“You’re right, Uncle. I won’t die just because I don’t have Seo Yeehan.”
“……”
My anxious gaze naturally fell on Morae. The strength in the hand I had on my uncle’s arm slackened.
“Just to be with one person, Han, I’m breaking my parents’ and brothers’ hearts and being an unfilial daughter. Why wouldn’t I know that? I’ll carry that sin with me for the rest of my life.”
I had been foolishly worried. There was no way Morae would have come this far with the kind of resolve that would waver at this point.
For her, this choice was a step unrelated to any temporary, emotional impulse. Perhaps Morae and Yeehan weren’t fighting against Teacher Im, my uncle, my grandfather, or the world, but wrestling with their own lives.
To avoid blaming or resenting anyone for their own lives and choices, even if it meant committing what the world called an unfilial act. To become the true masters of their lives not just by taking the freedom of choice for themselves, but by turning the full responsibility that follows that choice back onto themselves—for the sake of upholding a truth that many, including myself, turn away from.
“Saying things like ‘my life is my own,’ or ‘a child is not a parent’s possession’… to our parents, there’s probably no viler thing to hear in the world. But we didn’t make this choice for the thrill of alienating and hurting our parents… We’re living in as much pain and guilt as the sense of betrayal and worry our parents must be feeling right now.”
Adding that she wasn’t asking him to understand, Morae closed her mouth for a moment, her face looking as if she had lived a very long time. It was different from the idea of looking old. She looked like someone who sidestepped time, having transcended all the trivial agonies that drive us into life’s traps. It may sound like an exaggeration, but in truth, it wasn’t just now; I had often gotten that impression from her.
“As you said, all fires will eventually die down. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t know if you’ll understand, but Han and I weren’t drawn to each other from the start just because of that fiery passion, that one feeling of being in love.”
As she put distance between her emotions and herself, conveying her story to him as mere fact, I saw a reflection of the man from last night in her.
I didn’t want to dismiss their transcendent attitude toward life as merely a unique Alpha trait. I didn’t want to do that and render their solitude, their conflicts, and their efforts into nothing. It was only a coincidence that the two of them were Alphas; in the face of the weight of suffering that life demands as the price for the strength to live without deceiving oneself, classifications like Alpha or Beta were meaningless.
Yuni-Noona and Juhan-Hyung were Betas, but they didn’t just stand by and watch themselves be transformed into unwanted forms by external forces.
My hand, which had been resting limply on my uncle’s arm, unconsciously clutched at my chest. Morae sent a worried glance my way, then took a few sips of her coffee, which had increased in volume as the ice melted, and said in a resolute voice,
“First, I’m going to get rid of the debt you owe my father.”
She had decided to accept the offer I had brought.
At the mention of paying off the debt, my uncle’s gaze wavered with bewilderment. He was asking, How?
“Once you pay that off, my father will have no pretext to threaten you, at least on the surface, so it’s best to resolve that first. We’ll send you the money.”
She didn’t explain the source of the money to my uncle. She must have thought that how much to say about the money was my choice.
“Of course, even after that, he’ll harass you in all sorts of petty ways. He’s my father, whom I love, but… that’s the kind of person he is….”
Pausing for a moment, Morae’s gaze now turned to the window. She was thinking of her father—a man she loved more than anyone because he was her father, but for whom, aside from the blood tie of father and daughter, the actual grounds for love and respect were so flimsy…. On her face, for the first time, a host of emotions surfaced and vanished.
When she slowly moved her gaze back to the table, her face had returned to its previous state, devoid of emotional openings. But rather than looking emotionless, it conveyed a pain, as if she were holding a mouthful of incredibly bitter juice.
With a seemingly empty expression and a voice that showed no trace of a tremor, she spoke.
“When you feel you really can’t go on like this, please tell my father this. That I’m grateful… he raised a monstrous daughter, a female Alpha. And that he shouldn’t be so anxious anymore… and should just live with his mind at ease.”
While she slowed her speech, refusing to allow any surge of emotion, Yeehan and I nearly stopped breathing. My uncle’s expression showed he didn’t immediately comprehend what he had just heard.
By handing over her weakness—the fact that she was an Alpha, which her father wanted to hide most—she had provided my uncle with a weapon to stand against her father. That heavy secret, which for her, too, had long been a burden, a shackle, and also a part of herself.
“Just saying that… my father will understand what it means. Don’t worry about what comes after.”
Morae tried to pay, but for the first time since he’d sat down, my uncle wouldn’t back down. From a worn brown wallet he didn’t usually carry, my uncle took out a few bills for our four drinks, after which there were almost no bills left inside.
After leaving the lobby, my uncle asked if there was a place to smoke in front of the hotel’s main entrance, and as the doorman directed, we went around the right side of the building to the smoking area.
A roof extending from the main entrance hung over our heads, but the rain was still falling.
Perhaps because the temperature had dropped due to the prolonged rain, the weather didn’t feel hot despite the high humidity. If anything, my exposed arms felt slightly cool.
