Without deliberately provoking him, Joan spent her time in front of him reading the fairy tale books piled up all around or examining unusual toys.
Even when she left that day, Rob kept his mouth shut tight like a clam. She’d definitely be fired. Joan was inwardly disappointed as she left the house.
The middle-aged woman who had greeted Joan followed her out.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Unfortunately, it seems your son doesn’t like me.”
“No. It’s very encouraging. And I’m not that child’s mother. I’m a hired housekeeper.”
At first she was surprised by the word “encouraging,” but that was completely overshadowed by the shock that followed.
“He seems like an abused child—he has no parents?”
“His biological parents are in Korea. They visit regularly. Actually, Kyungwoo experienced something bad in Korea. Terrible.”
“But his parents aren’t here?”
“It’s more helpful for Kyungwoo’s parents not to be here. You know. How Koreans react to mental suffering.”
Joan was angry at those words but couldn’t help but agree. In Korea on the eve of the new millennium, there were still plenty of people who trusted a shaman’s ritual more than psychiatric treatment.
“In any case, we’re extremely happy just that Kyungwoo didn’t have a seizure. We want to buy all the time we can.”
With that, the housekeeper proposed a groundbreaking pay rate. Joan couldn’t see any reason to refuse.
The next day too, Joan couldn’t talk with Kyungwoo. Instead, she learned more about the toys and discovered that the fairy tale books were more interesting than she’d thought.
When about a week had passed that way, Kyungwoo seemed to have reluctantly grown accustomed to Joan’s presence.
He cautiously approached Joan’s side and stacked wooden blocks. She was overjoyed, but Joan showed no sign of it. She just quietly watched Kyungwoo.
She spent time with Kyungwoo that way until she graduated from college.
When they held hands for the first time. When Kyungwoo first said “Joan” in English. When Kyungwoo smiled for the first time. When they took a photo at a birthday party with their arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling brightly. When Kyungwoo, after becoming Rob, attended a local elementary school for the first time.
Joan was with him at all those moments. In the process, Joan learned what terrible thing Rob had experienced.
Rob’s extremely wealthy parents were always busy people. They were equally famous. Even when his mother, who was a housewife at the time, went out with young Rob, they met people they knew everywhere and conversed with them.
Korea back then was more lax about child protection than one might think. No one expected that a child who had been right beside them would disappear in a famous hotel lobby. And there were no CCTVs.
Rob’s disappearance case was investigated quietly because of his parents’ fame. Since there was no ransom demand, it was the police’s judgment that he had been taken by someone who mistook Rob for a child from an ordinary family.
This was because they worried that the perpetrator, upon learning that Rob’s parents were important figures, might kill the child and bury him secretly under pressure.
About a week passed.
The investigation made no progress, the father blamed the mother for losing the child, and the woman who had lost her child was transitioning into hysteria.
The people who had been in the hotel lobby at the time each spouted unclear memories however they pleased, and the police, thinking a suspect who had come in from outside had disappeared with the child, hadn’t paid attention to the hotel from the beginning. But that was a serious oversight.
Rob had been in the hotel from start to finish. A businessman with pedophilic tendencies who had come over from the neighboring island nation had kidnapped and confined him. Because he was a valued foreigner who had come to spend foreign currency, even though he went down to the lobby frequently, the police didn’t even question him.
What Rob went through in that room was still a mystery. One clear point was that Rob showed no particular symptoms of physical abuse. Who knows how much they investigated the possibility of sexual abuse of a male child in a conservative Confucian country. In any case, that’s how it was.
That didn’t mean Rob was unharmed. His inner self had suffered terrible serious injuries.
A week later, taking advantage of a moment when the Japanese suspect’s guard had become lax, Rob grasped in his hand a lighter he had taken from his pants. Then, instead of running away, he set fire to the bed where he was sleeping.
When thick smoke filled the room, a staff member rushed in following a report from a guest in the next room who belatedly smelled something burning.
Only after all the hotel guests had evacuated and even the staff had escaped was Rob discovered by a firefighter. At first they thought he was the Japanese man’s child, but much later it was revealed that he was the missing child and he was handed over to his parents.
However, by then it was already far too late. Both the parents and the child had irreparable cracks in their hearts. If there was one thing better than others, it was that they had money rotting away enough to entrust the child who had suddenly closed his heart to the hands of overseas specialists.
Of course, fearing rumors spreading through the Korean community, he was sent not to a major city but to Portland, a small city where there were hardly any Koreans even at that time.
Although they called themselves child psychology specialists, American doctors were no help at all to Kyungwoo, who couldn’t speak English. Kyungwoo went from one children’s hospital to another before finally being shut up in the house, and even then he tormented the housekeeper throughout his seizures.
Until he met Joan.
Until he very arduously returned to being a normal child after that, Joan never once saw his parents. She only felt their presence occasionally through thank-you letters and large-denomination checks.
Actually, when Rob said he had to return to Korea, Joan inwardly wanted to oppose it. The man who was once her husband though now divorced, Joan and Rob, and the newly born Chris too.
The four of them were good friends and family.
“I have to repay the treatment costs. I’ll be back soon. I’m just temporarily filling the vacancy until Noona gives birth and returns.”
Rob, who left saying that, couldn’t return even after several years passed. While Joan divorced and built a life for just the two of them with Chris, Rob gradually became a man, and became more haggard.
