5. The Fiancée
“I’m sorry. I’m late.”
“What are you apologizing for? You can be a little late when you’re busy with work.”
After being shown to his seat by the server, Doheon sat down. Sunghee, who was already seated across from him, welcomed him warmly, telling him not to worry about it.
“I heard your mother wasn’t feeling well.”
Jihyun, who naturally took the seat beside Doheon, looked dejected as she said she had received a call on the way there.
It was a call even Doheon, her own son, hadn’t received, but he didn’t care. He already knew it was a childish attempt to emphasize how close the two of them were.
“I’m worried about whether she’s all right. There wasn’t any strength in her voice.”
“She’ll get better.”
His mother was the kind of person who used her sick body to get what she wanted no matter what, sometimes as a sword and sometimes as a shield, taking advantage of the fact that she had undergone major surgery.
She was also the reason and cause Doheon was maintaining an engagement with a woman he had no feelings for.
“Oppa, you’re too indifferent toward your mother. That’s why she complains to me whenever she sees me.”
Doheon showed no particular reaction to Jihyun’s words. Instead, he picked up the menu and handed it to Sunghee.
Touched that Doheon was taking care of her, Sunghee examined the menu with a broad smile.
“They said the apricot jam is used in the cake for dessert.”
Jihyun spoke to Doheon after he called the server and finished ordering, but he didn’t answer. He was staring at a particular spot.
“Oppa?”
Following Doheon’s gaze, Jihyun turned her head, but the view was blocked by a pillar.
Jihyun couldn’t see her, but beyond the pillar, at the very corner of the lounge, sat Yoonkyung. Even then, she was only partially visible, her profile appearing and disappearing as the wall blocked her.
“……Doheon oppa!”
When Jihyun grabbed Doheon’s arm, his gaze immediately shifted to Jihyun, then to the hand holding his arm.
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
With the brief answer, Doheon pulled his arm away.
As his firm arm slipped free, leaving only empty air in her grasp, Jihyun clenched her fist.
He was the kind of man who wouldn’t even allow a small touch, let alone let her link arms with him.
Thanks to Doheon losing his memories, Jihyun had been able to take the position of his fiancée, but three years ago and even now, all she had gained was an empty title.
“The wallet from B Company this time is really pretty. They even have a matching men’s version. What do you think, oppa? Should I buy one for you?”
Forcing down the corners of her lips that were about to fall, Jihyun raised her voice even more.
“The one I’m using now isn’t even that old.”
“Three years is a long time. Or what about the shoes from S Company? I saw their advertisement, and it looked like it was filmed in Italy. I went there last year, but seeing it made me want to go again.”
A bag from one company had come out, this season was like this, she had traveled somewhere and the hotel service had been this or that.
The things Jihyun talked about were usually similar.
Her major, piano, was practically the only subject that could somewhat attract Doheon’s interest, but with her barely good enough skills to graduate, that was impossible from the start.
“You must be busy with everything you were put in charge of as soon as you returned from the States, right? How is the company?”
“It’s hectic.”
Doheon lifted his glass and drank some water in response to Sunghee’s question.
“Representative Kwak is pretty free-spirited.”
“Thanks to that, you get to see oppa often. I guess I should thank Jicheol oppa?”
It was doing well when the company was practically on the verge of collapse.
This was why dealing with people who were immature was so exhausting.
“I’ll help you so you won’t have to work so hard, oppa.”
“Instead of helping me, you should have helped your brother.”
“Jicheol oppa and I don’t have compatible work styles.”
“And you do with me?”
“Of course. I can adjust everything to you.”
Jihyun’s coquettish smile only made Doheon feel more suffocated.
“Doing your job well is how you help. If you’re a parachute hire, it’s hard to earn recognition unless you’re twice as good.”
“Isn’t my existence enough? Why do I need their recognition?”
What do those people matter?
At the sincerity behind Jihyun’s small scoff, Doheon turned his head toward the window.
“Come to think of it, it’s already been three years since you two got engaged.”
Sunghee, who had been watching the two of them carefully, changed the subject.
“Doheon is back in Korea now, and you’re both at an age where……”
“Jihyun is still very young.”
“I’m not young. What’s so young about being thirty?”
“You’re very young.”
Whether financially or emotionally, a thirty-year-old who had never properly become independent was nothing more than a child who had simply grown older.
“I’ve been working hard to learn how to cook these days, too. If we’re going to become a family, I……”
“Speaking of family, that reminds me.”
Cutting Jihyun off, Doheon touched his glass of water.
“I heard these days people get a certificate proving their marital status before getting married. Imagine marrying someone thinking they’ve never been married, only to find out they have a divorce on their record, or even a hidden child.”
“My goodness. People these days really have some nerve.”
“What do you think, Mother?”
Doheon looked at Sunghee.
“You don’t have any hidden children, do you?”
