Affair. It was a repulsive word just to hear.
What’s more, that relationship being between a stepmother and stepson—I found myself even more at a loss for words. Though I’d already penetrated the tabloids about Baek Sahyun’s family through painstaking information gathering, I couldn’t answer for a long while. Baek Sahyun’s gaze was burdensome, and whether I answered that I knew or didn’t know, it seemed I’d end up in an awkward situation either way.
Baek Sahyun asked slowly.
“Do you think it’s true, or not?”
It was a tone that seemed to be subtly testing me.
“Jang Woohyun, do you think… I really had an affair with my stepmother?”
“…I wonder.”
“You can speak comfortably. I’m asking because I’m curious how it looks to a third party.”
Honestly, since this was a melodrama novel anyway, I wondered if one added affair would make much difference. If we’re talking about degrees of shock, wouldn’t the existing story of a guy obsessing over another guy and even getting him pregnant be more shocking?
I pushed away Baek Sahyun’s upper body, which had tilted completely toward me before I knew it.
“Move back before you talk.”
It was because his face was placed at too close a distance, making me needlessly tense.
Baek Sahyun noticeably urged me on.
“Spit it out as is. The thoughts floating up in your mind right now, all of them.”
“Why?”
So I became doubtful. Baek Sahyun’s appearance of continuously demanding my opinion was raising considerable suspicion.
For instance, I worried what if he was urging me like that to grab an opportunity to assault and humiliate me thoroughly. Baek Sahyun said expressionlessly.
“I’m worried you’ll say something different later.”
“……”
“If there’s anything you’re misunderstanding, shouldn’t you spill everything when you can grab me and speak frankly? That way I can give explanations all at once too.”
It was also an answer I hadn’t expected.
“…Explanations?”
When I asked back carefully, Baek Sahyun smiled slightly.
“Yeah. Explanations.”
As if to start the car’s engine again, he began moving his body. His exceptionally white and straight hands settled on the steering wheel.
Like that, Baek Sahyun began pulling out a long story while driving with an appearance that seemed like it would appear in a photo spread. Since we were driving in a car, it was certainly a drive, but listening to someone else’s tragic story while driving was also a first for me, making my head feel heavy.
Though I knew well that Baek Sahyun was a bastard whose head had gone around the bend somewhere, I’d never been curious about how he came to have such a psychotic personality. There were plenty of people with stories even besides Baek Sahyun. I was one myself.
But the moment he recited in a low, calm voice, I couldn’t help but be absorbed as if being sucked in. He was… a protagonist with a childhood far more pitiful and regrettable than I’d expected.
❖ ❖ ❖
In Baek Sahyun’s memories, the existence called father was nothing more or less than trash who always held a liquor bottle and rampaged. When getting beaten by him, who had a much larger build than himself, Baek Sahyun would unconsciously think.
Someday, when the time comes that I grow taller than you, I’ll make you feel exactly the same feeling I’m feeling now. Young Baek Sahyun thought like that every time he gathered up the green liquor bottles rolling around on the house floor to throw away.
“I wish I’d grow taller quickly.”
But perhaps because he only filled his meals with convenience store foods like cup ramen and rice ball triangles every time, his scrawny body had no intention of growing.
Rarely returning home not drunk, Baek Sahyun’s father clicked his tongue with a tsk at the sight of his gaunt child.
“As a son… What kind of state is that? And why are you wearing such stretched-out clothes?”
It couldn’t be helped since all the clothes he had were like this. But Baek Sahyun didn’t talk back to his father and just continued solving his school homework.
If he didn’t finish his homework, the school teachers would spit out complaints saying, “Kids without mothers are all the same.” They didn’t know at all that the young child listening to those words was actually the biological grandchild of the “Haseon Group.”
It was because Baek Sahyun’s father, Baek Seongun, who dressed his own suit splendidly, paid no attention whatsoever to his son.
Baek Sahyun was the son born and brought by a woman without background that Baek Seongun had briefly fooled around with in his youth. From the time she threw the child in front of Haseon Group’s chairman and demanded hush money, her whereabouts became obscure.
Perhaps she paid the price for trying to sell her own son—drunk Baek Seongun would giggle saying that.
“Your mother was that kind of woman. She didn’t have even a speck of affection for me or you.”
“……”
“The reason she gave birth to you might have been a scheme to make it big. If she were a woman with maternal love, she wouldn’t have been able to carry a newborn baby who couldn’t even open its eyes all the way to the company lobby to threaten them. I was engaged to another woman at the time, and your mother was a woman who had an affair with me in that state. I was stupid to think it was love.”
