One-Sided Love
The first thing I did as soon as I came home after learning the specific circumstances of Kkotmoa’s family was to have my secretary find out about the hospital bills. No matter how much Mom wanted to raise me normally until graduation, I was the one and only successor who would inherit D Group’s management rights. I occasionally accompanied Father to business events and even went on overseas business trips with him. For someone like me, even if there wasn’t often occasion to contact them, it wasn’t that I didn’t have a secretary. That said, I didn’t treat my secretary like a servant or order them around at will like Kang Junwoo or other guys from high society. Excluding events I attended with Father, this was the first time I’d given personal instructions.
Since it would reach Father’s ears anyway, I didn’t say anything childish like maintaining secrecy when giving instructions. With just a calm expression, I listened to the report that came thirty minutes after giving the order. Three months of hospital bills were overdue for Kkotmoa’s dad lying in the hospital. The amount wasn’t small either. The secretary reported things I hadn’t even asked for. The bank debt they took out last year with the flower shop as collateral wasn’t trivial either. Perhaps even the 100,000 won monthly allowance given to Kkotmoa was a burden for that household.
“Secretary Park, you work meticulously. But…”
What I’d instructed was only about the hospital bills, but the fact that Secretary Park reported additional things meant he knew about the relationship between the ajusshi at the hospital and the ajusshi at the flower shop, and furthermore, it also meant he knew of Kkotmoa’s existence. For the first time in my life, I did something called threatening someone using their weakness as leverage. Even in my usual blunt tone without emotional fluctuation, Secretary Park wrote and sealed a written pledge that he wouldn’t inform anyone about this fact, including Father.
But even though I’d found out, there was nothing I could do. That was agonizing. If I had my way, I wanted to run over right now with my black card and pay all the overdue hospital bills for him and pay off the bank debt to free the flower shop. But I had nothing to say to Kkotmoa. I didn’t want to be hated by him. I didn’t want distance to grow between us.
I just thought I had to help Kkotmoa unconditionally without even knowing the exact reason why I wanted to help him. But I could bet my wrist that it definitely wasn’t sympathy. This emotion I couldn’t define was absolutely not sympathy.
I visited Father’s study after a long time. I’d like to be able to do something with my own power, but I was still an age that legally needed a guardian, and I was a minor living under my parents’ protection. I didn’t resent that or find it frustrating. Unlike Kang Junwoo or the high society kids who enjoyed deviance, I’d never once made my parents worry. I knew it was far wiser to conform and use it to my advantage in that time.
“Right, you said you’d cut off all private tutoring except successor education until you take the college entrance exam?”
I cunningly told Mom instead of Father that I’d take a break from private education. I thought even Mom wouldn’t be able to beat Father if I dropped successor education too, so I compromised appropriately. Anyway, successor education was on Sundays, so it didn’t matter. Sundays were also the days Kkotmoa went to the hospital. In any case, looking at Father’s expression, even if he wasn’t pleased, it seemed he’d given in to Mom.
“Yes. I want to try living the way Mom wants until I graduate. Like other kids.”
“Ha ha, this kid really.”
“You know, the king of our house is Mom.”
Father burst out laughing at my lame joke. Proof that he agreed. Actually, Father and I didn’t have such a warm relationship. Father was extremely busy with group work, and since I entered puberty, our conversations were almost cut off, so except for absolutely necessary words, there wasn’t much occasion to talk, making things awkward. But now that I had something I wanted, I was ready to pretend to be friendly and flatter Father as much as needed.
“Father, I have a request.”
“Yes, tell me.”
“I’ll speak directly without beating around the bush. There’s… a guy I want to help.”
I couldn’t even describe Kkotmoa as a friend in front of Father. Even though he himself married a middle-class mom, if they weren’t high society friends who played in the same waters, Father didn’t like associating with them from the start. Father’s theory was that pine caterpillars must eat pine needles to live, and die if they eat oak leaves. According to that theory, while I wouldn’t lose out or be harmed, it implied that the pine caterpillar might die. When I tried to refute using Mom as an example, what I heard was the sophistry that Mom wasn’t a pine caterpillar from the beginning.
“A guy you want to help?”
“Yes. But I don’t want that guy to know I’m helping him. You taught me, Father, to let not your left hand know what your right hand does. I don’t want to swagger pathetically at school.”
Father, who had the traits of a wild beast from birth with rough and fierce habits, was someone who only became a docile sheep in front of Mom. He was also someone who held contempt for men who beat around the bush or used cowardly methods with shallow tricks. Knowing this better than anyone, I chose a frontal breakthrough.
I began explaining my plan step by step. I didn’t use the word “friend” even once. To me, who harbored different feelings anyway, he wasn’t a friend. I had to pretend not to be close to him so as not to arouse Father’s suspicion. As a member of society’s leadership class, I had to thoroughly package it as if I was practicing from now the charitable work I’d carry out after succeeding to D Group’s management in the future—wanting to help society’s disadvantaged class. So throughout my speech, my ribs ached, my chest throbbed, and my heart hurt as if stabbed by a knife.
