Chapter : 02
It really was true.
If the woman sitting across from him had been Soyul, Taehun would not have been able to go through with this blind date today.
At first, he had been absolutely certain that she was Soyul. He had thought that the girl he knew had grown into an adult and appeared before him, saying that she would become his bride.
That was why his heart had seemed to sink.
But soon, he realized that she was not Soyul.
He had not even bothered to check the profile documents of the woman he was meeting, since he intended to marry whoever she was. However, his chief secretary had read the contents aloud to him, so he knew that the woman’s name was not Soyul, but Jiminchae.
Thank goodness she wasn’t Soyul.
‘But I’m still not entirely comfortable with this. Of all people, she has to be Soyul’s twin sister.’
He was going to become the husband of a woman who had exactly the same face as that girl.
But the situation was urgent right now. Perhaps, as they lived together, seeing the same face would eventually become something he grew accustomed to.
‘Yes. It can’t be helped. Rejecting someone simply because she has the same face as her in a situation like this would be unreasonable.’
Taehun gathered his thoughts and spoke again.
“Then I’ll ask you directly, Jiminchae.”
His low voice settled heavily over the table.
“Are you willing to go through with this marriage?”
“……”
The answer from the woman sitting across from him was slow to come.
Her expression looked gloomy, and her neatly folded hands seemed to tremble slightly.
“…Yes.”
At last, a quiet answer came.
That one word sounded less like an enthusiastic declaration of intent and more like something she had agreed to reluctantly.
But Taehun did not look too deeply into it.
‘As long as we get married right away, I don’t care what circumstances she has.’
Taehun decided to make his own circumstances clear first.
“Then I’ll make one thing clear beforehand.”
“……”
“This will be a marriage without love. My entire schedule is already allocated. I don’t have the time to take any of it away and devote it to a family.”
Taehun drew a firm line with a resolute voice, sounding cold even to himself as well as to the woman sitting before him.
“Instead, I’ll guarantee everything else. It would be better for us to set our expectations from the beginning. If they don’t match later, the cost will be much greater for both of us.”
If his young wife ever approached him one day with a face full of longing for his affection, he would not be able to accept her feelings.
That would be unfair to his wife, and it would also become an exhausting burden for him.
‘But that isn’t the only problem anymore.’
Although he would eventually become accustomed to it, there would be moments when Soyul’s face would inevitably appear over hers.
What if one of those moments happened when his wife was approaching him, wanting his love?
If that happened, somehow, he felt as though he would be committing a sin against Soyul and Youngho.
Therefore, in many ways, it would be best to block any expectation of affection from the very beginning.
“…Yes, I understand.”
The woman answered in a subdued voice.
A young woman of only twenty-two had calmly accepted the words “a marriage without love.”
Perhaps this wasn’t her own decision after all.
But it wasn’t something he needed to question.
With that answer, things had actually become easier for him to proceed.
“Good. Then I’ll have my secretary inform you of the schedule and procedures.”
Taehun stood up.
He had managed to fasten the first button.
As he walked away with a lighter heart, however, he stopped impulsively before taking even three steps.
“Um….”
But just as he was about to turn around and ask,
How is Soyul doing?
Taehun tightly closed his mouth.
Since he had decided to marry Soyul’s sister, he would probably see Soyul soon as well.
There was nothing wrong with asking her directly if she had been doing well.
“No. Never mind.”
Taehun bowed his head slightly and walked away again.
“President, did your conversation with the other party go well?”
Inside the car heading toward Chairman Kang Deokheung’s hospital, Choi, Taehun’s chief secretary, asked him.
“Yes. We both agreed, so we’ve decided to get married.”
Perhaps because he was reviewing documents on his tablet PC, Taehun’s answer sounded extremely businesslike to Choi.
As though he had simply concluded a contract.
At the same time, it was surprising.
Taehun had not even properly checked the blind date woman’s documents, forcing Choi to read them aloud to him.
Before going up to the café, he had even said:
“I plan to finish within ten minutes. Wait so that I can leave immediately.”