The three of us blankly watched the smoke rising from the end of the cigarette, which looked like a part of my uncle’s body, getting sucked into the rain.
“You two, you’ve liked each other since middle school.”
My uncle’s eyes were tracing the lines of rain.
“Was it the winter of your third year of middle school…? Morae, you said you’d steamed some lobster at home and it was unbelievably delicious, and you brought three or four of them over to our place around dinnertime so we could try some. In the dead of that cold winter. You said it was for our family to try, but how could I not know you came because you wanted to feed that Han kid. At the time, I was the one who opened the door while washing up at the sink… and the sight of your face, standing at the gate holding that pot, strangely stayed with me for a long time.”
Hoo. With just a short breath, my uncle took a deep drag of his cigarette and expertly flicked the ash with his blunt fingertips.
“I’m an ignorant man who’s spent his whole life just trying to make ends meet, so I haven’t lived my life weighing things like love… but when you have something delicious in front of you, you want to feed it to them, and until you do, you can’t swallow a single delicacy yourself… I guess that’s what love is.”
As if the very act of letting the word “love” pass his lips, or of defining love in his own way, was embarrassing and ridiculous, my uncle shrugged and let out a dry laugh.
“Wherever you go… don’t tell anyone, not even me. If I knew, I might not be able to withstand your father’s threats and blurt it out, so just… live without saying a word to anyone.”
After saying this calmly, my uncle let out the last puff of his cigarette in a particularly long stream and added, like a sigh,
“Your father, too, as time passes, won’t he forgive you someday? He was always so devoted to you, ever since you were little.”
It was then that Morae burst into tears.
It was a moment no one had expected. No, I had never even imagined Morae showing tears. Especially in a situation like this, I had thought she was a strong person who, even if tears came crashing down like a storm, would somehow, out of sheer stubbornness, swallow them and never reveal her naked emotions.
But Morae cried.
Like a child who had suddenly tripped and fallen on flat ground with not a single stone in sight, without any warning.
At that one sentence: He was always so devoted to you, won’t he forgive you someday?
She didn’t just shed tears silently; she literally burst out crying. Yeehan wrapped his arms around Morae as she covered her eyes with her right hand and bit her lip, weeping.
To the world, he may have been the wicked, money-grubbing ‘Teacher Lim,’ but he was a father who would have laid the world at Morae’s feet if she wanted it. Because he was a father who was endlessly weak to her, she must have suffered all the more on her journey to this point.
My prejudice that she wouldn’t cry, that not showing tears was strength—might it have been one of the causes that had driven her into a situation where she couldn’t cry until now…?
Unable to look directly at her, I stared down at my feet, then escorted my uncle, who was at a loss before Morae’s tears, wondering if he had said the wrong thing, back toward the main entrance.
“I’ll go with Noona and Hyung. Please get home safely. The money… you should be able to get it soon.”
With one hand stuck in his pocket, my uncle rubbed his mouth with the other and looked back at me.
“About that, what money do you kids have to send me that?”
The lines around my uncle’s mouth looked even deeper as he asked with a worried expression.
The advance I had received for work I hadn’t even started was no different from a debt, so honestly, I didn’t feel very proud of it. I hesitated, my lips parting and closing, then answered as if pushing out a sigh.
“I’m… painting again.”
“……”
“Someone who liked my old paintings made me a good offer to start painting again…. It’s not strange or dangerous money, so don’t worry, and just pay off the debt first.”
I shook my head firmly at my uncle, who said he would send the money back to me in monthly installments.
My parents were people who were content as long as they could make a minimal living and paint, so our family had no spare funds to speak of. I was no longer at an age where I wouldn’t know that taking on my father and me in that state must have been a huge financial burden. Besides, my father would likely not want to leave that place unless he had a great change of heart. There was no need for my uncle to feel indebted to me for paying off this debt. If anything, I was the one who was sorry.
Watching the back of my uncle as he took the plastic cover off his umbrella from the automatic wrapper and was about to open it, I spoke after a moment of hesitation.
I didn’t want to ask, out of a pointless defiance that no one would recognize, but I couldn’t help but ask, drawn by the pull of blood ties, as a feeling of injustice surged up in me.
“How is… my father?”
“……”
My uncle turned, his mouth just tightening once, but he gave no other answer. I gave a weak smile to show I understood and rubbed the back of my neck.
I had to admit that the reason I had specified the source of the money was partly to reassure my uncle by telling him it was payment for painting again, but also partly due to a desire for the news that I was painting again to reach my father’s ears.
But I didn’t want to go so far as to ask him to pass the message on to my father.
It was my own desperate struggle to somehow prove to my uncle, to my father, and to myself that I didn’t care what my father thought.
I watched my uncle’s back as he walked away on the quaint, red-bricked road, holding his worn umbrella, where luxury sedans were lining up to enter and exit, then I withdrew my gaze.
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