CHAPTER 78

Only after Jinwoo’s back was completely out of sight as he stepped briskly toward the parking lot did Leeseo open the envelope.

Inside was a handwritten letter that looked like it had been folded several times, with smudges of tears. After a moment of hesitation, she opened the folded letter.

As soon as she saw the handwriting on the inside, she couldn’t help but burst into tears. It was a letter from Gyucheol.

[Leeseo, this wretched excuse for a father cannot bear to face you, so he writes a cowardly letter.]

As soon as she saw the familiar handwriting, memories came flooding back. Once, Gyucheol was a doting husband who would write a short letter for no particular reason and leave it by his wife’s side before heading off to work.

Some days it was a line from a poem, other days it was an unfamiliar lyric from a popular song about love. Her mom would read his romantic letters over and over again, and then magnetize them to the old, tiny refrigerator.

Even when young Leeseo teased her mother and squirmed, her mom would just laugh it off. The peaceful memories from the time when her mom was alive seemed so distant that Leeseo thought she had completely forgotten them, but when she saw the stiff handwriting in the letter, they came flooding back to life.

Tears welled up, making her vision blurry like being submerged in water. With a pained expression, she continued to read the letter.

[I know that no words will ever be an excuse for my poor choices. From the day I sold my soul to the devil until now, I have continued to deceive myself.

How could someone like me dare to oppose Chairman Kwon’s authority and refuse his proposal? There was no way a helpless, penniless commoner like me could escape his trap if he had already made up his mind to use me.

So, I deluded myself, trying to escape guilt by convincing myself that it wasn’t a silly mistake driven by my greed for money but rather, it was completely someone else’s will and coercion. I patted myself on the back and told myself that anyone could have made the same choice I did.

But it was nothing more than a despicable self-justification. If I had thought about you, who would be left behind to face the condemnation as the daughter of a criminal, I would never have indulged in such a vile rationalization. When you came to the prison, applying for a visit to see me , I couldn’t bring myself to see you. I was so ashamed of my cowardice that I wanted to turn back time. 

By the time I realized that, it was already too late, and I had caused you irreparable harm, but I’m going to try to untangle the tightly wound threads now.

Asking for forgiveness from you is shameless, so I would rather have you resent and blame me. I hope you live your life without suffering from a foolish and pathetic father like me, who has no relevance to you.

I requested strict confidentiality, but given the media attention, I fear arrows may be directed at you. I hope you won’t come looking for me again. I’m sorry.]

Leeseo stood helplessly on the back alley of the library and sobbed, hating Gyucheol for being cowardly to the end, for making her cry.

Such words should have been said to her, to her face.

She hated herself for leaving him alone until that crossroads moment when he made the wrong choice. But she didn’t know if it would have been different if she had been by his side.

As Gycheol said in the letter, as long as Chairman Kwon was determined to use him, he would have made it happen, but it was a meaningless assumption at this point.

Leeseo wiped her tear-stained cheeks with the back of her hand. Then, she folded the letter the way Gyucheol had folded it and placed it discreetly between the pages of a small book, tucked away in the farthest corner of the bookshelf. She buried the letter deep in her chest and stopped looking at it.

“Ah. It’s getting chilly as it gets dark. It seems like it’s really autumn now.”

Jieun, tucking the front of her thin cardigan, lightly shook her body while clasping Leeseo’s arm. Leeseo nodded as she snuggled closer to Jieun.

“Yeah.”

After last night’s refreshing rain announcing the arrival of autumn, it felt like the season had crossed its boundary. In a few days, it will be October. The daytime heat still lingers, but the mornings and evenings are cool enough that it’s easy to catch a cold if you don’t bundle up.

“I’ll have to go home for the weekend and get some fall clothes. What are you doing this weekend?”

“Weekend? I don’t really have any plans. Probably just going to the library or something.”

“Why go to the library on the weekend? Are you trying to make it to the top of the class? Come on, don’t you want to go on a blind date?”

“Blind date? …… Mmm.”

Leeseo’s awkward smile prompted Jieun to sigh deeply and click her tongue.

“Oh, I get it. I know you don’t usually do blind dates or anything, but there’s this kid across the hall from me who makes me sick every time I see him. He came back to school last year after the army, and he’s had a crush on you ever since. Says he saw you at the library and felt destiny or something.”

“Destiny from just seeing my face?”

“Who knows? Maybe destiny hits you when you see your meant to be’s face. Seriously, there are a lot of guys seriously chasing after you. Not that he’s a weird guy though. I’m not crazy enough to set you up with just anyone.”

