Side Story 2.3

The guilt was so overwhelming that he couldn’t even bring himself to meet Eun-sol and Ro-hee again.  

And starting from that very day, Seol-hwa began appearing in his dreams. She wore the engagement ring he had given her long ago.  

In his dreams, Seol-hwa smiled at him as she had in the past, her face radiant with happiness. But suddenly, her expression would turn sorrowful as she asked,  

‘Is my daughter doing well?’ 

Her question left him breathless.  

Unable to answer, he would wake up with his pillow soaked in tears, Seol-hwa’s voice still echoing in his heart.  

‘Is my daughter doing well?’  

‘Is my daughter doing well?’  

‘Is my daughter…?’  

His chest ached. It felt as though he might cough up blood, but all that came out was the sound of his pitiful sobs.  

And so, time passed once again.  

The news of Jeong-hyeok’s return from Akai eventually reached his ears.  

One day, his son appeared before him.  

“I’m here to get the diamond.”  

It was an unannounced and audacious visit. Though Jeong-hyeok’s brusque demeanor and curt words were the same as always, his eyes and overall aura were completely different—like he had become someone else entirely.  

“This is what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”  

Gi-jo instinctively knew that the diamond Jeong-hyeok referred to was the one on Seol-hwa’s ring.  

When Gi-jo handed it over without resistance, his son gave him a perplexed look. He had hoped Jeong-hyeok would say something—anything—but his son left without even glancing back.  

That night, Seol-hwa appeared in his dreams again. This time, her finger was bare, the diamond ring gone. Yet, she no longer asked about her daughter.  

Ah…!  

He realized it then.  

Everything had finally returned to its rightful place.  

“Ro-hee, there’s a pond outside. They say there are lots of pretty goldfish.”  

Eun-sol’s voice brought Gi-jo back to the present, pulling him out of his thoughts about the past.  

“Goldfish?! There are goldfish?!”  

Ro-hee’s sweet voice made his chest ache once more.  

“Ro-hee, would you like to go see the pond with the lady over there? Mommy needs to talk with Grandpa for a bit. Is that okay?”

Eun-sol seemed to want to have a quiet conversation with him.  

Kwon Gi-jo nodded slowly. It appeared there was indeed a purpose behind her sudden visit.  

As Ro-hee disappeared toward the garden with the helper, Eun-sol pulled something out of her bag.  

It was a letter, stained with traces of wine.  

Gi-jo’s hands trembled as he unfolded the letter. It was a letter his late wife, Hye-rin, had written to Seol-hwa while she was still alive.  

[Seol-hwa, I’m not sure even as I write this. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually send this letter to you.]  

Though the letter was blotchy with stains, Hye-rin’s handwriting was neat and precise. Gi-jo’s glasses fogged up from the tears that began to well in his eyes as he read.  

So, Hye-rin had regretted it too. She had wanted to ask for forgiveness.  

It was a side of Hye-rin he had never known. Thinking back to how cruelly he had treated her in the past, he felt a lump in his throat and couldn’t bring himself to speak.  

“…Even if she hadn’t received this letter, your mother would have forgiven her already. Even during the happy times we shared, Seol-hwa always suffered from guilt for betraying Hye-rin.”  

His hands trembled as he carefully folded the letter back up. A bitter, sorrowful laugh escaped his wrinkled lips.  

It was a love that had been painful for everyone involved. A cruel love that could never have been whole, no matter what.  

“I think so too. My mom… she was too soft-hearted for her own good… that’s probably what happened.”  

Eun-sol swallowed back the tears that threatened to spill.  

The two of them sat in silence for a while. Eun-sol, fiddling with her teacup, eventually broke the quiet with a story from her childhood.  

“…There’s a memory I have about my mom that I’ve always found strange. It’s something I still think about, even now that I’m grown.”  

It was a story she had never shared with anyone before.  

Gi-jo, too, had never heard this particular story about Seol-hwa’s past and found himself listening intently, as if transfixed.  

“I think I was about ten years old. I was supposed to be out playing with my friends, but I came home earlier than planned because it suddenly started raining. When I opened the front door…”  

The moment she opened the door, she heard a sound. Someone was crying loudly, with abandon.  

