CHAPTER 7
“I should never have come back, not ever.”
“I should have died in that house where they worked me like a slave…!”
When Han Ji-yu brought up what had happened during her disappearance, something she had never talked about before, Mi-ri’s eyes reddened with tears.
The disappearance.
That incident was Mi-ri’s trigger for tears, Myung-hoon’s trigger for seizures of rage, and Seo-eun’s trigger for giving up.
Stepping aside for the sake of her poor younger sister—that was the role Seo-eun had taken on in this family after Ji-yu returned.
“Han Ji-yu, that’s not what we’re talking about right now.”
Seo-eun tried to bring the conversation back to the point, but it was useless.
Ji-yu’s sobbing turned into a desperate scream.
“Mom, Dad!”
“And Do-yoon, too… I want to go back.”
“I’m sure they’ll take me back if I return.”
“I was the best at begging, after all!”
“So please let me go, please….”
“Ji-yu…!”
“Ugh, ugh.”
Mi-ri’s shoulders shook as she dry-heaved at the horrifying story she could not even bear to imagine.
Kang Do-yoon tried to pull Ji-yu to her feet, but Ji-yu shook her head and refused.
“No, I don’t want to!”
“I’m going back.”
“I don’t belong in this family.”
“Everyone is so happy here, so why is this happening only to me…?”
“Couldn’t it mean that I’m supposed to leave?”
At that, Mi-ri came rushing over with a half-dazed expression and clung desperately to Seo-eun.
“Seo-eun… Seo-eun…!”
Mi-ri shook her so hard that Seo-eun’s body staggered.
“Seo-eun, we can’t send Ji-yu away.”
“You say you’re sorry first, okay?”
“Mom….”
“Seo-eun, please.”
“It’s your mother asking you.”
“Why do I have to apologize to Ji-yu?”
“I told you, Kang Do-yoon and I have been together for a year.”
“I can prove it!”
Then Myung-hoon cut Seo-eun off.
“Seo-eun, please, just stop.”
“Why do I have to give way to Ji-yu?”
“I’m telling you, Kang Do-yoon and I….”
“…You’re not even our daughter!”
“……!”
For a moment, Seo-eun was rendered speechless.
Myung-hoon quietly avoided her gaze.
He did not seem to have any intention of taking back what he had said.
So it really was true.
What Seo-eun had only vaguely suspected had been happening without her knowledge.
Things had felt strange for a while.
After Ji-yu returned, Mi-ri had changed.
She constantly poured all her worries out onto Seo-eun.
Whenever Seo-eun spent a day absorbing Mi-ri’s tangled emotional garbage, she would be left with a hollow feeling inside.
Even Myung-hoon, who had once given Seo-eun limitless love, began treating her as though she were invisible after Ji-yu returned.
But Seo-eun had believed the words, We’re a family.
That was why she had tried even harder to be good to Ji-yu.
“Did you really mean what you just said?”
No one could answer Seo-eun’s quiet question.
Mi-ri was the one who finally spoke.
“Then are you telling me to send Ji-yu back to that filthy, hellish place?”
“Seo-eun, I can’t do that.”
You call yourself a mother, yet how can you not understand your own daughter at all?
“She’s lying!”
“It’s all a lie!”
“She’s acting!”
Slap!
The next moment, Seo-eun’s vision flashed white.
Her head had been turned to the side, and for a moment, she could not comprehend reality.
Myung-hoon had slapped her.
A searing pain spread across one cheek.
When she slowly turned her head back, she saw Myung-hoon standing before her with a flushed face, breathing heavily, while tears blurred her vision.
“You ungrateful…”
“You repay everything we did for you by behaving like this!”
The pain in her heart hurt far more than the pain in her face.
Her father and mother, who had supported her in everything, and Kang Do-yoon, whom she had never doubted would become her partner in life.
Suddenly, the people who had been taking one step back from her felt like strangers from another world.
People who had nothing to do with her.
Seo-eun no longer wanted to convince them.
There was no need to present them with evidence anymore, either.
“You should have told me when you adopted me.”
“You should have said, ‘You’re a replacement for Ji-yu, so don’t ever mistake yourself for our real daughter.’”
“What, what did you say?”
“This, this insolent girl…”
“Just because we fed you and gave you a place to sleep, you think you can talk back to us like this?”
It had never been love.
It had been an imitation.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you for letting me know how you really feel.”
“I almost went my whole life without ever knowing.”
“A substitute love meant to fill an empty space for a while.”
“I’m going to stop pretending to be your real daughter, too.”
“I’ll be going now.”
Seo-eun bowed her head toward the bewildered Mi-ri and Myung-hoon.
Then she turned around without a trace of hesitation.
“W-Well, look at that insolent little brat!”
Those words made Seo-eun turn back.
She walked over and stopped in front of Kang Do-yoon.
“And your errand-girl act ends here, too.”
“You’d better do well at the company starting tomorrow.”
“W-What… what did you say…?”
“Assistant Manager Han, how can you say something like that…?”
“If you don’t, I’ll catch up to you in no time.”
Seo-eun watched Do-yoon’s trembling eyes for a moment before turning away.
Then she walked toward the entrance with her back straight.
“I told you we should have adopted a boy, didn’t I!”
Myung-hoon’s voice, deliberately loud enough for her to hear, struck her like an arrow.