Even when hearing stories about his mother, Baek Sahyun showed no change in expression. Each day living his own life wasn’t entirely comfortable either, so he couldn’t be heartbroken for someone he didn’t even remember.
Moreover, on one hand, he even felt this way.
‘Who would love an alcoholic trash bastard like you? She wisely escaped well.’
Just by not aborting the child and letting him be born into the world, his mother had shown enough love for him—Baek Sahyun rather thought positively. On top of that, he even thought it was truly fortunate that she hadn’t been caught by the ankle by a human scum like his father.
This was because Baek Seongun was, setting everything else aside, a loser who lost succession rights pushed out by his younger sister, and an incompetent human who couldn’t secure even one position in Haseon, famous as a family business.
He even had bad habits with his hands.
The experience of being strangled was naturally also caused by Baek Seongun. One day he barged into Baek Sahyun’s room with a pained face, then grabbed his fragile neck and began to squeeze it strongly.
Even when Baek Sahyun, who burst out coughing, grabbed his wrist with a reddened face, he absolutely wouldn’t release his strength.
Baek Sahyun couldn’t understand Baek Seongun, who straddled him strangling his neck while dropping tears from his eyes.
“Why of all things, why of all things did you have to resemble me! If you’d resembled your mother I could at least miss her, but why of all things do you resemble me….”
He thought it was pretentious bullshit. Miss her? If he really missed her, he wouldn’t have been able to treat himself, the child she bore, like this.
An idiot drunk on his own tragedy, unable to distinguish front from back. Baek Sahyun was seized by the impulse to wash away his blood flowing in his body.
The person who appeared before such a Baek Sahyun was precisely Baek Seonghee. Haseon Group’s young chairman and Baek Seongun’s younger sister. So, she was a person who was Baek Sahyun’s aunt.
She was a woman with a face surprisingly similar to Baek Seongun, but one thing was different. The leisure peculiar to a victor worn beneath white skin and cool eyes. The properly smiling corners of her mouth and waist stretched straight in a line were different from Baek Seongun, who only lived blowing disease horns.
“Are you Sahyun?”
A woman dressed in a black suit approached with large strides in front of Baek Sahyun, who was leaving school carrying a worn-out bag as usual, and asked.
Baek Sahyun stopped and looked up at her.
“You’re the spitting image of your father.”
She, who evaluated gently, knelt down on one knee in front of Baek Sahyun. The moment their gazes met horizontally, her lips moved once more.
“That’s fortunate. If you’d resembled your mother’s side, I wouldn’t have even thought to come get you.”
For Baek Sahyun, who was always beaten for not resembling his mother, Baek Seonghee’s assessment that it was fortunate he didn’t resemble his mother was quite curious.
Baek Seonghee asked toward Baek Sahyun, who looked at her with a face that was only calm, unlike a child. She extended her hand as if requesting a handshake.
“Choose.”
“……”
“Whether to follow me as is and become Haseon’s successor, or return to where you lived and remain an illegitimate child.”
“……”
“Of course, I didn’t come to get you because I wanted to either. The family demanded a child, so I chose you. I’ll explain the details when you become my son.”
It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that came to young Baek Sahyun. The face of the person who gave the opportunity seemed endlessly relaxed, as if knowing she absolutely wouldn’t be refused.
Baek Sahyun grasped Baek Seonghee’s hand without leaving a gap. The boy with a face that, looking closely, resembled his aunt far more than his father, answered calmly.
“…I wanted to leave anyway.”
“Really?”
“That human’s alcohol smell keeps getting stronger. If I endure more, I’ll go crazy first.”
Baek Seonghee nodded as if agreeing.
“Then I should take you right away. If you go crazy, it won’t be good for me either. I won’t be able to be a good mother, but I promise you this one thing.”
She firmly grasped the child’s undergrown hand. It was a cold hand, but it was better than the hand of someone who swung liquor bottles while pouring out abuse.
“I’ll be a better parent than that person who’s your father.”
“……”
“Better than that stupid beta bastard.”
Like that, Baek Sahyun suddenly became Haseon Group’s successor out of nowhere, Baek Seonghee’s son, and met the opportunity to reverse his life. Haseon Group made a shocking official announcement as soon as Baek Sahyun entered Baek Seonghee’s family register. They brought out before the world the only son that Baek Seonghee bore from someone she truly loved during her study abroad days and had been hiding until now.
But just as there’s no such thing as an eternal secret, rumors that Baek Sahyun wasn’t actually Baek Seonghee’s son also couldn’t help but pour out with momentum.