She froze in place. It wasn’t just any crying—it was a wail filled with anguish. A cry so mournful, it felt as though the person’s soul was being torn apart. Even as a ten-year-old child, too young to grasp the depths of life, she could feel it.  

“W-who… who’s crying like this?”  

At that time, there should have been no one in the house but her mother. Yet, she couldn’t believe that such a sound could possibly come from her mom.  

But when she cautiously opened her mother’s door, she was shocked to discover that the cries truly belonged to her.  

Inside the room, the TV was on. For a moment, she thought her mother might be crying over a sad movie.  

But the program on the TV wasn’t a movie. It was just a dull and boring current affairs show.  

“At the time, I couldn’t understand it at all. I had no idea why my mom was crying. I wanted to comfort her, but she was crying so sorrowfully that I couldn’t even bring myself to approach her.”  

Standing behind the door, the ten-year-old Eun-sol had cried too, as if the tears were contagious. She didn’t know why her mother was crying, but the tears wouldn’t stop.  

“And then, when I grew up, I finally learned why my mom had cried that day. After meeting you, Chairman Kwon, and learning that you were her first love…”  

“……”  

“That day, the current affairs program on TV featured an interview with the owner of a financial company. That person was none other than you, Chairman Kwon Gi-jo. My mom had seen her first love on TV and cried so much because of it.”  

Tears poured endlessly from beneath Gi-jo’s tightly shut eyelids. The tears, streaming down the deep grooves of his wrinkled face, fell silently but were as bitter as the tears Seol-hwa had cried that day.  

“After that day, I couldn’t enjoy playing with my friends as freely anymore. It felt like something inside me had awakened, leaving me uneasy.”

Eun-sol didn’t know why her mother had cried, but one thing she understood completely was that her mother had been deeply unhappy.  

Her grandmother always spoke as if singing a song. She would often say, “Your mother, who came from nothing, was lucky to have snatched up your father, a doctor. She should be grateful for the rest of her life.”  

But her father fell into gambling, and somehow, all the blame fell on her mother for not being a good enough wife.  

Until Eun-sol witnessed her mother’s tears, she had believed her grandmother’s words to be true. She thought it was only natural for her mother to endure her grandmother’s scolding.  

“That’s something I still feel so sorry about to this day.”  

Even though it was gaslighting she experienced as a child.  

“She was my one and only mother. Even if I couldn’t help her, I shouldn’t have just stood by and done nothing….”  

Tears streamed down Eun-sol’s face, smudging the light lipstick she had applied.  

“Even now, when I think of my mom, it feels like my heart is freezing over. What must she have felt? Knowing exactly where and how her first love was living, while enduring cruel *buse in a marriage that felt like a gutter?”  

“……”  

“If I hadn’t been born… if only I hadn’t been there, maybe my mom could have gone to find you, Chairman Kwon. Maybe then, she wouldn’t have fallen ill with that terrible disease.”  

Kwon Gi-jo could only cry silently, unable to offer any words of comfort. But for Eun-sol, just being able to share her story about her mother and herself was comforting in itself.  

“That’s why I want to say… I can’t turn away from you, Chairman Kwon. When I think about how you were my mom’s first love, whom she longed for her entire life….”  

Using the handkerchief Gi-jo had offered, Eun-sol wiped her tears.  

“Even if Jeong-hyeok turns away from you, I won’t forget to show you the respect you deserve.”  

Her voice, now calm, grew firmer.  

“But does it really have to be this way? Isn’t there a way for everyone to get along? To stop hurting each other…?”  

She pulled an envelope from her bag and placed it in front of Gi-jo.  

“That’s why I hope you’ll be the one to take the first step. To show courage, like a father should.”  

Gi-jo stared at the envelope placed next to his teacup. The logo on the envelope looked familiar, but he couldn’t recall which company it belonged to.  

“I hope we don’t create any more regrets. Haven’t we already had enough of those?”  

Eun-sol’s words struck deep into Gi-jo’s very bones.  

His life had been filled with nothing but regret and remorse.  

Could such a life… really change now?  

“Children’s Day is coming soon. I hope we’ll get to see you then.”  

Eun-sol rose from her seat. After offering a slight bow, she turned and disappeared.  

Gi-jo raised his rough, calloused hand and opened the envelope. Inside were tickets to an amusement park.