“I haven’t done anything for you as a father. I know you must have resented your useless dad a lot.”
“…No. Really, no.”
Though he said no, Haeyoung felt a stinging pain from the lie that was like a thorn in his mouth. If he hadn’t flinched at those words, that would have been the lie.
There were times when he couldn’t sleep at night, burdened by the thought that his father might contact him asking for money.
When he didn’t have much money on hand, he’d be startled with fear, and sometimes he’d imagine pretending not to hear and avoiding his father’s calls. He’d imagined several times expressing his frustration, saying he wanted to live comfortably without money worries like other friends, just for once.
But those were all just imaginings. When he was suddenly pulled back to reality while having such thoughts, Haeyoung inevitably felt disgusted by his own petty heart.
Ashamed and sorry, he hid his fingers that kept curling inward under the table. But he wasn’t as anxious as he’d been at first. A cautious voice fell upon Haeyoung’s head as he gradually relaxed.
“But, um, Haeyoung-ah. Dad has work these days.”
Work?
At the sudden words, Haeyoung looked up with a puzzled face. Their eyes met, and his father drew an awkward curve at the corners of his eyes. But soon, a thick force filled his previously awkward gaze.
Haeyoung couldn’t help but be startled as he looked at the gaze fixed on him. It resembled his father’s eyes from childhood that he remembered. The eyes of his father who always wore a hearty laugh while doing business. But for some reason, looking at that glistening gaze, Haeyoung had to feel an inexplicable sense of déjà vu.
“Why, I told you before that I started a business. It’s showing signs of doing well. You know Dad has a good sense for these things, right? So I’m trying to expand overseas.”
The voice that followed was full of unnatural confidence. But what mattered wasn’t the voice, but the content of what he said.
What is he saying right now? From Haeyoung’s frozen mouth, a dull voice barely leaked out.
“……What?”
“I’m trying to expand the scale. But… this expansion thing, it’s not without risks, you see. So in the beginning, I need to establish connections with large corporations. That way the support base is solid and credibility is built.”
Business, overseas, expansion…….
Clang, the chopsticks that slipped from Haeyoung’s hand fell under the table with a sharp sound. But no one paid attention to the fallen chopsticks.
Business.
His father’s business was Haeyoung’s trauma. He vividly remembered asking in their last contact how he could start a business again. Yet the fact that he still hadn’t given it up made his head go blank.
…Did Seonwoo hyung give Dad money even after we broke up?
At the thought that suddenly occurred to him, Haeyoung’s face turned pale.
The moment when all sensations, including the noise of the restaurant and everything touching his skin, grew distantly far away. What flashed through his helplessly bleached mind were memories from his high school days.
The door that wasn’t locked when he returned home from school and opened ridiculously easily, the red papers that filled his view as soon as he entered the house. The sound of his parents fighting that had continued for some time, and… finally, his mother’s last appearance as she left the house without looking at him.
After that, his father, who lived drunk for days, didn’t come home day after day. Spending nights alone in the darkened house, Haeyoung would imagine what he should do if a stranger knocked on the door.
That was the case until Hajin’s family came looking for him.
‘Haeyoung-ah, I got a call from your mom. Don’t worry, come live at auntie’s house.’
Those were the days when he went to school and tried hard to pretend nothing was wrong, flowing with exaggerated laughter as if nothing had happened. If he hadn’t taken the hand the auntie extended to him, his high school life after that would have been even harder.
That’s why Yoon Haeyoung couldn’t easily erase those memories. It remained not as a healed wound but as trauma, occasionally, very occasionally resurging to grab his ankles.
Back then, his father’s business failure had shattered the entire family into pieces. Haeyoung, who still remembered that, couldn’t understand how he could think of starting a business again. Even then, hadn’t there been problems from trying to expand the business excessively? But how….
Just how.
“Do you have to do it?”
The voice mixed with his breath fully revealed the shock he felt.
“Please…. Please, Dad. Even without doing that… you can live normally.”
That’s what Haeyoung wanted.
Yoon Haeyoung wanted to live like others, even if he couldn’t live more affluently than them. Normally, maybe sometimes a bit lacking, but not unhappily. However, the words he let out desperately, as if chewing them, scattered without reaching the other person.
“Don’t talk childishly. You’re saying this because you don’t know what kind of opportunity this is.”
At the cold words, something like a hollow laugh escaped from Haeyoung’s mouth in the form of a sigh. Perhaps noticing the absurdity written on his expression, his father soon soothed Haeyoung with a softened voice.
