The Fracturing World

"W-well, the thing is..."

The foreman stammered, his words catching in his throat. Tae-shin's voice grew even colder.

"Judging by how healthy that tongue of yours is, I suppose you're all just malingering together."

Only then did the foreman dimly realize he'd made a slip of the tongue in front of Tae-shin, and he began bowing and scraping with unmistakable urgency.

"Just a moment, Executive Director Woo. I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. What I meant to say wasn't... that isn't what I—"

"I'll keep everything I heard today in mind."

Tae-shin cut him off with finality, as if the man weren't worth another second of his time. Having drained his cup of vending-machine coffee, he neatly crushed the paper cup one-handed and set the wreckage down on the table.

"Then we'll be going."

Tae-shin rose from the sofa first, long strides carrying him away. The foreman raked his fingers through his hair and let out a deep, deflated sigh. A single careless remark, and his precious audience had gone up in smoke—he could only fumble about helplessly, at a complete loss for what to do.

Now that his eye level had suddenly risen, he gazed quietly down at Lee-seol, who sat frozen like a stone.

"Shall we go, Agassi?"

She knew he'd chosen the address deliberately, just to hoist her up in front of everyone. But there was no helping the heat flooding her face. Scarlet to the ears, Lee-seol scrambled hastily out of her seat.

The sedan carrying Lee-seol and Tae-shin pulled away in a smooth glide. The construction site receded bit by bit until it vanished altogether among the blue-green trees. After a brief glance back at the landscape, Lee-seol simply propped her chin in her hand and stared out the window, lost in thought.

Her mind was a tangle. The small world she had known her whole life was beginning to crack, little by little.

The people of Sehwawon, who had been keeping secrets from her all along. The people of Eulju-ri, whose faces and hearts did not match. And behind those secrets, pulling the strings—the Haeun Group.

And now the heir and grandson of that very conglomerate was sitting in the seat beside her.

Woo Tae-shin.

Just how much did he actually know?

"Are you all right?"

His low voice drifted to her ear. No, she was not all right. She felt downright wretched. Breathing slowly and deeply, Lee-seol leaned back against the seat.

"...Is there any reason I wouldn't be?"

"You have 'I'm not all right' written all over your face. That's why I asked."

Letting out a small sigh, Lee-seol stole a sidelong glance at her own reflection ghosted faintly on the window. Annoying as it was, he was right. Every last one of her tangled emotions was written plainly across her expression.

"To be honest... I was a little shocked. I never imagined the villagers talked about Granny like that."

Her voice trailed off, growing murkier by the word. All this time, Lee-seol had kept turning her eyes away from the truth that her world was small. But whenever Woo Tae-shin was near, the world outside kept forcing itself back into her awareness.

Things from another world were seeping in through the already-broken membrane, drop by drop. It felt like an enormous current that no dam could ever hold back.

"Why should it matter what other people say about an old woman?"

"..."

"I don't see any reason for Shin Lee-seol-ssi to be shaken."

His voice was bone-dry. A tremor ran thinly through Lee-seol's eyes.

Nothing about his words sounded like comfort. There was a sharp bone buried in them.

If Granny Yoon-hwa's patron spirit still dwelled within her, there would have been no need to waver at the rumors the locals flung about so freely.

She could have simply scoffed—so what if some ignorant dogs barked?—and left it at that.

But the reality was otherwise. And that was why she had wavered. And if she kept revealing weakness like this...

She had made a serious mistake, she thought. The realization sent her heart hammering so fast it felt ready to burst. Thump, thump—her temples throbbed.

"...I just hate it when people's outsides and insides don't match."

She sorted through the chaos in her head and pushed out an answer. The man let out a low groan, as if the remark ached somewhere, then laughed outright.

"Shin Lee-seol-ssi, you're pure."

"...Is that your way of saying I was raised in a sterile laboratory?"

"Maybe a little bit, yes."

The moment he finished, Lee-seol fired straight back.

"Then the place where you grew up must have been filthy, Woo Tae-shin-ssi."

"It was probably far more disgusting than you're imagining."

All he did was fold his arms with leisurely ease and sink back against the seat. She had launched what was meant to be an attack of sorts, but it seemed to land on him without leaving a scratch. Fidgeting uselessly with her fingers where they rested on her knee, she tried again.

"...What's it like, where you live, Woo Tae-shin-ssi?"

"You want to know?"

"...No, not particularly."

"Then never mind."

mercifully, he didn't press further. He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes, arms still crossed.

