CHAPTER 2
Three years ago.
With an anxious expression, Sujin waited for the man to arrive. He was arriving an hour and a half earlier than the appointed time. As she shifted her impatient gaze, she saw beyond the large window the sparkling river flowing.
“……”
The place she was in was a quiet mansion. Surrounded by mountains at the back, the air was clear, making it a good place for Sujin, who had a weak body, and it was planned to be their honeymoon house after marriage.
Anything related to health was something her mother, who was unusually sensitive when it came to health matters, readily accepted the man’s proposal, so Sujin had no objections. In fact, a house like this was fine with her.
What was really important was…
―!
Far away, a large grandfather clock rang out with a solid yet cheerful sound, echoing through the spacious area.
Please…
Sujin closed her eyes tightly, praying desperately for her trembling heartbeat to be drowned out by the sound of the clock. It might be difficult to bury even resentment for this situation that seemed like a cruel twist of fate.
Why. Why did it have to be him of all people?
She begged that it wouldn’t be him, anyone but him.
Sujin bit her lips until they turned pale, trying to suppress the tears welling up in her eyes.
It was unbearable. To reunite with her first love after seven years in such a state.
“……”
Sujin tried squeezing her right leg, which didn’t respond well no matter how hard she tried. Inside her trembling palm, cold sweat seeped out.
The night she lost her fiancé in a car accident. It was the cruel scar left by that night.
She couldn’t hide the fact or the scar, but she arrived an hour and a half early because she absolutely didn’t want the man to see her limping.
“I’ll sit here.”
“How could I host such a distinguished guest like you here? If you’re tired, I’ll support you to the reception room.”
“It’s really okay. Thank you.”
She rejected the maid’s suggestion to lead her to the reception room deep inside the mansion and chose to sit near the entrance and the dining table for the same reason.
After the conversation, she struggled to get up and didn’t want to show a pathetic figure moving sluggishly.
Even though she knew it was futile, she wondered how she would endure it in the future with just the thought alone being agonizing.
“……”
Sujin closed her eyes with a miserable expression as if crumbling in her seat.
Tick-tock.
As her vision was blocked, she could still hear the ticking of the grandfather clock vividly in her ears. Her mouth was dry, her chest felt like it would burst, and her breath reached the tip of her nose.
It’s okay. It’s okay.
It’s nothing. It will pass.
She had always tried to endure somehow with the words she had repeated like a mantra whenever she felt sick since she was young, but it was of no use.
“Haah, ha……”
In the end, Sujin leaned her slender body against the table, gasping for breath as if collapsing onto it. Her long, glossy black hair swayed messily around her head.
As her lips were pressed tightly below her white nose, the days of struggling through her lips seemed to have turned into breaths leaking through her lips.
Two years of rehabilitation therapy since the car accident.
Surviving was a miracle in itself, but Sujin’s life had never been smooth since then.
All she had left from enduring the hellish time from the age of twenty-three were the indelible scars and the stigma of society.
The unfortunate accident that took her fiancé and crushed her right leg was attributed to Sujin’s fate by people without hesitation.
“I feel sorry for her. How could such a thing happen? On the night when she publicly announced her engagement to the whole world, her fiancé died. The fate is really cruel.”
“Why, isn’t it said that women who eat men are determined by their palmistry? Even though she was bedridden from a young age, she miraculously recovered and survived.”
“Tsk tsk, if you’re the daughter of the wealthy Cheongrim Group and a virtuous woman, what else could you expect? Now she’s going to live a life of misery with a lucky woman, leaving behind the only son of the uncompleted Da Jin Group.”
Elderly people openly spoke with disdain, attributing Sujin, the youngest daughter of the weak Cheongrim Group, to having ‘eaten’ the son of the Da Jin Group.
“Anyway, Lim Sujin has been unlucky. Even if the road to marriage is blocked, it’s completely blocked. Now that this has happened, what man will marry her in the future?”
Even young people without outdated thinking reflexively shook their heads, wondering from which household they would take a woman with such complicated fate.
“……”
Sujin knew better than anyone the gaze of society looking at her, and rather than blaming it as cruel, she accepted it calmly as if resigning herself to it.
Having grown up in a world where arranged marriages were common and having publicly celebrated her engagement with her fiancé, the accident that happened was natural for people to see her with cautious eyes or to consider her in a worse situation than a divorcee.
But Sujin’s mother was different.
“Sujin. Don’t listen to nonsense, don’t even think about it or say it out loud. Do you understand?”
She could never easily pass over her mother’s warm gaze and harsh words towards her pitiful daughter. It was a natural reaction as a mother with a child.
“Everyone just wait and see.”
Sujin’s mother kept repeating to herself that she would clearly show everyone how well her daughter was living with a good household and a marriage.
It was a different position from her father, who wanted Sujin to marry into a family with a decent job even if it wasn’t a prestigious one, instead of being tied to her parents after marriage.
“Why does our Sujin have to live as if she doesn’t exist? Don’t you feel ashamed to show our daughter in public?”
“No. I don’t mean that…”
He thought that as long as his pitiful daughter didn’t need to be talked about more by people, it was enough, but since his irrational wife shot fiery glances and lashed out like a madwoman, he didn’t interfere.
Sujin’s mother also scolded her husband for not understanding, but she couldn’t deny the fact that it was difficult to match her daughter with a family of similar status.
Before she knew it, she began to seek a match with middle-class companies. It was her thought of using the power of Cheongrim to elevate her son-in-law’s family to the level of a conglomerate.
“……”
Looking at her mother with a venomous face searching for a scapegoat, Sujin merely bit her lips every day.
She didn’t want to face her like this. At the worst time in her life, in the worst way possible.
“No, why is she like this?”
Sujin’s mother tried desperately to comfort and persuade her daughter, thinking she didn’t want to marry for some reason.
“Sujin, they say they don’t care about anything as long as you’re okay with it
. Who are you to them? Why wouldn’t they agree?”
It was a way of saying that people like Hanyoung would never dare to oppose Cheongrim.
If it weren’t for Sujin’s misfortune, it would have been an inevitable fate.
No one would have ever reached such a level if it weren’t for the weight of the conditions. From their side, ignoring rumors and even embracing Sujin was not only natural but also a sign of respect.
“I really don’t want to get married. Please…”
Even though she knew, Sujin begged her mother. She couldn’t bear the misery because she knew exactly why the other person was willing to accept her.
“Ah, this is all my fault. Because I couldn’t give birth to you healthy… Made you suffer all your life…”
Her mother, who had always embraced her with endless love no matter how painful it was, now wept bitterly, blaming herself for everything. If only she had given birth to her healthy, none of this misfortune would have happened.
Just as the accident wasn’t Sujin’s fault, the weight of her life wasn’t her mother’s fault either. But could any parent in the world separate that?
“No. It wasn’t you. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
Sujin swallowed her tears as she leaned against her weeping mother.
“I’ll do it like that.”
And so, Sujin couldn’t overcome her mother’s tears this time either.
As always.