Choi had assumed that Taehun merely intended to meet her in person out of courtesy and reject her.
But he was going to get married.
“So… I see. It seems you liked her.”
At the words liked her, Taehun’s finger, which had been scrolling through the tablet screen, stopped.
‘Did I like her?’
It was actually the opposite.
His heart felt heavy because of that familiar face.
Still, if he set aside the fact that she had exactly the same face as Soyul, objectively speaking, she wasn’t a bad match.
“She arrived exactly on time, so she seems to have basic manners. I expected the conversation to take ten minutes, but it ended in five. That’s a fifty percent reduction from the expected time. She seems to be someone capable of communicating efficiently.”
…Are we hiring a new employee?
Choi pressed his lips together.
He could only feel sorry for the woman who must have been bewildered.
‘At least Grandfather will be relieved now.’
Not long afterward, Taehun finished reviewing the documents and gazed out the car window as he thought.
“Your dead younger brother, Taeseung, appeared in this old man’s dream. He said you were in danger.”
Taehun’s blind date had begun with that dream of Chairman Kang Deokheung, the founder of DH Group and Taehun’s grandfather.
Chairman Kang had asked Baekwoon about the dream.
Baekwoon was a fortune-teller who was famous for his remarkable spiritual abilities in addition to his expertise in saju, and he was someone Chairman Kang had relied on for a long time.
“When I asked him, he said that misfortune really had fallen upon you. He said that to avoid that misfortune, you must marry a woman with this saju. Please, I’m begging you. This old grandfather can’t bear to send you away first like Taeseung. Please?”
To think that in this day and age, when the Fourth Industrial Revolution was progressing through the power of science, his grandfather was blindly believing the words of some fortune-teller.
He respected and loved his grandfather, but this was something he could not possibly agree to.
On top of that, the woman was eight years younger than him.
Did his grandfather really want to turn his grandson into a thief?
“Grandfather, those things are all superstitions. I won’t die just because I don’t follow what he said, so please don’t worry.”
“No! His words have never been wrong! That’s why, Taehun! Please, grant this old man’s last request while I’m still alive!”
Chairman Kang had pleaded with him for days and nights, but Taehun refused to listen.
Chairman Kang had recently undergone surgery for stomach cancer. As he continued begging Taehun, he grew thinner and thinner.
He had reached the point where Taehun genuinely thought his grandfather might die if this continued, so he had no choice but to change his mind.
Taehun, too, had experienced the grief of losing his younger brother in an accident.
That was why he wanted the rest of his family to remain healthy for a long, long time.
‘At least it’s fortunate that there is someone.’
He could now put his grandfather’s mind at ease.
Taehun had also thought about compensation for the marriage.
He intended to compensate the bride’s family generously.
The same applied to the bride herself.
For accepting a loveless marriage at such a young age, he intended to guarantee that she would live comfortably for the rest of her life.
Other than that, he would maintain his distance.
That was the most he could offer his young wife.
Taehun simply had no energy to devote to a woman.
There was something he absolutely wanted to accomplish.
‘So it can never happen.’
A marriage with Soyul, who Youngho was surely watching from heaven and hoping would meet a good man and live happily, was truly impossible.
Soyul headed home with nothing to show for her efforts.
“Ahh, it hurts…. So this is how painful heels are. Sister Minchae even wears these when she goes clubbing. Does she actually dance while wearing them? I’m suddenly starting to respect her….”
Sigh….
As she walked down the alley, Soyul let out a sigh.
Her feet hurt.
And the fact that the only place she could go while dragging along these painful steps was home was equally sad.
“Ji Soyul, you. Your adoptive parents raised you rich, didn’t they? They say you compare us to them?”
“Then go to those dead people! And don’t call me Mom!”
Not long after returning to her biological family, Soyul had been driven apart from them by Minchae.
“No, I never compared you to them…! It’s true. Please believe me…!”
But they didn’t believe her.
They believed Minchae, not the daughter who had been a stranger to them for twelve years.