It truly hurt her heart. Whenever that happened, Joan resented Taeryoung’s chairman. The man she looked up on the internet bore no resemblance to Rob whatsoever. Despite the blood connection, they were completely different races.
“I wish someone would help Rob.”
Wishing fervently, Joan signed the prescription. She didn’t record Rob’s file on the computer. She wrote everything by hand.
One copy for the pharmacy, she made a spare copy and inserted it into the file.
Rob wasted precious time for two whole days in front of the TV as an excellent couch potato. Actually, even if he tried to do something, there was nothing he could do properly because of his arm injury. Using that as a shield, Rob grinned broadly even at nagging to not be lazy, raising his arm. Sometimes he deliberately made a pitiful expression.
Rob, who had only slept the whole time, tried to return to Korea as soon as he exchanged the prescription for medicine. Chris, who hadn’t been able to play properly during that time because of exam studying, was almost ready to throw a fit.
“Come to Korea after you take your exam.”
“Really? You’ll send me a ticket?”
“I’ll send you first class. If you want, a luxury hotel suite too.”
“A driver?”
“How about I run around myself?”
Chris, who had been listening with her arms crossed and a sullen expression up to that point, finally spread her arms wide and hugged Rob.
“Oh my, you’ll miss your plane. Hurry and go.”
The warm goodbye at the compact Portland airport was enough to attract attention. Only after Joan gave a warning did Chris let Rob go.
Grinning, Rob boarded the small propeller plane. At least until he took the jet from Seattle and crossed the Pacific again, may that smile continue.
Joan prayed inwardly.
*
Just as he was about to turn his stiff neck while wrestling with case-related materials, a KakaoTalk message came.
Checking the preview that appeared on the lock screen, it was Gu Daeyoung.
[Hey, look at this.]
‘Why’s he suddenly sending a KakaoTalk.’
He had no interest whatsoever. Still, he unlocked it to take a breather. Entering KakaoTalk, there was a photo that Gu Daeyoung had sent.
In a photo that appeared to have been taken at Incheon Airport arrivals, there was a foreign actor whose name he didn’t know but whose face he’d seen a few times in movies, smiling broadly.
“This bastard. Why is he sending something like this.”
Just as his disbelief was evaporating at the absurdity, Gu Daeyoung sent several photos in a rush without pause. They were all photos of that actor, but toward the back the focus went off, so later the actor wasn’t visible and only the passersby in the background were emphasized.
[That’s Jung Kyungwoo, right?]
Without delay, after turning off the chat room notifications, he flinched while trying to press the lock button. Only then did he enlarge and carefully examine the photo Gu Daeyoung had sent.
Because the guy calling himself a reporter used a top-grade camera, even though the distance seemed considerable, the photo was remarkably clear. The man wearing a black jumper and black cap was unmistakably Jung Kyungwoo.
[Today?]
An answer immediately came back to his question.
[Just now, VIP arrivals]
After that, short messages began pouring in like when he’d sent the photos. It was fortunate he’d turned off the advance notifications.
[From early this morning]
[I was on standby at the airport]
[From Hollywood]
Synthesizing the messy messages, apparently a great actor from Hollywood was coming but that gentleman with a very high nose refused the general arrivals. So, avoiding the crowd of fans and reporters, he made a surprise appearance at the VIP-only arrivals used by high-ranking officials, but quick-witted reporters had even anticipated that and lurked nearby before shoving cameras at him. Gu Daeyoung was among them.
[But then someone appeared from behind, came in all bundled up, so thinking it was some idol who’d caused a scandal, I just shot away]
Turns out it was Jung Kyungwoo. Since they’d gone to photograph a world-class celeb that guaranteed click counts, the other reporters weren’t particularly interested in a relatively obscure domestic fourth-generation chaebol.
But Gu Daeyoung was different. In time barely enough to photograph the Hollywood actor, he devoted a few shots then displayed the devotion of sending them to Seo Jaeha.
[Flight departing from the US West Coast]
[Seattle]
Gu Daeyoung went on and on about things he hadn’t even been asked.
[Why would he go to America at this point? And why his arm?]
A needless comment came out.
[Probably got drunk and fell. He grew up in America, so what’s strange about going to America?]
[Maybe he’s hiding a lover? Maybe he hurt his arm doing it rough with his lover?]
This bastard Gu Daeyoung—you couldn’t tell if he was sharp or dull. In any case, his ideas were certainly outrageously cheap.
Jaeha, whose interest had plummeted, locked his cell phone and flung it onto his desk. Then, instead of concentrating on work again, he leaned back deeply in his chair and cast his gaze toward the ceiling.
‘America, Seattle.’
Jaeha lightly rubbed the back of his head that still ached.
After treatment, he suffered from headaches for both weekend days. After barely suppressing it with painkillers, when he came to work on Monday, there was an endless stream of looks and questions asking why his head was like that, making his head throb.
When he roughly made up an excuse that he fell while drunk, pitiful reactions followed as a bonus.
“Funeral yukgaejang never gets old no matter how much you eat it. Try hard so I can eat yukgaejang again from now on too.”
Director Baek’s words were clearly irony, but somehow it felt like they weren’t irony. Of course, there was no consideration of reducing his workload just because he was injured.
Jung Kyungwoo’s injury too—just because it wasn’t life-threatening didn’t mean it was trivial. It was a situation where it wouldn’t be enough to take a fistful of painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs and rest. And yet a long flight?