—
It was a brutal night.
The moment Seo-eun left the apartment building, she collapsed.
She dropped to her knees before eventually sinking onto the ground.
She could not even feel the rough texture of the asphalt beneath her.
It’s all over.
No.
Have I gone back to the beginning?
It doesn’t matter.
I was alone from the very beginning, anyway.
“Haa…”
Thinking that gave her at least a little strength.
Seo-eun barely managed to get back on her feet.
But just as she began staggering forward from dizziness, someone grabbed her by the shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
Seo-eun’s body spun around.
The person who steadied her wavering mind was none other than Cha Hee-mok.
—
Once again, Seo-eun had ended up indebted to him despite never intending to.
Hee-mok once again gave her the passenger seat beside the driver’s seat, and Seo-eun could not exchange a single word with him because she was lost in her thoughts.
Before she knew it, they had arrived in front of her officetel.
She needed to get out, but she suddenly did not want to do anything at all.
Feeling as though she needed to hold on to something—anything—Seo-eun opened her mouth.
“Are we already here?”
She was not asking because she was curious.
She had simply felt that she needed to say something, so she had asked out of courtesy.
Looking at her absent expression, Hee-mok asked,
“What happened at home?”
“You don’t look like someone who just came back from visiting her family.”
“…….”
His clear eyes drew the answer out of Seo-eun.
“I actually had a fight with my parents.”
Only afterward did she realize how weak the word fight was for what had actually happened.
She could feel his gaze falling on her left cheek, which was still numb from Myung-hoon’s slap.
“What kind of fight leaves your face looking like that…?”
Unable to tell such an obvious lie, Seo-eun glanced at Hee-mok as if she had no intention of hiding anything, then quickly lowered her gaze.
“You’re right.”
“Actually, it was worse than that.”
“I’m too embarrassed to talk about it anymore, though.”
As an awkward silence settled between them, Hee-mok dug up a faint fragment of memory.
“I’ve met your mother before.”
“She used to come to the academy from time to time, too.”
At the gentle voice that made Seo-eun forget her troubles with her family, she forgot her embarrassment and met his eyes.
Mi-ri had often visited the academy that Seo-eun and Ji-yu attended.
Sometimes the academy staff asked her to come because they wanted to keep their top-performing student, Seo-eun, from leaving.
Other times, they contacted her to complain about Ji-yu, who skipped academy classes as though it were a daily routine.
“You remember that?”
“I remember thinking she seemed like a good person.”
“I remember her having a very warm impression.”
“I don’t know what happened, though.”
“If you’re going to say something like that, please don’t.”
Seo-eun’s usually steady eyes trembled.
If he was going to tell her to be a good daughter or say something similar, she did not want to hear it anymore.
“What do you mean?”
But contrary to her expectations, Hee-mok covered the top of Seo-eun’s head with his large, solid hand.
The warmth that seemed to embrace everything caused her prickly emotions to melt away in an instant.
Seeing Seo-eun’s gaze gradually settle, Hee-mok said,
“It probably wasn’t your fault.”
“…….”
An old memory came rushing back.
Once, Seo-eun had ruined an exam because she had accidentally written her answers one line off.
That day, she had sobbed uncontrollably on the academy rooftop.
He said the exact same thing back then.
Hee-mok, who attended the same academy, had suddenly appeared and gently stroked her head as he said warmly,
“Yeah, cry your heart out.”
“That’s the only way you’ll feel better.”
“I don’t know what happened, but it probably wasn’t your fault.”
And then….
Seo-eun had abruptly stopped crying at those words.
It was not because he had told her not to cry.
Instead, his permission to cry as much as she wanted had somehow made her tears stop.
The high school boy she saw through her tear-filled eyes had looked so incredibly cool.
That was when Seo-eun decided that she would like Hee-mok.
He also acknowledged her whenever he saw her, and the two of them became quite close.
Then one day, Hee-mok was the one who asked her out first.
“Seo-eun, do you want to go watch a movie with me this weekend?”
The sudden rush of old memories made her laugh.
“Hee, now that I think about it, you were quite the player, weren’t you?”
Her tears disappeared completely.
His gentle touch had felt far too practiced.
Of course, when she had been young and knew nothing about such things, her heart had raced.
“A player?”
“But not anymore.”
“Is this how you win a woman’s heart at a time like this?”
“When she’s feeling completely vulnerable?”
“I didn’t know you misunderstood me that badly.”
“So, after successfully stroking my head….”
Seo-eun met his eyes and asked him a daring question.
“What do you do next?”
She did not like the fact that he seemed to have quite a playboy streak.
But there was no denying that he was an attractive man.
“I’m going crazy.”
He let out a quiet laugh while gripping the steering wheel with both hands.
His tone suggested that she had completely misread him, so Seo-eun argued back.
“Everything is perfect.”
“A confined space, a situation where I need comforting, a lonely man who just came to Korea.”
“And… a woman like me who wants to be loved, at least for this moment.”
Even after saying it aloud, the words embarrassed her.
But she had no intention of taking them back.
If anything, she thought it was fortunate that he was such a loose man.
If you’re really that experienced, then please handle a woman like me, too.
“Hee-mok oppa.”
Of course, just for tonight.
“Will you sleep with me?”
The calmness in his eyes cracked in an instant.
“We’re not kids anymore.”
“We’re both adults now.”
