A Secret Named Dongbaek

Naturally, Lee-seol had her own yearning for the world outside. Try as she might not to harbor it, it would sprout of its own accord in some corner of her heart. There had even been a time when she believed that leaving, once the moment came, was simply the natural order of things—the way it went for everyone else.

But Lee-seol soon ran headlong into Granny Yoon-hwa's fierce opposition.

"Absolutely not. University is out of the question, too. What does a girl need with book-learning... Do you have any idea how many dirty bastards infest the world out there? Why go looking for hardship?"

Granny Yoon-hwa opposed Lee-seol's university enrollment and her move to Seoul with equal stubbornness. There was no need, the old woman insisted, to rack her brains jostling through the dust of the secular world; she should simply stay here, gaze at nothing but good and pretty things, and remain delicate and pristine.

There was only one way for Lee-seol to leave Sehwawon: to marry and become an outsider to the family.

Of all the sophistry—there had never been sophistry like it. Buried in a village where old people outnumbered children, facing nothing day after day but the same familiar faces, how on earth was she supposed to meet a man her own age, let alone carry things as far as marriage?

Nor was she particularly keen on love and marriage becoming mere instruments for leaving the nest. Marriage, if it ever happened, was something she wanted with someone she truly loved.

Even if she couldn't subscribe to Granny Yoon-hwa's antiquated creed that a woman need only be delicate and pretty, neither could she simply defy the old woman's will. Say what she might, this was the person who had taken in a girl with nowhere else to go and supported her in every way imaginable for a full twenty-one years. She had no intention of docilely obeying Granny's worn-out commands, but neither could she up and revolt, declaring she wouldn't stand for it.

In every respect, she was caught between a rock and a hard place.

Had she been certain she could live a better life out in the world, she might have pushed as hard as she pleased, but in truth that wasn't the case either. Wasn't it just a childish desire—wanting to see what she hadn't seen, to have what she hadn't had?

She was a little afraid, too. This humble country life she led here wasn't so bad, was it? Granny was right. There was no need to go out and borrow hardship...

Lee-seol often soothed herself with such sweet excuses. Even so, whenever a vague, unrelievable wistfulness stole over her, she would seize her mechanical pencil and scribble away in a frenzy. The heavy mass she carried inside only ever dissolved when it was hardened into language and released. As she wrote line after line across clean paper with a well-sharpened pencil, the suffocation in her chest would thaw, little by little.

She loved writing. It was the only moment in all of Sehwawon when she could feel change. She thought she might love forever the keen thrill of a pen gripped in her hand.

She had a respectable talent, too. The year she turned twenty, a piece she had entered in a mid-sized literary journal's contest won her the New Writer's Award, and through that connection she published two volumes of poetry. Royalties trickled in from time to time. She had secret money now—money she could spend without watching Granny's face.

That the young mistress of Sehwawon was none other than Dongbaek was an enormous secret known to no one in this world but Lee-seol herself. She had always written under a pen name.

Dongbaek.

It was Lee-seol's other name.

No one knew—not the household of Sehwawon, nor a single classmate from her elementary, middle, or high school days. Granny Yoon-hwa least of all. Lee-seol was terrified that the old woman might fly into a rage and order her to quit such nonsense on the spot.

Dongbaek was a kind of prop that let Lee-seol endure this stifling life at Sehwawon, and at the same time a means of diverting her suppressed desires into safer channels. And yet...

"We'll be seeing plenty of each other from now on, after all."

"..."

"Let's get along well, you and I."

Woo Tae-shin.

A man with the face of a gentleman, wearing an arrogance draped over his body like plate armor as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Suddenly she found herself recalling the deep dimple that had carved itself into his cheek. As though something had been set down on top of it, her chest felt terribly tight. In the end, Lee-seol rose from her seat and simply flopped down onto her bed.

When her eyes slipped open, it was somehow already evening. She must have fallen asleep right there on the bed.

Squinting at the bedside clock, Lee-seol rubbed her eyes, climbed out of bed, and padded down to the dining room on the first floor.

"Come on down quick, Miss Lee-seol!"

A lavish nine-dish table that Tongyeong-daek had wrought with all her kitchen magic was being set, dish by careful dish, on the polished cherrywood table. There was steaming clam and green laver soup, fluffy white rice, and a fragrant Korean spread built around fresh seasonal greens.

And at the table, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, sat Tae-shin.

