Rurin And The Song (3)

“Ah, I see.”

When El responded, the man nodded and lifted a bag. It seemed he, too, had brought food for the dog.

“Yes, this is actually my last day of work. I handed in my resignation. I’m planning to move to the countryside with my severance. There’s no reason left for me to stay in Seoul…and during all that, this little guy kept weighing on my mind.”

The man walked over to the dog and began petting its head.

“Hey there, buddy…want to come live with me? You’ve been waiting for days now, huh? I don’t think your owner’s ever coming back.”

To El, the man’s eyes were filled with genuine sincerity. He didn’t seem like someone simply acting out of pity—he truly wanted to spend the rest of his life with this dog.

So El stood up, reassured.

“Are you okay?”

Rurin stood up as well.

“You’re planning to take him?”

That was good news. Especially if someone with eyes like that was taking him—otherwise, the poor thing might’ve ended up in a shelter and been euthanized.

When El asked to confirm, the man nodded without hesitation.

“Yes. But…it doesn’t seem easy to win him over. The first day, he didn’t even want to follow me. Still, I kept feeding him and showing my face… Maybe once he realizes his owner’s not coming back, he’ll follow me.”

The man kept beckoning the dog to come with him. Watching that, Rurin looked into the dog’s eyes and spoke.

“I don’t know the details, but this guy wants to live with you. The one you’re waiting for isn’t coming. Better to survive than starve to death. Got it, woof?”

To El and the man, it just sounded like random barking.

“Ah, this is my wife. She has a weird way of clicking with animals, haha.”

“That’s right. I’m the wife!”

“Oh! You’re married?”

“Yes, well, you could say that.”

El scratched his head as he tried to explain Rurin’s odd behavior to others. The man smiled understandingly, then resumed beckoning the dog.

Surprisingly, the dog began walking toward him. Maybe it was proof of the care the man had shown over the past few days.

Otherwise, even if it somehow understood Rurin’s words, it wouldn’t have followed so easily.

But it had so little strength that it kept collapsing mid-step and then rising again. Understandable, given how poorly it had eaten.

Unable to watch any longer, El spoke to the man.

“If you’re not in a rush, our house is just around the corner. Want to stop by? I’d like to feed it something softer than kibble—cooking’s kind of my thing, you see.”

“I’m sorry, Doongi.”

The man, petting the dog with a sorrowful face, looked utterly heartbroken.

His name was Lee Jin-seong. When his daughter was young, he lost his wife. He never even considered remarriage—he raised his daughter alone.

So it’s no exaggeration to say he lived solely for her. And Jin-seong had been content with that life. He often said he had no other wish—he’d raised his only daughter to be kind and beautiful.

That’s why the moment something happened to her, Jin-seong’s entire world crumbled.

He had originally planned to accept the loss and live quietly with the stray who had wandered into his home and become family.

This new family member, wearing a collar labeled “Doongi”, had been named exactly that.

But then he was hit with a devastating truth—that what he believed and what was real were entirely different.

And Jin-seong could no longer sit still.

Jin-seong’s daughter had aspired to be an actress. She’d even landed minor roles in a few dramas, so technically, she wasn’t just a hopeful—“rookie actress” would be more accurate.

But that was it. The jobs began to dry up.

Still, she didn’t let it get her down. She performed in small theater productions and stayed busy pursuing her dreams.

Especially because she didn’t want her father, who’d raised her alone, to worry—so she never showed how hard things were.

Their father-daughter bond was incredibly close. Like many daughters raised solely by their fathers, their relationship mirrored the intimacy usually seen between mothers and daughters.

They had depended on each other to live, and expected to do so forever.

Knowing how hard her father had worked, she dreamed even more desperately of succeeding—to repay him, to give him a better life.

But the path of an unknown actress only grew darker.

Then, one day, she was given an “opportunities ”. Her agency had set up something promising.

So she’d told her father proudly—this time would be different.

“Really?”

“Yup, I’m serious.”

“Then this time…can I finally brag to my coworkers and friends that my daughter’s on TV?”

“Yup! Totally!”

“Haha, you rascal.”

But what returned wasn’t his daughter’s TV drama—it was his daughter’s cold body.

The police said it was suicide.

Based on the suicide note saying she killed herself because her career wasn’t working out, Jin-seong’s life effectively ended that day too.

He couldn’t accept that she’d take her own life just because she wasn’t getting jobs.

But everything pointed to suicide.

But—

She was the one who’d said, “If acting doesn’t work out, let’s go to the countryside and farm together.”

So why would she choose suicide?

Was she truly suffering that much?

—“So…I can brag to everyone to watch my daughter on TV?”

Jin-seong suddenly remembered saying that—and his heart shattered.

Could those casual words have pierced her heart like nails?

