CHAPTER 75

Within the few belongings she had, there were some over-the-counter medications and instant cup noodles for a quick meal. She knew that she should prepare something to eat and take medicine if she wanted to quickly recover, but she didn’t feel like lifting a finger. She was tired, and she thought that sleeping for a bit and waking up would make him feel better. So, she closed her eyes again.

She spent the next few days in this indifferent state. She dozed in and out of sleep, counting the patterns on the wallpaper and staring dazedly at the patterns of sunlight that leaked through the blinds. She gave in to a lethargy that felt worse than a cold.

The passing of time felt like a dream. To say the least, it was akin to a dreadful nightmare.

The vile words and curses at her and the eerie grin of Chairman Kwon, akin to a devil, kept repeating in her mind. The hardest thing to bear was the vision of Taegyeom still standing in that dark hotel room.

I shouldn’t be.

Yet Leeseo was still stuck in that moment of separation as if dwelling on a tragic event.

“…!”

Leeseo’s eyes, which were looking down the alley, widened suddenly. She spotted a black sedan parked at the edge of the alley, its heavily tinted windows glinting in the sun. She tried to read the license plate, but it was too far away to make out the numbers.

She had narrowed her eyes and leaned forward to get a better look, then suddenly let out a bitter laugh. The irony was not lost on her—a person frantically searching for traces of someone who had cruelly hurt her and turned away coldly. She felt a sense of self-contempt for hoping that the owner of that car would be Taegyeom.

She pulled the blinds halfway down and turned away from the window. As she walked over to the switch to turn on the light, her stomach rumbled and her head felt dizzy. It was a natural consequence as she had barely sipped water for days and hadn’t eaten anything.

Stop making guessing and pull yourself together.

Regaining composure, she took a step forward. When she picked up her phone she had haphazardly thrown on the desk, the screen didn’t light up; the battery seemed to have run out.

After connecting the charger and pressing the power button, several messages came flooding in. Most of them were from friends asking about her move, while the rest consisted of school-related announcements and a few were spam texts.

Under the newly received messages, the three symbols for the name ‘Kwon Taegyeom’ occupied her sight like a piercing gaze. She stared at his name for a moment before deleting the text. She deleted his call history and contacts as well.

She felt like her heart was going to break or her world was going to come crashing down around her, but nothing actually happened. Now, there was no evidence left that he had ever existed in Leeseo’s world.

The mark Kwon Taegyeom left on her heart would wear and tear, and one day it would stop hurting and become dull.

Iseo put down his phone and looked up. Instant noodles caught his eye, but he thought he should eat proper food. Leaving the phone, which still had less than ten percent battery, she grabbed her wallet and headed outside.

Walking unsteadily, she entered a nearby beef soup restaurant she found at the end of the alley. The restaurant, beyond lunch hours, was quiet. She slowly finished a bowl of beef soup alone and then ordered an iced Americano from the coffee shop next door. Holding the takeaway cup, Leeseo impulsively changed direction away from home.

After transferring buses twice, she arrived at her destination: her mother’s memorial hall. It wasn’t far from the mansion, but it took over an hour from Songdo.

It was her first visit since his mother’s memorial last year. There was no particular reason. There’s no particular reason to seek out your mom when you’re feeling overwhelmed and lost but, the only thing that was different now was that there was no mother to quietly embrace and pat her back.

Standing in front of her mother’s memorial, she stared blankly at the altar for a moment. Next to her mother’s memorial, there was a large bouquet of flowers. The petals, moistened with water, looked fresh.

Who…?

As she stared at the fresh bouquet, which seemed to have just been placed there, Leeseo involuntarily glanced around. However, on a weekday afternoon at the memorial hall, besides her, there was no one else.

No one immediately came to mind to who would come to visit her mother’s memorial except for her father. But it was physically impossible for Gyucheol to leave flowers here.

Did someone mistakenly leave them?

Leeseo, who had been staring at the memorial table, unknowingly had tears welling up in her eyes. Thanks to the large and vibrant bouquet that filled the table, her mother’s memorial didn’t seem lonely.

After nearly a year, she had come empty-handed.

With a sigh mixed with self-pity, she reached out and gently touched the smooth surface of the glass door.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I’ll come more often.”

For a while, she had been quietly feeling her mother’s traces then eventually turned around. The sound of her footsteps hitting the marble floor resonated in the quiet corridor.

Going down the stairs, she took a deep breath. After inhaling the lukewarm air that signaled the end of summer deeply into her lungs, she resumed walking.

