Chapter 104

I quickly decided to abandon the idea of leaving right away. I wasn’t thinking of trying to talk to the director’s son. I had no right to interfere in someone else’s family matters, nor did I want to.

I didn’t know that much about the director’s son.

What I knew was that the relationship between the director and his son was terribly poor, and that the son had left home a long time ago and had not contacted him since.

I just wanted to see his face once.

I was curious about what expression he might be making.

It took a long time for the visitation to end. I waited with Chaerin for it to conclude. After having lunch at a nearby restaurant and returning to the lounge, quite a bit of time had passed, yet there was still no news.

I contemplated going back, but having waited this long, I thought I should at least see his face, so I ultimately stayed until the end.

It was late in the evening when I finally got to see his face.

“Ah….”

A man who entered the lounge sighed briefly upon seeing us.

He was too old to be called a young man, but still young enough to be considered middle-aged, looking somewhat tired.

Chaerin got up from her seat and approached him.

“Thank you for your hard work.”

“No, it’s the least I could do…”

“How was it?”

“I… don’t really know. There was no specific problem when I talked to him. He’s probably sleeping now.”

He was quite a different image from what I had thought.

Maybe it was because of the word “son.” I unconsciously thought he might be a younger man, but he wasn’t that young, and the fact that his relationship with the director was poor did not give off the negative impression I had expected.

He seemed old enough to be the head of a household, and instead of the face of a young son opposing his father, he wore the face of a tired working man.

Unintentionally, I found myself staring at him, perhaps rudely, when he soon turned his gaze towards me.

“Ah… I’m sorry.”

I apologized without even knowing what for. He didn’t seem angry with me, but he didn’t bring up any discussion about my apology either.

“Have you had dinner? If not, let me treat you to a meal.”

That was probably meant for Chaerin, and I didn’t particularly care whether we went out or not, but I nodded. I still didn’t know what I wanted to see from him.

He took both Chaerin and me outside the hospital. He asked if there was anything we particularly wanted to eat, but both of us said we were fine with anything. So, he just looked for a nearby restaurant to enter.

After placing our orders, he spoke first.

“I didn’t get to say much earlier because I was flustered. You are Chaerin, right? Thank you so much for helping my father.”

“No, it was only the right thing to do. Don’t mention it.”

Chaerin’s words held no aggression or harshness. Yet, from her response, I interpreted the phrase “Of course, it was something you should have done.” Chaerin certainly didn’t mean it that way, nor would the director’s son think so. It was just my twisted interpretation.

“Both of you… come from the orphanage my father ran, right?”

“Yes. It’s been quite a while since we all became independent.”

The man didn’t clumsily offer us any words of comfort. I couldn’t tell if that was because he was too busy, or if he knew we wouldn’t welcome such words.

“I’m sorry for the late introduction. My name is Kwang-min. As you know… I’m the director’s son.”

“I’ll introduce myself again. I’m Chaerin. And this is…”

“Seol-guk.”

“Thank you once again. This role should have originally been mine, and I’m sorry for putting you through a difficult task because of me.”

He was a person entirely different from my imagination. Even though he was the son of someone who had a poor relationship with his father, he was polite and ordinary enough. The dissonance was confusing, but that didn’t mean I could rudely throw any questions at him.

After all, he was someone who would soon lose his father.

Thankfully, he had a reason for inviting us to dinner. He began to open up about his feelings.

“I talked a lot with my father. I don’t know if you’re aware, but our relationship was not particularly good. We shared some old stories… and recounted times when we actually got along.”

Food arrived, but no one picked up their spoon.

“I’m terribly sorry to say this, but I actually didn’t like all of you—those from the orphanage—all that much when I was younger. I suppose I could say it was jealousy… you might find that hard to believe, though.”

“My father… was a good person. But he wasn’t a faithful family man. He spent more time at the orphanage than at home. As a child, I hated that. It felt like he was being taken away from me. He was my father, but it seemed like he liked you all more than his own son.”

“My mother also didn’t appreciate my father much. Unfortunately, they didn’t marry for love. Their marriage was a matter between families, and my mother had someone else she liked but was forced to marry my father. My father, it seems, couldn’t find value in loving someone who didn’t love him back. In any case, I resented my father and felt sorry for my mother.”

“I think both my parents were clumsy individuals. When I was young, I thought all adults were competent, but I wonder if back then, neither of them had quite grown up yet. If they had sat down face to face and talked deeper, more often, their relationship might not have deteriorated so badly.”

