It wasn’t that he was worried Chaehyeok might have hit his biological father. If anything, he thought he’d have felt grateful if that were the case.
The thought came to him suddenly, and Yieum glanced at the back of Chaehyeok’s hand. That scarred, roughened hand showed no fresh sign of having just struck anyone. Though it was the sort of hand where a punch or two probably wouldn’t leave a mark to begin with.
“Did you drive him off?”
“Not really. Just told him this was my place.”
Isn’t that the same thing.
He should say thank you, but Yieum deliberately pressed his lips together and held it back. He reminded himself — this composed man who had helped him twice now was a gangster, and he had come to collect a debt.
When Yieum went quiet, no words passed between them for a long stretch.
Chaehyeok rested one arm along the back of the sofa and let his gaze wander across the ceiling and walls. Occasionally he pressed down on the empty cushions beside him, or tapped at them idly.
Yieum watched the scene awkwardly, rolling sentences around in his mouth only to swallow them back down.
I have to ask.
But what if I’m opening a can of worms. Is this even the kind of person I can ask something like this. Yet the knowledge that nothing would begin if he didn’t ask was what finally pried his sealed lips open.
“Um……”
“What.”
“How much was my stepfather’s debt? The district office told me I don’t have a legal guardian right now, so I can’t receive the inheritance or claim the insurance money until then. They said the court would contact me, but that could be——”
“Kid.”
“I don’t know when that’ll be——”
Yieum spilled the words out breathlessly, and Chaehyeok, who had been staring at a corner of the room, slowly turned his head.
The motion of uncrossing his legs and leaning forward was unhurried. It seemed he was trying to meet the eyes of Yieum sitting at a distance. Neither the slight furrow between his brows nor the set of his mouth gave any hint of what he was thinking.
That expressionless gaze stayed on Yieum’s face for a long time.
Yieum, cowed, dropped his eyes. Only then did Chaehyeok click his tongue shortly and straighten back up.
“Did I ever say Bongwoo’s debt was money?”
“It’s not?”
Yieum’s head snapped up, his face brightening.
“Want me to repeat myself?”
“It’s not my body, is it?”
“Organs don’t even fetch decent money.”
Chaehyeok, looking thoroughly unmoved, dug a finger into his ear. Yieum had meant something different by that question and couldn’t quite tell whether it was his phrasing that had gone sideways, or whether Chaehyeok had taken it somewhere sideways himself.
Either way the meaning had gotten through, so it seemed better to stay quiet and wait for his answer.
“……”
“By the way, kid — did you just say you can’t receive the inheritance?”
“Yes…… apparently my mom and stepfather never officially registered their marriage……”
“You think I wouldn’t have known that?”
As expected. A gangster’s logic didn’t follow the law.
“So, so then I have no obligation to repay——”
“Who said you don’t?”
The law. The clear answer surfaced in his mind, but Yieum clamped his mouth shut.
Because the expression on Chaehyeok’s face had twisted into something so ugly it made it impossible to speak.
“Ah, for — fuck’s sake!”
After a moment of stiffness, he suddenly threw his head back and dragged both hands through his hair. It was the most volatile reaction Yieum had ever seen from him.
He held that position and muttered in a low voice —
“This has turned into a headache.”
Yieum quietly scooted his hips a little closer. If that was his reaction to hearing the inheritance couldn’t be received, then the debt Bongwoo had left behind had to be money.
He hadn’t given a clear denial in the exchange just now either. Yieum figured he’d been trying to play word games, and asked carefully —
“It is money, isn’t it?”
After a long silence, Chaehyeok abruptly straightened up.
The look in his eyes turned razor-sharp. Yieum, pressed down by the force of it, started quietly edging his hips back to widen the distance. But Chaehyeok leaned his upper body forward by the same amount, closing it again.
“When is this guardian situation getting sorted.”
“I’m not sure — if there’s no suitable person they said the court would appoint one……”
“And?”
“My biological father might try to reclaim parental rights……”
The hand Yieum raised as he spoke trembled faintly.
The mother who had abandoned him and run came back to get him after five seasons had changed. The first words out of her mouth before any I missed you or I’m sorry had been: “How long has it been since your father last hit you?” He didn’t understand until the divorce proceedings were underway that she hadn’t asked out of concern for him.
If she had truly been worried about him, she should have had his biological father’s parental rights terminated — even after the divorce was finalized. Then his location as a child left alone wouldn’t have been known to his biological father the way it was now. And he wouldn’t be tormented by a fear he’d thought he had barely managed to escape.
