A Living Hell
Yeon-jae stared at Je-heon as he held his silence, her fingers tightening until they ached. She clutched the fabric of his clothes as if it were reason itself, crumpling it without end in her fist.
"That isn't true, is it? What are you saying? You and I—we loved each other. Do you really not remember?"
He said nothing.
"This too. The key! You gave that to me."
Yeon-jae bent quickly and snatched the master key from the floor.
"We were here together. Don't you remem—"
"This delusion of yours is genuinely creepy."
It lasted only a moment. Everything she had been pleading for was cut short by Je-heon.
"I know your type. Find yourself a rich man and climb. Thought I'd be an easy mark because I lost my memory? Lovers?"
His mouth twisted, and a sneer spilled out.
"Go on, then. Why not say there's a kid, too, while you're at it? See if I so much as blink. If you wanted to latch onto me, you picked the wrong man, Jeong Yeon-jae."
Yeon-jae could not speak.
"You've been living off my family so long you think that makes us close."
Every word was a thorn, and each one drove itself into Yeon-jae's heart.
A pain of an entirely different order from anything she had ever heard from Myeong-hee came flooding in. It felt as though her heart were being torn to shreds, and Yeon-jae bit down on her lip. If she did not, she was certain her legs would give out beneath her.
"And if I am pregnant?"
The suppressed voice leaked through lips that had twisted open.
"It's true I had nothing. It's true I learned and grew this far because of the Gu-il Foundation. But I have never done a single thing I couldn't hold my head up for."
He did not answer.
"I really am carrying a chi—"
"You're insane. You've completely lost it."
A low voice, laced with a scoff, cut her off.
"You thought I'd just take your word for it if you said you were pregnant? Do I look that easy to you?"
He closed the distance in a single step, his eyes flashing sharp. The man was so tall she had to lift her face to meet his gaze, and the murderous light he gave off tore through Yeon-jae's heart.
This was not the man who had whispered love to her for a year.
The loathing circulating in his eyes told her everything. Nothing she said would ever reach this man.
"Get out. Before I call the police."
"I'm not lying! I'm really not!"
Her body was dragged toward the front door. Even as she was shoved back, helpless, her eyes never left Je-heon.
"Je-heon, you'll regret this. You'll know when your memory comes back."
Even as she spat the bitter words, her eyes were full of longing. For the sake of the child in her womb, she wanted to hold onto this man by any means she could.
"Regret? As if I would."
But every last scrap of hope shattered.
He pulled the master key from her hand with finality. And in an instant, Yeon-jae's body was shoved outside the front door. Through the slowly closing gap, she could still see him.
Please look back. It isn't what you think.
Yeon-jae reached toward the door, but then it shut.
The sound of a glass being set down, and then a presence nearby. Her neatly curled lashes lifted, and Yeon-jae's light brown eyes took in the scene before her.
It was Min-yeong.
"Are you all right? You don't look well."
"The director's call seems to be running long. You could always come back later."
"It's all right. I'll wait."
Yeon-jae dismissed Min-yeong's suggestion that she go home and try again. Then she closed her eyes once more. Her ears were ringing.
She hadn't made it home until dawn, and she hadn't been able to sleep even as the morning sun rose. A fever had been climbing since the early hours, her head throbbing—but the real pain was somewhere else.
She pressed a fist against the region of her heart.
The man who had driven words like daggers into it. She had gone to the residence because there was something she needed to tell him. She had found the courage to speak, and what she received in return was nothing but cold contempt. No matter how she protested, how she explained, none of it got through. In his eyes, Yeon-jae was already nothing more than a woman trying to use his amnesia to climb the social ladder.
Yeon-jae's hands wrapped around her belly.
The child was what she had stayed up all night agonizing over. The pitiful little life already nested deep inside her. If Je-heon was incapable of thinking rationally, then she had come here with the single-minded determination to tell Myeong-hee, at least. The woman regarded her with something close to horror—but a grandchild might be different.
"You can go in now. The director's finished her call."
At the voice again, Yeon-jae opened her eyes.
Standing before the door, Yeon-jae drew a deep breath.
From the age of sixteen, when she had entered the foundation, received its sponsorship, and begun to play the piano, until this very moment—she had come and gone from this bedroom countless times, and still it never became familiar. Whenever she had to enter this room, it was a day of brutal scolding. The methods varied. Objects thrown. Verbal abuse.
Perhaps because the memories were nothing but horrific, her hand tightened on the doorknob. After a deep breath she opened the door, and her vision gradually brightened with the morning sunlight pouring through the vast floor-to-ceiling windows.
She had come uninvited, so she was already bracing for the shout that would come.
"You're here. I heard you've been waiting a long time."
But the voice that slipped into her ear was utterly alien. So much so that she wondered if Myeong-hee had mistaken her for a different visitor.
"Jeong Yeon-jae."
At the voice again, Yeon-jae swallowed hard.
When she gave no answer, Myeong-hee, who had been standing with her back turned, finally faced her.
"While you're here, take a look at these. Which do you think looks better? Nothing's catching my eye. I've always been someone who only wore dresses."
A rolling garment rack stood in front of Myeong-hee. Yeon-jae's gaze slid across it and landed on the silk hanbok hanging there—traditional Korean formalwear, beautifully colored and luxuriously made. Myeong-hee lifted one with a lukewarm expression.
Unseen, Yeon-jae let out a small sigh. Seeing Myeong-hee uncharacteristically gracious, she thought it was fortunate, if anything. She had come intending to confess that she had been Je-heon's lover, and that there was a child.
"This color's all wrong, isn't it?"
"Director."
Yeon-jae's lips parted, and the voice that spilled from them scattered into the air.
"Do you still want a grandchild?"
Myeong-hee's hand, which had been lifting a hanbok from the rack, paused for a moment. After a fleeting silence, it began to move again.
"A grandchild? Of course I do. Do you know how much money I've poured into Hyeonwol-dang?"
Yeon-jae already knew that Myeong-hee wanted Je-heon to produce an heir.
Even without that, Myeong-hee pursued perfection to a degree that bordered on obsession. A single son—Myeong-hee would not tolerate a single blemish in him. That was why she was fervent enough to commission a shamanic rite at every opportunity.
So perhaps it would be all right.
Even if Yeon-jae herself was beneath their station, half the child's blood would be Je-heon's. And more than anything—if she could remain by his side. Even a small hope, she wanted to cling to it somehow.
Every time Myeong-hee went on speaking, Yeon-jae's heart clenched and swelled in turn. A grandchild she wanted so desperately—surely there was a sliver of hope. Yeon-jae tightened her clasped hands. Before she knew it, they were damp enough with sweat to feel clammy.
The car from Je-heon's accident had been wrecked beyond recognition; it had to be scrapped. The press had run banner headlines about how he had survived by a hair's breadth. After an accident that severe, after two months of unconsciousness, a temporary loss of memory was hardly strange. Most amnesia was short-term, and people recovered quickly enough.
Once his memory returns, everything will be resolved. If I can just stay beside him until then...
That was the hope she had been forging and nurturing in her chest.
"But that isn't about you."
Myeong-hee set the hanbok she had been examining down on the table with a snap. The gentle tone of just a moment ago changed in an instant.
Yeon-jae could not speak.
"You know how I'll come at you, don't you?"
At the weighty warning that reached her like a whisper, Yeon-jae squeezed her eyes shut.
It was the moment the hope she had been raising shattered into pieces along with them.