They stared back at him, now forcing their outward smiles. Yonghwa couldn’t help but feel he had extended his welcome. With once glance at his watch, he knew he should be leaving so Shinhye could get some rest.

            “Thank you for inviting me in.” Yonghwa disrupted the growing silence and stood up, brushing out the creases in his pants. The two nodded at him and he turned to Shinhye who looked deeply entranced with her thoughts.

            “I’ll see you at school,” He muttered softly with a small smile and then left for the door. Shinhye tried her best to smile back, but it was difficult to fight off the stinging in her left arm and the mental shock she had just endured—but she needed to be certain. After Yonghwa left, confirmed by the sound of the front door slamming shut, Shinhye asked,

            “Was Jung Yonghwa the name of your son?” Sunhwa nodded, allowing the misery in her eyes to intrude her aging face. Yongguk was frowning with disappointment, but the two knew that they couldn’t have expected more than this. They abandoned their only son soon after birth, and they could take this as karma getting back at them.

            “I didn’t think we’d find him here of all places.” Yongguk admitted, remembering that he wanted his son far away from here so that the past would never have to touch his life. Yongguk and Sunhwa still found themselves dragged down by their family history, but they didn’t want Yonghwa to suffer the same burden. It seemed that it was too late to change now, because Minjung knows.

            “Why did you leave him?” Shinhye asked nervously, hoping that it wasn’t too sensitive a topic. She felt like she had a right to know, but if she thought more, she realized it was actually none of her business. Her foster parents had treated her like their own child throughout her time growing up and she hoped that they would be comfortable to share.

            “Your parents knew our situation. At that time, being so poor and helpless, we had no choice but to give him up. We thought that anywhere would provide him with a better future than we could.” Sunhwa explained, still hiding key components in her explanation. Shinhye couldn’t exactly remember how her family came to know them, or even their whereabouts. She only knew that her parents would trust them with their lives and that they were genuinely good people. So how did two people with so much potential be too poor to raise their own son?  It was no longer her turn to ask questions.

            “How long have you two known each other?” Sunhwa wondered, fixing a cushion on the side of the couch she sat on. Shinhye thought about it for a moment and wondered whether they meant since they’ve been friends or since they’ve first seen each other.  She decided to answer both, since as Yonghwa’s biological parents they had every right to know about their son’s life that they had missed out on for nineteen years.

            “First year of university I saw him in a few of my classes. We didn’t really become friends until, well, quite recently. He’s quite… distant, so we only ever spoke when the situation required it.” Shinhye analyzed her impressions of him since the day they first met up until now. She was quite shocked with how much his personality towards her had changed since then. They went from acquaintances who only greeted each other in the hallways to holding hands while strolling down a sidewalk. Just the memory made Shinhye’s face flush bright pink.

            “He seems like he has a good heart.” Sunhwa had observed, smiling to herself. Their brief encounter was enough to remind Sunhwaof how Yongguk had been when he was a young adult. They were both slow to trust but sincere in their actions, and only their eyes told of how they felt.

            “I think so too.” Shinhye smiled along with her foster mother, her right hand still clenching her newly bandages left arm. If he didn’t have a good heart, would he have gone through all the trouble and worry just to see her?

            “All this time I only saw him as a lost little boy who was emotionally broken and chose to close himself off to the world. It seemed like that was the type of person he wanted to be, and no one dared to question it or wonder exactly why he was like that.” Shinhye sighed, feeling a pang of guilt start to consume her. She’d known him for quite a while now and anyone in the school would say that she was the closest person he had to a friend, and in the end, they wouldn’t have even been considered close until just recently. She had always been curious as to why he was so alone, but why did she never bother to figure it out?

            “Abandoning him is probably the biggest regret in our lives.” Yongguk breathed heavily, trying to hold in his grief. Sunhwa’s eyes began to tear up; her face was that of a mother mourning over the misfortunes of her child. She had never seen those two so broken, and in a way, it scared her.

            “If he ever finds out, I don’t know how we can face him again.” Sunhwa concluded cowardly, allowing the hot tears to trickle down to her chin. Yongguk sat beside her comfortingly rubbing her shoulder with a heavy sigh.

@}--,--'----

            Yonghwa paused outside of his house, hesitating before twisting the knob to open the door. The dark sky was moonless and cold winds blew through the bare tree branches, slashing the side of his cheek and continuing their journey to catch rotting leaves and branches, carrying off debris with them down the road. It was indeed a spooky night, especially in this neighborhood. He believed that if he saw Shinhye safe and sound again, his mind would be at peace, but after today, that there was no way he could put his mind to rest. Yonghwa stepped into his house and locked the door, heading straight for his laptop. Kang Minjung’s words were now flowing through his mind as he tried to dissect meaning from them as well as her tone. What exactly was her relation with him?

            “Jung Seunghyun… assassination…” Yonghwa decided to feed his curiosity and tried to search up every article he could around that man’s death. Just because their last names were identical didn’t quite mean they were related, after all, all Korean last names were common. If Jung was such a unique last name, people would be rumoring that he was related to Girls’ Generation’s Jessica—which was absolutely ridiculous. Yonghwa continued his search, clicking on every article with a different link only to find that they were all identical to the one passed around every year around his memorial or slight variations from that one. It was disappointing that this was all the public media could do over a death that was so locally significant. Still, he continued scrolling through the search pages. He learned that the murderer’s name was anonymous, which didn’t help him at all, and then he found a link to Jung Seunghyun’s family history.

            “The fall of the Jung family?” Yonghwa breathed, completely captivated by his new research. It took fifteen pages of scrambling and sorting to get to the information he wanted, but now it seemed it was worth the time. Under the header, there was a brief paragraph explaining Jung Seunghyun’s chaebol status and how the family had completely disappeared without a trace after his death. If Kang Minjung had been telling the truth when she said Yonghwa was Seunghyun’s grandson, then Yonghwa had chaebol blood coursing through his veins. This seemed even more ridiculous to him, but at the same time, he wanted to believe it was true. 

A/N: Wow I'm doing a lot of updating this week ^^ This story's got me addicted haha. I'm nearing the last few pages of my planning and a lot more is being revealed so I have a feeling this fanfic probably won't make it to 30+ chapters, but I'll try to keep it going as long as it doesn't get draggy. Thanks for reading ^^