with me, too.”
The words were easy. And yet, they were such sweet words of persuasion that she wanted to pretend she was fooled. She bit her lip as if to chew it up, as she felt like she would nod her head at any moment if she didn’t come to her senses.
“You like me. It’s me you like. Isn’t that right, Yi-seo?”
The thought of wanting to cling to Tae-jo’s pitch-black eyes as he tried to confirm it again crossed her mind for a very brief moment. But Yi-seo cut off the illusionary thought by holding her breath for a moment.
“Seriously.”
His face, which had been interrupted for a moment, turned rough between breaths.
“It wasn’t nothing, was it?”
“Something this messed up couldn’t possibly be love… It couldn’t be.”
His words would have made her waver whether they were sincere or a lie.
It was an emotion she had once wished for, but now it had to be something that couldn’t be. The emotion he had realized so late had to not be love. For that to be the case, the weight of the ring on her finger was pressing down on her shoulders and her heart.
Did Ryu Tae-jo even know what he was saying right now?
Even if this engagement ended in a breakup, his great family would never accept her. That was the reality. Thinking that far, Yi-seo unconsciously chewed on the inside of her molars. The thing she had wanted the most, so much that she added countless assumptions to a single word, “love.”
A desire she couldn’t tell anyone, couldn’t show anyone.
She wanted it to be love.
Even if a future with Ryu Tae-jo was a disaster, she wanted it so much that she would paint over that difficult ending with golden paint.
A long silence filled the space between them. The emotions that had been rising up like a tug-of-war slowly subsided. After getting rid of all the emotional things that had been blurring her vision, she could finally see Ryu Tae-jo for who he was.
The dignified him, as if he were on a throne where he reigned everywhere.
“I liked you.”
Yi-seo’s voice, which came out as if she were in a trance, was low. As if nothing had happened, as if she were standing on a calm land after a storm, Yi-seo finally confessed with a look of resignation.
“Because you shone so brightly.”
You, who could belong anywhere. Me, who couldn’t belong anywhere because of my bloodline, didn’t feel sorry for myself, but I was strangely drawn to you in a place I couldn’t belong to because of my original sin of being who I was, no matter how I was born.
“I guess you were just too dazzling.”
She was jealous of that solid light that she couldn’t have, and she wanted to have it. She couldn’t forget the brilliance she felt when she stepped into the solid paradise where he was.
Knowing she couldn’t have it, maybe she wanted to go all the way. Even though she didn’t have the courage to do so, she had the desire, rationalizing the foolish thought that everyone makes such a mistake at least once in their lives.
“I guess I was under the delusion that if I embraced that light for even a moment, I could shine, too.”
She was so desperate for that world that she thought that if she couldn’t belong to that paradise, she had to find her own paradise somewhere else. A hope she could hold on to, even just for that.
Love.
She was so pathetic for having scoffed at that word that came from Tae-jo’s mouth. Yi-seo mocked herself again, a beat too late. The end of a relationship that was like the sun that would burn her if she touched it, and a bubble that would crumble if she held it. She was supposed to let out a bitter smile, as what she had wanted was right in front of her, but she couldn’t even force a smile.
Love. That word, so cruel and yet so gentle, was tearing at her shattered heart.
“Even with the love you give, I won’t be able to smile.”
With a heart that had never been loved, she couldn’t warmly embrace anyone. Just as a person who can’t read can’t read a letter branded in red, she couldn’t understand it. It was still an excessive desire for her, who had only understood the most beautiful and sweet word in the world by simply enduring it.
“The sadness I felt because you didn’t hold me back was, in the end, because I wanted to hold onto you that much.”
After pouring out the emotions that had filled her head to the point of bursting, she felt a sense of calm.
That she had stirred up a snake-like desire with a fleeting wish and made it a trap, and that she, not the snake, was the one who had been exiled from Eden, was an ending that anyone could have predicted.
The snake was still in Eden, in his own paradise, and there was no place for her in his solid paradise. Realizing that, a bitter taste filled her mouth.
“I had a great time meeting you, even if it was only for a short while.”