Had she failed again, and chosen to die from the pressure of disappointing him?

If so, wasn’t he the one who killed her?

Faced with the unbearable reality of his daughter’s death, Jin-seong could do nothing but cry endlessly.

Until then, he believed he was the one most responsible. The more he thought about the words he’d said to encourage her, the more he believed they had only become unbearable pressure.

That’s why he’d decided to accept her death, move to the countryside, and live quietly while praying for her soul.

But the truth was different.

The hidden truth was nothing like what Jin-seong had believed.

His daughter had been afraid he might learn the real truth. She’d thought she’d destroyed all the journals.

But one journal remained, and thanks to it, Jin-seong found out everything.

The “opportunity” his daughter had mentioned? It was actually a backdoor deal made by her agency.

They’d arranged for rookie actresses who weren’t gaining traction to be used as sex bribes behind the scenes—to secure casting, commercials, and influence for their more favored actors.

When her turn came, Jin-seong’s daughter was told that if she endured it just once, she’d get a prominent supporting role in the next season’s drama. She agonized over it.

If she’d known that this was the kind of “opportunity” it would be…

She would never have proudly told her father about it.

To the father who had always, always supported her dream—without ever once objecting.

To the dad who never pursued his own happiness, who poured everything into her—she just wanted, even once, to show him something.

To show him smiling because she was in a drama.

Just those few lines in a private journal—never meant for anyone’s eyes—were enough to completely destroy Jin-seong’s spirit.

At first, Jin-seong’s daughter had no intention of committing suicide.

If her dream came true, even just once-

She planned to leave that world behind and go live quietly in the countryside with her father.

All she wanted was to show Jin-seong, just once, that she could be an actress.

That wish alone-

But the agency didn’t keep its promise. They just handed her money, trying to brush it all under the rug.

They kept saying, “Next time, after this one gig,” over and over again.

She was devastated.

Crushed by guilt over what she had done.

Yeah, if it weren’t for that, she wouldn’t have taken her own life.

But with no one to turn to, Jin-seong’s daughter’s final choice was death.

When Jin-seong found out-

When he realized the agency had given his precious daughter the final push-

And that he himself had contributed just as much—his mind snapped.

But the journal couldn’t be accepted as legal evidence.

No matter who he turned to, no one listened. The agency just played dumb.

Their only reply? “She was delusional.”

They said it was all hallucinations caused by depression—nothing more.

But Jin-seong knew his daughter. She wasn’t the type to write nonsense in her journal.

Even knowing that revealing this truth would kill his daughter a second time…

He wanted revenge on those who drove her to this.

That revenge included the death he had planned for himself—the punishment he believed he deserved for pressuring her too.

So he couldn’t accept any new family. Not even Doongi.

Having finished all preparations, Jin-seong headed to the home of the kind couple he met that dawn—when he first brought Doongi.

Having severed all other ties in the wake of his daughter’s death, they were the only ones he could ask.

He remembered their house well from that early morning, when they’d fed Doongi something warm and soft.

Rurin was watching an idol group dancing on her smartphone. It was her current favorite song.

“You don’t like ballads or rock or anything like that?”

“Hmm, I like energetic stuff. Like this—with dancing!”

“Oh really?”

Even when El recommended other music, Rurin clearly preferred this kind. Specifically, girl group songs.

The reason? She judged songs based on whether she could both dance and sing to them herself.

So she often found herself humming songs alone in bed at home.

“We should probably hit up a noraebang sometime.”

El had never thought of noraebang as a place to take Rurin—but now it didn’t seem so far-fetched.

“What’s a ‘noraebang’?”

Rurin, curious, lifted her head from her phone.

“A place to sing.”

“What? You guys have a specific place to sing? What a pain.”

“Well, I mean, you can sing anywhere as long as you’re not bothering people, but…it’s hard to explain. You’ll understand once you go.”

“Ohhh?”

Rurin still didn’t get it and shook her head. Then she sat on the bed and puffed her cheeks in a sulk.

“More importantly, you.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been watching for a while now—who’s that girl? What are you looking at?!”

“Just a regular magazine?”

“I saw you! You’ve been stuck on that one page the whole time…!”

How did she even notice that he hadn’t flipped pages while listening to music? How many eyes did she have?

El, a bit dumbfounded, replied.

“I mean, yeah—I was thinking that maybe this hairstyle would suit you. Just imagining it.”

The model El had been looking at had a bob cut that reached just below her neck.

“That kind of style?”

Rurin frowned with a hmph and snatched the magazine from him.

“So you like this hair, huh? Even though mine is super long…?”

Then she stared at El with teary eyes.

“No, I was just imagining. That’s what I always do, right? Every little thing I see, I picture you with it. Would she wear this? Eat this? Look good in this? I imagine the whole world through my amazing wife-shaped lens.”