Chapter 7
If I hadn’t loved you, would it have hurt less? Would things have been easier?
Seol-ah quietly weighed the two sides.
On one side, her feelings for Moon-hyuk.
On the other, the pain those feelings caused her.
But once again today, the scale inevitably tipped toward Moon-hyuk.
Soon, the familiar bitterness spread throughout her chest.
Feeling even more ridiculous for being like this, Seol-ah pressed her fingers against her cracked lips and looked out the window.
At that moment, the small distance between her and Moon-hyuk, enough for only one person to sit between them, suddenly felt impossibly far away.
Then, as if a transparent barrier had risen between them, something huge seemed to block her from him.
Soon, Moon-hyuk and Tae-woo’s conversation brushed past her ears like a passing breeze.
It was a conversation she did not dare to interrupt.
Ha…
Seol-ah let out a faint breath and slowly raised her gaze.
The high blue sky, without a single cloud, filled her entire field of vision.
It was so bright and painfully blue that the clear sky was enough to bring tears to her eyes.
It was also the sky beneath which her mother had left this world.
Under that sky, Seol-ah once again became a lonely island.
A dry, cold winter island where even growing a single small flower was difficult.
Tap, tap, tap!
White crystals were roughly scattered over her.
Seol-ah squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head slightly.
A large amount of coarse salt poured mercilessly over her body.
It was so large and rough that it should have hurt.
But she felt no pain.
She wasn’t even angry.
She was simply too exhausted.
Her body and her heart were both completely worn out.
Behind her tightly closed eyelids, she pictured her mother-in-law, Kyung-hwa.
Madam Lee Kyung-hwa was the lady of Taekyung Group and the director of the famous gallery, Hwayang Art Center.
Even in her late fifties, she was an exceptionally beautiful woman with the elegant, aristocratic appearance befitting Moon-hyuk’s biological mother.
Society often described her as the very embodiment of noblesse oblige.
But did people know?
In front of cameras, she would wear an apron and smile elegantly while visiting orphanages.
But the moment the cameras were lowered, her expression would instantly turn cold.
Did they know this, too?
That this woman, who was more intelligent and sophisticated than anyone in the world, was actually someone who strongly believed in superstitions like this?
The salt hitting her body and falling to the floor with little thuds told the story.
It revealed her hypocrisy.
It revealed who she truly was.
And it also told Seol-ah:
This is where you belong.
Only after the bowl was completely emptied did the salt, pouring down like hail, finally stop.
“Madam, I’m sorry. But please understand the eldest madam’s wishes.”
Jung-ae, who was in charge of managing the household, bowed her head at an almost perfectly measured angle.
Her immaculate greeting and perfectly controlled expression, matching her spotless and neat clothing that almost suggested obsessive cleanliness, made her look exactly like Kyung-hwa’s right-hand woman.
In the end, Seol-ah had only one answer.
“…Yes. I understand.”
“Thank you. Then please come inside.”
Jung-ae stepped slightly to the side and extended her arm toward the house, as though welcoming a guest.
Seol-ah unconsciously bit the inside of her lip.
Then she raised her eyes slightly, taking in the scene before her.
Past the black iron gate stood a towering red wall that stretched endlessly to the side like the walls of a fortress.
Seol-ah’s breath caught.
For two years, this had been the house where she ate, slept, and lived.
Yet now it felt as though the house were a prison, squeezing and crushing her.
Still, Seol-ah calmly lifted her head and walked inside.
She passed through the gate.
Then she climbed the stairs stretching upward.
After walking up for quite some time, she finally reached the top.
A vast garden came into view, with wide stretches of grass and magnificent pine trees and carefully landscaped plants, some of which were worth hundreds of millions of won each, arranged beautifully together.
That was when—
“You’re here, Dongseo?”
A woman sitting on a garden bench spoke to her.
She had tied a snow-white ribbon loosely around her neck.
It was Jihyun.
She wore a luxurious chiffon blouse and a neat skirt with a simple, clean-cut design.
Her outfit could have looked somewhat plain, but the full, elegantly tied ribbon added just the right accent.
She looked like a swan, graceful and refined.
Seol-ah answered.
“Yes, Hyeongnim.”
“It was such nice weather, so I came outside.”
Jihyun said this without being asked, her eyes lazily narrowing as she spoke.
Then she slowly stood up and approached Seol-ah.
“It must have been hard, right?”
Jihyun lowered the ends of her eyebrows in an exaggerated expression of sympathy and spoke gently.
But it was strange.
Her words were clearly supposed to comfort Seol-ah.
Yet there was no comfort or sorrow in that beautiful but artificial expression.
Was it just Seol-ah’s imagination?
Or had her heart become twisted because of some lingering resentment?
