If We Had Never Married

“Your father in heaven must be turning in his grave. Just a chauffeur’s son? Song Yeon-ha, snap out of it. Know who you are and act like it. You’re an adult now—you should know better.”

“…….”

“It’s not that I dislike Je-yoon, but whether it’s dating or marriage, you’re in a position that demands caution. Song Yeon-ha. You.”

It was the reaction she had already expected.

At the time, the succession structure at Songhwa had been tilting toward her uncle Song Chi-hwan. Yet once Yeon-ha—the only child of the legitimate heir—came of age and entered Seoul National University with outstanding grades, voices supporting her had grown louder within the company as well.

To a mother who clung blindly to everything her father might have achieved had he lived, Yeon-ha was the sole remaining hope.

That was precisely why she had wanted even more desperately not to be found out.

Afterward, under her mother’s influence, Yeon-ha was sent to study in America. Je-yoon sometimes sought her out whenever he had schedules in the States, but that was all. Neither Je-yoon’s management nor the people Jang Eun-ju had stationed for close surveillance of her daughter wanted the two of them meeting. The days they could not see each other stretched longer, and under pressure from her grandfather and mother, Yeon-ha ended up working at the American branch.

Je-yoon, who had been working like a man possessed, abruptly enlisted when Yeon-ha stopped coming. Just before his discharge, the announcement of Yeon-ha and Kevin Lee’s strategic marriage was made.

So her feelings for him had become nothing more than a past that had already slipped by.

Je-yoon was family to her; their respective circumstances and realities simply did not permit her to think of him as a man.

“There’s a lot to do. Yeon-ha. Let’s work.”

Yeon-ha took her hand away from the ear she had been fiddling with and carefully arranged the samples into their case. The entire process was unusually slow. Just then, the phone on the living-room table began to ring. It was a call from Je-yoon.

“Yeah.”

Perhaps because she had just been dredging up the past, the sound of Je-yoon’s voice made something near her heart flutter for no reason at all.

“No. You?”

“Stay there. It’s more comfortable there, isn’t it? There’s a bed and everything.”

Uncle had always been like that. He would claim his son was so precious he could put him in his eye without it hurting, yet he remained clumsy when it came to expressing emotion. Every time Yeon-ha visited the hospital, Je-yoon’s press photos would be open on the uncle’s phone, but he was never the type to say anything embarrassing to his own son’s face.

Even so, perhaps because he had reunited with his father after so long, Je-yoon’s voice seemed a little buoyant.

Yeon-ha laughed without a sound.

She really had not slept properly; the dinner engagement scheduled for today was bound to be uncomfortable. How had he known?

“You heard that?”

A soft laugh finally slipped out of her. An answering laugh came from the other end of the line.

For all the words he used, they had lived together for years. He knew exactly what he was saying. Yeon-ha felt a small ache at the realization that Je-yoon was the only person who understood her heart, and at the same time a quiet relief that she still had somewhere to lean.

“Okay.”

“…Ghost.”

Yeon-ha rose from the chair and opened the refrigerator door. Eight pieces of inari sushi sat in a ceramic bowl. She took the bowl out, peeled off the plastic wrap, and put one into her mouth.

“Mm.”

The word came out mangled around her chewing. She had expected to choke, yet somehow it went down easily. Yeon-ha picked up another piece and put it in her mouth. Je-yoon simply listened in silence to the soft sounds of her eating until she spoke again.

Yeon-ha finished every last piece of the inari sushi he had made. When she told him she was done, Je-yoon answered in a proud voice.

“Okay.”

She was about to hang up when an urgent voice came from the other side. He kept insisting he could not trust she would actually brush her teeth and that she must not hang up, so in the end Yeon-ha had to set the phone beside her and brush while he listened.

“Isn’t Uncle sleeping? Hang up. It’s embarrassing having you listen to me brush.”

“We were kids then.”

“Was I? Wow… I’m already thirty. I even got married.”

Yeon-ha, sitting on the sofa, turned onto her side and rested her forehead against the backrest.

“Well… Probably still at the American branch, then come back to Korea and take over management rights?”

Yeon-ha slowly steadied her breathing and closed her eyes.

Probably… if my feelings for you had still been the same then, I might have confessed. I waited for you the whole time I was in America…

When the strategic marriage happened, I folded those feelings up and put them away in a drawer. If that marriage had never taken place… even if I had wanted to fold them, I wouldn’t have been able to.

Still. Even though I’m divorced now, I can’t bring myself to unfold that paper again.

When Yeon-ha did not answer, Je-yoon asked again whether she was sleeping. She chose not to reply and simply pushed the phone into the gap between the sofa cushions.

The tension that had gathered at her fingertips drained away, and the strange flutter inside her chest settled as well.

Yeon-ha, who had fallen asleep on the sofa, opened her eyes to the sound of an alarm. The surroundings were so quiet that Je-yoon clearly had not returned yet.

The first thing she checked upon waking was his presence. Yeon-ha shook her head at the puzzling state of affairs.

When she checked her phone, messages from Je-yoon were waiting.

Whether it was jet lag or something else, the timestamp next to the messages read four in the morning. He would have gone to sleep sometime after that, so he was probably still asleep now.

“I should wash up and head to the workshop first.”

Yeon-ha set the phone down and walked toward the bathroom.

Je-yoon pushed his stiff body upright. What was wrong with this VIP-room bed that it felt more uncomfortable than Noona’s sofa? He grumbled inwardly and wanted nothing more than to get to Yeon-ha’s house as soon as possible.

He had only come because Noona told him to show his face; with the daily video calls his father made, there was no chance of forgetting what the man looked like.

Feeling a sharp gaze on his back, Je-yoon deliberately yawned with exaggerated volume, making it abundantly clear that sleeping here was exhausting and that he would be leaving soon.