...Was I overreacting? Did his jab get under my skin?

No—even if it had, there was no choice. The secret she and Granny Yoon-hwa had guarded stubbornly, just the two of them, had to stay beyond his reach.

She had come to him with an innocent face, asking for help—but perhaps Tae-shin had been suspicious from the very start.

Suspecting that the mansin who had withdrawn from the world for over twenty years might, in truth, be nothing more than an empty shell.

He had come here for one reason alone: to borrow Granny Yoon-hwa's power.

So if he discovered it was a counterfeit... how exactly would Woo Tae-shin react?

Lee-seol gave up on the thought and squeezed her eyes shut.

Before she knew it, dinnertime was nearly upon them. Far in the distance through the window, the front gate of Sehwawon came into view. Standing at the gate, upright and unmoving as a withered tree, was Granny Yoon-hwa.

Even with a stretch of distance still between them, the back of Lee-seol's neck went taut. She could feel it, vivid and whole—the old woman's chill, narrowed eyes fixed squarely on her.

She's furious. Without a doubt...

A shiver of dread crawled up her spine. Lee-seol braced herself for the reckoning that was about to fall on her head.

"Seems the elder is in quite a temper."

Watching her, Tae-shin smirked and dug the knife in with perfect calm. It displeased her greatly, and Lee-seol bit her lip and released it.

Soon the car glided to a gentle stop. Before the door had even opened, Granny Yoon-hwa was striding straight toward the vehicle.

"Don't tell me you went down to the village?"

The instant Lee-seol stepped out of the car, Granny Yoon-hwa was upon her, firing off the accusation without granting her so much as a moment to explain. Lee-seol's voice shrank to a crawl.

"...Yes, Granny."

"Did I not tell you plainly not to go off doing foolish things!"

The old woman exploded without rhyme or reason. Her head had already felt ready to split from everything that had happened earlier, and now Granny was bearing down on her savagely besides—her mind was in complete disarray.

What did I do wrong? Nothing that serious, really. What I gave Woo Tae-shin was, in its own way, goodwill—and I kept the secret with Granny airtight. So why is this what I come home to?

Everything was just so tiresome. Everything, every last bit of it, irritated her.

...Pull yourself together, Shin Lee-seol. The storm of emotion surging through her was strangely unfamiliar. Lee-seol dipped her head slightly and bit down on her lower lip.

"Elder. I'm the one who asked her to. I don't know my way around the village."

Tae-shin, utterly unbothered, shielded her with a hand resting lightly on her shoulder. But if anything, his protection only seemed to pour more oil on Granny Yoon-hwa's fire.

"Get inside. Now!"

Granny Yoon-hwa thrust out a gnarled index finger and pointed squarely at Sehwawon.

How strange. An unfamiliar rebelliousness was stirring, twitching to life in Lee-seol's heart.

"No answer?"

"...Yes, Granny."

Squeezing out a reply she didn't mean, Lee-seol trudged wordlessly toward Sehwawon.

A heavy atmosphere hung over the dinner table. It felt as though someone had set a boulder on top of her head. From the mouth of Granny Yoon-hwa—who ate with a face carved from granite—a stern command dropped.

"Lee-seol. You are not to leave the grounds for one week."

The decree fell equally on Tae-shin, who was calmly ferrying a slice of perfectly grilled beef to his mound of fluffy white rice.

"And you—if you have business, use the other servants. Not that girl."

"Understood."

Tae-shin answered with immaculate politeness. And yet, looking across the table at Lee-seol, he arched one brow ever so slightly and let a faint smile play on his lips.

His eyes glittered with a trace of mischief. It was the look of a boy standing on a sun-baked schoolyard, enduring the principal's endless lecture while wordlessly trading glances with a friend: isn't this unbearable?

In other words, it was a signal that he wasn't listening to a single word Granny Yoon-hwa said.

Strangely, a laugh threatened to bubble up at the corners of her mouth. Lee-seol lowered her head, gently, to hide the smile creeping upward.

In all her years under Granny Yoon-hwa's tutelage, not once had anything like this happened.

Until now, she had been a third presence wedged ambiguously between Granny Yoon-hwa and Woo Tae-shin—one hundred percent Granny's ally.

Yes, in the beginning, that was what she had been. It was the only way it could have been.

But what about now? The person she was silently communing with, the one she felt this unexpected kinship with—it was unmistakably not Granny Yoon-hwa, but Woo Tae-shin.

And strangely enough, she found she didn't entirely dislike it.