Chapter- 19
It felt like Sa-eon had been waiting for her. She was being observed without rest.
“You seem quite familiar with hotels, Hong Heeju.”
His deeply sunken pupils stabbed at her with remarkable intensity.
Heeju was indeed familiar with hotels. She had to accompany her third-generation chaebol sister a lot.
When she nodded obediently, the man’s expression twisted in irritation.
“Familiar, huh.”
He chewed on the word.
…Yes, I am. So what?
She nodded once again, this time more emphatically.
Baek Sa-eon gritted his teeth repeatedly.
Heeju stared blankly at his clenching jaw where Sa-eon’s veins would bulge and then disappear. Soon she followed him to the living room.
This was the top-floor suite with a panoramic view of Seoul.
“Now that the tears are gone, shall we have a talk?”
His voice was steeped in irritation for some reason.
‘Is it about the blackmailer?’
Baek Sa-eon kept fiddling with his Zippo lighter, clicking it open and shut. His face, in stark contrast to his fidgeting hands, was utterly cold.
“There were no signs of hacking on your phone.”
Finally, he closed the lighter and spoke, placing Heeju’s phone on the wooden desk.
‘Of course, it wasn’t.’
Heeju wasn’t surprised. The garter belt photo had been taken on the criminal’s phone, after all.
Her own phone was probably clean. There weren’t even many contacts saved on it, and the most anyone would find would be over-the-top texts from Director Han Joon at the center.
“But there were some suspicious traces.”
…What?
“That guy, Han Joon… What kind of person is he?”
“…!”
“Every other word in the message is ‘dear’ this, ‘dear’ that.”
Baek Sa-eon’s eyes narrowed as he noticed her dumbfounded expression.
“Sit.”
He pulled out a chair and commanded.
“Sit and answer with the keyboard.”
“…!”
“Because we’re about to have what some might call a conversation.”
Is he trying to get something out of me?
“It’s not an interrogation,” Baek Sa-eon replied sharply, clicking his tongue.
For someone who claimed not to have mind-reading abilities, he seemed like a liar.
“I’ve been targeted by a blackmailer recently. From your car to my office, even my father’s nursing home—they’ve meddled everywhere. Naturally, you’re in danger too.”
“…”
“That’s why I can’t let suspicious people slide by.”
Is he… talking about the director? While Baek Sa-eon’s reasoning wasn’t entirely off, it wasn’t completely accurate either.
The blackmailer was Heeju herself, though the hostage-taker was orchestrating it from behind the scenes. This complicated arrangement was giving Heeju a headache.
Reluctantly, she sat in the large executive chair. Soon, the blank white monitor was filled with her typed words.
<Director Han Joon is the head of a Sign Language Interpretation Center.>
“Director?”
He immediately latched onto the word.
<He has called me that since I was a kid.>
“How young were you?”
<After the car accident… when I was around nine years old, probably.>
Baek Sa-eon fell silent for a moment.
“So you let him?”
“…”
“Then what about me—”
His unusually slow speech made Heeju freeze.
“Whether with your hands or your voice, you’ve never once addressed me. So why let some old guy call you ‘dear’ without issue?”
His cold voice grazed her skin. Heeju hastily typed again.
<He’s not that old…>
“Don’t give me that nonsense. Do you think a 12-year gap is not old? Even a 6-year difference feels huge, and let alone 12…”
Suddenly, a harsh wrinkle formed on his brow.
“Hong Heeju, get a grip. No one else would bother putting up with someone as clueless as you. Where’s your sense of caution?”
Heeju stiffened.
How did he know Director Han Joonn’s age? Moreover, the six-year gap was exactly the difference between her and Baek Sa-eon.
This realization annoyed her even more.
People who had known her for a long time always treated her like a child. She was nearing 30, for heaven’s sake…!
“At the very least, you should’ve left no traces.”
Wait… Is he talking about the photo with garter belt?
“Looks like I underestimated you, Hong Heeju.”
Sa-eon leaned in close, resting his elbow on the chair. His warm breath brushed against her ear.
“When did the little girl with the yellow backpack grow up like this?”
With a loud thud, he slammed his fist on the desk.
“Hong Heeju, did you even get proper s3x education?”
“…!”
Heeju jumped out of the chair.
‘What is he even talking about?!’
“As your legal guardian, I’m asking. Did you learn at school or through hearsay?”
It was mortifying enough to have this conversation with Baek Sa-eon. Her face was about to explode in shame.
<I learned it properly at school…!>
“From the school nurse?”
<No, from an external instructor…>
“Then this time, I’ll bring in a specialist for you to learn properly again.”
‘What?’
“You have to learn it again.”