The low confession flew like a knife and cut through Tae-jo’s chest. He was standing so still that she didn’t even realize his hands were trembling slightly. His breathing gradually became rough, and she could see the veins on his neck, which he had strained, standing out in multiple branches.
“At first, it was just a fling, but in the end, you were the only person I could be myself with.”
The veins on his tightly clenched fist finally bulged out blue, but his breathing was still cold and distant.
“I believe you’ll understand me. Because that’s the kind of person you are. Even if you act on your own, you were the only one who understood my situation.”
“Stop.”
Tae-jo, who had only been listening in silence, parted his stiff lips.
“Don’t talk like it’s over.”
His cold face, which was denying reality, gradually became distorted. He stubbornly reached out and grabbed Yi-seo’s wrist. Only then did Yi-seo realize that he was trembling.
“Don’t go, stay with me, Yi-seo.”
The voice that flowed into her ears was a plea. As if it were a body that was completely frozen, perhaps with a plea, it seemed like it would crumble if she even let out a single breath incorrectly.
“You know your heart is with me, too.”
Yi-seo’s shoulder, which was trying hard not to waver, trembled slightly.
“You’ll remember me. Over and over, you’ll remember me and regret it. Right?”
It was a desperate plea that she didn’t want to hear even if she covered her ears. She didn’t want to feel this emotion when everything was already over. If she understood his pain, she would sympathize with it, and the fear that she would be swept away again began to swallow Yi-seo from below.
Yi-seo slowly, one by one, took off Tae-jo’s fingers that were clutching her wrist. The warm body heat that had been clinging to her wrist fell away, and her tattered heart fell away with it.
“You know I have to go.”
Yi-seo’s voice, which was letting out a long, deep breath, was barely audible, as if it would break at any moment.
“Even if it was nothing, it’s fine. Yeah, well. Whatever happened in the past.”
Tae-jo grabbed Yi-seo by the shoulders again, as if the sincerity and confessions he had said, all the words that had come out, and everything that was lingering now didn’t matter anymore.
“So stay here, by my side. You don’t have to forgive the mistake I made. You can hate me and despise me. Everything’s fine, just do it by my side. I’ll fix everything. You just stay still. Just be still.”
A faint smile appeared on Yi-seo’s lips. It was as if she was saying it was a complete end, and Tae-jo’s eyes were filled with a red emotion.
“Tae-jo…”
Yi-seo lightly stroked Tae-jo’s stiff cheek with the back of her hand. His gaze lingered on Yi-seo’s empty wrist, then his eyes squeezed shut. It was his turn to be shattered by the cold premonition that was wrapping around him.
“Thank you so much for being my comfort. That much, at least, is sincere.”
It was the moment Yi-seo turned around, clutching her smooth wrist where nothing was left. Not far away, Seo Jeong-ju was looking at the two of them with an aghast expression. She had clearly come after hearing that Tae-jo was at the art center, but she probably hadn’t expected a situation like this.
“What do you think you’re doing right now at your workplace?”
Seo Jeong-ju, who had spoken sharply to a frozen Yi-seo, frowned in embarrassment when she saw Tae-jo standing behind her.
“Ms. Yoon Yi-seo, come to the director’s office. Right now.”
She then gave an order in her usual elegant voice that showed no emotion. But it was Tae-jo who passed Yi-seo and approached Seo Jeong-ju.
“Talk to me instead.”
The force of her son, who was striding toward her, was so strong that it felt as if he was going to protect Yi-seo no matter what, and Seo Jeong-ju couldn’t hold back her displeasure.
“This is a workplace, and I intend to treat Ms. Yoon Yi-seo as an employee, not to say anything based on personal feelings. We’ll talk separately later. Ms. Yoon Yi-seo.”
“Yes, Director.”
Tae-jo held up his hand to stop Yi-seo, who was about to move.
“You stay here.”
And he turned his head and pushed Seo Jeong-ju’s back.
“You should listen to me first.”
“You…!”
“Let’s go.”
