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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 53
Chapter Title: A Secret Shared
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53.
“I’m talking about Han-byeol’s father. Is it… Im Eun-seong?”
The air in the car felt thick, stagnant. Hae-yeong added a light laugh at the end of her sentence. Now that the words were out, she immediately realized how utterly absurd her own suspicions and questions were.
“No, no, Yeon-joo. I’ve just been writing a drama in my head these past few days. Gosh, I must have too much time on my hands. It’s just, you two went to the same university, right? I was just thinking about this and that.”
An embarrassed laugh escaped her. She was too ashamed to even look at Yeon-joo, imagining how dumbfounded she must be.
Come to think of it, this was the first time Hae-yeong had ever uttered the words “Han-byeol’s father.” She had always believed that his absence was a topic she shouldn’t show interest in, a question she should never ask.
She never wanted to make Yeon-joo uncomfortable. Theirs wasn’t the kind of relationship that could only continue if they shared every last tightly held secret. If she could tell her, she would, when the time was right.
That’s what she thought, what she believed. It was a conviction she had upheld throughout her precious friendship with Yeon-joo.
A wave of regret washed over the space her question had left, as if she had broken some unspoken rule. Hae-yeong bit her lip at Yeon-joo’s lack of response. Not wanting the mood to sink like this, she raised her voice and forced a smile.
Then she looked at Yeon-joo.
“Yeon-joo. I was just kidding. Gosh, when a person’s bored, their imagination…”
Hae-yeong’s words slowed, then faded.
Her lips, sensing the impending shock, went dry in an instant, and a thick fog clouded her mind.
“What is it, Yeon-joo? Why are you reacting like this?”
Seeing Yeon-joo utterly speechless, only her long, dark eyelashes fluttering, made Hae-yeong’s heart plummet.
“What is it? Why are you being like this? What is this? Huh? Hey, Yeon-joo.”
“…”
*Honk—*
The light had changed, but Hae-yeong couldn’t move. The car waiting impatiently behind them blared its horn, and only then did Hae-yeong snap to her senses, gripping the steering wheel with both hands.
[In thirty meters, turn right.]
The navigation system was guiding her to their usual lamb skewer place, but Hae-yeong drove aimlessly, as if she owned the night streets.
A place that should have taken ten minutes to reach took them thirty, but Yeon-joo remained silent to the end, acknowledging that she could no longer endure, caught between a despair too deep to fathom and a hope that had been severed completely.
*
The restaurant, with its sign written entirely in Chinese, was a hidden gem popular among Chinese residents and international students. The lamb lacked its typical gamey smell, and they offered a wide variety of authentic mainland dishes and Chinese liquors, making it a favorite spot for Hae-yeong, who often traveled to China for work.
Yeon-joo had been there a few times, dragged along by Hae-yeong, who always insisted on going together whenever she found a great spot. From the outside, it didn’t look very big, but once you opened the door, it boasted a vast interior. It had recently started getting featured on TV, and now it was hard to find an empty seat after seven o’clock; long lines of waiting customers had become the norm.
Hae-yeong, who had made a reservation in advance, sat with Yeon-joo by the window. The lamb skewers arrived almost as soon as they ordered, and Hae-yeong placed them on the automatic grill.
The skewers, a perfect mix of fat and lean meat, rotated rhythmically between the toothed rails. Hae-yeong ordered a Chinese sorghum liquor that paired well with the food, poured herself a glass, and drank it before the meat was even cooked.
In the bustling restaurant, where they should have been enjoying a cheerful, chatty time as planned, Yeon-joo simply closed and opened her eyes, with no intention of drinking or eating.
In that time, Hae-yeong finished two more glasses. She took the golden-brown skewers off the rail, placed them on a plate, and offered it to Yeon-joo.
“Let’s eat first. You should eat, even if you don’t feel like drinking.”
She gave the plate a little shake, and Yeon-joo took it with a listless hand. After telling her to eat, Hae-yeong herself seemed to have no appetite and refilled her empty glass once more.
“What happened? Are you just going to stay silent like this?”
The distinct chill of the alcohol seared her stomach. Feeling the buzz spread quickly, Hae-yeong let out a long breath.
Yeon-joo was still silent, and time just ticked by. Hae-yeong knew that pressing her wouldn’t help, so she said no more and waited in silence.
“It’s true.”
After what felt like an eternity, Yeon-joo’s lips parted.
“It’s true. He is Han-byeol’s father.”
“Haa…”
Feeling her emotions welling up in her eyes, Hae-yeong squeezed them shut. As multiple vertical lines formed between her brows, Yeon-joo continued.
“We met in college, I got pregnant with Han-byeol, he went his own way without knowing, and now… here we are.”
She spoke without a hint of emotion, as if reciting the ending of a boring drama she’d seen. Her detachment was no less than the resignation of an old woman who had lived a full life, and that, in turn, was what made it so sad.
“So I dropped out. Because of Han-byeol, I had no choice. I just… lived my life in a daze, and then one day, he was in front of my eyes again.”
Hae-yeong had no reply, and there wasn’t much to say anyway, so she drank. Shock and sorrow washed over her at once, and she didn’t know which to deal with first.