The verbal abuse and neglect that followed had made her lonely and miserable.
But they were her biological parents—the people who had given birth to her and searched for her again.
She already knew how painful it was to lose a family.
She believed that if she tried harder, the misunderstanding would eventually be cleared up.
So she always smiled and behaved obediently, desperate to be loved.
But this morning.
Soyul, who had been forced to take a leave of absence from school and was working at her parents’ barbecue restaurant without even receiving proper wages, had set out for work when she realized she had forgotten her phone.
She returned home and took off her shoes at the entrance.
Then she heard something shocking from the living room.
“Then, at the very least, send Ji Soyul out pretending to be me! We look exactly alike, so one day should be fine!”
“Her? Oh my, should we? The extra daughter who came along with the package is actually useful at times like this.”
“She is useful. Didn’t they originally bring her back because of her adoptive parents’ inheritance? It was extremely useful when we opened a branch of our restaurant.”
“That’s right. But I never thought she’d be useful in a way like this, too.”
In that instant, her heart collapsed.
All the years she had spent desperately seeking their love without knowing the truth crumbled like a sandcastle.
Silently leaving the house, Soyul went to a nearby park and sobbed.
They had told her to go to the blind date pretending to be Sister Minchae.
Should I really just disappear somewhere rather than let them use me again whenever it suits them…?
Then, suddenly, her perspective changed.
What if Ji Soyul, who had always obediently done everything they asked, simply stole that marriage away from her?
They would surely become furious and go crazy.
Just as furious as she was in this moment, with all her sadness and anger.
For the first time in her life, such a wicked idea had occurred to her.
‘Maybe that was too cruel of me….’
As if it were punishment for that thought, she had failed completely.
Soyul limped her way home and entered the living room.
Miyoung and Minchae, mother and daughter, were sitting on the sofa, looking absolutely delighted.
“Looks like you did a good job? Kang Taehun’s personal secretary contacted us right away. He said they would meet soon to discuss the marriage.”
“Hey, what did you talk about? I need to know.”
“…He asked if I really intended to get married, so I said yes. And then he said it would be a loveless marriage.”
“What?”
One of Minchae’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
“He said he didn’t have time to devote to a family. As long as I intended to get married, that was all that mattered, and he made that clear.”
At those words, Miyoung seemed to furrow her brow for a moment, but soon the corners of her mouth curled upward.
“Well, that’s good. What meaning does love have anyway? As long as you get married, is that family’s wealth going anywhere?”
“Exactly. Now that it’s done, hurry up and take off those clothes. They’re expensive, and you completely wasted them on this.”
Leaving them behind, Soyul headed toward her room in the basement.
“When does that secretary want to meet?”
“The bruises on your face are a problem. Let’s tell him to come after at least the bruises have faded.”
The excited voices of the mother and daughter followed Soyul down the stairs.
After changing her clothes in the basement room, Soyul collapsed onto her bedding.
The blanket was soaked with the unpleasant dampness characteristic of a basement.
As she blankly stared at the mold-covered ceiling, Taehun’s face appeared before her eyes.
“Was it three years ago? That was the first time I saw him, at your younger brother’s funeral. I couldn’t even ask how you were doing….”
Now Taehun would marry Minchae, and he would become her brother-in-law.
“I should have ruined it completely. Idiot….”
If she couldn’t marry him, she should have ruined things so that Minchae couldn’t marry him either.
She should have done something completely crazy while pretending to be Minchae.
Besides her anger toward her family, she also didn’t want Taehun to marry Minchae.
The Taehun she remembered had a cold expression, but he had been a kind older brother.
“You won’t be able to bully Soyul anymore. So don’t cry.”
She had liked him.
She had liked the man who had comforted her and gently stroked her head as he reassured her.
Soyul squeezed her eyes shut.
The thought of that man becoming Minchae’s husband made her shudder.
But she still couldn’t imagine it.
The fact that she would eventually marry Taehun.
And in a rather strange way.
