Chapter 14

Things were moving far faster than she had expected, and Seo-ha’s eyes went round.

“I left the office in a hurry earlier, so I didn’t bring it with me. There’s no seal to use anyway, so put down a thumbprint or sign it, whichever’s easier for you.”
“You mean… we’re going to your company?”

His office, of all places. Seo-ha hesitated for a moment over whether she ought to go, because she did not want to feel like an uninvited guest again, the way she had at the animal hospital earlier.

“What, if we don’t go, are you going to sign it online, contact-free?”

Jun-hyeok needled her flatly.

“Didn’t you just say you’d be perfectly on my side? I’ll add that clause in too, so all you have to do is sign.”

Seo-ha held tight to Dodam’s harness and followed after him, still confused. As ever, Han Jun-hyeok’s rhythm had swept her up and was carrying her off somewhere; that much was no different from before. If anything had changed, it was that wherever this road led, she now walked it facing the same direction he did.

Han Jun-hyeok and Yun Seo-ha had become a real married couple.

Jun-hyeok’s mother, Kim Seon-yeong, poured quince tea into the cup of her husband, Han Dong-pyo, who for once was taking his ease at home.

If only every day were like today.

Her husband had been in a good mood lately, all of it thanks to her beloved son, Jun-hyeok.

H Bio had staked its whole existence on the drugs it was developing now, the macular-degeneration eye drops and a new treatment for atypical optic neuritis, and neither could go anywhere without the government’s wholehearted backing and approval. So her husband was pinning great hopes on Yun Jeong-hwan, a clean-image politician on track to become president. The way Han Dong-pyo’s voice ran higher than usual on the phone with Cha Mi-yeon, Yun Jeong-hwan’s wife, said as much.

“Ahem. It’s presumptuous of me to say it to you, Chairwoman, but the moment our son met the person meant for him, he became a man who’d walk through fire for her. We had no idea ourselves; we’re only finding out now, ha ha.”

Honestly, Kim Seon-yeong had not foreseen this either. She had agonized over the match Han Jun-tae had brushed off and finally begged Jun-hyeok, though she had never held out much hope, because no one knew the son she had borne in pain better than she did.

Even so, he’s a boy who won’t do what he doesn’t want to, even at knifepoint…

She had only meant to get past that one moment somehow, and now the whole business was moving along like this.

“Kids these days rarely do what their parents want, so this is a relief for us. I never dreamed my son would be in such a hurry either. Could it be he fell for Seo-ha-yang at first sight?¹”

To Kim Seon-yeong, Jun-hyeok was more than a dependable son. Merely imagining what her life would have been without him was horrifying.

Now that I think of it, this much time has gone by already.

Kim Seon-yeong had first met Han Dong-pyo at a hotel in Jeju, where she worked on the staff assigned to the VIPs who came to play golf. Money did not guarantee good character in a customer; if anything, the opposite was more common. Born poor and knocked about day after day with nowhere to lean, she had found in Han Dong-pyo a ray of light. He never talked down to her, never gave her any grief, and was always generous.

Little by little she began to wait for the days he came, until even the rest of the staff knew it, and it was always she who attended to Han Dong-pyo. And then she became pregnant with Jun-hyeok.

“It’s a relief that it’s good news. I’ll be contacting Assemblyman Yun separately myself before long.”

As her husband wound up the call, Kim Seon-yeong quickly threw out the tea that had gone cold and poured fresh, hot quince tea.

Back then she hadn’t known one thing: the wife Han Dong-pyo said he had lost was still alive in a hospital, fighting her illness. Only after that wife died did Kim Seon-yeong at last move from the position of mistress, the other woman, into the seat of his wife.

“The timing lines up so neatly it’s as if heaven were on our side.”

Han Dong-pyo said it with a hearty burst of laughter.

“If the new drug we’ve developed gets that girl’s eyes to open, even a little, the publicity effect will be enormous. Let’s get some good out of our daughter-in-law.”
“But what if it has no effect?”

At her worried words, Han Dong-pyo glared.

“Don’t jinx it!”

He brought his hand down on the steel table, and the cup tipped over. Scalding tea spilled over Kim Seon-yeong, but he paid no attention to his wife, who had nearly been burned.

