A/N: I knew I've been MIA for so long... but I just needed some time to pick myself up. 

I apologize for leaving you hanging.

JIYONG’S STORY

TAEYEON (PART II)

As Grandma had said, the information, even unvarnished, was sordid in extreme. Taeyeon’s father was a drunk who’d served time for assault multiple of times. That was bad enough, but what sickened me the most was to find out that one of the charges were involving him attacking Taeyeon brutally in the parking lot of a counseling center as she was leaving an evening counseling session.

And the assault on Taeyeon wasn’t exactly Kim Youngmin’s first crime against his family. Seventeen years ago, about the same time when Grandma was persistently trying to destroy my passion for music and focus on grooming me to be the heir of the family’s business, Kim Youngmin had beaten his wife, Kim Yoojin, and thrown her out into the cold weather wearing nothing but a flimsy cotton robe and a pair of house slippers. When the 10-year-old Taeyeon had tried to let her back in, Kim Youngmin had knocked her across the room. It wasn’t until he collapsed in a drunken stupor that Taeyeon had been able to get her mother back into the house, but unfortunately, the damage had been done.

An asthmatic who suffered from perpetual lung infection, Kim Yoojin didn’t have the strength to fight off the pneumonia that had resulted from her exposure. She died three days after her husband’s assault.

Though the police had taken a report at the insistence of Kim Yoojin’s doctor, Park Jinyoung, no charges had been brought against Kim Youngmin. Park Jinyong had also reported Kim Youngmin for child abuse, but the social worker who investigated hadn’t seen any need to remove Taeyeon from her father’s custody.

I couldn’t begin to imagine what it had been like for Taeyeon after that, living in the same house with a monster who had murdered her mother. Was it any wonder that that a few years after that, only a few weeks before her fifteenth birthday, she quit school to marry Park Jungsu, the 20-year-old good for nothing who’d gotten her pregnant.

It didn’t take much reading between the lines for me to realize that she had jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. Four months after her wedding, she had a miscarriage as a result of a fall down a flight of steps, just as Taeyeon had described to me, except for one critical detail. The ‘accident’ had happened in September. The only way she could have slipped on ice was if her own personal hell had frozen over, and I didn’t think that was the case. Repeated domestic disturbance complaints showed that Park Jungsu liked beating up his own wife. If Taeyeon had lost her baby as a result of a fall down a flight of stairs, it was because she’d been pushed.

As I read the cold facts of Taeyeon’s life, I formed a chilling image of a lawyer in a courtroom presenting the same facts to a judge. Even a mediocre shyster could make Taeyeon sound unfit to raise a child.

It wasn’t true, of course, but a lawyer could make a judge believe it. Taeyeon had known that and feared it. Feared me. She had married me because I’d threatened to investigate her and take her child away.

“You’ll be lucky to have one-court supervised visit a year.” I’d flung at her.

Was it any wonder that she had hated me? It was nothing less than miraculous that we had come as far towards friendship as we had.

Considering what I was learning, I had to wonder how much further we could go, how much further Taeyeon would allow it to go? Could she ever let herself fall in love with a man she was so afraid of?

Seungri had known all of her secrets, of course. Taeyeon would had confessed them to him long ago as they were falling in love. She would have handed him the truth as a symbol of trust.

Will she ever love me that much?

The question battered at me as I read and reread Kang Daesung’s report. I knew I would never be satisfied with less. The all-or-nothing quirk in my personality was like a little demon pestering me with questions it was much too soon to ask.

If I could earn Taeyeon’s love, could I also earn her trust? Would there ever come a time when she truly believed there was no danger in giving me her secrets?

I had to know. There were a dozen ways I could rationalize my decision to not tell Taeyeon about grandma’s investigation, but only one really mattered.

If there was any hope for us to have a future together, Taeyeon had to trust me enough to tell me the truth herself.

That day was a long way off, of course. In the mean time, there were more immediate issues that I had needed to make peace with. So many wrongs had been done to her in Jeonju. Though I knew there was nothing I could do to set them right, I couldn’t escape the desperate need to go there.

Taeyeon had told me that I’d never be able to understand what her life had been unless I saw it for myself. Well, she was right. I need to see the people and places that had shaped her childhood. Mostly, I needed to see Kim Youngmin, even if it was only from a distance, to make peace with the horrible urge I had to beat the bastard to a bloody pulp.

It was a little after 2.00 a.m when I made a terse phone call to the number Kang Daesung had left. A second call took care for of the necessary business arrangements. I left a note for Taeyeon, stating that I’d been called away to handle a labor dispute at the hotel in Jeju island and probably wouldn’t be back until late Sunday night or Monday. By 5 a.m. after a quick nap, I was in my car leaving Seoul heading for Jeonju. By 7.30 a.m, Kang Daesung and I were settling in at a table in the coffee shop of the Wansan-gu.

The coffee shop wasn’t too crowed, mostly local lining up to buy their food before going to work.

“I’ll clear out in a f