Tae-jo quickly took Seo Jeong-ju and disappeared. But even after the two of them disappeared, Yi-seo couldn’t move from her spot for a long time. She couldn’t forget the look that had been on Seo Jeong-ju’s face just a moment ago. The disillusionment that had appeared on Seo Jeong-ju’s beautiful face, which she had only ever known to be elegant. That was the reality.
________________________________________
A deep, cool silence settled in the director’s office. Seo Jeong-ju stared at Tae-jo, who was silently keeping his mouth shut without his expression faltering. Her gaze was terrifying. It was as if she was ready to tear off his skin if it meant getting him to confess what had happened.
But she, as usual, melted her emotions away with a sip of tea. Just by showing an emotional moment, the momentum would be reversed. It didn’t change even if the person was her son.
“Explain what happened.”
She felt as though her world was collapsing, but she emptied her frustration with a deep sigh.
“It’s exactly what you saw.”
A cold gaze was exchanged in silence.
She had expected this, so she had a person secretly report Tae-jo’s every move. How troubled she had been every morning when she received reports about her son’s private life. She had been suspicious ever since he started visiting the art center more frequently, and he had even beaten up the eldest son of MI Asset a while ago, she was told.
Not only that, but he would sometimes stop by Pyeongchang-dong and wait endlessly in front of someone else’s house after work and early in the morning before he went to work. When she heard that, she had wanted to call Yoon Yi-seo to the director’s office and scold her.
But she had left them alone, thinking that they were adults and that they had their own paths to follow, and her son’s actions became even more reckless.
“It seems they were dating. They mostly met briefly after work, and there are records of her entering the villa where the young master is a few times. It seems they have refrained from meeting since the engagement announcement with Executive Director Ryu Jin-han, but lately, the young master has been waiting mainly in Pyeongchang-dong.”
She knew that Tae-jo sometimes spent time with Yi-seo. But she had no idea her son was the one who was more clingy.
“What are you thinking? How can I face my sister-in-law if you’re acting like this?”
“…”
Seo Jeong-ju, who couldn’t stand her youngest son who was stubbornly keeping his mouth shut even though he probably had a truckload of excuses, urged him to speak.
“That’s the person who’s going to be Jin-han’s wife. Are you saying you actually like someone like that?”
“Yes.”
Seo Jeong-ju’s eyes widened in shock.
“What?”
“I like her. That’s why I’m following her.”
“Crazy, you’re crazy.”
Seo Jeong-ju, clutching her teacup, couldn’t hold back and spoke with a sharp tone.
“Get a grip. Their engagement is only a few weeks away. She’s going to be your cousin’s wife. You should desire something realistic.”
Now?
Seo Jeong-ju put her hand on her forehead and sighed as if she couldn’t believe it.
“Fix this.”
“I can’t.”
“Tae-jo.”
Seo Jeong-ju lowered her voice, in case anyone heard. She knew her son’s nature: once he was fixated on something, he became blindly devoted to it until he was satisfied. Her other two sons had never done anything to make her raise her voice after they had grown up, but Tae-jo was different.
Thinking of her other two sons, who had found a spouse and were living a stable life at Tae-jo’s age, Seo Jeong-ju took a deep breath.
“If you act like this, I can’t keep Yoon Yi-seo at our art center. It will only create gossip if I keep her around.”
It was clear as day that if she left him alone, her son would get caught up in a messy scandal. The thought of it made her heart sink, and Seo Jeong-ju became cold.
“Then clean it up. Isn’t that why you had someone follow me?”
Seo Jeong-ju’s eyes widened at Tae-jo’s nonchalant reply. He knew she had a person following him? Her surprise was fleeting, and she was furious that he had acted so recklessly even though he knew that.
“You have a firm grasp of my movements anyway, and you’re my mother, who knows me better than anyone.”
With that, he was asking her if she didn’t know that his feelings wouldn’t just disappear in an instant, and that he was going to see this through to the end. Seo Jeong-ju felt as if she had been hit in the head.
“If you act that way, it will only make things harder for that child. Do you think this makes sense? What the hell is going on? How could something like this happen in our family….”
“Mother.”
Just then, Tae-jo spoke to Seo Jeong-ju in a low voice.
“I’m holding back a lot right now, too.”