Sitting on a chair at the bus stop, Leeseo stared blankly at the electronic sign displaying the bus arrival times. Unaware that there were eyes watching her from afar.

Seated in the driver’s seat of the car, Taegyeom couldn’t take his eyes off Leeseo’s back visible through the car window. He took in every detail of her hair, the way it fluttered in the wind, the small shoulder it brushed against, the side of her face he saw every time she looked in the direction the bus was coming, her thinning cheeks. He engraved it all into his mind.

It was a cruel torture not to be able to run and hug her and touch her when she was right in front of him. The dark window in his mind that had not been lit for days seemed to have swallowed Hyun Leeseo. In his mind, he endlessly imagined breaking the window, breaking in, and entering.

During the day, he was busy dealing with prosecutors and the media to bring down Kwon Kyungrok and at night, whenever he had a chance, he would drive his car to a narrow alleyway where he was not invited and spend the night staring at the window like a stalker. It had become his routine.

He was relieved to see Leeseo out of the house after a few days, but her noticeably gaunt face infuriated him, he looked like he was going to lose his mind. Like a joke Yoo Jinwoo used to make, there truly seemed to be no one crazier than him.

Taegyeom kept his calm gaze fixed on Leeseo and then made a movement with his hand. Pressing a few buttons on the smartwatch he held, a recorded voice started playing.

It was hidden behind the enshrinement box until shortly before Leeseo arrived at the memorial hall. It seemed like Gyucheol had left this in a hurry, without the luxury of carefully concealing it, vividly conveying Gyucheol’s sense of urgency.

Although the recording had some noise due to the poor recording environment, the conversation was clearly recorded. It contained Hwang Incheol’s voice conveying Chairman Kwon’s proposal and Gyucheol’s questioning voice, ending with reluctant acceptance. It was a strong piece of evidence that would support Gyucheol’s claims.

As the rattling sound of the recording finished, Leeseo seemed to be getting up from the bus stop chair. Taegyeom calmly started the car after transferring a copy of the voice file stored on the smartwatch to his account

Leeseo boarded the bus that had stopped at the station. The bus pulled away with a loud bang and a puff of smoke. Silently, a black sedan followed behind.

***

Taegyeom followed her until they reached the neighborhood where Leeseo had a one-room apartment. Although there might be a chance for her to turn around, she persistently walked forward, focusing only on what was ahead. When he saw her entering a fruit shop on the way home and coming out with a bag full of melons, Taegyeom couldn’t help but smile.

She did have a particular fondness for fruits. When she felt tired and listless, she used to cut fruits neatly and feed them to him, putting them gently in his mouth. It was cute.

The dry smile that had been hanging at the corners of Taegyeom’s mouth gradually withered away as the memory of their bedtime flirtation flashed through his mind.

The past few days when Leeseo was holed up in her house, for her, it had been the time she needed to sort out her feelings for Kwon Taegyeom. And for him, it was a time to confirm that he couldn’t live a single moment without her.

He knew Leeseo would do well on her own. She didn’t fit with the dark and shady world he lived in.

She has so many people by her side who love and care about her, and even though she looks vulnerable due to her delicate appearance, she’s actually stronger and more determined than anyone else.

Today, she would buy and eat fruits, tomorrow she would meet her friends, the day after she would go to school, and the next day she would be smiling, brightening up the world.

“It seems like you’ve already sorted everything out, Leeseo.”

A dry chuckle escaped him. Unlike the faint smile clinging to his lips, his cold eyes persistently followed Leeseo’s back.

Inherently selfish, he couldn’t wish for her happiness after leaving him. Even though it was repulsive to wish for her to be unhappy by his side, he had no choice. It was better to let go of her than to forcibly keep her by his side.

‘To get involved with a complicated and tangled man like you, I don’t have the energy for it.’

‘I used to think the background surrounding you was glamorous and luxurious. But now, it’s scary and overwhelming. You’re Chairman Kwon Kyungrok’s son, and as long as that undeniable fact remains, I can’t handle you.”

The expression, the breath, every word spoken at that moment haunted Taegyeom endlessly. And he came to a conclusion: Just make it unbearable for her.

With a bag full of yellow melons in her hands, Leeseo disappeared into the apartment building. Taegyeom tilted his head, fixating on the second window from the left on the fifth floor. Shortly after, the light sparkled through that window, and the black sedan slowly navigated its way out of the narrow alley.

Taegyeom’s car blended into the traffic of cars on the way home, heading towards the hospital owned by GK Group in Yeongeon-dong. It was where Kwon Kyungrok was hospitalized after suffering a recurrent stroke.