“What’s got you so busy. How much work are they piling on you that you’re that busy?”
“I’ve got things going on. I do other stuff during the day.”
“……Ha. Haejeong. Hyung isn’t joking around right now.”
Yeon Juhyeok’s expression grew increasingly serious, but Yeon Haejeong still looked utterly uninterested. As if even the sound of his voice was boring, he tilted his head back and looked away.
“And on top of that — why did you go up to the seventh-floor office and cause a scene the other day?”
“Oh, who snitched already?”
“Do you not know that the company community board caught fire over that?”
“Since when does a Vice Chairman concern himself with things like that.”
“How could I not? And something that big of an issue gets back to you on its own.”
“I just had something pissing me off.”
“Ha. Because something’s pissing you off, you go and shout and curse in front of all those employees? What are you, an elementary schooler?!”
“It’s not like I punched anyone or dragged someone around screaming at them! I just blew off some steam once, what’s the big deal!”
“That temper is the problem, the temper! Before Managing Director or whatever, you need to grow up first, you hear me?!”
“Ugh, enough! Stop nagging me, my ears are going to fall off!”
“Then give me a reason to stop, please!”
When Yeon Juhyeok cried out in desperation, Yeon Haejeong’s lips moved in dissatisfaction. The truth was, Yeon Haejeong knew it himself. Part of it was not wanting to work, but part of it was also that he couldn’t concentrate. His mind was so completely occupied elsewhere that he couldn’t even begin to feel the importance of the work at hand.
Come to think of it, how sick is he? Did he come in today?
Even as his hyung rattled on loudly about one thing or another, his head was full of only that one thought. After filling him up to the brim with his own energy — calling it a mistake and then acting like he didn’t know a thing — and then suddenly going and skipping out on work because he was sick, Yeon Haejeong had nearly lost his mind. That day, his face had looked flushed, but he hadn’t even considered that he might actually be ill. On top of that, according to Section Chief Jo, it was the first time since he’d started working there that he’d ever taken sick leave. A guy who never got sick was apparently bad enough off to be laid up in bed.
The memory of tormenting him through the night before suddenly surfaced, leaving him with a thoroughly unsettled feeling. It’s not like a little rolling around would make someone sick enough to be bedridden. The hell kind of man. Yeon Haejeong grumbled to himself like that, but he had already realized — somewhere along the way, without thinking, he had gathered all sorts of things and found himself standing in front of Munyeong’s place.
I must be out of my mind.
The fact was so shocking to Yeon Haejeong that he had no room to think about anything else. Me — the one and only Yeon Haejeong — going out to someone’s place with an armful of medicine just because they’re sick? It was something he had never once imagined doing in his entire life. At first he’d thought about just turning around and leaving, but then figured it’d be a waste to have bought all that stuff, so he’d at least leave it at the door. But then he’d thought that since he’d already come all the way, shouldn’t he at least see his face — and was about to knock on the door, when he remembered how Munyeong had tried to brush off what happened that night as a mistake and pretend it never happened, and the irritation had flared up again, so he hadn’t been able to go through with it so easily.
After more than an hour of going back and forth near the apartment like that, he had run into Munyeong’s friend walking over from a distance. Friend was what they were, but to Yeon Haejeong’s eyes he looked like nothing more than a leech clinging to Munyeong. The mere sight of him was grating enough to make Yeon Haejeong want to kick him, but the desire to get what he was holding into Munyeong’s hands was stronger. He’d told the friend to pass it along and keep it a secret, but one look at his face made it clear he’d never keep it secret to save his life — so Yeon Haejeong had even pressed 100,000 won into his hand as he said it. At first the guy went on about how he’d deliver it himself, how he at least knew how to pay back a kindness and all that — but the moment the money landed in his hand, he smiled pleasantly and made a point of saying he’d make sure it was delivered properly.
He didn’t trust him one bit, but once the handoff was done, he felt a little better. Still, something nagged at him. The thought of the two of them giggling together in that cramped little place made his insides twist, and then on the other hand, thinking about that idiot lying there sick and miserable made him too irritated to even start the car.
So he had stayed there, through the night, and gone to work the next morning. After that, he’d gone back several more times and hovered around. He would loiter and stare up at the window of the top floor of the run-down villa where Munyeong lived for hours at a time, then leave. Over and over.
“Do you have any idea how much your mother worries about you?”
The thread of Yeon Haejeong’s wandering thoughts snapped to a halt. The effortless stream of retorts dried up, and he turned to look at Yeon Juhyeok with sudden coldness. Unable to read the shift in his expression, Yeon Juhyeok continued in a voice heavy with complicated feeling.
“If you knew even a fraction of how much your mother worries about you, you wouldn’t be working like this.”
“……Ha.”
Yeon Haejeong let out a quiet scoff at his hyung’s earnest concern. But Yeon Juhyeok pressed on without backing down.
“She’s worried, but she knows your stubbornness, so she hasn’t assigned anyone to watch over you — she’s just quietly keeping an eye on things. That alone says how much she thinks about you. You know what she’s like, right?”
