Hope
Even as she stepped out of Hyeonwol-dang, the shamaness's face lingered, vivid and unshakable—those eyes that had locked onto hers and refused to let go.
She had wanted to ask what that meant. She couldn't. Had the woman sensed the pregnancy? Even as she told herself that was impossible, she couldn't shake the crawling unease left by that piercing gaze.
As Yeon-jae approached the sedan, the rear window rolled down and Myeong-hee appeared.
"The talisman?"
"Here it is."
Myeong-hee took the envelope she held out and slipped it into her handbag.
"Start practicing piano at the foundation soon. Come back. Two months was enough last time, wasn't it?"
"I'm quitting the piano—?"
Myeong-hee's eyes snapped up, sharp as a blade, and Yeon-jae had to swallow the rest of the sentence.
Then a ringtone cut through the car without warning.
"Oh my—ahem. Hello?"
Myeong-hee cleared her throat and slipped into a voice of liquid warmth.
"Have you been well? In-laws already? Oh, please. I'm just fine. I had a bit of business—I didn't even notice the phone."
Yeon-jae took a step back from the sedan and watched the woman on the call. The face that had been pouring venom at her without restraint was now wreathed in a smile, as if none of it had ever happened.
"That's right. How about the engagement ceremony around next month?"
The word landed strangely, and Yeon-jae blinked. Then her light brown eyes began to tremble, helplessly, with nowhere to go.
"By next month his condition should have recovered, and a month is plenty for the preparations. The children can decide the details themselves."
"......."
"Of course. I'll tell Representative Gu to prepare thoroughly. Yes, yes. Take care."
In-laws. Engagement ceremony. Representative Gu.
Yeon-jae's whole body began to shake. A terrible what if took root, and it felt as though her heart were being wrenched from the ground up.
Myeong-hee finished the call with a string of affectionate farewells.
"You're still here? Ask Secretary Joo about coming back. Let's go."
She set down her phone, and her gaze found Yeon-jae—looked at her as if she were pitiful—then turned away.
The engine turned over. Watching the car begin to move, Yeon-jae reached out and caught hold of it.
"What are you doing?"
Myeong-hee's brow furrowed deep. At Yeon-jae's sudden lunge the car jerked to a halt, and even the driver in the front seat looked startled. His voice, saying it had been dangerous, never reached her.
"D-Director. What do you mean by an... engagement ceremony?"
Yeon-jae's voice trembled without end as she asked. The person Myeong-hee called Representative Gu was only one man. Gu Je-heon. The man she loved, who had been sleeping for two months.
"The Representative—did he perhaps..."
Did he wake up?
She was shaking too hard for the words to come. Her eyes darted, restless, unable to settle. Watching her, Myeong-hee wrinkled her nose and let out a snort of laughter.
"Do you still like our Je-heon?"
Yeon-jae's pupils widened, slowly, then all at once.
"I've known for a long time that you liked my son. But you need to know your place. Why are you curious about my son at all?"
It had been a ten-year unrequited love—hidden from everyone, kept only in her heart. She had believed Je-heon was the only one who knew, and so the fact that Myeong-hee had noticed stunned her, if only for a moment.
"And Yeon-jae—that isn't love. It's obsession. Je-heon would be frightened if he knew you were like this. How can anyone love someone for ten years?"
With a single sentence, she condemned that love as obsession.
"Je-heon is getting engaged. Next month."
A silence so complete that even the sound of her own heart was enormous. In that hush, the heartbeat that had been gathering speed began to pound, rough and wild. But the fact of his engagement could not reach her. Something far more important was tearing through her mind.
An engagement meant only one thing. Yeon-jae swallowed and waited for the words that would follow.
"He woke up, my son. So give it up."
At Myeong-hee's venomous follow-through, the rims of Yeon-jae's eyes burned hot. The bleak world began to break open, light seeping in by degrees.
He had woken up. The baby's father.
After Myeong-hee had gone, Yeon-jae staggered toward Min-yeong. There was no time to compose her face the way she usually did.
"Min-yeong, is it true? That the Representative woke up?"
"Yes. He'll probably be discharged today."
Min-yeong said it as if it were nothing, drawing out a tablet and tapping the screen.
"When can you start coming to the foundation? The Director said to keep the practice room open. Let me know a time that works."
Min-yeong seemed to be trying to pin down her schedule. But the foundation, a return to the piano—all of it had long since evaporated from Yeon-jae's mind. Emotion surged up her throat, and she covered her mouth.
He had woken up.
Yeon-jae clasped her trembling hands together and drew them down over her face. A great deal had happened in a single day, but Je-heon's news was fierce enough to set every other thing aside.
It had been only a year since a ten-year unrequited love had, at last, been answered.
"Jeong Yeon-jae. I told you to go meet someone your own age."
The low voice seeping into her ear made Yeon-jae flinch. The downpour had blurred her vision, but the voice itself was terrifyingly clear. The name she had wanted so badly to hear crushed her chest that day.
"Have I... really never been a woman to you? Ha—never mind. I don't need an answer. Then why did you come looking for me like this?"
Rain soaked into her hair and traced the soft line of her jaw. The rain kept coming, soaking her clothes through, and still she could not move. Watching the man who did not so much as twitch—while she herself was being swallowed by a despair without end—Yeon-jae smiled, bitter and thin. It was only her clothes getting wet, and yet her voice sounded even more sodden.