“Package it as a company racing to develop a new drug for its daughter-in-law, and the public sees the firm’s value differently. That’s all it takes. The whole world is marketing — you still don’t know that? Tsk, tsk.”

There was a great deal more that Kim Seon-yeong did not know. Han Dong-pyo had been generous to her only because she was an ‘outsider’. He thought of family as property, and whenever something went against him he turned his violence on her too. Kim Seon-yeong bore it, because becoming Cinderella overnight after a life spent drifting along the bottom had filled her with a fierce joy.

But even that moment of happiness did not last long.

“Mother, Father. I’m here.”

Flinching at the sudden voice, Kim Seon-yeong turned to look behind her. Han Jun-tae, the eldest son, born of the former wife, stood there grinning.

Her shoulders stiffened on reflex. Gooseflesh rose all over her body, and frozen as she was, she hurriedly got to her feet. The thigh the scalding tea had touched burned and stung.

“Ah, you’ve come. You startled me, arriving without a word.”

“Have I come somewhere I’m not allowed, Mother?”
“No…. That isn’t what I meant.”

Kim Seon-yeong quickly rearranged her expression.

“Darling, Jun-tae’s here.”
“Right. What brings you here at this hour?”

Han Jun-tae had already settled, as a matter of course, into the seat Kim Seon-yeong had occupied a moment before.

“There’s something I have to tell you, Father, so I left work a little early.”
“You did? What about?”

Han Dong-pyo’s eyes darted about as though this were unexpected, and Han Jun-tae’s gaze landed on Kim Seon-yeong. Startled out of her wits, she babbled.

“Oh, goodness, look at the state of me. The tea’s gone and got cold in the meantime. I’ll bring out fresh tea right away.”

She turned and bustled back into the house. Without realizing it, she raised her right hand and rubbed the back of her neck.

‘Mother, take your pick. Shall I do you the kindness of killing you just as you are? Or shall I kill Jun-hee in your place — she takes after you so exactly that the mere sight of her is bad luck. Either way, I think I’d enjoy it.’

A terror she had never managed to forget, however hard she tried, surged up in her. As the feel of Han Jun-tae’s hands throttling her neck with all their strength came back to her whole, Kim Seon-yeong’s eyelids twitched and trembled.

Perhaps because the end of the working day was long past, the first thing Seo-ha noticed about the company Han Jun-hyeok led her into was how still it was.

That surprised her, since by his account the employees would still be in the building. In a place she knew nothing about, she and Dodam had no choice but to rely on Jun-hyeok entirely, and perhaps because she was holding herself so tense, trying not to be a burden, she didn’t even register that she was pressed right up against him.

“Boss!”

The instant the elevator doors opened, a booming voice reached them, and Seo-ha, a few steps in, stopped dead. Jun-hyeok took gentle hold of her wrist and moved her behind his back as if it were nothing.

“Why weren’t you answering your phone, you had me— no, that isn’t the issue, our Karon. D-don’t tell me Karon’s…”

The other man seemed to be in a state several times worse than Jun-hyeok had been back at the animal hospital. He kept repeating what he had already said, a little like a drunk.

“Why are you still at the office.”
“Is going home really the issue right now!? You should have called. Called! When a man’s breath is rattling in and out of him like this!”

The voice rang out even louder than before, and Seo-ha flinched and pressed closer in behind Jun-hyeok’s back. A light pressure came through the wrist he held.

“I said it’s fine, so quit making a fuss.”

At that the man’s excitement eased a little, and he spoke with his chest heaving.

“Phew. That was almost a disaster. Outdoor training ground or not, an intruder in B Zone isn’t something to brush off lightly, you know.”

“I know. Did you report it?”
“Of course not! For now, just like you told us, we only patched him up a bit and locked him away.”
“Good work. Once the police have him, we won’t get what we want out of him.”

From what she could tell, the intruder, thief or not, had luckily been caught. For a moment, Seo-ha got a sense of the world Han Jun-hyeok lived in.

Just then the man muttered, bewildered.

“But what’s this dog I’ve never seen before doing here…”

The man plainly had not expected, until that moment, that a person might be standing behind Jun-hyeok’s back. Jun-hyeok was tall enough to hide Seo-ha completely and then some. Park Jae-man looked Dodam over slowly, and only when he found the woman hidden behind his boss did his eyebrows twitch.