“I had to find out why the boy was making such a scene at his mother’s — I had no choice but to look into it. I was told everything about the past as well.”
Chairman Yeon lowered his gaze, his expression weighed down with complicated feeling. It was astonishing enough that the other party knew everything — but his reaction to it was equally astonishing.
“At the time, my older brother passed away, and I wasn’t able to attend to what was happening within the family. Things like that were going on right under my roof… and I, blind as a man could be, knew nothing of any of it.”
“Father. Please don’t speak that way.”
Yeon Juhyeok gently rebuked Chairman Yeon for blaming himself. Munyeong found the scene genuinely perplexing. And then he thought he understood. Why Haejeong’s mother had gone to such lengths. This ideal image before him — this was what Rep. Chu had wanted to preserve at all costs. A husband and father who thought of and worried for his children with such sincerity, and a son who truly cherished his father. In one of the most prominent chaebol households in the country, a peace without a single discord or blemish existed in this home.
“My child.”
“…….”
“I am truly sorry. I wanted to take this opportunity to offer you my apology.”
“……Ah……, no…… please. Please don’t do this.”
“You even saved Haejeong’s life — and yet our family’s wife treated you so harshly. She isn’t someone who would ordinarily go that far, so she must have been very anxious…. One apology won’t erase everything you’ve been through, but I would very much like to make it up to you in a meaningful way — would that be all right with you?”
Munyeong, at a complete loss, looked not at Chairman Yeon but at Yeon Juhyeok. His expression said he had no idea whether this was really happening or what he was supposed to do — and Yeon Juhyeok responded with only a shrug, as if to say, just handle it as best you can.
“I…… I really am fine.”
“That can’t be.”
“No…… I genuinely wasn’t doing it hoping for anything in return. It was simply that Haejeong……”
“…….”
“I was just worried about Haejeong… that’s all it was, I truly wasn’t expecting anything.”
“…….”
“Please don’t apologize, Chairman. I’m begging you, please.”
Munyeong pleaded, his face close to tears. He was at a complete loss, trembling like a frightened calf, and Chairman Yeon let out a faint, soft laugh.
“Did you care for him from back then?”
“……Pardon?”
“Our Haejeong, I mean.”
“……I’m — I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. I’m a man of an older generation, so I still… can’t fully understand that inclination — but what can one do. Having lived this long, I find I’m the same way myself.”
“…….”
“What you love — there’s no stopping it, no matter what you do. And at an age when the blood runs hot, how much more so must it be. Isn’t that right, Juhyeok.”
Chairman Yeon smiled with an easy warmth and placed a small confection in his mouth.
“I wouldn’t know — I feel as though all that youth has rather passed me by.”
“Is that so? That’s a problem. You’re still a young man.”
“It seems you haven’t changed at all, Father.”
“…That’s right.”
“…….”
“That’s why I can’t let go of your mother, and here I am like this.”
The laugh that followed had a note of something bittersweet behind it. Yeon Juhyeok, too, couldn’t conceal the trace of bittersweetness and brushed a hand across his lips. The mood had quieted in an instant, and while Munyeong sat fidgeting with unease, a commotion of footsteps stirred from the direction of the corridor. The household staff began bustling about in a flurry — and then a fierce shout rang out all the way up to the ceiling.
“Where is he―!”
An all too familiar voice. At that voice, the heart that had frozen solid with tension inside Munyeong’s chest began to slowly thaw.
“Where the fuck is he!”
At the sound of the one voice in this composed household barking like a savage dog, Yeon Juhyeok let out a very audible sigh.
“Father, are you really going to keep letting that one get away with things?”
“Ha, I have my doubts too, I must say…. But seeing him in such a state, unable to pull himself together — I can’t help but feel for him…….”
“You’d be the only one who feels for that wild foal of a person.”
“What can I do — he’s the one who takes after his mother the most.”
It was strange to hear with his own ears the reason Chairman Yeon was fondest of Haejeong. Chairman Yeon truly, genuinely loved his wife. Knowing that, and yet remaining so composed — perhaps, Munyeong found himself thinking, he had already known everything all along. Could love really make a person this accepting?
“Im Munyeong!”
At the desperate call of his name, both Chairman Yeon and Yeon Juhyeok looked at Munyeong at the same time. Munyeong’s face went hot in an instant and he pressed his two hands together tightly — the only thing he could do. He was so mortified he could barely stand it.
The panting breaths and the heavy, stomping footsteps grew closer and closer — and then at last, he appeared. The moment he did, Munyeong’s eyes flooded with shock as he watched him emerge from the corridor.
“…Ha…….”
“Im Munyeong…….”
Yeon Haejeong, seen for the first time in a month, was — to put it plainly — a complete wreck. His hair, apparently untouched all this time, had grown long and gone disheveled. His face was covered in scrapes and cuts from what must have been some manner of recklessness, on top of which his stubble had been left unshaved for what looked like days, growing out in dark, unkempt patches. On top of that, he had apparently been in such a frantic rush that his shirt buttons were done up wrong, and he had no socks on — it looked as though he had come running barefoot. In a word, the state of him was absolute chaos.
“Why are you here, what do you think you’re doing coming to a place like this!”
Haejeong, his face even more gaunt than before, was throwing his temper around exactly as he always had. He strode over and grabbed Munyeong’s arm where he sat still.
“Are you not going to greet Father?”
Yeon Juhyeok said flatly, dissatisfied with Haejeong’s entrance that had all but blown the household apart. But it didn’t seem to reach Haejeong’s ears — his eyes were already halfway gone. As though convinced that Munyeong had been dragged here against his will and given a hard time, he was breathing fire through his nose and snapping his eyes up at his older brother. His certainty on the matter was plain.
“What did you say to him?”
“…What?”
Haejeong pulled Munyeong behind him and ground his teeth.
“What did you say to him this time!”
Yeon Juhyeok let out a heartfelt groan at the sight of him charging in without even reading the situation.
“What on earth…….”
“I said don’t touch him. I told you clearly — don’t lay so much as a finger on him!”
The eyes, already edged with something close to madness, had gone bloodshot. Munyeong stared at Haejeong, completely out of control in a way no one could stop, and clapped a hand over his own mouth in alarm.
“Touch him — I haven’t touched anyone, you little—!”
“Why did you call him here. I wasn’t even here — why did you call him?”
“……Ha.”
“Who called him. Was it Mother again? Or Father?”
Not even hearing Yeon Juhyeok’s rebuttal, Haejeong bellowed at Chairman Yeon, who appeared to be exercising extraordinary patience. Munyeong, flustered by the sight of him rampaging like a man with no restraint, grabbed hastily at his collar. Please — stop…. Please, stop….
But his desperate grip seemed to be read as a sign of fear — and Haejeong seized Munyeong’s hand firmly in his own and roared as though the whole world were his enemy.
“Calling him here like this — what is it you want to say now.”
“…….”
“That he should stop seeing me?”
“…….”
“That he should break things off with me?”
“…….”
“Did you throw money at him again to make him break things off with me? Did you threaten him? Did you hit him?!”
Haejeong even stamped his feet as he screamed. The sight of him lashing out like that was, in a way, desperate. The firm grip holding his hand, the furious eyes guarding against everyone around them — to Munyeong’s eyes, it all looked desperate. Almost as though Haejeong were trying to protect him. As though he were fighting desperately to shield him from everything. Setting aside how alarming the behavior was, something felt strange in Munyeong’s chest.
