My Secret Daddy

Chapter 1

1.

When Seonghyeon came to his senses, he found himself standing in the courtyard of an unfamiliar church.

His mind was so dazed that it felt as though he had been struck on the head by a fist the size of a Cyclops. Seonghyeon shook his head several times, trying to clear his blurred vision.

At dawn that day, he had gotten into his sister-in-law’s car with Ruby. His sister-in-law was Hyejeong’s only blood relative. The car had headed toward a church about thirty kilometers outside New York. The moment he climbed into the back seat, he searched for Ruby’s hand and held it tightly. It had been almost an instinctive act of protection.

As if to reassure him, Ruby interlaced her fingers with his and nodded. He rested her head against his chest and sank deeply into the seat. Until they reached their destination, he had remained awake, dreaming.

It was the same nightmare that had been replaying before his eyes at every opportunity these past few days.

Before he knew it, he was standing in a receiving line, accepting condolences from mourners. He couldn’t remember when he had started greeting people. The long line before him moved sluggishly, like a procession of black insects.

An unfamiliar woman dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief and held out her hand to Seonghyeon.

“How could something like this happen…? It’s truly such a terrible tragedy. The two of you were such a picture-perfect couple…”

She was undoubtedly someone he had met recently, yet not a single piece of information about her remained in his memory.

After several more people passed, familiar faces finally appeared.

His mother, Mrs. Na Seonmi, accompanied by his four half-siblings.

Seonmi removed her gloves and gently stroked her son’s roughened face.

“Oh, my poor Seonghyeon… What are we going to do with you?”

It was immediately obvious that Seonghyeon had inherited a different bloodline from his siblings. Nearly all of his genes seemed to have come from Seonmi alone. His tall, slender frame, narrow eyes, and sharply defined nose—all of it came from her.

His quiet personality and artistic talent had also been inherited from his mother, who had once been an opera singer.

Seonmi’s heart felt as though it were being torn apart.

Seonghyeon was the only child she had managed to have after undergoing years of fertility treatments. Perhaps because of that, every moment of his life had seemed miraculous to her, as though he were a child bestowed upon her by heaven.

Before he had even learned to read and write, he had picked up a violin. He had refused to put it down until he could handle it as naturally as one of his own limbs.

His fingers had bruised so badly that she had to bandage them every day. He had replaced his strings ten times in six months, and every year, he ordered a new violin.

Even now, nine violins of gradually increasing sizes stood displayed in Seonmi’s room like a graph charting her son’s growth.

There had been occasional friction, of course, but even her husband had been lenient when it came to Seonghyeon. He had quietly accepted the unusual life of his youngest son, who had been born with extraordinary musical talent.

And, to Seonmi’s satisfaction, her son had managed to navigate an astonishing twenty years of life abroad remarkably well.

That was why Seonmi found the situation so difficult to understand.

Her seemingly perfect son had suddenly, for several years now, been under constant assault from enemies outside himself. Before she knew it, he had been forced to live a strange life with an unfamiliar child, entirely against his own will.

She was terribly worried.

They had met back in middle school. How many years had it been since then?

Now that he no longer even had his violin, Hyejeong must have been his entire world. Seonmi couldn’t help feeling a premature anxiety that her still-young son might simply give up on life altogether.

“If you grieve for too long, Hyejeong wouldn’t like it either. You understand?”

Seonghyeon said nothing. He simply embraced his mother.

Voices he could neither fully recognize nor completely understand continued whispering into his sensitive ears.

“It’s strange, isn’t it? Four years ago, he suddenly quit playing the violin…”

“I heard he has a daughter. Did you see her?”

“She looked about ninth grade. When did he have her?”

“It’s strange. When he was interviewed a few years ago, he never said anything about having a child.”

“Do you think he was having an affair? For a couple who were supposedly so close, don’t they seem awfully calm? He doesn’t look all that heartbroken, either.”

At that point, Seonghyeon quietly left.

Fidgeting with his empty hands, he wandered around the church, searching for Ruby.

