Chapter 18
Baek Tae-ju, who had been silent, slowly rubbed his furrowed brow.
"Yoo Ha-jin."
"Yes, Baek Tae-ju."
Perhaps because her nerves had been on edge the whole time, her response didn't come out softly. He continued in a flat tone.
"You must know how important your role is in this deal."
"I know..."
"If you know, then you should have avoided getting unnecessarily tangled up."
"......"
"Does this look like a joke to you?"
At those words, anger surged up uncontrollably.
"Watch your words."
At her coldly snapping tone, one of Baek Tae-ju's eyebrows twitched upward.
"A joke? It might be just some petty money squabble to you all, but you know exactly what I lost, and you're saying that crap?"
"Lower your voice."
"How the hell would I know who that guy is? You think I wanted to get mixed up with you like this from the start?"
"Yoo Ha-jin."
"You think I wanted to do this shit...!"
Drip-
Her head had been throbbing and pounding nonstop, and then, as if by magic, something thick dripped from Ha-jin's nose and splattered onto the floor.
The moment she saw the bright red blood drops falling in beads, she froze in shock. Her head had been aching and burning all along, and when it finally snapped with rising fever, disaster struck.
She'd never had a nosebleed in her life... With constant stress keeping her body tense and endless headaches plaguing her, it seemed her body was finally sending a warning signal. Stunned, Ha-jin reached for her nose, but Baek Tae-ju moved far faster.
"Ah, it's fine..."
"Stay still."
There was no hesitation in the way he cupped her nose with his hand and tilted her head down. This was a man who had an extreme aversion to anything messy or disordered...
Horrified as some of the blood stained his pristine white shirt cuff an ugly red, Ha-jin twisted her head to pull away from his hand, but Baek Tae-ju didn't budge an inch. In a stuffy, nasal voice, she mumbled softly.
"Let go, I said it's fine..."
"Unless bleeding's your hobby, shut up."
His low voice, laced with irritation, silenced her. Calmly pinching her nose and bending her upper body forward, Tae-ju led her into the bathroom attached to his room.
His body pressed so close the entire time—especially the faint, indefinable perfume scent wafting through the metallic tang of blood—made her stomach churn with nausea. Not because it was repulsive or unpleasant, but simply because he was too damn close.
"Tilt your head down more."
His low voice, still holding her, seemed to echo even louder in her ears. This wasn't the time to argue, so Ha-jin obediently followed his instructions. As she bent her waist further toward the sink, Tae-ju turned on the faucet. With one hand still firmly pressing her nose like acupressure, he used the other to wash away the messy drips from her face.
His movements were mechanical, as if he were simply performing a routine task, but Ha-jin felt her insides roiling without cease.
She'd never imagined this man capable of something like this. That she'd ever receive even the slightest gentle touch from him...
As she quietly mulled it over, a similar moment suddenly surfaced from a long-buried memory fragment.
Ah, there it was.
Swish—listening to the running water triggered an overlapping recollection.
A day when rain poured down like mad, just like the day Myeong-hyeon died. Lifting Ha-jin's face as she lay prostrate at her feet, wailing in despair...
"Do you want to find that bastard?"
She'd had a subordinate hold an umbrella over Ha-jin and, far more tenderly than expected, wiped the tear-smeared mess from her face with her thumb as she asked.
Plop—
A single drop of blood seeped into the water, trailing a strange tail behind it. Staring blankly at the pale pink-tinted water, Ha-jin recalled a very old memory she'd long forgotten.
***
Do-gongdong's Big Mom—or Do-gongdong's Big Sis.
That's what they mostly called Ha-jin's mom, more than her real name, Lee Soo-young.
Behind Do-gongdong, a neighborhood that developed far later than surrounding areas, there were still shabby cushion houses packed tight together, bars even smaller than teahouses, and spots where the 'sisters' waited for customers. Ha-jin's grandmother had been running a restaurant in that alley long before such places sprang up.
The gas station was gone now, but back then it sat just a short distance from the eatery. Drivers stopping for fuel, bus drivers, and cabbies naturally became regulars.
Grandma had a cranky streak, but her cooking was unparalleled. Word spread quickly, drawing loyal customers. When she passed on, Ha-jin's mom took over and kept the place going without ever leaving.
Around that time, the gas station vanished for some reason, replaced by a new building. Regulars dwindled sharply, and in their place, women who sold smiles and booze became the shop's new mainstay patrons.
"Those damn bar girls. They come and go, and the place reeks of makeup and perfume—enough to choke you."
After a gaggle of them filed in and out, Mom would gripe like that nonstop, but she'd sneak a smile seeing the spotless empty bowls they'd left behind.
Ha-jin's mom had no time for the women who voluntarily sold themselves in the alley chasing an easy life—she barely saw them as human. But she pitied those forced into it: sold off by families worse than beasts or dragged in as debt collateral, slaving away in misery.
Every now and then, she'd prepare all sorts of side dishes, package them up, and make sure they tucked them into their bosoms when they left.
Ha-jin's mom stuck around that alley for ages, eventually becoming the undisputed queen sis to everyone there. When rough-looking gangsters barged in to collect debts and raise hell, she'd beckon folks discreetly to the back door of the restaurant and hide them until the thugs cleared out. And if the bar's top madam got pissy about slow debt payoffs and smacked around some young girl or threw a tantrum, Mom threw an even bigger one.
"Hey! We're all barely clinging to life here—do you really wanna bully a kid who got sold off in place of her deadbeat dad's debts like that? What kind of trash pulls shit like this?"
Amusingly, by the time her boldness had earned her fame and a stellar rep in the alley, she was still shy of thirty.
Then one day, Ha-jin's mom fell head over heels in a blazing romance with a stranger whose background no one knew. He was the romantic type who wandered with an acoustic guitar, singing in every corner of the alley, catching loose change tossed into his empty case—barely scraping by one day at a time.
Handsome face, killer voice, sang like a dream. To a woman whose only male company in the alley had been foul-tempered, asshole thugs, he must've seemed like the ultimate prince. Legend had it Romeo and Juliet went from love at first sight, vows of eternal devotion, defying death itself, to double suicide—all in just five days.
Not quite that extreme or fiery, perhaps, but Mom and the man burned plenty hot.
One day, freshly past thirty, Mom learned she was pregnant with Ha-jin. Bursting with joy, she rushed to tell him the news.
He—Ha-jin's dad—was thrilled too. "Now that we've got a kid on the way, no more suffering for you," he said. He'd landed a job on a Seoul construction site and suggested they shack up together on the city's outskirts.
Five p.m. in front of Byeol-kkot Dabang. The only trace she left was a clumsily handwritten sign reading "Store for sale." Mom headed to the rendezvous with her meager belongings and waited for him.
But whether he'd gotten into an accident on the way or some other mystery, he never showed—no call, no nothing. From the broad light of day, as Mom waited under the scorching sun, wiping sweat from her brow, right on through to the pitch-black night. He'd stood her up cold.
That was when the conviction hardened: men couldn't be trusted, not a single one. In the end, Ha-jin's mom struck out alone for a grueling life in Seoul. Even with her belly swelling, she opened a side-dish shop hawking her cooking skills, lent a hand at the tailoring shop, mended and polished shoe soles—whatever it took.