HMGD 08

Chapter 08

The director’s office at Saegwang Museum.

One of the top three private museums in Asia, Saegwang Museum.

Its director, Seo Jeongyeon, was the wife of Daewoong Group Chairman Jung Jido, Jaehyun’s mother, and currently Yeonha’s secondary guardian.

<I’d like to see you at Saegwang this afternoon.>

Jeongyeon asking to meet at the museum was unexpected.

I had gone to her exhibitions during my marriage, but I had never once visited the museum for personal reasons.

In the Daewoong family, they usually used the VIP lounge at Daewoong Hotel for things like this.

Even though it was a sudden request from my mother-in-law, I wanted to speak to her directly at least once.

About my position.

And for Yeonha.

The director’s office was filled with Jeongyeon’s taste.

The vintage decorations and oriental-style furniture resembled the furnishings at the Daewoong residence.

Every place Jeongyeon occupied felt as though a European royal palace had been transplanted there.

“You must’ve had a hard time coming all this way.”

Jeongyeon spoke while pouring deep red pu-erh tea from a gaiwan into a teacup.

Without lowering her head, she lifted the cup with one hand and inhaled the aroma.

The five-carat ring from a high jewelry brand that she had worn on her fourth finger for thirty years sparkled under the light.

“I have no excuse, Mother.”

The day I fought with Jaehyun and left the house, I hadn’t even managed to say goodbye to the mother-in-law I had lived with.

People often speculated that Jeongyeon’s mistreatment as a mother-in-law had contributed to my divorce from Jaehyun, but that wasn’t true.

Jeongyeon wasn’t someone with enough free time to bully her daughter-in-law.

She was just as busy as Jaehyun, and there were more days when I couldn’t even see her at home.

Could someone like her really raise Yeonha?

“A celebrity daughter-in-law sure causes a lot of noise.”

Unlike her words, her expression remained calm.

Even past sixty, her skin still glowed flawlessly, and her voice remained elegant and clear.

“I’m sorry. Until the lawsuit is over… please take care of Yeonha for me.”

“Yujin. Don’t you think it would be better to stop this fight here, when there’s nothing to gain from it?”

She wasn’t someone who spoke indirectly.

The lawsuit between Jaehyun and me, reported almost daily, must have been a burden on the Daewoong family too.

“I only want Yeonha, Mother. Just let me… let me raise him.”

“It was the Chairman’s decision as well to raise that child within the Daewoong family.”

“If that child means…”

My breath caught sharply in my throat.

My husband’s illegitimate child.

Had everyone known except me?

“It was a son.”

“Mother… are you saying you knew from the beginning?”

“Yujin. That’s not how you preserve your pride.”

“If you were in my place, would you really have been any different?”

At my words, Jeongyeon smiled as though the answer were obvious.

“My way is to protect what’s mine and gain something greater in the future. Acting recklessly without seeing even one step ahead… how clumsy.”

“Mother!”

“Wait for the right time. Between that child and Yeonha, there’s no guarantee Yeonha will have the advantage in the succession battle.”

“Ha… this is insane…”

My God.

Everything about this was terribly, horribly wrong.

“Please… just let my child grow up normally. I don’t want him raised there, becoming like Jaehyun.”

My resolve to raise Yeonha with my own hands only grew stronger.

I could never let my son become someone who valued his father’s mood above every moral, ethical, and legal principle in the world.

Like Jaehyun.

“Normally… You married into the Daewoong family, yet your dreams are certainly grand.”

[What exactly do you think I am… what do you think the Daewoong family is? You sure dream big.]

Jaehyun’s words came back to me.

Was raising Yeonha myself really nothing more than an impossible dream?

All of them felt like an enormous wall standing before me.

“Do you think there was never a time when I wanted to run away too?”

Jeongyeon spoke while I sat with my head lowered, letting out a faint sigh.

For the first time, a slight tremor lingered in the voice of the woman who never lost her elegance.

“Do you think… accepting that child was easy for me?”

“I…”

I lifted my head and looked into Jeongyeon’s eyes.

As though she could no longer contain the emotions pouring out, tiny spasms trembled around her lips.

It lasted only a moment, but I had never seen Jeongyeon reveal her emotions like this before.

“Yujin. Stay quiet. Stay quiet, just as you always have.”

Jeongyeon’s face became emotionless once again.

She was telling me that everything I was doing was pointless.

Just as I always had?