“My father was… an adult. I think what he did was remarkable, deserving of respect.”

“He was a respectable person, just not a respectable father.”

He suddenly rolled up his sleeve. There was a very large, long scar.

“Isn’t it ugly? It’s a scar from a car accident. My mother and I were in it together. I just ended up with this scar, but my mother didn’t. She shielded me, which caused her to get injured more severely.”

“After being taken to the hospital, she passed away that night. The only ones who witnessed my mother’s final moments were me and the doctor beside her. And that day, my father didn’t come.”

“I think fate dealt a cruel hand. On the same day, there was an accident involving a group of kids from the orphanage. They were all severely injured, but only one child was in a critical condition.”

…I knew this story. It was a few years after I had entered the orphanage. Even though it was a group, not everyone had gone. If I remember correctly, they had taken the older children for some event, so at least Chaerin and I would not have been included. I distinctly remember that the atmosphere at that time was quite bad.

“My father had to choose. Whose side would he stay by—his dying wife’s or the dying orphan child’s?”

“My father chose the child. Sadly, that child also died that night. I hated my father. At that time, I truly hated him so much that I wished he would die. My father said to me…”

‘You had your mother, but that child had no one but me.’

“I don’t know. I still don’t understand. Was that child more important than my wife even though he wasn’t his own? It wasn’t my father who was sacrificed; it was my mother and me.”

“Did he not think about the wounds I would carry because of this?”

He glanced at me for a moment.

“…I left home as soon as I became an adult and lived alone. I got married a few years ago. I have a daughter. She’s still a young child—not even old enough for elementary school. They say when you have a child, you can understand a parent’s heart, but I couldn’t understand my father’s heart. What he had wasn’t a father’s heart. It felt so precious—so precious, feeling like the most important thing in the world. How could my father have been like that?”

He poured himself a glass of water. What should have been water looked like alcohol.

“I’m not blaming you all. It’s not your fault, and even if it were, I wouldn’t have the right to say so.”

“Thus, I could only blame my father.”

“I talked a lot with him.”

“What did you talk about with your father?”

“My father… he cried. He said he was sorry. He apologized.”

“It’s not the first apology he’s ever given. He apologized before too. Yet, even while doing so, he just said it was necessary.”

“I still cannot forgive my father. When I came here, I wanted to yell at him. Even after twenty years, I couldn’t forget.”

“But… when I saw my father crying as soon as he saw me, I couldn’t bring myself to be angry. I just asked him why. He kept crying. I had never seen him like that before. He kept apologizing. So I wanted to ask him. Still.”

Do you still think you should have been there for that child?

“I didn’t ask. In the end, I couldn’t ask him. It felt like too cruel a question. If my father had said that he should have been there for that child, I would have had to continue harboring hatred. Even if he had said he should have been with my mother, my resentment wouldn’t have gone away. No matter what answer he gave, it would have been terrible—for me and for my father.”

“So I told my father. I never intended to say that. But I ended up saying it. That it was okay, that I had forgiven him long ago; I lied.”

“Even now… I still cannot forgive my father. Yet I said those words.”

“My father cried like a child. My daughter in kindergarten doesn’t cry like that.”

“And… we talked.”

“It wasn’t an apology, a blame, or a confession. It was just a conversation.”

“I told him how I had lived. I also talked about my wife and daughter. He was very pleased to see the photos.”

“I spoke about my mother. My father didn’t really know much about her. The food she liked, her favorite color, her favorite flowers, the books or shows she enjoyed, the songs she often hummed, the things that happened while she and I lived together…”

“And the messages I wanted to convey to my mother.”

“I asked him to tell her when they meet in heaven.”

His story ended there.

He picked up his spoon and began to eat the cold soup, followed by the rice.

We began to eat as well, without saying a word.

“I’m sorry for sharing such a difficult story. I guess…I’m getting old. I couldn’t hold it in without telling someone.”

Yet he did not shed a single tear until the end. He merely wore a slightly tired expression.

I pretended not to notice the tears he shed from his heart.

That would not have been right.

I had no intention of blaming him or throwing questions at him, but I knew that I harbored some envy and weak, shameful hatred toward him. I thought he would be the kind of person who could feel that way.

In reality, he was very ordinary and worn out.

Because that appearance was not much different from mine, I accidentally understood him a bit, and not wanting to understand, I closed my eyes.

I just shed a single tear for him.