Chapter – 31
What she had wanted to strongly object to earlier, when the mountain grandmothers said things like “It’s just infatuation,” “He’s a fool for love,” and “It’s all temporary anyway.”
Yoo-geon suddenly stopped walking.
Ji-an, who had been walking ahead, turned back a little late.
Her questioning gaze seemed to ask, “Why suddenly?”
Yoo-geon stared at her silently, furrowing his brows slightly, then spoke.
“If it wasn’t just a casual remark…”
Ji-an swallowed dryly without realizing it.
She felt strangely tense.
Was it because of his low, resonant voice?
Or because his eyes looked darker and deeper than usual?
“If it wasn’t just a casual remark, would you take it seriously?”
“……Pardon?”
What… was he talking about?
As Ji-an tilted her head slightly in confusion,
Yoo-geon walked toward her.
Ji-an looked up at him as he stood right in front of her.
The tall man, who was always big, seemed even more like an unshakable mountain today. Behind him, against the night sky, stars shimmered.
He lowered his face to her eye level.
His well-defined, sharply sculpted face was brightly illuminated by moonlight, filling her entire field of vision.
Her heart began pounding at how suddenly close his face was.
“Those words I said earlier…”
Ji-an’s lips parted slightly, too overwhelmed by the quiet excitement of facing his face up close to register his next words.
“…weren’t just something I said casually. They were completely sincere.”
Her eyes widened before she could even savor the fluttering excitement of being so close to his face.
“Don’t just brush it off. Think seriously about it too, Ms. Eun Ji-an.”
Now her eyes were wide open.
That expression was clearly captured in Yoo-geon’s eyes.
Yes, she must have been surprised.
Even I’m surprised that I’m saying something like this.
But he was certain he wouldn’t regret it.
After showing his sincerity to those who kept dismissing his words as a joke or mere infatuation, the suffocating feeling inside him had eased.
Yoo-geon walked past Ji-an alone, heading toward his destination.
But Ji-an stood rooted to the ground, as if she had taken root there, unable to move. The words Yoo-geon had just spoken kept floating inside her head.
When Ji-an didn’t follow, Yoo-geon stopped walking and went back to grab her hand.
“Ah…!”
“You’re not by my side tonight. What if I have a nightmare? I have to at least borrow the protective, auspicious energy of Ms. Eun Ji-an’s hand to prevent nightmares, right?”
Using such an excuse, Yoo-geon held her hand and started walking again.
Ji-an, still dazed, was dragged along while recalling the grandmothers’ words.
A fairy who descended from the moon?
Prettier than other women?
Feeling uneasy because of other men……
…Those were words filled with sincerity?
Ji-an’s mouth slowly opened wider as she followed Yoo-geon.
Ji-an had no memory of walking while holding Yoo-geon’s hand.
She vaguely remembered him saying goodbye in front of the lodging.
Later that night, she had a light beer with her colleagues.
“You know that new actress who played the pregnant woman in that movie? Ji Eun-chae. I heard she gained 10 kg to play the pregnant role…”
“Oh really? But she still looked pretty in a natural way. I wonder how pretty she must have been before gaining weight…”
While her colleagues chatted, Ji-an’s mind was elsewhere.
After showering early enough not to stay up too late for tomorrow’s schedule, she lay on her bed, blinking blankly.
It was only when everyone else was asleep, and the sound of snoring filled the room, that Ji-an finally came to her senses.
‘Those words I said earlier weren’t just casual. They were completely sincere.’
‘Don’t just brush it off. Think seriously about it too, Ms. Eun Ji-an.’
Ji-an silently screamed beneath the blanket among her sleeping colleagues.
‘He said I was… pretty…? That he felt uneasy because of other men…? Yoo-geon said that…?’
Ji-an pulled the blanket over her head.
‘Do I… really look pretty…?’
At her family home, on the day she made songpyeon (rice cakes) with her mother.
She had wanted to know what it meant when, looking at her childhood photos, people said, “She was cute even then”—whether it meant she was cute only back then or still cute now.
But she couldn’t ask.
Today, however, she had heard it directly from his mouth.
You are pretty.
Her face grew hot, and a small, pained sound escaped her lips.
‘It might be a message related to the contract… No, I don’t want to think about that. Just for today, just like this…….’
The first love she had carried in her heart all her life.
Her chest swelled with emotion from the words she heard from him, staying like this.
Ji-an’s mother, Yun Seo-young, died when Ji-an was seven years old.
The year after Seo-young passed away, when Ji-an turned eight.
Ji-an missed her mother even more on her first birthday without her mother.
Unable to even smile once, she spent the day in sorrow. That night, Ji-an couldn’t fall asleep.
‘Mom… I really miss you.’
Lying on her bed and sniffing, Ji-an eventually couldn’t resist her longing for her mother and went to her father’s room.
Her father was a man who had no expression and even had a frightening, stern face, but she vaguely felt that he loved her.
So she thought that if she poured out her feelings, he would surely comfort her.
When she reached the front of Yoo Pil-beom’s room with such expectations—
Ji-an was shocked.
From inside the room, she heard her father crying.
“Seo-young…! Why did you leave so early! I wanted to celebrate your birthday every year… Why did you leave me… Why… If only I had stopped you from having the child…!”
Ji-an’s small body trembled at the door.
Her face turned as pale as if she had seen a ghost.
It was deeply shocking to Ji-an that her father was crying. She had never seen it before.
Even at her mother’s funeral, he had only had slightly red eyes but had carried out the funeral with an emotionless face.
She had thought her father was someone who didn’t know how to cry. Someone nothing in the world could hurt.
But that father was crying alone. Missing her mother. Regretting that he hadn’t stopped the woman he loved from giving birth to her.
The sound made Ji-an remember something she had overheard at the hospital before Seo-young’s death.
‘Yun Seo-young patient is really pretty, isn’t she?’
‘Yeah. I heard she was originally a promising painter.’
‘Really? What a waste. With that beauty, if she hadn’t had a child, she would have stayed healthy and become a successful artist.’
If Mom hadn’t had a child… me… would she have stayed healthy?
‘Then… Mom got sick because of me?’
Ji-an was too young then to understand exactly why Seo-young was ill.
But the conversation of the nurses had been shocking.
Ji-an wanted to ask her mother directly.
“Mom, did you get sick because of Ji-an?”
But she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
She was afraid that her mother would answer yes.
Afraid that she would tell her the truth—that she would have been healthy if she hadn’t given birth to her.
The truth she was too afraid to ask became confirmed by her father’s words.
Ji-an staggered backward from the door of Pil-beom’s room, then ran back to her room and cried under the blanket.
She couldn’t control her sadness or self-hatred.
The thought that her only father hated her hurt her heart unbearably and terrified her.
After that day, Ji-an could not eat properly.
“Why are you acting like this? Why aren’t you eating? Huh? If you keep this up, you’ll die!”
Pil-beom tried to scare his increasingly thin daughter and even took her to the hospital.
But Ji-an couldn’t swallow food properly because she hated her own existence for making her mother die and making her father sad.
Two months passed like this, and Seo-young’s first memorial day arrived.
