Chapter 21

She walked with heavy steps. It felt like all the staff were whispering and staring at her. She saw herself, timidly knocking on Ryu-il’s door, reflected like an afterimage.

It had been a miserable, sad moment, but looking back, she realized she’d forced herself to suppress the excitement of seeing his face and touching him.

She walked the path in reverse, crossed the backyard, and picked up her worn textbook and bag from the bench. In the end, the only place she could go was the small room she’d always shared with her mother.

“Hee-won!”

When she entered, her mother grabbed her hands and smiled brightly.

“Our debt is paid! President Ryu Ga-yeon paid it off!”

Hee-won calmly looked up at her mother. She took the documents Ga-yeon had given her from her bag and handed them over. Her mother read and reread the papers confirming their debt was cleared, tears streaming down her face like a slave freed from bondage.

“Thank you, Hee-won…”

Her mother collapsed at her feet, sobbing.

“Thank you so much…”

She wept at Hee-won’s feet.

“I’m so sorry for being this kind of mother…”

Hee-won looked down at her mother. So many words spun in her mind, she didn’t know where to start. The mother who had never given up on her since she was a cell, who’d raised her through hardship, who’d boasted about her good grades, and… who’d pushed her toward Ryu-il’s room.

“Mom, you know…”

She finally brought up the subject they’d both avoided. Maybe she should have asked long ago.

“Did you know President Ryu Ga-yeon made Jung Kyung-won do all this?”

“I knew someone important wanted to break Young Master Ryu-il’s engagement through Kyung-won. But I only found out today it was President Ryu Ga-yeon.”

Her mother answered like it was no big deal.

“Well, Young Master Ryu-il has plenty of enemies, so it’s not surprising.”

“But because of me, Senior Executive Director Ryu-il…”

“Oh, come on, he has more money than we could ever dream of, so what’s the worry?”

She spoke as if a mouse was worrying about a cat.

“And Mr. Choi said the home shopping business really had nothing to do with Young Master Ryu-il. President Ryu Ga-yeon’s daughter, Oh Ji-won, was running it very well. Inside, they were actually worried he’d be parachuted in.”

If Mr. Choi said so, he probably knew more about Wigang’s affairs than they did. As Hee-won gazed at the ceiling and sighed, her mother wiped her tears and spoke.

“I told Kyung-won we’d need a place to live, so the president gave us an extra 200 million won. We should be grateful. You’ve worked so hard. Now let’s forget everything that happened here and go to the real estate office tomorrow morning.”

Her mother smiled gently, and Hee-won looked at her face. She remembered Ga-yeon’s calm, cold words.

“Oh, and you asked for 200 million won to get a house, right? That’s already been deposited to Jo Mi-sook. Keep that in mind. Families like yours always try to squeeze their daughters for more.”

Unlike Ga-yeon’s worries, her mother hadn’t hidden the money.

Honestly, her mother, who’d led her to Ryu-il’s room, was unfamiliar to her—she’d thought her mother might hide the money and tell her to live separately, or set up a newlywed home with Mr. Choi and send her to a gosiwon.

T/N: A gosiwon is a type of very small, affordable single-room accommodation in South Korea.

“Quit tutoring. Save a little for living expenses, and just study for the national exam or whatever it is. Not much time left.”

But her mother hadn’t done that. The world spun dizzyingly.

“…Wait, let me just get some water…”

She walked to the small fridge and opened it. Her eyes landed on something deep inside.

“Mom.”

Inside the fridge was a lunchbox—the one the kind hotelier had packed for her train ride when she went to see Ryu-il in the provinces.

It was filled with beautiful, fancy food she’d admired. She hadn’t eaten it, but brought it up to give to her mother.

“This lunchbox… you haven’t eaten it yet?”

It had been several days. It must have spoiled. Her mother shrugged as she wiped her tears.

“What lunchbox?”

“The one I brought on the train. I thought of you, so I brought it.”

“Oh.”

Her mother blinked, puzzled.

“Right… there was something like that. Sorry, Hee-won. These days, when I have time, I eat with Mr. Choi…”

“Oh, it’s fine.”

Hee-won shook her head.

“It’s just a lunchbox.”

“Still. Was there anything tasty in it?”

Even though she’d said she’d brought it specially, her mother didn’t even know what was inside. At that moment, Hee-won realized something.

She’d been bound to her mother by debt since birth. Through hard days, they’d been a close mother and daughter.

Because they shared the same debt and goal, she thought they were almost one body. Her mother was her only family, her other half, unlike her father or Kyung-won. So when her mother pushed her toward Ryu-il, it was shocking, but she couldn’t turn away.

Looking at the untouched lunchbox, she realized at last she and her mother were not one.

No one could stay in their childhood forever. Now, her mother valued a meal with Mr. Choi more than the lunchbox she’d brought, and that wasn’t her mother’s fault.

Her mother wasn’t very bad or very good. She was just ordinary. The boundary between good and evil was blurry.

It was the same for everyone. Ryu-il had suffered because of her, but was that really a bad thing for everyone? For the home shopping staff, it might have been a relief.

