As they sat on the cold wooden bench, Sunhwa found it hard to look Yonghwa in the eyes. There was just too much regret and shame that she felt for what she did, and she knew her son wouldn’t be so easy to forgive her. Just like he asked, she tried to tell the story without leaving anything out—starting from when he was born.

            Jung Seunghyun’s death brought a crippling blow to their family, but it did not leave them in a helpless state. A few weeks later they continued to move forward and things regarding the university—Seunghyun’s last project before he left—were going quite smoothly. It was quite suddenly that they suffered a second blow; an investment fraud. Their collapsed was becoming so significant that the government had pretty much forced them to give up custody of their son. It wasn’t until they discovered a hidden will seven years later that they regained a fraction of their wealth back, and though it wasn’t nearly as much as they thought, it was enough for them to raise a child. Immediately they went back to the orphanage to look for their son, but they had abandoned him so many years ago that his whereabouts were hard to track down. Through their difficult times, they had become close friends with Shinhye’s parents who helped support their immediate financial needs until they got back on their feet. They were constantly overseas for business matters so they entrusted them with Shinhye, and they gladly took her in. Over the next few years they made endless phone calls to different foster homes and even orphanages in case he had been abandoned again but no one could tell them where Yonghwa was. It went to the extent that they couldn’t even know if he was even still alive. The first few foster homes he had been sent to claim he had runaway so many times that they just didn’t know anymore. The situation became too hopeless to bear, and they decided that they needed to move on so they tried their best to focus on their alliance with Shinhye’s family. Shinhye’s parents weren’t chaebols like Yongguk had been, but they were part of the upper middle class that was quickly gaining wealth and notability in society. After her long explanation, Yonghwa was lost in his own deep thought.

            “Ever since, my only wish was to hear you call me mom…” She confessed with a weary heart with low hopes that he would hear to it. He now knew what he wanted, but for some reason some things still didn’t make sense. He had more pieces to the puzzle, but not all of them fit together like he had hoped. Hearing his mother’s one wish in the world made him close his eyes and think, but to him still, it was hard to see her as his mother. She hadn’t done anything for him, so why would he call her ‘mom’? Mothers were supposed to be loving, they were supposed to help you up whenever you fell, feed you when you were hungry, tell you that you were smart even though you said something completely stupid and defend you when older kids picked on you. Sunhwa had never done any of these things for him; how could he call her?

            He left soon after, knowing that there was still more he needed to know from her but he just didn’t have the right questions in mind yet. There was no doubt he would probably come back when things were sorted out in his mind, but for now he had to be content with the new information he had. The trip back home was solemn and quiet. He couldn’t recall hearing any cars drive by the entire way home, nor did he pass any people. Though it was still broad day light, the gloomy clouds that hung over him added to an eerie feel, enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand. When he got home, he did his usual routine of picking his key from his jacket pocket, flinging the screen door open with his left hand as his right reached into his mailbox, only to be greeted with a pointy object that pricked the meat on his pointer finger. He retreated his hand from his mailbox and watched a small blot of blood grow bigger on his finger. Carefully with his left hand, he pulled out a single rose with a white note attached, the corner slightly stained with the blood from his tiny prick.

            “Count your blessings. The end is drawing near.” He read the note aloud and shivered, immediately looking around his house from where he stood and down the road. There was no sign of anyone around, and there were no footprints on his lawn or steps other than his own. When he left to go to Shinhye’s house, the rose had not been there. So how did it get here?

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

            “Tell me what happened.” Shinhye suddenly demanded after everyone was done eating dinner at the table. They were still seated, almost ready to pick up their plates and head to the sink when she stopped them.

            “About what, dear?” Sunhwa asked, slightly startled. Shinhye had been biting her lip nervously throughout dinner, only poking at her food with thing metal chopsticks, mixing them around in his bowl until it looked like a big brown mess. She had barely eaten a morsel of food.

            “It’s obvious the Kang family has some sort of grudge against you two, and you’re not telling anyone anything. I respect your privacy and have been up until this point but it’s not fair to Yonghwa. If you won’t tell him everything at least tell me.” She was fed up with all the secrets and fed up with people hiding things from her. Sure, a lot of this has completely nothing to do with her, but why did it feel like she was getting tangled along in this mess? Seeing Yonghwa at school with eyes more distant and lonelier than usual as he avoided her in every class was starting to drive her off the edge, and seeing her parents act like everything was perfectly fine with their fake smiles didn’t make anything better. Whether she lived or died, she needed to know now.

