SOG Ch 189

The large round dining table, fit for a banquet hall, was laden with food. The zucchini pasta and steamed lobster prepared by Kim Geun-won, with Woo-jin as his assistant, were as delicious as the ordered dishes. These two dishes were said to be Gyeong Hye-in’s favorites. To Jae-chan’s eyes, the couple looked truly affectionate. While Gyeong Hye-in didn’t particularly subdue her temperament in front of her boyfriend, her fondness for Kim Geun-won was clearly evident in her gaze and expressions.

Among the various dishes were also an array of unfamiliar beers and wines. As everyone except Jae-chan had a drink or two, the atmosphere became even more cheerful. Especially when they played Kim Geun-won’s viral YouTube broadcast, Gyeong Hye-in burst into laughter, holding her stomach.

To match the mood, Jae-chan smiled and kept pouring high-proof wine for Gyeong Hye-in. Then, saying “Ah, it’s hot. Noona, want to get some fresh air?” he gave her a look suggesting they talk privately.

They both stood up, holding beer and wine glasses respectively. Of course, Jae-chan’s beer glass contained orange juice.

“What’s gotten into you?”

Gyeong Hye-in giggled as she stepped onto the terrace, shrugging her bare shoulders. Perhaps due to her flushed face from the alcohol and her unique expression, she looked like the vocalist of an eccentric rock band.

“You usually don’t even pretend to know me unless there’s something to gain… Do you want something from me again? Or are you going to give me free relationship advice? I don’t need it anymore, you brat.”

Whether she was really drunk or not, Gyeong Hye-in certainly became more talkative with alcohol. Jae-chan, who had been moistening his increasingly dry throat with juice due to tension, spoke in a joking tone.

“No, I’m just trying to make a friend.”

“A friend?”

“Yes, Woo-jin is having a hard time playing with friendless me all the time.”

Gyeong Hye-in furrowed her long, slanted eyes. In response to her look that seemed to say ‘What nonsense are you talking?’ Jae-chan smiled a little, then cast his gaze at the large knotted cloth decoration still covering the terrace entrance. Every time he faced the sharp form that looked as if it had been clawed by a large carnivore, he felt breathless, as if the countless moments of life and death he had faced before regression were pressing in on him. Jae-chan calmly settled his breathing and spoke.

“What do you like so much about Geun-won sunbae?”

He had learned through dinner conversation that the two had known each other longer than expected. Before forming a sponsor-sponsee relationship, they had first met 7 years ago. When Gyeong Hye-in was twenty-three and Kim Geun-won was twenty, through an offline meeting of an online cafe that only people with guiding abilities could join. The circumstances of their first meeting were a bit absurd.

“Do you know what I was to my father before I became a traitor daughter beyond a useful dog?”

While they were talking about Kim Geun-won, Gyeong Hye-in suddenly changed the subject. Intending to go along with her for now, Jae-chan listened attentively as Gyeong Hye-in continued.

“I was a daughter he couldn’t be proud of. A ‘guide’ daughter too embarrassing to show off.”

“…”

“Do you know what my old man said when I manifested as a guide at fourteen?”

Sensing it probably wasn’t anything positive, Jae-chan carefully remained silent. The words that followed were beyond imagination.

“‘Don’t tell anyone you’re a Guide. That’s something only whores do.'”

Gyeong Hye-in burst into laughter seeing Seon Jae-chan’s rounded eyes. To be surprised at just this much. It wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg of the abuse her father had hurled at her.

Anyway, that must have been why. She became curious about Kim Geun-won, who was very proud of being a Guide and insisted on the need to work for the improvement of Guides’ rights.

“Guess what that guy said to people at the first cafe meeting?”

At Gyeong Hye-in’s another question, Jae-chan reflected on Kim Geun-won’s personality. Kim Geun-won had the temperament of a social affairs reporter. Hot-blooded with clear likes and dislikes. With such a temperament, Kim Geun-won would probably-

“Um… Let’s unite as Guides?”

“…”

“No? Then, how about, ‘Let’s take one step closer to equality together’”

Gyeong Hye-in acknowledged that Seon Jae-chan had a pretty good grasp of Kim Geun-won.

“It was something vague like that, pretty much.”

Though he was her lover, Kim Geun-won was an excessive idealist. And Gyeong Hye-in, an excessive realist, cherished this nature of Geun-won that stood at the opposite extreme from her.

“He gave a speech at that gathering. He spouted pretentious words like all Guides should join the Guide Human Rights Committee, we should break free from repetitive compulsions, we should build our own objective power away from absolute environments… and I kind of liked it.”

Gyeong Hye-in let out a momentary sigh as she recalled that time.

“Quite impressive, just like that pattern.”

Though he felt he should agree, Jae-chan muttered this while his whole body tensed with muscles stiffening from curiosity about something else. He, who had been silently sipping the orange juice in his beer glass, pointed at the macramé decoration.

“I’ve never seen that pattern before, what does it mean?”

Gyeong Hye-in glanced back casually and answered nonchalantly.

“Ah, it’s a swan.”

“…A swan?”

“Yes, a black swan. This is the glaring bird head.”