“Having a connection with Hanje is such a big deal, why wouldn’t you try to use it? Like a fool.”
“…….”
“If I land a contract from Hanje, there are people who will invest right away. Haeyoung-ah, just this once… just help me one last time, okay?”
At the continuing words, Haeyoung felt his head cooling down coldly. But at the same time, it felt like something hot was surging up from inside. To avoid spitting it out, Haeyoung clenched his hands placed on his knees tightly.
“I…….”
Haeyoung, who had opened his mouth, reflexively closed it again at his pathetically trembling voice.
Haeyoung, who stopped speaking, unconsciously put force into the corners of his eyes. Perhaps that’s why his eyes seemed to sting.
He reflexively tilted his chin back to look at the ceiling. And not long after, he slowly lowered his head again. His father was still looking at him, revealing that strange confidence of his.
Yoon Haeyoung bit his lips that were twitching with surging emotions tightly, swallowing the words he almost blurted out in anger.
Dad, what I knew wasn’t Hanje, it was Cha Seonwoo. Do you know that? I liked Seonwoo hyung. No, actually I still like him. But the fact that hyung gave you money made me feel so pathetic, so… we broke up.
The words he couldn’t spit out clumped inside and became firewood for his burning insides. Instead of the words he pressed down and swallowed, Haeyoung spat out a firm and calm voice.
“I’m nothing to that hyung anymore.”
With those words, a clear line was cast before Haeyoung again.
But he knew it wasn’t that a line that didn’t exist had been drawn. It had only become temporarily blurred while he tried hard to ignore it; the line had been drawn all along. Haeyoung stepped one foot back that had been placed over it.
He knew through intuition before his head that this was the moment he had to do so. Because he hoped that Seonwoo would no longer be connected to his father.
‘Haeyoung-ah, have a good trip.’
The greeting he’d given him as he left the house suddenly came to mind. Haeyoung’s gaze wavered, unable to find its bearings.
Why would that affectionate voice come to mind at this very moment? At the moment he was declaring himself that they were nothing to each other. At the very moment he had to do so, of all times.
“According to that secretary… it seems the chairman’s son there thinks the world of you.”
But even in moments when he thought it couldn’t get more miserable, there was always a worst.
Haeyoung opened his mouth slightly with a face that couldn’t believe the words that popped out of his mouth. The content of the words brought a strange sense of dissonance. Soon his brow furrowed helplessly. His distorted face bore a complex light mixed with various emotions.
He tried to think he must have heard wrong. He hoped he had heard wrong. But such vain hopes were simply shattered by the words that followed.
“I went to the company to talk about business, and the secretary there said so. From what I heard, if you speak up, it seems like the contract will work out somehow, why, before… you two were in a close relationship and he even gave investment money, didn’t he?”
“……Investment money.”
A hollow voice flowed from Haeyoung’s mouth.
Investment presupposed the recovery of that capital. No one calls giving money without expecting returns an investment. Haeyoung had learned that way, and had lived that way.
What his father received wasn’t an investment. It was charity arising from a romantic relationship, and that’s why it was miserable. Just like now.
“…Did you meet Seonwoo hyung? You went to the company where hyung is and… met him? …When?”
Though he asked for an answer, he actually didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want to know what he would say. Perhaps noticing such signs, his father, who had paused for a moment, answered in a lowered voice as if luring Haeyoung out.
“The week before last… the day before Christmas, I think. I didn’t see his face, they said he wasn’t at the company so I just met the secretary and left. But there’s no way that person would know anything about contracts.”
“…….”
Before Christmas.
Haeyoung unconsciously closed his eyes tightly. There was a day that came to mind. Christmas Eve, the day Minho suggested they all go out.
‘But weren’t you about to go out, Seonwoo-ssi?’
‘…Something did come up for a moment, but it’s nothing important.’
The way he had hurriedly dressed as if he had somewhere to go, and the gaze that passed over him.
The fragments of memory that came to mind slowly completed into one picture. Haeyoung couldn’t open his eyes. Back then, he… had worried presumptuously whether he was breaking a prior engagement because of him. The time he’d been conceited burrowed in, eating away at the inside of his chest.
He’d thought there was nowhere left to fall. That all that remained was to work hard and plan for the future again…….
He thought that would be enough.
“Haeyoung-ah….”
As if running away from the voice calling him, Haeyoung finally raised his hand and buried his face in it. It felt like he’d plummeted headfirst into darkness with no end in sight once again.