But Chaehyeok, who knew none of what was going through Yieum’s mind, murmured indifferently —
“Should’ve just let him leave, then.”
“No!”
Yieum cried out before he could stop himself and practically threw himself forward onto all fours. One more word from Chaehyeok and he looked ready to drop to his knees and beg.
Not long after she’d taken Yieum, the court had ruled in his mother’s favor. A foregone conclusion. It was the reason she’d needed him in the first place.
At the time, the evidence of domestic violence was insufficient to make the divorce ruling stick. So she had brought Yieum — the abused child — home to use as a favorable card. Custody had gone to his mother, naturally.
He had thought that was the end of it. That a system called termination of parental rights existed, and that his mother had known about it — that, he’d only found out much later.
That was when it started. Slowly beginning to let go of the one-sided love he’d been carrying for his mother.
Chaehyeok’s gaze touched the tips of Yieum’s fingers, drained white, then moved to the kitchen knife sitting on the dining table. He rubbed his chin, seeming to turn something over in his mind, then set his mouth and asked —
“Why.”
“Before my biological father can reclaim parental rights, I’m going to file for termination of parental rights with the court.”
“What?”
Chaehyeok’s brow furrowed sharply, as though he’d heard something that couldn’t be right.
Yieum slowly pushed himself up from the floor. He shoved his trembling hands under his thighs to hide them and opened his eyes wide.
The knowledge that backing down here would mean being cornered by someone far more vicious than any gangster was what kept his fear at bay.
Their gazes clashed in taut silence for a long moment. Yieum was the one who spoke first.
“If I do that, things will get complicated and the inheritance will be delayed even further.”
He expected the usual — something like don’t try clumsy tricks you can’t pull off, or you think that’s going to make me go easy on you.
But Chaehyeok’s face crumpled into a fierce scowl, and he grabbed his head in his hands again and shouted at the floor —
“Ha—…… fuck, Bongwoo!”
The outburst was so far outside what he’d expected that Yieum sucked in a startled breath.
Just how much was the debt he needed to collect — that a man who had seemed utterly unshakeable was losing his composure like this.
On top of that, he was the CEO of a major construction company. Thinking about it now, the fact that he had come alone, personally, to collect the debt was strange in itself.
Then — could it be that this was money that couldn’t be repaid with his mother’s assets to begin with? This apartment was a monthly rental, and even the deposit was only a large sum by Yieum’s standards. Even with the insurance money, it seemed unlikely to be an amount that would satisfy Chaehyeok. If he had mistakenly assumed the apartment belonged to his mother, then Chaehyeok’s reaction made sense.
“Can’t exactly kill a dead man twice……”
He muttered and pulled out a cigarette. Smoking indoors wasn’t allowed, but if he said something now, the fact that it was a rented place might come out. Not trusting himself to lie, Yieum just rolled his eyes aimlessly and went ahead and threw open every window he could reach.
By then, Chaehyeok was already blowing smoke from both mouth and nose like a dragon.
Before things got worse, Yieum quickly stuffed some tissue into a paper cup and soaked it through with water. The ash on Chaehyeok’s cigarette was tilting at a precarious angle.
He rushed over and shoved the paper cup into Chaehyeok’s hand. Mouth still firmly shut — not wanting a slip of the tongue to rub him the wrong way.
“Hah.”
Chaehyeok let out a dry, disbelieving laugh as he took the paper cup, but obediently tapped the long column of ash into it.
Yieum opened every window in the apartment he could, all except the master bedroom. Chaehyeok paced the same spot, smoked his cigarette down to nothing, then dropped where he stood. Yieum, watching from a distance, startled and hurried over — but Chaehyeok looked considerably calmer now, and simply put another cigarette between his lips.
A moment later, he picked up his phone from the floor and made a call. It must have been on speaker — the loud ringing tone carried clearly to Yieum’s ears. In the brief moment Chaehyeok was lighting the cigarette, the other line picked up.
Yes, sir.
A voice that was businesslike with a certain tightness to it. Clearly someone who was cautious around Chaehyeok. Unlike them, Chaehyeok took a long deep drag, exhaled a slow stream of smoke, and only then opened his mouth.
“Geumbyeon, here’s a situation — a couple in a common-law marriage both died on the same day at the same time, yeah? The woman has a young kid attached to her, not a single blood relative in sight, but the biological father is alive. How does inheritance work?”
In a typical case, parental rights would revert to the biological father and he’d be granted the status of legal guardian. ……If there’s any inheritance to be received, the biological father would effectively be the one exercising that right.
