The Wind Orchid
How much time had passed? It was a heavy silence that stretched every second into an hour. The only person who seemed untouched by the oppressive atmosphere was Cha Taekyung.
At last Baek Jeong-hak broke the silence with a long sigh.
“Making such a spectacle in front of the guests. Kim Ju-yeon. Pay special attention to the second floor.”
He waved a dismissive hand and vanished down the hallway, leaving the empty liquor bottle slammed carelessly onto the table.
Ju-yeon bowed her head with deliberate obedience toward his retreating back. Her already pale face had gone even whiter—the complete opposite of the hostility she usually showed Gaon, a picture of meek compliance.
When she lifted her gaze again, resentment flickered in her eyes, though its target remained unclear.
Whether he noticed that resentment or not, Cha Taekyung stepped deeper into the dining room and held out the flowerpot to her.
“I thought this would do well in the kitchen, so I brought it.”
Ju-yeon took the pot in a daze.
“It’s a wind orchid. Hardy against wind and humidity—it should thrive even in the kitchen.”
She looked utterly incredulous. Gaon understood the woman’s feelings perfectly. She had never imagined she would find herself empathizing with Kim Ju-yeon, yet in the face of Cha Taekyung’s eccentricities they could not help but share the same bewildered mind.
“Just mist it with water a few times now and then. A kitchen without a single plant is far too bleak.”
Regardless of the expression on the other person’s face, Cha Taekyung finished saying exactly what he meant to say. Ju-yeon’s face flushed deep crimson as she looked from Cha Taekyung to Baek Gaon and back again—an expression thick with shame and contempt, as if the two of them had conspired to mock her.
“Do it yourself.”
She snapped the words coldly, set the flowerpot on the table, and swept out of the dining room.
Cha Gil-ho flinched and hastily stepped aside to clear her path. Unlike the timid doctor, who seemed thoroughly distressed by the entire sequence of events, Cha Taekyung showed not the slightest hint of embarrassment.
He merely shrugged once and picked the flowerpot up again.
“Over there looks good.”
After placing it on the small windowsill adjoining the counter, Cha Taekyung sat down at the table. In the arms that had held the flowerpot now rested a simple breakfast of eggs, whole-wheat bread, and yogurt.
They had gathered in the kitchen for the morning meal. A glance at the clock standing in the corner confirmed it was already past ten. From watching Cha Taekyung these past few days, Gaon knew he was a man who lived as regularly as possible.
“Will you eat with us?”
Cha Taekyung asked.
Across from him sat a somewhat steadied Cha Gil-ho, watching Gaon. Only then did she realize she had been staring blankly at them; she shook her head.
“Or have you decided to observe from this close?”
His tone was amused. Gaon understood a hundred times over why Ju-yeon’s face had burned so red. The man possessed a gift for effectively getting under people’s skin—an innate talent in that particular field.
“No.”
Gaon snapped coldly and left the kitchen.
Only when she reached the stairs leading to the second floor did she stop dead in her tracks.
……Did he help me?
In the midst of her daze the thought rose with perfect clarity.
Looking only at the result, she had clearly received Cha Taekyung’s help.
Cha Taekyung’s voice as he boldly demanded it of her uncle replayed in her mind, along with that brightly smiling, radiant face.
That bizarre smile, in that single moment, borrowed the brilliance of his looks and radiated an otherworldly, bewitching aura that scarcely seemed human.
Upstairs, when she opened Gayoung’s door, a mild warmth met her. Even though she had stormed out of the kitchen in anger, Ju-yeon had apparently followed Baek Jeong-hak’s order to the letter.
This time Gaon had no choice but to admit she had received Cha Taekyung’s help—and the help of the doctor she had thought so pathetic and weak as well.
“Lucy. Time to eat. Aaah.”
Gayoung had the doll seated on her lap and was deep in a game of house. After the clash in the kitchen, Ju-yeon had diligently kept the second-floor heating on, and even amid the fervent late-spring chill Gayoung’s room remained full of warmth. Once again several peaceful days followed one after another.
“What side dishes does Lucy like? What do you want to eat?”
That old doll with its forever-tangled hair was a toy the child had played with since she was four. Gaon could not even remember who had given it as a gift. She disliked the doll. It seemed to stand as a stark emblem of Gayoung’s world that never grew up.
“The weather’s really nice today, Gayoung.”