Jieun pouted, pushing her lips into a round shape, a determined expression on her face.

“I mean, he meets my standards, which are pretty damn good, which is why I think you should meet him.”

Jieun’s high standards for men were widely known among their friends. She herself had gone without a single romantic relationship, claiming there wasn’t a man who caught her eye until she started dating a fellow graduate of the same department while Leeseo took a leave of absence, apparently succumbing to the boredom.

While not the type to share her love stories in detail, the frequent phone calls and constant texting, along with her occasional chuckles, gave away the fact that Jieun was quite smitten. From what Leeseo heard, Jieun’s boyfriend is a sweet guy.

“Still, before graduating, you should try dating like everyone else does at least once. Otherwise, you’ll end up sleeping late and feeling left out. Those guys who say they like you are lining up like a parade, but you always reject them. Is it because we’ve been in college longer than others? If things had been normal, we would have graduated by now too.”

It was the first time Jieun had brought up the subject of blind dates to Leeseo, who had been with her for all six years of her college days, except for the period when Leeseo took a leave of absence.

“I act that way because I feel like it’s a waste, because I feel it’s a waste. You know I don’t usually bother with things like that, right?”

“He’s really popular around here. He has a handsome face, a good physique, and a nice body shape. He even became a cover model for the school magazine and is somewhat famous as a handsome guy from our university in online communities. Maybe you wouldn’t know since you’re not interested.”

“Oh.”

As uninterested as she sounded, Leeseo nodded soullessly, pretending to be interested out of a sense of duty.

“He’s also incredibly tall. Imagine how rare it is to have a guy over 180 centimeters at our school. He’s a whopping 185! It’s almost a top-tier specification. I actually investigated the heights of guys in our department. Don’t be shocked. Can you believe that there’s not a single guy over 180 cm? Ha…”

The conversation naturally flowed into a contemplation of men’s height. It was more like Jieun’s frustrated monologue than a conversation.

“Joo-young, he always claims his height is 183 cm, but it turned out to be 178 cm only during the military physical examination. Even if you consider a couple of centimeters as cute, isn’t lying about five centimeters downright shameless? If he’s going to do that, he might as well just say he’s 183 with insoles included.”

Entering the tonkatsu restaurant near the back gate, Jieun sat by the window and ordered cheese tonkatsu without even looking at the menu. After a moment’s thought, Leeseo ordered soba (buckwheat noodles).

“The weather is chilly, why soba? Order something warm.”

“I’m not that hungry. Just want to eat something simple.”

“You didn’t eat much for lunch either. Anyway, skinny people create a sense of dissatisfaction like this….”

Behind Jieun, who was pouring water into the stainless steel cup the staff had left behind, Leeseo looked over her shoulder at the TV screen. The TV was showing a news report.

[Amid the ongoing special investigation into embezzlement allegations against Chairman Kwon Kyungrok of the GK Group, search warrants have been issued for the chairman’s company and residence.]

“Are we still talking about that? If this continues, GK is really going down, isn’t it? It hasn’t even been that long since I changed my phone. If I had known this would happen, I would have bought somewhere else.”

Jieun, glancing back wearily following Leeseo’s gaze, shook her head as if bored. Over the past month, news about the GK Group seemed to echo from everywhere. Despite Leeseo’s efforts to shut her ears and close her eyes, and tried to avoid it as much as possible, it became futile before long.

At first, it was Shin Joo-ah’s affair and Jingyeom’s driver-swapping scandal, but then, just as the public’s interest was beginning to wane, Chairman Kwon’s personal misconduct surfaced. Naturally, GK’s stock plummeted, and the corporate image built over several years plummeted in an instant.

[However, as Chairman Kwon remains unconscious after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, prosecutors are grappling with how to proceed. Some have criticized the media for releasing too much information before specific chargers have been made. Reporter Lee Chul-yong, outside the hospital, reporting.]

“After playing the role of a national hero for decades, the timing of being caught as he’s exposed to the entire nation with his true colors, it’s unfortunate. In the end, you could say he got what he deserved. I don’t know.”

Jieun turned her head backward, muttering while glancing at the TV. However, as a staff member approached with a tonkatsu plate, Jieun quickly shifted her attention.

In front of Leeseo was a bowl of buckwheat noodles with ice. The buckwheat noodles topped with sesame powder and finely chopped radish was a popular menu item at this restaurant, but they didn’t appeal to her taste.