“Don’t tell me he’s someone Kang Hyukwoo loves.”
I didn’t need to study him closely to grasp the situation.
The heavy dark circles under his eyes, the sunken voice, and the lingering stench of cigarettes from chain-smoking were enough. Just noticing those few differences told me everything I needed to know.
‘…That’s what he came for, then.’
Jay wasn’t thinking rationally right now. If anything, he was acting on emotion. He was far more sensitive and agitated than he normally was.
‘If he were in his right mind to begin with, there’s no way he’d show up this late without even a word.’
At the root of Jay’s anxiety and stress was a deep-seated distrust.
He hadn’t said anything in advance because he was convinced that even if he reached out, I wouldn’t let him come. He waited outside the door until late at night because he was just as certain that it was the only way he’d be able to see me.
That guy must have been just as frustrated.
It must have felt like knocking on a solid wall. In the end, he either had to give up on reaching the person behind it, or, if he couldn’t bring himself to do that, he had no choice but to break the wall down.
That’s why I didn’t take offense at Jay’s current behavior. I understood it all; him venting his emotions on me like this, every bit of it. I had no desire to get angry or respond with the same kind of forceful attitude.
To be honest … I don’t think I even had the energy for that.
I spoke with a slack face, no tension anywhere, and a voice that had sunk low, “Go back. You’ve been standing here the whole time, haven’t you? Don’t you have a schedule tomorrow too?”
“Answer my question first. Is that child Kang Hyukwoo’s son?”
Then, probably assuming I was deliberately avoiding him and trying to brush off the situation, Jay grabbed my shoulder tightly again and shouted at me. As my body was violently shaken, Choi Jeokhyeon’s expression immediately hardened, and he began moving toward Yoo Jay.
I firmly shook my head to signal that he shouldn’t step in, and then, slowly lifting my eyes to meet Jay’s, I began to speak.
“If I deny it, will you believe me?”
“…….”
“No, you won’t. You came all the way here and questioned me with that attitude precisely because you’re already certain, aren’t you?”
Hearing words that were basically an admission, Jay’s teeth clenched with a harsh grinding sound. His eyes, wide with shock, flickered with fury before giving way to a sorrow he couldn’t conceal. His face, stained with a heavy mix of despair and sadness rather than rage, twisted in agony.
“Why in the world are you keeping Kang Hyukwoo’s child with you, hyung…….”
I quietly stared at his face and muttered in a dry tone that showed no emotion, “Calm down. This isn’t a situation serious enough for you to get this agitated.”
Yoo Jay held his breath for a moment, struck by how cold the words felt, as if they came from a different world.
Was he hurt?
Or was he at a loss for words because it was so absurd? I couldn’t tell.
‘…What was I thinking about again? Ah, right. Jay’s reaction was strange. How…….’
My thoughts kept breaking off abruptly, so I couldn’t properly make any clear judgment.
‘What kind of expression did he have? I can’t remember.’
The only things I could clearly perceive at that moment were the headache tightening around my brain and the heaviness in my eyelids from keeping my eyes open for so long. When I lowered my gaze and blinked slowly, he seemed to take it as a sign that I wasn’t taking this seriously, and his voice rose again.
“If not in a situation like this, then when on earth am I supposed to get agitated? If it were anyone else but you, hyung, I wouldn’t even care this much. Everyone else would just be thinking about how to use him, how to make threats with it. That’s how most people live, selfish, ugly, always thinking only of themselves!”
“…….”
“But you’re not like that, hyung. I know what kind of person you are. You could never drag an innocent child into this. But who on earth … who would even think of taking in their enemy’s child and caring for them!”
The moment I heard the words ‘their enemy’s child‘, my gaze instinctively shifted to the sleeping boy, his face peaceful in deep sleep. I tried to see him as Kim Chaeyul, not Kang Hyukwoo’s son, but it seemed I couldn’t control the realm of my subconscious as easily as I wished.
‘…Is he saying the way I’m acting right now isn’t normal?’
The truth was, I didn’t have a clear plan for this yet.
