Chapter 3 (Part 3)

Embarrassment filled Seo-hye’s face.

He briefly furrowed his brow, then laughed softly.

He asked, a bit more gently,

“Are you living under surveillance, even with your phone?”

Seo-hye, feeling ashamed, pressed her heated ears with her hand and tried to snatch her phone back.

However, Do-jin didn’t return it and looked at her with a rather cold expression.

The smile that had lingered on his lips was completely gone. The warm eye smile she had seen for a fleeting moment seemed like a mirage.

“If you leave the house, whatever you do will be better than the current situation. Why don’t you think about leaving?”

He asked as if he was genuinely curious. Well, it would be curious for him too, seeing a twenty-five-year-old adult unable to leave this house and being exploited.

Seo-hye hesitated for a moment before opening her lips.

“……It’s just that. Whenever I try to do something, nothing good ever comes of it.”

Do-jin lowered his head slightly to look into Seo-hye’s eyes, surprised by her straightforward answer.

“As soon as I was forced to come to this house, the man they call my father passed away. I feel like if I leave this house and go somewhere else, my mother might pass away too.”

“……”

“Anyway, it’s not far off.”

Muttering words full of meaning, Seo-hye took her phone back from his hand. She then pushed him gently with her arm.

“I really just need to endure a little longer. So, I’d appreciate it if you stopped shaking me. Both my heart and my situation.”

Having said all she wanted, Seo-hye quickly turned her body and slipped inside the gate, not giving Do-jin any time to stop her.

Using the closed door as a shield, she conveyed the rest of her message.

“Please convey how to proceed with the program through your secretary. Take care on your way back.”

As she climbed the stairs again, it felt like a heavy weight was being placed on her feet with each step, making it hard to move quickly.

She kept wanting to turn back and check on him.

The truth was, she wasn’t immune to wanting him.

However, as she had told Do-jin, she had significant trauma related to her father’s death.

In the first place, her biological father, Hwa-jun, did not welcome her existence.

It was not Hwa-jun who found her first, but Hwa-woong.

He came one day, claiming to be her grandfather, and suddenly told her to paint, forcibly bringing her to Cheongun-dong that day.

Due to her presence, Hwa-jun and Hwa-woong quarreled day and night. Five days after she arrived, Hwa-jun died in an accident.

After that, everyone in the house treated Seo-hye as if she were a harbinger of bad luck.

In such circumstances, Hwa-woong, upon learning of her mother’s chronic illness, offered to pay for her hospital bills. He said that if she left his side and went to her mother, her mother would also die.

In other words, the moment she left Hwa-woong, Hyo-young’s treatment would stop, and if anything happened to her life, it would all be Seo-hye’s fault.

Exploiting this psychological state of Seo-hye, Hwa-woong thoroughly brainwashed her.

He told her to give up everything for the only family she had left, to stay by his side and paint, thinking only of her mother’s treatment. That was the only thing she could do.

***

Upon entering the house, she saw Hwa-woong and Chae-seon having a serious conversation on the sofa.

Seeing Seo-hye enter, the two of them silently stared at her sharply and told her to come and sit down.

Seo-hye went and sat across from them.

As soon as she sat down, Chae-seon, who had stood up, slapped Seo-hye hard across the face.

“You sly fox. You’re no different from your mother.”

Perhaps because it was a direct hit, the ear on the side she was slapped became numb.

She slowly turned her head to face forward, holding her ear.

Before Chae-seon even came into her blurred vision.

Slap-!

Once again, a hand flew at her head.

She had been slapped on the cheek more than once, but today it felt particularly painful.

A buzzing near her brow kept resonating, and the dizziness was severe.

“That’s enough.”

Hwa-woong finally stopped Chae-seon, albeit quite late.

Chae-seon, glaring at Seo-hye who could barely open her eyes, plopped down into her seat.

Seo-hye blinked several times, struggling to bring her scattered focus back together.

Then she saw three rings with thickly set jewels fall onto Chae-seon’s thigh, who was sitting across from her.

Looking more closely, she noticed that Chae-seon was removing all the rings from her fingers.

It seemed that while she was gone, Chae-seon had put on additional rings, prepared to leave marks on her face.