Although he asked Sunghee, the moment Doheon asked the question, both women turned their eyes toward him.
“W-What…….”
“I was just joking. Why are you so surprised?”
“D-Doheon asked so seriously that I got nervous without realizing it. Your charisma is no joke.”
Sunghee laughed awkwardly.
“We haven’t seen each other even once in the past three years. Of course there couldn’t be one. It was never mentioned either. Right?”
“Of course. You know I only have Jicheol oppa.”
Jihyun scolded Doheon for taking a joke so seriously.
“If we’re talking about hidden siblings besides Jicheol, then what about Narong and Darong?”
“They’re not siblings. They’re children.”
“You’re right. Haha.”
As Doheon listened to the mother and daughter’s conversation, his expression slowly became calm.
‘Do you really want to see your mother go crazy because of this?!’
He had clearly seen the woman named Kang Yoonkyung standing before Sunghee when the word mother had come from Sunghee’s mouth.
In truth, Doheon had arrived at the appointed time, but a business call from someone looking for him had dragged on, so he hadn’t been able to enter.
The contents of the call were confidential, and while searching for a suitable place to take it, Doheon had found a narrow corner.
After discussing the progress and presenting a solution, Doheon finally ended the lengthy call and hurried toward the restaurant.
That was when he saw the faces of two women reflected in the diagonal glass window.
Sunghee, the ‘fiancée’s stepmother,’ and Yoonkyung, the ‘woman he had met at the company.’
Two women who should never have been together were standing face-to-face, talking in a serious atmosphere.
‘Yoonkyung, listen to your mother.’
He had been curious for only a moment.
Doheon had been about to walk past them and erase his interest when he heard the word mother from Sunghee and could no longer move forward.
‘I don’t have a mother. She died three years ago.’
The word three years from Yoonkyung’s mouth stopped Doheon in his tracks.
For Doheon, who had lost all memories from the two years immediately preceding the accident three years ago, it was almost an instinct engraved into him ever since the accident.
‘You decided to be Kwak Jihyun’s mother instead of Kang Yoonkyung’s mother. So don’t bother me and go take care of your own daughter.’
Doheon already knew that Sunghee wasn’t Jihyun’s biological mother.
Therefore, if their conversation was true, if what he had heard was correct, it meant that his fiancée, Jihyun, had a hidden sister.
A person he had never seen or even heard of.
After coming down to the first floor, Yoonkyung hurried toward the main entrance she could see in the distance.
No matter what the compensation was, going on an unwanted blind date after work was exhausting.
And a blind date with an arrogant man who lacked even basic social skills was even worse.
‘I didn’t even want to come, but he kept insisting.’
Even though the man was thirty minutes late, he showed no sign of being sorry.
He was the kind of man who changed the meeting place without even asking for her consent, so she hadn’t expected much to begin with.
But expecting little and being offended were two separate things.
His attitude toward the server alone made it obvious.
To put it simply, the man was rude.
On top of that, he apparently hadn’t even learned proper table manners, making it difficult to sit across from him and eat.
So Yoonkyung merely answered his questions mechanically, like a doll, without initiating conversation herself.
She wasn’t being impolite, but she kept the interaction to the bare minimum.
This man was the illegitimate son of a National Assembly member who had a child with a bar hostess while still married to his wife.
The men Sunghee arranged for her to meet were always around this level.
An unsavory birth was practically a requirement, and most were either reckless men their families wanted to get rid of or men of below-average intelligence.
Sunghee sent them to her knowingly.
If she managed to get rid of Yoonkyung through marriage, she benefited, and even if it failed, she had nothing to lose.
The dozens of blind dates arranged by Sunghee were nothing more than tickets for Sunghee to gain access to social circles.
What mattered to her was the number of times she could claim she had made an effort.
Yoonkyung endured those hours and received money in return.
At first, Yoonkyung had also been offended by the men’s attitudes, but after it happened repeatedly, she became numb to it.
It wasn’t as though any of the men who came had a reason to like her, but she had no reason to like them either.
In that sense, she sometimes thought it was actually rather clean and simple.
“Next week, then.”
After leaving the hotel, Yoonkyung looked up at the tree across the street.
Even within Seoul, perhaps the temperature was noticeably different here.
Unlike the tree in front of her company, the tree in front of the W Hotel was already filled with flower buds between its branches.
“If I had to come out anyway, I wish it had been next week instead of today.”
Then she would have been less tired than she was now.
Yoonkyung rubbed her shoulders and, as though she had remembered something belatedly, took her phone out of her bag.
Money had been deposited into her account under Sunghee’s name.
After checking the balance, Yoonkyung entered the deposited amount and pressed the transfer button.
The seven-digit number in her bank account disappeared all at once.
When the pop-up confirmed that the transfer had been completed, Yoonkyung pressed the call button and raised the phone to her ear.