All I had was a vague compulsion, a sense that I couldn’t just walk away, because part of the responsibility for that child becoming an orphan undeniably lay with me.
‘What on earth am I supposed to do?’
But hearing those words hit me harder than I expected, like they struck a nerve.
My mouth opened and closed a few times before I finally forced out a voice.
“…You can only say that because you don’t know what I’ve done.”
“What did you do, then? You won’t even explain it properly, so how on earth am I supposed to understand!”
Jay’s sharp voice struck my eardrums like the clatter of breaking glass. As a flood of stimulation overwhelmed my already oversensitive senses, I winced and covered one ear, grimacing as I stammered out a response.
“…Stop, let’s talk about this later.”
“…….”
“For now, I just … I think I need to rest for a bit.”
I must have seemed abnormal, because Jay, looking somewhat flustered or perhaps even frightened, released his hold on me and took a step back. At that moment, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Bzzzzzz.
[Lee Chise]
It was a call from Lee Chise.
“Is Jay there?”
Thinking that answering the phone would allow me to escape this situation, I immediately pressed the accept button, and the first thing I heard was that question. I hesitated, caught between the thought that saying yes right away would feel like abandoning Yoo Jay, and the dread that denying it would trap me in this suffocating moment indefinitely. In the end, I simply clamped my mouth shut.
As the silence dragged on, Lee Chise spoke calmly, as if trying to reassure me.
“I’m on my way there right now. I’ll be there soon.”
“…….”
“I’m sorry, hyung.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say, ‘No, you don’t have to come‘, so I slowly lowered the hand holding my phone. Soon after, Lee Chise arrived, and Yoo Jay was taken back to Jo Inchan’s house.
I could tell the two of them were arguing about something, but nothing they said really reached me. After that, with Choi Jeokhyeon supporting me, I made it back home, and the moment I stepped through the door, I must’ve fallen asleep on the spot.
***
When I woke up, the news was reporting that Kang Hyukwoo had died.
Choi Jeokhyeon said that the so-called ‘high-ranking‘ figures, who had been anxiously fearing that their dirty laundry would leak through Kang Hyukwoo, were overjoyed when they heard about his disappearance, as if a party had been thrown. To them, Kang Hyukwoo was merely someone of such low importance, easily discarded like an old, worn-out shoe.
Thinking back on how proud Kang Hyukwoo had been of his supposed closeness with those people, it was almost laughable. It must have all been just a fantasy he created for himself.
“This morning, Director Kang Hyukwoo of RH Entertainment, a central figure during Prism’s golden years, was reportedly…….”
Whether I turned on the TV or went online, everything was talking about Kang Hyukwoo’s death, but I still couldn’t quite believe it. It just didn’t feel real.
I went about my days as usual.
Practicing, preparing for the concert, eating my meals, and so on.
‘…Kang Hyukwoo really died like this?’
It still felt like Kang Hyukwoo was alive somewhere in this world, and my head was hazy, as if I were stuck in a dream. I might’ve seemed a little off, but no one blamed me. Even as Han Seungbeom, everyone knew I’d been through more than a few bad experiences with Kang Hyukwoo.
I went about my days treated like a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at the slightest touch.
Then one day, a letter arrived at Choi Jeokhyeon’s house, with the recipient’s name written as Seo Yutae.
I took it with me and headed toward the sea where Seo Yuseong had died.
Whoosh.
It was clearly daytime, but heavy rainclouds blanketed the sky, hiding every hint of blue. Perhaps because the current was rough, there were no seabirds or travelers in sight. In silence, I lifted my gaze toward the sea, then took a lighter out from my coat pocket.
Flick. Fsshh. Flick.
With a movement that was practically muscle memory by now, my thumb pressed the button. A small flame sparked to life, only to flicker and vanish again and again in the fierce sea wind.
I kept repeating the motion over and over, my mind completely blank. When I finally managed to get a steady flame, I picked up the letter I had been holding in my hand the whole time.
It was the last letter Kang Hyukwoo had sent me before he died.