Chae-seon, a teacher who taught social studies, was excessively proud of herself. She believed that her thoughts and actions were unconditionally right and considered Seo-hye, the illegitimate child, to be filthy.

Nevertheless, she regarded herself as someone who maintained decorum with Seo-hye and claimed to be a cultured person who reprimanded her as gently as possible.

In reality, from Seo-hye’s perspective, it was laughable. Considering her actions, Chae-seon was nothing short of the most vicious.

Chae-seon would give Seo-hye only undercooked fish or meat, and cook with ingredients that seemed spoiled and inedible.

On cold days, it was common for her to deliberately send Seo-hye on errands and then not open the door for her.

And whenever Seo-hye went to work at the academy, Chae-seon would always leave the window wide open, regardless of rain or snow, so that the room would be cold with no warmth left.

Therefore, for a while, during the period when she was painting her mother’s landscape paintings, she used to lock her room with a padlock.

If Chae-seon were to argue about locking the door, she couldn’t say anything, as it would be an admission of her own actions.

That’s why recently she has been able to stay in her room somewhat peacefully.

Seeing Chae-seon deliberately wearing rings brought back memories of past incidents, making her feel nauseous.

“Seo-hye.”

Even after watching Chae-seon slap Seo-hye twice, Hwa-woong called Seo-hye calmly, as if nothing had happened.

This was also a common occurrence, so Seo-hye didn’t find it strange.

“Yes, grandfather.”

“Right now, because of you, this marriage is at risk.”

“…I told Won Do-jin that I have no intention of marrying him. And if I were to get married, my sister should go first, not me. I’m not that shameless.”

“Tsk, with that mouth of yours.”

Chae-seon sneered.

“Won Do-jin said he understood. However, he wants me to do the program. So I said okay.”

Hwa-woong’s expression was not pleasant.

“You can assign Mr. Kim. And isn’t this beneficial for you and my sister as well? If neither you nor I do it, it seems the program will be canceled.”

Seo-hye pointed to Hwa-woong’s casted arm with her chin.

“Besides, you can’t go, can you?”

“Then make it look as little like yours as possible.”

Seo-hye immediately understood what he meant.

All the works presented to the world as Hwa-woong’s were actually Seo-hye’s paintings, so he was telling her to hide her habits, techniques, and skills as much as she did at the academy.

“Don’t worry.”

At Hwa-woong’s suggestion to go upstairs, Seo-hye simply nodded and got up from her seat, walking around the sofa.

As she went upstairs, she faintly heard Chae-seon protesting to Hwa-woong.

“Father, it feels really unsettling. How about just refusing?”

“Isn’t Chairman Won’s grandson already not fond of us?”

“Sigh. I never imagined the problem would arise from the man’s side. It’s very troubling. Hae-mi is crying and won’t even come out of her room.”

“Still, since Chairman Won and I agreed to involve only the eldest granddaughter, don’t worry too much. Above all, I won’t let Seo-hye go anywhere.”

Once she fully ascended to the second floor, she could no longer hear their conversation.

She headed to her room and lay down her weary body.

***

The next day, having gone completely hungry the day before, Seo-hye waited until after nine o’clock to go down to the first floor.

Hwa-woong, who was reading a newspaper on the living room sofa, folded the newspaper in half and stood up as if he had been waiting for Seo-hye to arrive.

“Come to the study.”

Cursing inwardly, Seo-hye followed him.

“They say the Elin Department Store will open its Seocho Central branch in December. So, early next year, they’ve contacted us about holding an exhibition of artists who have illuminated Korea at the cultural bridge within the department store.”

After a period of silence, she thought it was inevitable that this would come, and her hands and shoulders began to ache already.

“I’ve decided to participate as well, so just paint three pieces. Make one a landscape painting.”

“…Yes.”

“I’ll open the warehouse door again, so don’t think about coming out of there except on the days you teach the kids at the hotel. Leave your phone behind when you go in.”

Seo-hye always had to paint in the warehouse located on one side of the yard, which didn’t even have heating.

Due to the frequent visits of guests to the house, it was imperative that the fact she was creating paintings on behalf of someone else remained a secret, which is why Hwa-woong essentially forced Seo-hye into confinement.