At mealtimes, only two settings had ever been laid out—one for Granny Yoon-hwa and one for Lee-seol—but there were three on the table now. What was more, Lee-seol's place had been set directly across from Tae-shin.

Woo Tae-shin... so this man meant to dine with them, too. Lee-seol's brow creased faintly.

Of course, there was nothing particularly strange about sharing dinner with a guest who had come all this way. Granny Yoon-hwa had always treated visitors who made the journey to Sehwawon with generous hospitality, and Lee-seol had never once felt ill at ease because of it.

But perhaps because she still wasn't comfortable around him, the mood at the table felt somehow ominous. The one consolation was that Granny Yoon-hwa, if anything, seemed warier of him than Lee-seol was. One had only to look at the heavy silence that had settled over the table with its warm evening meal.

"I'd only heard tell you were handsome, but my, you surely are a striking gentleman, you are!"

Sensing the peculiar atmosphere of the meal, Tongyeong-daek had begun meddling in the only way she knew—chattering. Setting down a glistening grilled croaker in season, she kept stealing glances at Tae-shin while showering him with praise until her mouth went dry.

Then again, with the managing director of Haeun Construction—the man whose rumors had turned quiet little Eulju-ri upside down—sitting right before her eyes, it would have been utterly impossible for someone of Tongyeong-daek's temperament to let the moment pass without adding a word or two of her own.

Tae-shin wore the same clothes as before. Was it because he had undone one of the shirt buttons he'd kept fastened to the collar, or because his neatly combed-back hair had loosened a little? Something about his air seemed slightly different.

Even so, it felt less like a man gone slovenly and more like being granted a covert glimpse of the private face of someone who always lived by precise angles. That he was remarkably good-looking was something she had to admit, however grudgingly.

"You flatter me."

Though he took that blatant gaze full in the face, Tae-shin merely gave a bland nod, as if he'd long since grown calloused to looks like these.

"I simmered it up nice and hot with the green laver we got in just yesterday, but the mistress said she was hankering for it, so..."

Tongyeong-daek's chatter carried on the whole time she ferried side dishes over and arranged them across the table.

Thock. Granny Yoon-hwa set her barley tea cup down with a rough clatter, and her baleful glare pinned Tongyeong-daek to the spot. Oops. Tongyeong-daek's shoulders hunched high.

"If you've finished setting it, go on in now."

"Yes, yes'm..."

Tongyeong-daek, faltering, managed a clumsy, half-bent bow and vanished into the back of the kitchen as though chased out.

Ah-hem. With a long, dry cough, Granny Yoon-hwa picked up her spoon. Lee-seol followed suit, lifting her own. The uncomfortable dinner began.

Clink, clink. Only the small sounds of tableware meeting filled the dining room. An indescribable heaviness hung over the meal. Granny Yoon-hwa kept a stiff, stony face and did not open her mouth once, and Tae-shin, too, seemed silently absorbed in his food.

...I'm going to choke.

Her hand drifted to the water glass more often than usual. It had been a very long time since she'd sat through such an uncomfortable meal. Back around middle school, the day she came home later than promised after eating tteokbokki with friends at a snack shop near school, Granny's wrath had come crashing down on her—and the atmosphere then had been exactly like this.

But if she made a show of picking at her food at the table, a scolding was as certain as fire. Lee-seol had just teased off a tender morsel of croaker from the center of the table and laid it atop her rice when a low male voice sounded.

"Have the two of you always dined alone?"

Tae-shin's gaze was on her, and the question's destination seemed to be the same. Should she answer, or wait a moment? Caught in between, Lee-seol could only glance nervously back and forth. Fortunately, Granny Yoon-hwa answered in her stead.

"We did."

"It must have been lonely."

"Woo Tae-shin, was it?"

Granny Yoon-hwa snipped the idle chatter off at the waist. Tae-shin, without a trace of displeasure, kept his faint smile in place.

"Yes, ma'am."

"And just how long do you mean to stay here?"

Granny Yoon-hwa's voice was exceptionally sharp. When the old woman dropped one of her iron decrees, no one in the old manor could hold their shoulders straight. Even Old Man Baek, the groundskeeper who had served here longest, would yelp and tuck his tail without ever daring to put up a fight.

And yet, Tae-shin smiled.

As if there were nothing in the world for him to be wary of. Once more, the deep dimple carved itself into his cheek. Perhaps it was because he was the first person ever to wear such an expression in front of Granny when her temper was up.

It was unquestionably a handsome face without a single flaw, and yet, strangely, it left her feeling uneasy.