At first, I didn’t want to read it, thinking it would be filled with nothing but curses. But when I noticed a faint trace of the word ‘Chaeyul‘ on the back of the paper, along with the round mark of a tear that had soaked through and curled the page, I opened the letter.
[Chaeyul-ah, it’s Dad.]
I had already read the contents back at home, so there was no real need to read it again now. The letter was filled with apologies and excuses directed at his son, expressions of love, and worries about his son’s future. Though here and there were lines trying to dodge responsibility and even blame me, it was still, without a doubt, a letter written to his son.
My only thought after reading the letter was, ‘So, this guy could cry too’. That was all. I didn’t want to think beyond that, so I intentionally steered my thoughts elsewhere.
Why did Kang Hyukwoo send this letter to me? He probably thought I would feel sorry for him and his son, and that I’d deliver the letter to its rightful recipient.
“…….”
I held the lighter to the corner of the letter.
Slowly, the paper began to burn. It vanished from this world without ever reaching anyone else, not even the person it was meant for.
Kang Hyukwoo was already dead, so there was no real reason not to deliver the letter. I just didn’t want to.
I wondered if this was what it meant to truly hate someone to death.
[Dad really loved you.]
I let out a bitter laugh as I took in the last remaining words on the nearly burnt letter. I thought to myself, Kang Hyukwoo was just infatuated with the idea of himself as a loving father. While sneering like that, I blankly watched the last scrap in my hand turn to ash and drift toward the sea.
What am I supposed to do now?
Ever since the loss of Seo Yuseong, who had been the greatest pillar of support in my life, it felt as though the rotting branch that had barely been holding me up had finally snapped. I felt like I’d regressed into the person I was right after losing him. That feeling came from how utterly meaningless my life had been before I found a purpose in revenge.
‘Seo Yuseong is gone, so what am I supposed to do now?’
It wasn’t that I regretted taking revenge. I just believed that once Kang Hyukwoo was gone, some of the weight pressing down on my life would ease, yet there wasn’t much of a difference. That was all. It simply felt like I had done what needed to be done.
‘What am I supposed to live for now?’
No.
I shouldn’t have these kinds of thoughts, these kinds of feelings.
Once I start thinking this way, it spirals out of control, no matter how much I will it to stop. Unrestrained, impulsive thoughts tore through me like claws.
‘I have to stop.’
Someone, please, stop me.
I had that thought, but my legs moved on their own.
My unsteady steps carried me forward, and the moment my feet stepped into the seawater with a splash, someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me into an embrace.
This wasn’t just some accidental bump or anything of that sort. He wrapped his arms tightly around my waist, holding me so that I filled his entire embrace. He held me as tenderly as a child clutching a precious treasure, as dearly as lovers holding each other close. Then, he inhaled deeply, as if completely taking me in.
With the weather this awful, being near the sea right now was dangerous.
I assumed there wouldn’t be anyone nearby because of that, but the sudden appearance of an unexpected visitor caught me off guard, and I tried to push him away. Before words like “Who are you?” or “Let me go” could escape my lips, I heard the other person’s whisper.
“No.”
His voice made my heart feel as if it had stopped; I was so utterly shocked that I froze, ceasing all resistance. I held my breath in disbelief and tried desperately to turn my head toward him, but before I could, he leaned in and gently pressed his forehead against mine, like a child seeking comfort.
Then, black hair with a hint of violet spilled over his shoulder. It was longer than the average man’s, though not as long as mine had been when I was alive, and it had a slight natural wave. The instant I recognized him, my hands, trembling uncontrollably, reached up to cup his face.
Then…….
“We finally got to meet … You can’t die now.”
“…Ah, ah…….”
There, before me, was the face I had longed for with all my heart.
“Hello, hyung.”
How … can Seo Yuseong be standing right in front of me now?
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Translator’s Corner:
I can finally die in peace
Please give this song a listen, it matches the vibe (it’s a really good song, and I’m not saying this just because I like them. They’re not named as best kpop group musically for nothing)
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