Sa-eon seemed to mutter a curse under his breath, but it went unheard by the already mortified Heeju.
“I don’t care about your personal life. But Hong Heeju…”
He clicked the Zippo lighter and muttered.
“You shouldn’t have gotten involved with someone shady.”
“…!”
Baek Sa-eon spun the chair around and leaned forward, gripping the armrest as if issuing a warning. Their eyes met at the same level.
“I could press you until you spill everything… what you’ve been doing, who you’ve met, how reckless you’ve been. I could make you confess every detail.”
“…”
“But I won’t. I won’t, Hong Heeju.”
As his pupils slowly contracted, he looked like a complete stranger.
“Because we’re nothing to each other.”
“…!”
“Don’t fool yourself into thinking we’re really married. I don’t think of you as such.”
“…”
“That’s one thing you shouldn’t be confused about.”
He closed his eyes tightly and spat out the words.
“So I won’t ask anymore.”
When his eyelids lifted again, all traces of emotion had been wiped clean. Only the indifferent emptiness that Heeju had always feared remained, oppressing her.
“Don’t push your luck.”
“…!”
“Even if we’re not married, tackling a child like you is no problem for me. If you don’t want every move controlled, take care of yourself.”
“…”
“If I hear about another incident where you’ve been stripped bare, even once…”
Baek Sa-eon left the frozen Heeju behind and stepped out onto the terrace.
He chewed on the cigarette for a while before finally lighting it. The thick, angry smoke swirled upward.
‘So the photo did bother him.’
If it upset him that much… Wouldn’t it have been better to just let her go…? Why endure all this frustration to stay in this sham of a marriage?
Heeju stared at the wall clock with a pale face.
Did they really need to maintain this hollow, degrading relationship? Was it worth crushing each other’s dignity like this?
Heeju’s expression began to harden visibly.
‘If only night would come quickly…’
She was no longer afraid of imprisonment or false accusations. His spirit, battered and bruised, had learned to endure.
She was desperate…desperate to make a call.
***
How much time had passed?
Someone broke the silence and rang the doorbell.
“…!”
But Baek Sa-eon didn’t move a muscle. So Heeju had to knock on the glass door.
‘Someone’s here.’
She pointed toward the door with a sullen expression.
Although he clearly understood her signal, the man simply inhaled his cigarette. Then, stepping closer to the glass, he exhaled a long plume of smoke into her face.
A transparent veil of smoke obscured her vision.
‘You j*rk!’
Heeju smacked the glass with her palm.
Baek Sa-eon let out a small chuckle and casually stubbed out his cigarette near where her lips would have been on the other side of the glass.
‘…!’
Even with the barrier of the glass, the act felt deeply insulting to Heeju.
The moment he crushed the cigarette butt, its crumpling edges were etched vividly in her mind.
Baek Sa-eon finally entered the room, walked past Heeju without a glance, and opened the hotel door.
An elderly gentleman with graying hair stepped inside.
“Why would you want this old man to run around…”
“You’re late,” Baek Sa-eon said curtly.
The faintly toxic scent of smoke lingered in the room.
Around the age of twelve, Heeju had caught Sa-eon in a neat school uniform, smoking a cigarette. She scolded him harshly, telling him to stop before storming off.
Since that day, this was the first time she found this stench on him.
As Baek Sa-eon stepped aside to let the elderly man in, the gentleman’s eyes widened.
“Oh, what a charming young lady.”
Heeju gave a slight bow awkwardly.
“This guy wouldn’t even listen to a word of my nagging about taking supplements…”
“Give a shot. That would make her cry less.”
“And here I thought it was strange that you called…”
Heeju tried to discreetly step away, but Baek Sa-eon blocked her with his arm. Before she realized it, she found herself being led naturally into the bedroom.
Moments later, she was lying down and receiving an IV administered by the doctor.
Perhaps she had been more exhausted than she realized; her mind soon began to drift into a haze.
As the voices around her grew fainter and fainter, Heeju was completely overtaken by sleep.
***
‘This… feels warm.’
A rough hand brushed her stray hair aside and the cold touch on her forehead felt strangely tender.
She wanted to open her eyes, but her heavy eyelids refused to budge.
Lost in her dreams, Heeju lingered on the blackmail call and the passage of time, replaying them endlessly in her head.
- TL/N:
I felt I should add this… The Director calls Heeju 자기야/ Jagiya= Honey, Sweetie, Darling, Baby etc. It’s a word used between married and unmarried couples genrally. That’s why people (like Sa-eon) might misinterpret it from a text. - I used <> to indicate the dialogues Heeju might have typed on the devices. As there’s a lot of inner monologues I didn’t want to make it messy.