Because I had to speak as if you were nothing to me.
Yet you’re a more special existence to me than anyone.
And yet I can’t explain my own feelings even to myself…
* * *
Today, Kkotmoa kept glancing at me all day long. He’d try to say something and stop, try again and stop, couldn’t concentrate on studying, so his workbook pages weren’t turning. I knew clearly what the reason was but didn’t show it. If I showed it first here, I felt I’d pity myself for suffering while speaking of you as if you were nothing in front of Father. No, even if not for that, I couldn’t tell him. Because it had to be something I didn’t know about.
“Hyeondo-ya.”
“Yeah.”
“Was it you?”
“What was.”
“Our flower shop.”
Regrettably, his eyes that met mine seemed to be asking me to say it wasn’t. He didn’t seem to have strong pride, but honestly, it was a bit frustrating why he tried to be so precise about this part. It would be better if he acted shamelessly, saying your family has lots of money and our family’s circumstances are difficult, so please help a bit. No, that would never happen. If Kkotmoa were the type to say such things, he wouldn’t have been special to me at all. Even while suspicious, he could only ask purely, hoping it wasn’t so, not giving up his expectations of me. I wanted to live up to his expectations forever.
“What are you talking about. Explain so I can understand.”
“Dad said a D Group person suddenly called yesterday and they met. Giving a business card, they said from now on D Group will order all the flowers they need from our flower shop, so let’s make a formal contract.”
Father’s drive was second to none. I also prided myself on having drive and execution power second to none, but every time I see Father, I’m astounded. My visit to Father’s study was yesterday evening. I thought it would be resolved around this week, but the impatient Chairman seemed to have handled it right away last night without letting even a day pass. For me, it was something to be grateful for.
“From small things like gifts sent to various places in the Chairman-nim’s name, to large things like events, there would be many, they said. When he said our shop doesn’t deliver, they said the company would send people for delivery, and he received a contract with really good conditions too.”
He doesn’t even know how to hide things. This kid doesn’t even feel hurt pride over things like this. Instead, he’s a kid who’ll be wounded in his tender heart. I can’t hurt him, can’t inflict even a small wound. All I can do is just look with an anxious heart, worried that even one petal might be damaged.
“Are you asking me if I did that now?”
“It’s not you? I thought it probably wasn’t, but still, I think my heart will be at ease if I confirm it.”
He’s really sharp in useless places. Because I know this, I can’t step forward and help. I want to freely give water to my flower, let it photosynthesize, buy expensive nutrients and put them in, but all I can do is just admire the flower.
“Do you have a brain? What do I look like to you?”
“Mm… a high school student?”
It was a bit unexpected. Since the conversation topic was like this, I was going to say what if he said D Group’s successor, then no matter what, I’m still just a powerless high school student, but he said what I was going to say first.
“That’s your answer, right?”
“Haa, thank goodness. Even while thinking it wasn’t, I would have been upset if you said you did it.”
Since it was only yesterday that I learned Kkotmoa’s circumstances precisely, there wasn’t enough time to think I’d pulled strings. Kkotmoa released his muscles that had been tense all day and collapsed onto the desk. His gaze as he lay with his head turned sideways was precisely fixed on me. Not the glances he’d been sneaking all along, but looking at me completely. Actually, I thought he’d ask as soon as we came to school, but because he asked when it was time to go home, I was the one who’d been more restless.
“Since the moment I heard from Dad yesterday, my heart kept pounding and I was so worried I couldn’t sleep properly.”
Even Kkotmoa with his strong “my pace” who doesn’t mind others couldn’t easily ask because he was concerned about me. Our clumsy nineteen-year-old selves might be fearing each other as much as we’d grown close.
“Come to think of it, did Mom say that? She did really like the flower basket she received as a gift that time… And that ajumma is crazy about your younger brother.”
When I tried to lie, cold sweat ran down my spine and I felt chills. I worried what if he brought Deonggeori to visit our house later and thanked our mom.
“Ah, is that it… Anyway, thank you. Please tell your mother I’m grateful too. Dad already said he’d make a flower basket soon and told me to bring Jaea and go properly thank her. For looking after Jaea.”
Damn. I shouldn’t have brought up Mom. The words I unnecessarily added created a crisis of my lie being exposed. Unlike Father, who would cleverly match his words in a similar situation and ask later, Mom was someone who would scold me harshly for going around telling lies even if she caught on. I was already suffering from having to keep lying to this kid, but I couldn’t help it because it was more agonizing for me that he was struggling because of money. I thought I had to postpone visiting our house somehow. For now, we’d be studying at Kkotmoa’s house anyway.