She kept swallowing her drink, then sighing, unable to bear the weight of it all. After a long while, Hae-yeong finally spoke.
“Back then, why didn’t you tell him?”
“There was no way.”
A look of loneliness settled on Yeon-joo’s previously expressionless face. Back then, in those truly helpless and overwhelming times.
“Once his phone number was gone, there was no way to reach him. His face was plastered all over TV and the internet. Everywhere I looked, I saw his face, but I couldn’t find him.”
“…”
“No, actually, I don’t think I tried very hard to find him. He was doing so well. He had caught his dream. How could I… how could I just suddenly show up?”
Yeon-joo managed to swallow a gulp of cold water. There weren’t many ways to quell the heat that was turning her insides to mud.
But strangely, the more she spoke, the slower her heart beat.
“That’s why I didn’t want to bring Han-byeol before him. That was the reason I initially opposed the movie casting.”
“Ah…”
Hae-yeong let out a sigh of understanding. It felt like everything that was happening to Yeon-joo now was her fault, and she was flooded with self-blame and anguish.
“So you broke up without him knowing you were pregnant with Han-byeol?”
“We did. Back then, CEO Min Tae-gon said it would be better to let him go.”
“Ah… Aah…”
“Of course, that wasn’t the only reason. At the time, I thought it was the right thing to do, too.”
“…”
“I still think it was the right thing to do. That hasn’t changed.”
It felt like a puzzle was being solved, piece by piece. Hae-yeong let out a different kind of gasp than before, and at the end of her breath, she drank again.
Regardless of the era, dating was a sensitive issue in the entertainment industry. While a company’s intervention couldn’t be called justified, it was something that happened countless times behind the scenes.
Entertainment was a business of investing huge sums of money to cultivate people. No one involved wanted any trouble. Hae-yeong had survived for a long time in this chaotic world where stars rose and fell overnight. She had seen all sorts of things in her time.
She could somewhat understand CEO Min’s position in having to separate the passionate young couple, but with Han-byeol in the picture, it became a completely different story.
The more she thought about it, the more it drove her crazy. *What do we do?* The same question spun in her head, but she couldn’t easily picture a way forward.
“Yeon-joo. You should have told me…”
Yeon-joo lowered her head.
“You should have told me. You’ve been bottling this all up by yourself, how could you, how…”
Hae-yeong couldn’t finish her sentence either, bowing her head. She still didn’t know which of the overwhelming emotions and thoughts to pull out and deal with first, but—
“How did you manage…? How did you never show it, not even once, how…”
The guilt of dragging her into this.
“I’m going crazy, I’m going crazy…”
The guilt of not realizing sooner.
Tears began to fall, and Hae-yeong quickly tore off a napkin. She couldn’t break down in front of Yeon-joo, who was fighting back her own tears until her neck turned red. *No. I can’t be like this.*
“Agh, sorry. Let’s eat the lamb skewers first. You haven’t eaten a single one. Your eonni went out of her way to make a reservation and bring you here… and you haven’t… haven’t eaten a thing… making me upset… why are you only drinking water…”
Her composure crumbled again.
As Hae-yeong mumbled, her head hung low, Yeon-joo managed a hollow smile. Her serene eyes, drained of all life, desired nothing, which was all the more heartbreaking.
“At first, after I saw him again, for a while I hoped that whether by coincidence or fate, he would realize.”
“…”
“I hoped he would recognize the child at a glance. That there really was such a thing as an undeniable fate, and that he would recognize him that way, that would be so nice.”
The bad me quietly dreamed.
That you would recognize him. That you would realize the child standing before you was, in fact, our child.
This great secret of my life that I could not confess myself—what if you were the one to discover it first—
“But not anymore. Now I pray that nothing happens between us.”
…A futile wish.
“Han-byeol is my son, my mother’s only grandson, and the only nephew that you adore, Eonni.”
“…”
“I think that’s how it should be.”
“Yeon-joo…”
Ignoring Hae-yeong’s pleading tone, Yeon-joo smiled faintly.
She stared at the liquor bottle as if debating whether to drink, then looked away. She didn’t think she could handle the churning in her stomach, even without alcohol.
She smiled with all her might at Hae-yeong, who was watching her, lost in uncontrollable sorrow. Then she picked up a lamb skewer that had already gone dry.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. Now that I’ve let it all out, I feel so relieved. Eonni, let’s eat now.”
“What are you going to do, what are you going to do…”
“I’m okay. Eonni, I’m okay. Once filming is over, everything will go back to how it was.”
“…”
“Right now… it’s just… it feels like I’m dreaming, so I think I’ll just wake up from it a little more slowly.”
Yeon-joo stuffed the lamb skewer into her mouth until her cheeks bulged. She chewed the piece of meat, which had neither taste nor texture, as if it were a heavenly delicacy, then poured a drink into Hae-yeong’s empty glass.
The hastily chewed and swallowed meat felt like it was lodging in her throat, but Yeon-joo didn’t stop eating. It was as if she was trying to fill the cold void left by the secret’s escape.
Like a wilting leaf, starved of sunlight, struggling not to fall.