Unlike his low voice, Tae-jo had the eyes of a teenager who had just fallen in love. It was boiling as if it would overflow at any moment, but he was holding it back so it wouldn’t spill over. At her son’s sincere gaze, which was showing his own kind of patience, Seo Jeong-ju frowned.
“I’m trying, and trying, and trying again, to hold back the urge to steal Yi-seo and run away several times a day.”
“From what I hear, you really…”
“If you take away Yi-seo’s only breathing space, I will really take her and hide somewhere. You don’t want that, do you?”
“Ryu Tae-jo!”
“I’m asking you. Please don’t do anything that will break your own heart.”
Seo Jeong-ju covered her face at her son’s resoluteness, which would not waver no matter what. Her head was throbbing. She had no idea how it had come to this, and she couldn’t figure out the distorted starting point. She lifted her narrowed eyes. The woman’s gaze, a mix of worry, anger, fear, and betrayal, was pure chaos.
“Do you think this is a possibility, that you’re so boldly declaring this to me? You’re making a grand rebellion at such a late age. But there’s one thing you’re overlooking. The fact that they’re getting engaged is known to everyone in Korea, and if you just type in their names on the internet, there are countless articles about their engagement. So what? Who are you taking with you, and what are you going to do?”
Her voice, which had been cold, gradually rose in temperature, and Seo Jeong-ju finally lost her temper.
“I don’t know how much more I have to endure.”
“I’m also curious about how much more I can endure. You know I inherited this obsessively persistent side from you. So please, help me not to do something even more ridiculous.”
“Help you with what? Are you going to go and break off their engagement yourself?”
His gaze, which didn’t deny it, was clear. The more she heard, the more complicated it became. This was just a request in name, but it was nothing short of a threat. Seo Jeong-ju, who was letting out continuous breaths as if she were dumbfounded, spoke in a cool, low voice.
“Even if the engagement is broken for any other reason, not because of you, I will not accept that child. Your place is not there. There’s nothing more to say, so let’s stop here. Of all the things I’ve heard from you, today has been the most horrible.”
“If that’s what you wish for, Mother.”
Tae-jo nodded as if he understood perfectly.
“I have three sons, so it wouldn’t matter if one of them were gone.”
“You!”
“So don’t lay a finger on Yi-seo. I’m asking you.”
Tae-jo stood up after saying it sharply, as if it were a warning. Seo Jeong-ju, who was blankly watching him bow and leave the director’s office, belatedly took out a sedative from her desk drawer and swallowed it.
It felt as if someone had sliced the back of her head. Even if her sacred temple, the art center, had collapsed, she wouldn’t have felt this hollow. A fever rose up the back of her neck again at the declaration of her youngest son, whom she had cherished all her life.
Seo Jeong-ju, who was constantly sighing and unable to suppress her anger, called Tae-han, the only person who could control him.
She had to find a way before something even bigger happened.
________________________________________
Summoned to Haeseungwon from early in the morning, Tae-jo was silently looking at the chairman beyond the table.
Ryu Jung-hwan was sitting below an eight-panel folding screen, which was harmoniously arranged with a pair of animals and objects. Next to him, Secretary Min, who was like his right-hand man, was quietly attending to him.
Even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, he naturally knelt on the cushion and waited quietly for the chairman to finish what he was doing.
The inner gate opened, and it had been about three hours since he had entered. His kneeling legs were starting to tingle from his feet.
The chairman, with his large physique, was still in high spirits, chewing on wild ginseng. It was a five-stemmed 천종 (Cheon-jong, a rare type of wild ginseng) that a ginseng digger from Gangwon-do had brought the day before. The time it took to chew and swallow the over 400-year-old ginseng from the root to the body and stem was several hours.
As the saying goes, to get the full effect, you have to eat every single rootlet right where you’re sitting, and he stubbornly chewed and swallowed every last bit.
Only after the tray that had held the ginseng was empty did he let out a leisurely breath and clear his throat with a khem.
“So. Why did you do that?”
After three hours, the first thing he asked was, as expected, about the problem.