This is the wing, this is the webbed foot, this is the claw. Gyeong Hye-in pointed to various parts of the form that looked like marks left by a beast’s claws as she explained. Seon Jae-chan’s stiff lips twitched.

“How do you know it so well?”

“Because I made it. It must have been when I was at the peak of adolescence, in middle school. After hearing that abuse I mentioned earlier, I decided to form a terrorist group. I was going to use this emblem if I ever formed a group to rebel against my father.”

Isn’t that what all middle schoolers are like? Even to Gyeong Hye-in herself, it seemed like such a middle school way of thinking. Jae-chan, who had paused at her saying she made it herself, asked.

“…Were you really planning to create a terrorist group?”

“Why? Are you going to report me for violating national security law?”

Gyeong Hye-in chuckled and waved her hand.

“I’m not a kid anymore. That’s just… since I’m still rebelling against my father in my own way, I brought it out as a reminder not to lose my original intention. I put it where I can see it everywhere.”

So that I never become my father’s faithful hunting dog again. Gyeong Hye-in murmured. At the bitter smile on her lips, Jae-chan suddenly recalled her bodyguards he had seen when entering the residential area.

“Are you doing well these days? I mean… it seems dangerous to be going against the most powerful person in the country.”

“It’s truly regrettable that I can’t say my old man isn’t that kind of person. Well, but as you can see, I’m doing fine.”

Gyeong Hye-in muttered cynically. Her father was the kind of person who could let his daughter die but couldn’t kill her directly. Just that kind of person. A coward neither hot nor cold.

Just then, a loud voice flew between the two of them.

“What’s with all this whispering between you two!”

It was Kim Geun-won. At her lover’s call, Gyeong Hye-in slowly got up, brushing herself off. While grumbling “Oh, really,” a bright smile spread across her previously cold lips. Seon Jae-chan, watching her with a complex gaze, asked one last question.

“What do you think it would have been like if you hadn’t met Senior Geun-won?”

Gyeong Hye-in was momentarily silent at this truly out-of-the-blue question.

A dry wind swept past the bare branches of the garden trees and across the terrace. Brushing back the hair covering her face, Gyeong Hye-in tilted her head slightly.

“You’re asking what my life would have been like without that passionate reporter?”

“…”

An excessively bleak expression appeared in the shadows. Gyeong Hye-in stared at Jae-chan with an unreadable face, then cast her gaze into the distant, quiet darkness. Suddenly, she spoke in a dry voice.

“You know how people always say they wish they could go back to the past?”

Jae-chan’s hand, which had been very tense, tightened. Suddenly talking about the ‘past’. What does this person know about regression to be speaking like this? While he was holding his breath, not knowing how to react, Gyeong Hye-in whispered.

“Not me.”

“…”

“I don’t want to go back.”

“…Why?”

“Because I’m perfectly happy with where I am now.”

Gyeong Hye-in looked at her new garden with a somewhat warm gaze, the corners of her mouth turning up.

Whether good memories or bad, they all piled up and interlocked to make her who she is now. Though there were some painful and unpleasant points, she was still savoring the most precious time of her life.

Eventually, Gyeong Hye-in returned to where her lover was. As the heavy cloth decoration fell, Jae-chan, left alone, belatedly and carefully understood her words. A faint sigh of relief escaped him.

*

“I heard they’re doing wind power and solar power in the American Union these days. We need to fix our energy dependency… Are you listening, honey? Hmm?”

Around 10 PM, Kim Geun-won was drunkenly rambling in the drinking session that had more than ripened and was now about to burst. They had clearly been talking about terrorism before the topic shifted to nuclear power plants, but it wasn’t clear when the subject had jumped to this. Jae-chan shook his head. It seemed like it was time to go home.

“Let’s go.”

When he whispered quietly to Woo-jin, who was out on the terrace getting some air, the guy with the gentle drinking habit nodded. No, Woo-jin seemed to have sobered up a while ago. His clear face, now free of the red flush, suddenly looked pretty, and Jae-chan lightly kissed Woo-jin’s cheek.

Woo-jin hugged Jae-chan tightly and returned a small kiss, then urged that they should go home quickly, so the two started busily cleaning up the empty plates, glasses, and trash. Until then, the thoroughly drunk Kim Geun-won kept muttering endlessly like a broken radio, while only Gyeong Hye-in was gazing at her young lover with deep eyes.

“We’ll be going now. You two keep planning your energy business.”

At Jae-chan’s farewell, Gyeong Hye-in waved her hand as if shooing away flies. Jae-chan and Woo-jin passed through the entrance and garden to come down to the garage.

Jae-chan took the wheel instead of Woo-jin, who had been drinking. As soon as they left the residential area, Jae-chan parked in a deserted alley. “Just a moment,” he said, asking Woo-jin’s understanding, and took out a tablet PC from the cross bag he had left in the back seat.

“What are you doing?”

To Woo-jin’s question, Jae-chan, busily moving his fingers, replied.

“I’m going to email Team Leader Choi Si-eun.”

“…The Freedom Alliance?”

“Yeah.”

Jae-chan readily showed the tablet screen. A separate category summarizing the President’s misdeeds, which he had been organizing among the project files, was displayed on it.

“Remember ‘Angel’?”