“So why sleep here!”

At Go Eun-jung’s shout, Je-yoon—who had slept in a white hoodie and light jeans—stretched and rose. What a fine son he had raised. Go Eun-jung looked at him with quiet pride.

“Ah… nagging the second I wake up. Aren’t you in pain? Looks like you could be discharged already. You seem healthy.”

But Yeon-ha… Even when he first heard of Yeon-ha’s marriage, and even when he learned of the divorce before anyone else, Go Eun-jung had never told Je-yoon.

They were no longer the little kids from back then, so he simply watched the two of them from one step behind.

“Why?”

Je-yoon, who had opened the bathroom door while washing his face, glanced over.

“Do you like Miss Yeon-ha that much?”

“You already know. Why ask?”

Je-yoon roughly wiped the water from his face with his palm, grabbed whatever skin lotion was on the shelf beside the bed, and applied it haphazardly.

Youth really was something. He could slap it on like that and not a single pore showed. Go Eun-jung felt proud all over again and carefully kept his expression blank. Even he was startled every time he looked at his own son; the way the hospital turned upside down whenever Je-yoon appeared was nothing new.

“Don’t impose on the young lady. Go sleep at a hotel at least.”

“At times like this Song Yeon-ha seems like Go Eun-jung’s daughter. How can the two of you be so alike?”

He paused for a beat, then furrowed his brow.

“No. Cancel that. Can’t be Go Eun-jung’s daughter. Crazy bastard.”

Je-yoon lightly smacked his own mouth.

“Anyway, I really am the son who came because he was worried Dad would feel left out.”

“The young lady told you to go, didn’t she.”

“What? No she didn’t. I came because I was worried you’d feel left out.”

“Left out? Thanks to my outstanding son the whole hospital is in an uproar. Even this morning the nurses and doctors kept coming in and out—so attentive it was almost overwhelming. Huh?”

It was not all that different from when they had not known he was Je-yoon’s father, but the increased number of checkups was no illusion.

“I was going back to Noona’s house anyway.”

“Sleep somewhere else…!”

“No. I sleep better at Noona’s place.”

“Sigh… You brat…. What if someone catches wind of it, huh? What are you going to do if the young lady ends up in trouble?”

“That won’t happen. I hate making Noona troubled more than anyone.”

“By the way, how does the young lady seem these days? Divorce news was still coming out even yesterday….”

“I don’t look at the internet much lately.”

Of course it was a lie.

He had hunted down every single article because hearing about Yeon-ha’s divorce made him happy. The only problem was that every piece that appeared alongside her name also carried Kevin Lee, Kevin Lee. Every time that name showed up he simply wanted to drive his fist into that face.

Je-yoon frowned down at his phone. He had pinned their chat room at the very top of his favorites and even pulled a separate shortcut onto his home screen, yet there was still no red notification dot.

Read and ignored….

“Then what are you staring at so hard?”

“Noona read my texts and left me on read.”

“Don’t go demanding replies from busy people. Huh? I almost broke up with your mother chasing after her like that. Do you know how pretty your mom was? Those eyes of yours are pure our—”

Here we go again. His mother had been gone more than twenty years and the man still lived in old memories. Je-yoon nodded absently and shot off brief replies to only the work-related messages among the pile.

“Anyway, you don’t have to come to the hospital so often. All right?”

“You’d like it more if I came with Noona.”

“The young lady is welcome anytime. But if she shows up here, strange rumors will start flying. What kind of relationship they have, or whether she’s mixed up with you… So tell the young lady not to come either. Understood?”

Je-yoon’s eyebrow tilted at a crooked angle without a word of reply. The little “1”s on the messages he had sent during the conversation were vanishing in rapid succession.

His fingers moved faster. Je-yoon chewed on his lower lip as the numbers disappeared the moment he sent each message.

Go Eun-jung let out a hearty laugh at the sight of his son floundering, hopelessly sunk into one woman—as if anyone could doubt whose son he was. But the smile vanished just as quickly.

It had been not long after Je-yoon entered high school, on a day when modeling offers had begun pouring in.

“Director Go.”

“Yes, Madam.”

“Would you like to send Je-yoon abroad to study? He does well in school, and for modeling work overseas would be better, don’t you think?”

Jang Eun-ju, the junior madam of Songhwa, had suddenly proposed overseas study for Je-yoon—under the guise of sponsorship.

“…I’m grateful just for the offer.”

“That’s not what I mean. All right, I’ll be frank. Yeon-ha and Je-yoon are too close.”

“…….”

The time the two of them spent stuck together had increased noticeably. When they were little it had not mattered, but as the children grew older it became impossible not to notice. Sometimes they even closed the door while they were in a room together. When he asked Je-yoon about it, the boy said he was learning English from Yeon-ha.

It had not been anything to worry about seriously, yet he had still told him he hoped they would not create unnecessary misunderstandings. After that, Je-yoon kept the door open for their English lessons.

Even so, rumors that the two of them might be dating circulated among the household staff. Everyone kept quiet around the junior madam for fear of a careless slip of the tongue.

Go Eun-jung managed his expression and offered an awkward smile, but Jang Eun-ju did not smile back. She was serious. Setting aside the difference in status, Je-yoon was still a high-school student while Yeon-ha was already an adult.

Talk of Yeon-ha’s strategic marriage had already begun circulating within the family. She was still young, but foundations had to be laid now if there was to be no noise later; it was a critical period.

Jang Eun-ju had always watched her daughter carefully. She believed the feelings would disappear on their own. Her daughter had ambition and was realistic.

She had to reclaim her father’s place, after all.

She had been certain of it.

But she had overlooked Je-yoon.