Tae-jo, who had been kneeling like a sinner, raised his head. The chairman’s sharp wisdom, which was even more piercing than a tiger’s in his benevolent face, flashed like gold and landed on Tae-jo.
“Lost your tongue?”
He urged his youngest grandson, who was just looking at him as if in a standoff instead of answering the question.
He knew Tae-jo’s movements had changed since Jin-han’s engagement was decided through Secretary Min, who reported Haeshin’s every move every morning.
At a drinking party the other day, he had caused a problem by spontaneously assaulting a friend, they said. And then a while ago, he had upset his daughter-in-law, and these days, he was wandering around Seoul like a madman. Even after cleaning up a situation that could have turned into a big commotion, his eldest daughter-in-law Seo Jeong-ju’s worries never ended.
The chairman, as if he was displeased with his grandson who was acting that way just because of a woman, stared at Tae-jo, who was stubbornly keeping his mouth shut.
He thought this was why his daughter-in-law hadn’t told him. A month ago, when they were discussing the marriage with Yoon Sang-baek’s granddaughter, he thought his daughter-in-law’s choice to exclude Tae-jo was the right one, and he changed the subject to Tae-jo, who was silent.
“How’s work?”
“You get a report every morning through Secretary Min, don’t you?”
Tae-jo, who had endured silently until his mouth was dry, was now like a prickly hedgehog as soon as he opened it. Kkeung, the chairman let out a sigh and looked at his grandson’s firm face over his thick reading glasses.
“Are you sulking?”
At his heavy voice, Tae-jo’s dark eyebrows twitched faintly.
“Why did you call me here?”
“Did you think I wouldn’t know when you make it so obvious?”
“You call me in for something this small, but why didn’t you call me to that meeting on that day?”
“I didn’t not call you. You didn’t come.”
“I was never told about it. And I know that it was cut off at my mother’s level, not by your will. So please, make this engagement as if it never happened.”
Just as he was about to figure out when he would lash out, Tae-jo brought up the main point. He deliberately mentioned that it was Seo Jeong-ju, not the chairman, who had cut off his right to give his opinion at that important meeting, and that he wouldn’t argue, but he was asking for the power to reverse the outcome.
“She’s the woman I was seeing.”
A laugh disappeared from the chairman’s leisurely face at his grandson’s expression, who believed this could be his last trump card.
A heavy silence fell for a moment. Even Secretary Min, who rarely showed emotions, held his breath at Tae-jo’s reckless audacity.
“So what? It’s not like she’s carrying your child.”
After a moment of thought, the chairman opened his mouth again, leisurely.
“Unless it’s something like that, everything is fine. It’s in the past. It’s natural for people to meet other people as they live. Isn’t it more strange for a person to never date like a loner?”
It was a scenario he had been envisioning ever since Director Seo had pleaded that if they left him alone, he would cause trouble.
The chairman deliberately put a wedge in nonchalantly and slowly examined his grandson’s face.
His expression, stubbornly keeping his mouth shut, was exactly like his own when he was young. Suddenly, Tae-jo’s childhood flashed through his memory.
When he was only seven years old, he stood in the front yard in the rain, his lips turning blue, because his older brother had been given an object he had had his eye on. Even when Seo Jeong-ju hugged him with her whole body and fussed over him, how stubborn that little boy was.
He couldn’t forget the eyes of that little boy who looked up at him, soaked in the rain. They weren’t the eyes of a child. He was the kind of kid who would stand there and endure the night dew, even if it meant collapsing, if he couldn’t get what he wanted. At that moment, the chairman finally thought that they had a formidable member in the family.
In the end, he had gotten what he wanted after suffering a fever throughout his body. Since then, he was known for his stubbornness.
But to have that same expression for something like this, something surged up within the chairman in an instant.
“Are you insane?”
Even with his deep attachment to his bloodline, a chill ran down his spine when he saw his grandson’s face, which looked as if he had been given an opportunity.
“Ryu Tae-jo, have you gone crazy? How can you make a face like that over just one woman! Are you determined to bring shame to this family!”
“Knowing what kind of relationship we had, you still put her with my cousin. Didn’t you expect this to happen?”
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