From the age of sixteen, when she first met him, until she turned twenty-one, Je-heon had been her entire world. Even when she was told not to like him. Even when the words came like a warning to go and date boys her own age, her heart only burned hotter.
"Why do you drive people this crazy? Won't you be satisfied until you've latched onto me for good?"
Emotion surged, and Yeon-jae bit down on her lip. She had never started this hoping he would notice. It was a heart that was supposed to like him until it broke on its own and folded itself away. She already knew well enough—he didn't have to come here and cut her with those sharp words.
"Yes. Sleep with me once. Then I won't hover around you anymore."
So she spat out something she didn't mean. If this was a bond that was going to end anyway, she wanted to see it through to the finish.
Gravel crunched underfoot as he came toward her. And until he told her not to regret it—until his hand roughly caught her chin and tipped it up—she had believed that was how it would be.
His large hands cupped her face, and the umbrella he'd been holding fell to the ground. The rain kept pouring, soaking them both, and still their locked mouths would not come apart.
The relationship that began with that impulsive kiss was a little strange. A day. Two days. Three months. A year. What she had believed would be a single night kept going. Even if they were only mixing bodies and nothing more, she wanted to hold on.
They ate together. They went for drives. And when their eyes met, they went to bed. It took a full year to understand that that was what lovers did. That she had not been, to him, something as small as a speck of dust.
"Please come. It's my first recital. I want to receive flowers from you."
"You're asking for a lot."
"You have to. Don't be late. I have something to tell you. Something important."
Before her first solo recital, Yeon-jae left the best seat empty and waited. When the performance was over, she wanted to tell him there was a child. She waited with a trembling heart. In the end, the man did not come. No—he could not come. He had been in an accident on a rain-slick road, and he had not woken up.
She never imagined that a debut performed in a storm of praise would be her last time at the keys. Because of it, Yeon-jae reached a point where she could no longer play at all.
Through eyelashes that trembled as they lifted, her brown eyes showed. But now—he had woken up.
Light kindled at last in the two eyes that had been empty all day.
I have to go.
Whether he had truly woken. Whether he was all right. She was filled with only one thought: she had to go and see with her own two eyes.
"I need to adjust the schedule in advance, so... Yeon-jae?"
"I'm sorry. Let's talk later."
Leaving the approaching secretary behind, Yeon-jae turned. She ran for the main road and threw out a hand toward an oncoming taxi.
"S Hospital, please."
The hospital she had visited more times than she could count. And yet she had never once been allowed through the door. The man was her sponsor's son, and she was nothing more than an employee working under Myeong-hee—a girl who had grown up on that sponsorship and now lived beneath it.
She had always circled in front of his room and gone back again. But today she would cross that threshold. Because now there was a reason she had to find the courage.
Yeon-jae gently stroked the curve of her belly.
Baby. They say Daddy woke up.
At the first words she had ever spoken to the child, emotion surged up through her. The thought that this baby had come to her when she was ready for nothing, and was suffering for it. But it was all right now. Because he had woken up.
Repeating that it would be all right, Yeon-jae clasped her hands together. Hoping the faint tremor in them would not reach the child.
Yeon-jae stepped out of the elevator and walked the long stretch of corridor. Even before she saw Je-heon, the stir of people and the medical staff posted in front of the room told her everything. He really had woken up.
She took each step with difficulty, barely holding onto legs that wanted to give. The closer she drew to the room, the more fiercely her heart slammed against her ribs. And then, at last, she stopped in front of the door.
Through a gap open wide enough for a fist, the room showed. Even among the medical staff filling it, what caught Yeon-jae's gaze was a single man. A man sitting up against the bed. The man who had always lain with his eyes closed was looking at someone and speaking. He furrowed his brow, then nodded.
Yeon-jae's eyes went round, widening. The tip of her nose burned, and slowly, tears began to well.
It had been a full two months. Two months since she had seen Je-heon's eyes—dark as ink.
He was a man she had always had to meet in secret. She could whisper love only in hidden places, and she knew perfectly well that that was her place with him. But a heart that outran all such reason pulled her feet forward.
"Then after you're discharged, I'll come to your home regularly for checkups. You've been through a great deal."
The gathered staff bowed toward him as one. Then they began to file out, and the door swung wide. They glanced strangely at Yeon-jae standing guard in front as they passed. As if something had taken hold of her, she walked into the room.
In the emptied space, only his secretary and Je-heon remained.
"Will you go straight home?"
"I should. I have to go to the Gu-il Mansion this evening, so I'll rest first."
The secretary standing beside him lifted his head at the sense of someone approaching. His eyes went wide at the sight of Yeon-jae coming in from the front. He looked as if he might come toward her—but in Yeon-jae's vision there was only Je-heon.
She dragged forward on legs that threatened to give at any moment, toward the man sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her, fastening the cufflinks of his shirt.
"Ms. Jeong Yeon-jae?"
The secretary's voice rang through the quiet room. And as Je-heon turned, slowly, their eyes met in the air between them.
Looking straight into that gaze, Yeon-jae's heart clenched tight. Then a feeling rose in her chest until it ached, thick and overwhelming, and she bit down on her lip. The distance of only a few steps felt as far as a thousand kilometers.
She had been so afraid this man would never wake.
But the moment she saw him, every fear melted away like snow.
He really woke up. Gu Je-heon.
The rims of her eyes burned hot.
"...... Representative."
And with the voice she barely managed to find, she kicked off the ground.