In Jihyun’s perfectly made-up eyes, Seol-ah thought she could even see a strange hint of spite and jealousy.
Even though there was no reason for it.
“……”
Seol-ah closed her mouth tightly.
She had nothing to say.
No, it wasn’t that she had nothing to say.
She simply could not bring herself to speak carelessly, and she did not want to say anything either.
Jihyun slowly crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side.
Then her eyes traveled over Seol-ah.
From the white ribbon pinned to the right side of Seol-ah’s head, down to her even thinner jawline, and along her long, graceful neck.
Jihyun’s eyes narrowed.
Even another woman had to admit that Seol-ah was incredibly pure and beautiful.
And with the sorrowful, fragile atmosphere surrounding her, Seol-ah possessed a kind of beauty Jihyun could never imitate.
The corners of Jihyun’s lips twisted.
Now, even Seol-ah’s roughened skin and the dark shadows beneath her eyes looked pitiful to Jihyun, as though they only made her more capable of stirring a man’s protective instincts.
To Jihyun, Seol-ah was like a cat that had climbed onto the kitchen stove without even knowing her place.
“Ha…”
Jihyun deliberately let out a deep sigh.
“You must be able to rest well today, Dongseo.”
Jihyun knew perfectly well that Seol-ah was not taking time off by choice.
Yet she deliberately said it that way.
Seol-ah could clearly feel the intention behind Jihyun’s words.
Instead of answering, she lowered her gaze even further.
Then Jihyun’s voice brushed past her ears.
“But Dongseo, did you really have to call your husband back?”
There was obvious hostility hidden beneath her words.
Seol-ah slowly raised her head.
“What… do you mean, Hyeongnim?”
“There are a lot of people talking right now.”
“What are they saying?”
“You know. Surely you don’t really not know, Dongseo? You know how important this business trip was to your husband.”
There was deep contempt hidden beneath those words.
And Jihyun spoke as though she, the sister-in-law, was more concerned about and worried about Moon-hyuk than his own wife, Seol-ah.
Discomfort and irritation washed over Seol-ah.
She looked directly at Jihyun.
“Hyeongnim, I wasn’t the one who contacted him…”
But before Seol-ah could finish, Jihyun cut her off sharply.
“Of course. I’m sure you weren’t. You didn’t contact him directly.”
“Hyeongnim!”
“Ha… I’m tired from preparing for the memorial rite.”
The employees were the ones actually doing the preparations.
Yet Jihyun closed her eyes and rubbed her shoulders as though she had done everything herself.
Then she waved her hand dismissively, as though telling Seol-ah to leave.
“Dongseo, you should go inside now. Mother must be waiting.”
Then she sat down and began elegantly drinking her tea.
Even an applause needs two hands to make a sound.
At this point, Seol-ah had nothing more to say.
No, she did have things to say.
But Jihyun was not someone who would listen even if she spoke.
More importantly, there was still a huge mountain she had to climb.
That mountain was Kyung-hwa.
Seol-ah walked inside to meet her mother-in-law.
That was when—
“Wouldn’t it be better if you took off that ribbon before going inside?”
Jihyun’s voice came flying after her, dripping with malice, as though she had been waiting for the opportunity.
“Oh, right. That way, you might look even more pitiful.”
Seol-ah stopped walking.
She had known for a long time that Jihyun looked down on her.
How could she not?
But this was the first time Jihyun had shown such blatant hostility.
Seol-ah stood still for a moment.
Then she simply stepped forward, deliberately walking over Jihyun’s malicious words as though they were nothing.
The front door opened.
It looked like an ordinary entrance door, but in reality, it was a work of art completed through the painstaking hands of a master craftsman.
After passing across the marble floor that spread out like a lobby, another door appeared.
The inner door.
When she opened it, gentle classical music and bright lighting greeted her.
Beyond it was a long corridor that looked almost like a gallery.
“Welcome back.”
An employee greeted her as though they had been waiting for her.
“Yes.”
Seol-ah also gave a small bow.
“She’s waiting in the living room.”
“Yes.”
The air inside was perfect.
The humidity was perfectly controlled.
The temperature was ideal.
A luxurious yet pleasant fragrance filled the air.
Everything about the atmosphere was perfect.
Seol-ah walked deeper inside.
But why did her steps feel so heavy today?
And why did this hallway feel so endlessly long?
She had lived here for two years.
Surely she should have become accustomed to it by now.
Come to think of it, she had felt exactly the same way when she first arrived.
That day, everything had felt especially frightening and difficult, as though it were foreshadowing the married life that awaited her.
September sunlight poured through the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, revealing the beautiful garden outside.
And inside that sunlight, Kyung-hwa was sitting on the sofa like a painting.