“……”
Yeon Haejeong watched, dragging his chin out long, to see how much more was coming.
“That means she has that much riding on you — her expectations. Are you going to keep letting her down like this?”
“……Hyung.”
“What.”
“Don’t bring up Mom to me.”
“…What?”
“It doesn’t work on me at all.”
Yeon Haejeong answered with a coldness unlike anything before, and rose abruptly to his feet.
Leaving behind a flustered Yeon Juhyeok — whose reaction was starkly at odds with the childlike petulance of before — Yeon Haejeong slammed the Vice Chairman’s office door hard enough to seem like he might break it off its hinges and walked out. A moment later, a threatening shout followed that he hadn’t finished talking and Haejeong should stop right there — but Yeon Haejeong shut it out completely, stepped out, and got into the elevator. The noise had the desk staff exchanging flustered glances, but Yeon Haejeong couldn’t have cared less about whatever rumors might come of it.
Worries about me. Right.
Yeon Haejeong let out a quiet, hollow laugh and rubbed the back of his stiff neck. Then, stepping into the elevator and descending, he gazed in silence at the city view passing by and found himself drifting, suddenly, back into the past.
The moment Yeon Haejeong came to know that he was not Chairman Yeon’s biological son was not the result of any single moment.
A subtle difference in treatment had existed since childhood. In the way his mother behaved — the faint, unmistakable distinction between how she handled his hyung Yeon Juhyeok and how she handled him. Of course, treating a firstborn and a second son differently was common enough, so at first he hadn’t been able to tell at all. The way she looked after his hyung more, worried about his hyung more, doted on his hyung more — it was the kind of thing you’d find in any chaebol household. It was only natural to give more to the one who would inherit everything.
But as he grew older, he came to realize that this difference was not like the ordinary kind. He came to understand that his mother sometimes disliked him enough to make her skin crawl, that she avoided him. The first time he realized it was when he and Yeon Juhyeok were in an accident orchestrated by persons unknown. Middle school. A dump truck of no identifiable origin plowed into the car he and Yeon Juhyeok were riding in together. Fortunately, the driver had jerked the wheel fast enough that they got away with minor injuries — but the image of his mother in those moments would not leave him. They had clearly both been hurt, and were lying in adjacent hospital beds, yet his mother’s tear-soaked eyes were directed only at his hyung. When he reached out an arm asking her to look at him too, she shook it off roughly, glaring at him with veins-raised, wary eyes.
He hadn’t been able to understand it at the time, but by the time he entered high school, he finally had a clear answer as to why. When their uncle passed away. When it had struck him as odd that his mother grieved so unusually deeply. It was only after overhearing a conversation his mother was having with a servant who had attended her since birth that he found the answer.
“I put it back where it belongs, so what’s the problem!”
Yeon Haejeong had yanked open the door of the empty storage room in the gymnasium — bang! — and stepped inside, continuing the call. His mother, at that time, was carrying tremendous anxiety because of him — because he now knew everything. The death of their uncle, and the secret her son had uncovered. His mother had hounded Yeon Haejeong every single day like a woman who had lost her mind, and lived tethered to pills and alcohol like someone seized by an anxiety disorder.
The period when they fought every other day, when they screamed at each other and the discord between them reached its peak. Yeon Haejeong shuddered at the memory as the call continued. His mother had discovered what he’d done — stolen their uncle’s watch — and was reprimanding him as though she were having a fit.
— How dare you steal that? Have you completely lost your mind?
“Is a child taking something considered stealing?”
— As if I don’t know what you’re up to! Where do you get the nerve to rebel like this?
The voice of Madam Chu Yeonan coming through the phone was sharp enough to hurt his ears. She was furious — venomous enough for it to come through the line.
“I was just curious, that’s all.”
Yeon Haejeong, who had been matching her volume, answered in a suddenly darkened tone, quietly.
— What?
“My real father’s keepsake. I just wanted to get a proper look at it.”
— ……Watch your mouth.
“Well then, why did you let it show. Why did you make it so obvious. How much did you love him, that you fainted at the funeral?”
Yeon Haejeong’s face held an expression of utter incomprehension. Anyone else might think it was something impossible to imagine, but not him. The different treatment compared to his real hyung, the flashes of regret he sometimes caught when she looked at him.
“But here’s the funny thing. That you loved our uncle so much… and yet you hate his son so fiercely.”
— Can’t you keep quiet…? Is this how you protest to your mother? What is it that I’ve failed to give you!
“And you’re having a fit even at the truth.”
— …You think you’ve got a hold over me right now, don’t you? That’s it, isn’t it? Is this your way of getting revenge on me? Scratching away at me like this, little by little, so that I wither away day by day? You want to know why I hate you? Because you are my one and only mistake. Just once. It was just once with that man — just one mistake. And because of that one time… I’ve spent over a decade dying of anxiety, and every time — you’re right there in front of my eyes—!