“Ruby.”

2.

“You’ve grown so much.”

Seonghyeon’s father, CEO Ha Jin-ho, was a broad-shouldered man with a fiery temper. Perhaps because of his enormous build, he still possessed a charisma capable of intimidating anyone at first sight, despite being well over seventy.

Ruby had encountered every kind of person imaginable, but Jin-ho was the one person she was genuinely afraid of.

“Hello, Grandpa.”

Standing beside Jin-ho was Taehyeon, whose appearance was almost an exact copy of his father’s.

He was Seonghyeon’s older brother and the youngest among his half-siblings.

“Ever since you came into his life, nothing but bad things have happened to Seonghyeon. Makes me wonder if we ought to have a shamanic ritual right in the middle of New York.”

Ruby did not answer. She simply lowered her head even further.

Taehyeon shifted his massive body irritably.

“Father keeps coddling Seonghyeon, telling him he’s doing great, and that’s why the kid thinks he can do whatever the hell he wants. And then he goes and brings in some child without even knowing whose blood she carries. They say misfortune is contagious.”

Ruby felt an arm wrap around her waist and closed her eyes.

She knew it was Seonghyeon before his hand had even fully touched her.

For the first time that day, Seonghyeon spoke.

“What kind of thing are you saying in front of a child? She witnessed her mother’s accident. Have you even considered how severe the trauma must be?”

Jin-ho narrowed his deeply sunken eyes and glared at the little girl in his son’s arms.

“Perhaps. But she doesn’t look very traumatized to me.”

“How would you know that, Father? Have you been inside this child’s heart?”

Taehyeon, who had been staring at his younger brother disapprovingly, cut in.

“Watch your mouth when you’re talking to Father. You’re turning this family into a complete mess. Do you even know how much people are gossiping about that little girl?”

“Please, watch what you say!”

Seonghyeon forced the words out through a voice that was painfully cracked, then ran outside the church with Ruby in his arms.

Taehyeon glared at the back of his brother’s head and grumbled.

“Crazy bastard. Why is he overreacting like that? Something’s seriously suspicious. Are you sure that little girl isn’t Seonghyeon’s own child?”

“Shut your mouth! Do you think Seonghyeon is anything like you?”

Taehyeon fell silent before he could answer.

He knew his younger brother’s stubborn, single-minded nature well enough to understand just how suffocatingly uncompromising he could be.

3.

Seonghyeon ran and ran along the endless church wall.

Held tightly in his arms, Ruby listened to his ragged breathing until, at last, she tugged at his arm.

“Daddy, stop.”

Startled by Ruby’s voice, Seonghyeon stopped running and leaned against the wall.

Breathing heavily, he pulled Ruby’s waist even tighter against him.

What the hell do they think they know, running their mouths like that?

She’s all I have left now.

For twenty years, he had lived away from his homeland, building a world of his own.

If he hadn’t had the violin, he probably would have gone insane in Jin-ho’s world.

From the moment he left his homeland, he had been happy.

He had endured several lonely years before Hyejeong came to him, but it had been a period of waiting with an end in sight. The unfamiliar streets and people of Munich had given his heart a sense of peace and freedom.

Passing through Munich and New York, he had eventually become a complete outsider, severed from all the relationships that had once surrounded him. He had been able to live entirely as a musician.

Then, one day, a tiny girl had appeared before him.

After gaining that child, he had lost the violin that had been like an extension of his own arm.

It had been the first true period of suffering he had ever experienced.

And yet, he had never once blamed or hated Ruby.

Perhaps he had seen in Ruby the image of the unborn child Hyejeong had spent more than ten years postponing and leaving him yearning for.

That might have been why he thought of the tragedy differently.

He didn’t think the misfortune had happened because of Ruby.

He thought that, because of that tragedy, he had been able to meet Ruby.

After finally making his way through that endless tunnel, what remained before him was his precious daughter—the child he had struggled to obtain at the cost of surrendering the violin that had been his other self.