If I kept living like that, would everything really become okay?

No.

I can’t live like that.

“I’m not the same as you, Mother.”

[I don’t know whether what you’re doing right now will truly help Yeonha.]

The officetel parking garage.

I parked and turned off the engine, but couldn’t bring myself to get out of the car.

Mother’s words wouldn’t leave my ears.

What if I really wasn’t helping Yeonha?

What if someday Yeonha resented me?

Painful thoughts became blades stabbing into my heart.

I miss him.

My Yeonha.

I stared at Yeonha’s photo on the dashboard for a long time before finally unfastening my seatbelt.

I couldn’t sit there forever.

I checked my phone, but there was still no message from Sunwoo.

After that day, neither of us had contacted the other.

Should I call him first?

Tomorrow was the deadline for filing the appeal.

As the saying goes, the thirsty person digs the well. The one dying to know how the injunction appeal was going was me.

The moment I remembered shoving that illegal entertainment club business card into Sunwoo’s hand, my eyes squeezed shut.

I went too far too.

But even if I could go back, would I have tolerated Sunwoo’s rudeness?

No, I wouldn’t have.

No matter how much I thought about it, I was never suited to quietly behaving as a chaebol family daughter-in-law.

“Ha…”

A sigh escaped me, reflecting my tangled emotions.

Ever since meeting Sunwoo again, I had tried recalling Kim Sunwoo from middle school, but his image wouldn’t come back clearly.

Until I understood what kind of person he truly was, I couldn’t fully trust him.

The blurred fragments of memory only left vague anxiety and discomfort behind.

The harder I tried to reconnect the memories that had been severed at some point, the deeper the crease between my brows became.

The memories began sixteen years ago in Geumje-dong.

It was such a brutal cold wave that you wouldn’t even notice your nose running.

I tucked the welfare supply confirmation form my homeroom teacher had given me into my bag and wiped my nose with a hand wearing dark purple gloves.

Ugh, it’s freezing…

I could probably just lie and say I gave it to Kim Sunwoo.

Should I just go home?

While waiting for the bus, I had to suppress the urge to turn around and go home at least dozens of times.

Hang in there.

Better not to create any gossip in the first place.

My movie was set to release next month, and I was hypersensitive to public reaction.

After breaking up with Senior Woosung last month, ridiculous rumors straight out of cheap soap operas—sponsorship scandals, pregnancy rumors, cash-envelope rumors—had spread everywhere.

But what had already happened was beyond my control.

The only thing I could do was work hard as class president during the second semester and recover my image.

Still, Geumje-dong?

The past me who had volunteered to personally deliver this piece of paper to the troublemaker Kim Sunwoo just to impress the teacher felt pathetic.

After stomping my feet against the cold for twenty minutes, I finally boarded the bus.

An unfamiliar bus. Familiar stares.

It was the same wherever I went.

“Hey, it’s Lee Yujin, Lee Yujin!”

“Where do you think she’s going?”

“Why did she break up with Choi Woosung?”

They probably thought they were whispering quietly among themselves.

I can hear all of you, idiots.

I pulled my MP3 player from my pocket.

Unwrapping the tangled earphones, I put them in and closed my eyes.

I could forget makeup, but I never went anywhere without earphones.

Music was the best way to block out the noise around me.

Geumje-dong, where Kim Sunwoo lived, was an hour away by bus.

The scenery felt so unfamiliar that it was hard to believe this was still Seoul.

The tightly packed houses were mostly low buildings, so the sky was wide open above them.

“62-1… I think this is it.”

Creeeak—

A grating metallic sound rang out as the iron gate opened, and an elderly woman with tightly curled perm hair stepped out.

“Oh my, who’s this?”

“Ah… hello. I came looking for Sunwoo’s house. Kim Sunwoo.”

The moment she heard Sunwoo’s name, deep wrinkles spread across the woman’s face as she smiled brightly.

“Oh my goodness, all the way out here in this cold. Our Sunwoo ain’t back from school yet though.”

“That’s okay. Please just give this to Sunwoo for me.”

The grandmother grabbed my arm, the one holding the welfare support form I had just taken from my bag, and pulled me inside the gate.

“Grandma, I’m really okay.”

“You came all the way here, you gotta eat before ya go. You should see Sunwoo too.”

Even though I shook my head and waved my hands in refusal, somehow I ended up being dragged along by the grandmother.

One hand still stuffed inside my bag.