Gaon spoke to draw her sister’s attention. Just as she said, a dizzyingly blue sky stretched overhead. The rain had stopped, and nature was preparing to welcome spring. The weather on Baekam Island could never be counted on; even now rain would come again and fog would roll in. That made this clear weather all the more precious.
At Gaon’s words Gayoung glanced out the window, then returned at once to her play.
“On a day like this, let’s leave the window open. Get some air.”
Gaon approached the window. The garden lay visible at a glance. If she opened the sash and leaned far out she could also observe Cha Taekyung tending flowerpots in the empty lot at the right-hand corner of the garden. After the incident in the kitchen she had stopped watching him. Even if she had continued to follow and observe, it would have been nothing but the same boring routine repeating itself to the point of tedium. Of course, whether he smoked or not within that routine would have been an important question, yet strangely her detective game had grown stale.
Was it because she had received unexpected help from that eccentric man? Or had the reality of herself—unable even to drive out Kim Ju-yeon—going out of her way to try to drive out the doctor’s nephew simply become laughable?
In the quiet moment she was lost in thought, something caught her eye.
Kim Ju-yeon was walking across the garden.
It was the first time Gaon had seen her face since the uproar. Even when preparing meals Ju-yeon had refused to show herself, leaving only a solitary tray or forcing Gaon to scoop the side dishes already set out in the kitchen.
She moved while constantly glancing around, an attitude of anxious vigilance that never ceased.
How strange…
What had changed her so?
At first Kim Ju-yeon had clearly not disliked the Baek sisters this intensely. She had never been warm, yet she had been a woman who did her utmost at every duty assigned to her.
Especially since the beginning of this year, however, she had grown markedly more negative and anxious.
Heading toward the rear of the mansion as if making for the servants’ quarters, Ju-yeon soon met the gardener Lee Yong-hoon. The two conversed for a long while with hand gestures. Lee Yong-hoon could neither speak nor hear.
Is it because she’s been trapped on the island so long that she’s come to hate it? Find it unbearable? Boredom. Helplessness. Whatever the feeling.
It was not entirely incomprehensible. Kim Ju-yeon was not that old—mid-to-late thirties. Perhaps she had grown weary of rotting away her youth shut up in this mansion. Standing beside a child who was not in her right mind and beside Gaon herself, who threw hysterics bordering on obsession whenever that child was concerned, the stress must have been considerable. Yet why did she not leave?
Perhaps because of her relationship with Lee Yong-hoon?
Gaon had already guessed at the unusual current that ran between Kim Ju-yeon and Lee Yong-hoon. She was not so foolish as to miss the atmosphere that flowed between them.
“Unnie, what are you looking at?”
Just then Gayoung came up beside her. When Gaon had earlier suggested she look out the window the child had shown no interest at all; now her eyes sparkled.
“It’s Kim Ju-yeon?”
Gayoung tilted her head, bobbed hair swaying. The tone in which she spat the name was deliberately cold.
“You shouldn’t call adults by their names so casually.”
Gaon scolded her in a low voice.
“She’s fine.”
“What?”
“She’s a bad person.”
“Baek Gayoung.”
Even when Gaon grew stern, Gayoung only snorted and kept repeating words like “mean” and “bad.” Gaon felt a pang of regret, wondering whether her own negative feelings had infected her sister as well.
“No matter how hard a situation is to understand, you still have to keep basic manners toward adults. And to someone who’s taken care of you since you were little—”
The words died on her tongue.
Come to think of it, exactly when did Kim Ju-yeon come to the mansion?
She was someone who had clearly lived in this house for a long time, yet Gaon could not recall the precise moment of her arrival.
Did she come with us when we first set foot on the island?
But Kim Ju-yeon had never taken care of Gayoung. A four-year-old child would certainly have required many hands. Between Baek Gayoung and Kim Ju-yeon, however, no attachment had ever formed. On the contrary, Ju-yeon had always regarded Gayoung with distaste, and Gayoung had never liked Ju-yeon either.
Four years old—Gayoung. Who had looked after Gayoung then?
Ah.
A throbbing headache crashed over her.
Gaon pressed a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes.
“Unnie, does it hurt somewhere?”
Gayoung looked up at her with clear eyes. The deep blue sky and her own reflection mirrored in the child’s gaze quieted Gaon’s heart.
“No. Unnie’s fine.”
Gaon forced a smile.