But now Ruby had come to mean something else to him.

Only three days.

Three days had been enough to plunge his entire life into perfect misery.

And throughout those three days, Ruby had become a stronger pillar of support for him than even a biological daughter could have been.

Four years ago, he had never imagined that a day like this would come.

He had never imagined that he would one day depend on this little child with such desperation.

When he finally came to his senses, he felt a little ashamed.

“I’m sorry, Ruby. Daddy’s being such an idiot, isn’t he? Our Ruby is so brave.”

He suddenly realized that he was crying and became terribly flustered.

But instead of stopping, his tears burst forth uncontrollably.

Before long, he was openly sobbing.

He was still embarrassed, but he thought it was all right because he was in front of a child.

He believed that children were beings capable of understanding anything.

Ruby’s heart hurt as though it were being carved apart with shards of glass.

Don’t cry… I’ll do everything for you.

I’ll love you even more than Mom did.

Please don’t cry.

At that moment, Seonghyeon felt something like a warm feather brush against his lips.

He slowly opened his eyes.

Ruby was kissing him, her cheeks flushed bright red.

Apparently unsure of exactly how to kiss, she even tentatively licked his lips with her tongue.

“Ruby… what are you doing?”

“Um…”

Seonghyeon realized that Ruby was imitating Hyejeong.

The sight was so adorable that he forgot his sadness and couldn’t help laughing.

“My Ruby… are you trying to comfort Daddy?”

Ruby returned to her usual expression and let out a delighted squeal.

“Ah! You smiled!”

“Yeah. I guess I did. Thanks to my little princess.”

He couldn’t believe that he was capable of smiling.

“Ruby…”

“Yes?”

“Can you wait for me just a little longer? Until Daddy becomes an adult again.”

“Okay! I’ll wait.”

Ruby stroked Seonghyeon’s cheek with an intentionally mature expression.

A peaceful smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.

Perhaps because they had come to share the same pain, Ruby seemed to grow closer to Seonghyeon after that day.

She had been casual with him even before, but she had never spoken to him informally.

She still didn’t call him Dad, but Seonghyeon didn’t want to force her.

There might have been a reason of her own for Ruby stubbornly calling him Daddy.

He believed that children always had reasons for the things they did.

“But Daddy… if you want to cry, you can cry in front of me.”

Seonghyeon touched his nose gently to Ruby’s forehead and smiled once more.

“No. Daddy’s an adult. Adults aren’t people who are allowed to cry whenever they feel like it. That’s something only children like our princess are allowed to do.”

But Ruby had never once been a child.

The moment she developed a sense of self, she had been abandoned in the middle of a jungle.

The jungle was teeming with all kinds of beasts.

They were cripples who could live for a hundred years and still never become adults.

And among those zombie-like humans, one person had appeared—someone whose very existence seemed impossible to believe.

That encounter, which had been a stroke of good fortune for Ruby, had marked the beginning of Seonghyeon’s misfortune.

Ruby couldn’t deny that.

Her uncle had been right.

But Ruby didn’t cry.

Just because something was true didn’t mean it was right.

Just because a starving child stole bread and was guilty of theft didn’t mean it was right to beat the child for it.

“Today… yes. Because Daddy cried in front of our Ruby today, I think I’ll be able to endure for a very long time. So if you wait just a few more days, Daddy will be able to become an adult again.”

Ruby wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and made a silent vow to herself.

“I’ll wait forever if I have to.”

“Thank you, my princess…”

I’ll grow up quickly.

I’ll become more beautiful and wiser than Mom.

I’ll become such an amazing woman that Daddy will fall head over heels for me.

The church’s backyard, stretching toward the lake, was shaded by dark oak trees and maple trees beginning to turn crimson.

As the setting sun began to moisten Seonghyeon’s eyes with golden light, Ruby kissed him once again.

Watching the smile on Seonghyeon’s face, Ruby lost herself in a fantasy of her own.

For that one moment, she imagined herself as a mature woman who had finally been freed from a spell.