Maybe that’s what it meant—good and evil don’t matter, only results.

“Hee-won.”

Her mother quickly forgot about the lunchbox and patted her back.

“Forget it. Young people sleeping together a few times isn’t a big deal. Young Master Ryu-il won’t think much of it.”

Was Ryu-il heading to the airport now?

As good and bad events mixed and the line between good and evil blurred… she still felt sorry to Ryu-il. She felt she’d done wrong. Maybe he’d scoff at her feelings.

“Mom.”

She cried again.

“That person…”

Her true feelings finally spilled out.

“…must hate me, right? Must think I’m the bad girl who trapped him?”

Even if the boundary was blurry, she wanted to be a good person to Ryu-il.

She didn’t want to be a miserable woman to him, but now she was someone who’d approached him for money and caused him harm.

“Hee-won.”

Her mother hugged her from behind, comforting her.

“Ryu-il has far greater enemies than you. You know that. They don’t even treat us like people.”

“…”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Only the chairman is upset—Mr. Choi said Young Master Ryu-il didn’t seem that interested in home shopping anyway. He’ll forget soon.”

It was no comfort.

Once, when her mother said it was okay, she’d believe it.

She buried her face in her hands and cried. She was sorry, so sorry, but there was nothing she could do. They lived in different worlds.

“…I couldn’t even apologize properly…”

“Pull yourself together, Hee-won. Even listening to your apology would be a waste of Senior Executive Director Ryu-il’s time.”

She couldn’t say anything, because her mother was right. Many people wanted to meet Ryu-il, and she was the least valuable.

Even an apology face-to-face would be a nuisance, so she bowed her head deeper. She closed her eyes.

The next day, they left Ryu Gil-jae. Her mother seemed happier than ever, but Hee-won was dazed from lack of sleep.

Not knowing if it would ever reach him, she went into Ryu-il’s empty room at dawn and left a short note. She explained briefly how things had happened and sincerely apologized.

She knew it was meaningless, but she felt she couldn’t bear it if she didn’t do even that.

After that, she and her mother rented a small officetel. Mr. Choi visited often, so Hee-won spent most of her time at school.

Ryu-il didn’t return to Korea until after she graduated, and she didn’t hear any news of him after that. She couldn’t contact him, but he could have someone contact her if he wanted. There was no contact.

“For people like them, this is nothing. Sleeping with someone like you, with no strings attached, is probably worth less than a meal.”

Kyung-won had said that at first. Thinking about it, it seemed true. She really was someone with no strings attached, and she wasn’t some sophisticated woman who offered unforgettable nights. In the end, for Ryu-il, those nights were probably truly worthless.

It was just that—a girl he’d known since childhood asking to sleep with him a few times… Of course, it cost him the home shopping business, but she couldn’t compensate him for that, and Ryu-il surely knew it.

In the end, she just had to live her own life.

A life that didn’t look up at Ryu-il or Wigang, a life that was hers alone.

“Who recognizes fair defeat on the battlefield? The one who loses is at fault.”

A quiet life, completely unrelated to the vast kingdom of the conglomerate the Chairman himself called a ‘battlefield.’

She finally returned to the path she’d longed for, one where she wouldn’t get hurt, and now she looked ahead, not up.

When she graduated and got her license to work as a pharmacist, she browsed job sites and found a pharmacy in the countryside. It wasn’t busy because it wasn’t attached to a hospital, so the pay wasn’t high for the countryside.

But what caught her heart was ‘housing provided.’ The elderly pharmacist who lived alone was going abroad, so she could use the house as it was.

At Ryu Gil-jae, she’d always lived in a cramped room with her mother. Even the new officetel didn’t feel like her own home. In fact, seeing her mother with Mr. Choi made her feel a bit guilty every time she went home.

When Kyung-won first proposed all this, she thought if only she could pay off her debt, she could leave Ryu Gil-jae with her mother, live together, go out to eat on weekends… She’d never doubted that was how things would be, but it all struck her from behind.

She didn’t hate her mother. She just felt truly alone now.

She applied for the job without hesitation.

Leaving Seoul sounded good. She wanted to end the miserable past and live with a little more comfort. She’d never really known what she wanted or liked, so there, she hoped she could quietly discover her true self.

So, as she wished, she became distant from Ryu-il.

She no longer had to look up at him. Her once vertical days finally became horizontal. Everyone she met was equal; she was kind to those she wanted to be kind to, and kept her distance from those she didn’t.

But there was one thing she hadn’t considered.

She couldn’t forget.

Ryu-il, that man, never left her mind.

Even after fleeing to her imagined peaceful heaven, the sensation of his touch lingered day and night. Everything from the name Wigang she’d encounter in Korea to the bitter scent of nameless grass reminded her of Ryu-il.

She’d always imagined leaving Ryu Gil-jae, but she didn’t know how to escape the traces she herself had made. She was lost in those memories, but with nothing she could do, she just called it peace.

So when the year changed and Ryu-il came to a nearby Wigang Resort construction site…

“It’s been a while.”

That peace shattered, almost laughably.

“But you don’t seem interested in selling medicine.”