My Secret Daddy

Prologue

1.

New York, 2006. It was my fourth autumn.

I still called him “Daddy,” but I had been calling Hye-jung “Mom” for quite some time. If you stopped to think about it, it was obviously strange.

Perhaps even he, who had never possessed an ounce of tact, had finally begun to notice the contradiction. One day, he started subtly pestering me over dinner.

“Ruby. Daddy is fine, but we’re Korean, so wouldn’t it be better if you called me Dad? I’m a little hurt, you know. You call Mom ‘Mom’ just fine.”

I looked at Hye-jung first. Her expression was as gentle as ever, but she was mashing her broccoli with her fork.

Even as she fixed her dark eyes on me, she grumbled.

“I’m thirty-five years old, and I still hate broccoli.”

Hye-jung clearly knew.

She knew just how precocious a child I was, and why that man could never become my “father.”

But even allowing herself to think about such things filled Hye-jung with self-loathing.

Unlike the countless women who crowded that man’s world, she had not been born into a wealthy family. Her mother, who had been a piano instructor, had died when she was young, while her father had worked as a piano tuner. They said that, until the very moment he closed his eyes, her father had left the two sisters with these words:

“Live an upright life. Life is like a piano. If you don’t tune it, you can’t make beautiful music. Always walk the right path and be faithful to the life you’ve been given. You mustn’t even entertain thoughts of doing what is wrong. Only then can you become a good parent someday.”

Put simply, if Hye-jung wanted to honor her father’s dying wish, she shouldn’t even have a child like me by her side.

And yet I knew she liked me.

I liked her, too.

She was beautiful and intelligent, and above all, she was a pianist. The woman I admired more than anyone in the world was a beautiful, intelligent pianist. Of course I couldn’t help but like her.

Four years ago, when he had been forced to give up the violin that had been his lifeline, Hye-jung had desperately pulled him back onto his feet.

She held him in her arms and cried every night, kissed him every morning, and played the piano at every opportunity.

During that time, I filled page after page of my diary with a single word.

Fate.

Because I was the one who had taken the violin away from him.

I was the one who had changed his life.

The only reason he was unhappy now was my fault.

Naturally, that meant his life should belong to me.

Back then, after dinner, I would climb onto the roof of our apartment and scream at the red sky at the top of my lungs.

“Hey! You bastard! Why Hye-jung instead of me? Why did you let him choose Hye-jung over me?!”

Then God would answer in a gentle voice.

“Little one, it seems you forgot, but you weren’t there when he got married.”

Oh.

Right.

I was fourteen now, and I hadn’t even been born twenty years ago.

“Then why?!”

This time, instead of God, I heard that man’s sweet voice.

“Hye-jung. We’re getting older, you know. Don’t you think it’s about time we gave Ruby a little brother or sister?”

Beyond the glass-paneled door, I could see the silhouettes of the married couple.

The two of them were embracing in the room they used as a practice studio.

Hye-jung gave a soft, foxlike chuckle.

I hated that laugh.

“I’m not some genius like you. This orchestra might be my last chance. Let’s put off having a baby for just one more year.”

That night, unable to sleep, I chewed on a single word perhaps a million times.

“Sibling… sibling…”

If I had a sibling, then we would become an unbreakable family.

Tears streamed uncontrollably down my face.

Beyond the curtains, a huge full moon peered into my room between the pitch-black buildings.

I knew.

I knew it would never be allowed for me.

That I was the only person in the world who wasn’t allowed to want him.

After staying awake the entire night, I finally decided to call him “Dad.”

I would truly become a good daughter now.

It was my goodbye, all by myself.

On Friday afternoon, we decided to have dinner and then see a musical.

I waited for him along the road to our meeting place.

Amid the countless people, he came toward me like the evening star, shining brightly.

“Ruby! We always seem to meet right here. You weren’t waiting for me out on the street, were you?”

“Da… d…”

A car horn drowned out my words.

He leaned toward me as far as he could, cocking his ear.

“What did you say?”

“Da… d…”

“Oh, Mom.”

Hye-jung was standing across the street at the intersection.

When she spotted us, she playfully blew us a kiss.

The light turned green, and she had just begun crossing the street.

That was when a Ferrari speeding toward her, completely ignoring the traffic signal, struck her and raced away.

Her body soared into the air as lightly as a falling flower petal.

We had been holding hands affectionately, smiles still lingering on our lips.

People screamed and began surrounding Hye-jung, but we stood there frozen, unable to move, our trembling hands still clasped together.

The scene replayed itself in a jumbled mess, as though someone had cut up a film and spliced the pieces back together in the wrong order.

Hye-jung’s body, which had been hurled some ten meters into the air, crashed down onto the asphalt.

Only afterward did we hear the sound of something striking the ground with tremendous force, like someone smashing down hundreds of bouquets of roses all at once.

Thud.

By the time I finally came to my senses, he was already pushing through the crowd and running toward her.

Dragging my trembling legs along, I approached that place.

He was clutching his wife’s mangled body in his arms, bloodied hands reaching out between the legs of the people surrounding them.

“Ruby! Don’t come over here!”

His face was more resolute than I had ever seen it.

I collapsed to the ground with a sigh of relief.

Thank goodness.

I didn’t have to go over there.

Daddy told me not to.

Someone held out a hand to me.

“Little girl, are you all right?”