            “Our Jung family used to be well acquainted with the Kang’s. We were on good terms, in fact, my father was best friends with the head of the Kang family, Kang Minwoo…” Yongguk finally began to explain, allowing himself to drift back through time to when they were early adults, before Jung Seunghyun died, and before the university was even built.

            “How these friendly ties broke was completely my fault. It was my shallow-mindedness that caused it all.” Yongguk’s words became dark and his head dropped downwards slightly in shame as he belittled himself. Sunhwa was looking more depressed now, showing her real emotions rather than her rehearsed smiles. Seeing them like this brought some relief to Shinhye. She knew things weren’t okay, but having people around her act like they were was worse than just showing how they really felt.

            “I never knew that my father made an agreement with Kang Minwoo,” He paused for a moment and looked Sunhwa in the eyes, “An agreement that was meant to bind my future with Kang Minwoo’s only daughter, Kang Minjung.” Shinhye let out a surprised gasp, her hand rising to cover as his words drifted through her ears. He was put in an arranged marriage without knowing.

            “It was because I was ignorant that I rejected Minjung. I didn’t love her, and she knew that herself, yet she used every dirty trick she could think of to try and get me to marry her. Back then in the chaebol world, love wasn’t what we chose our wives based on. It was money and prosperity. Who would bring up your family status even higher?” Yongguk began explaining a bit of how chaebol households worked. I had never bothered to learn about them, having easily submitted to the common stereotypical belief that they were all wealthy snobs.

            “Anyway, back then, the Kang’s owned much of the land in this area of Seoul and my father had been dreaming of creating a place for people to be free with their imaginations and ideas, a place where they could sort out their future. He needed land from them to build the university that you now attend.” He chuckled and then added, “He was quite the idealist with this humanitarian thoughts,” It seemed like he was rediscovering aspects of his father he had long forgot, or buried deep in the recesses of his mind.

            “Because this was his dream, he wanted to fulfill it no matter what—even if it meant jeopardizing my happiness. So when we were young, about your age, he made a secret agreement with Kang Minwoo that in exchange for my hand in marriage with his daughter, he would give him the land he needed to accomplish his goal. The Kang’s paid their price in advance, putting absolute faith that the Jung’s would carry out their part of the bargain later on when we were ready.” Everything started to make more sense now. The reality Yongguk had was scary in that he himself didn’t know that his soul had practically been sold without so much as a warning.

            “Back when we attended university, I started dating Sunhwa and knew that I loved her. It didn’t matter that she didn’t have chaebol blood. This was love—it transcends the confines of time and brings to us an indescribable bliss that no amount of logic can tie down.” When he described this, Shinhye could see a wide smile appear on Sunhwa’s face. It was true that they both loved each other unconditionally, and Shinhye was thankful that they did end up together.

            “Not long after we graduated university I had asked her to marry me. This caused a large uproar among the two households. My father was being called a swindler and a liar for wanting to re-discuss the conditions of their agreement.” His expression grew dark again as he entered another depressing chapter of their family history.

            “The Kang’s believed that it wasn’t too late to fulfill their ancient agreement. They tried everything in their power to get us to divorce, but what they didn’t know was that Sunhwa was already pregnant with our baby. The moment they discovered this, during a private discussion in my father’s office with Kang Minwoo, the unspeakable happened.” Everyone could guess what Yongguk had meant. Kang Minwoo killed Jung Seunghyun with his own hands in his office. It was like a horror movie come true.

            “Not many reporters got to the bottom of how the assassination happened, but there was no solid proof that it was by the hands of Kang Minwoo. He managed to slip out of Korea entirely and settle in America, bringing his family along and abandoning his property in Korea. Seven months later, they heard of the birth of our son Yonghwa. Minwoo had died from exhaustion in America, but the Kang’s still felt wronged and wanted revenge. We learned after the incident that they had bribed out most trusted investment company to flee with our savings, hoping that it would rip apart our chaebol title and send us into poverty. For a while, their planned seemed like success.” Yongguk was telling the story so fluidly that Shinhye would’ve thought he was reading from a script, but the story itself was already so powerfully engraved to his heart. He didn’t have to share it a million times to remember every aspect of it.

            “When we were penniless, we were forced to give up custody of Yonghwa. Years later, after we started caring for you, we discovered a hidden will from Jung Seunghyun which supplied us with enough to take Yonghwa back, but when we tried to look for him again, he could not be found.” It was Sunhwa’s turn to explain, and her voice was filled with the disappointment of a mother. Shinhye sympathized with her, feeling the need to give her a hug in return for all the warmth she had received. The two held such deep burdens in their hearts all these years, for almost two decades, and only now were they able to let out some of their grief. Their words gave her hope in Yonghwa, and she wanted them to rekindle what they never had time to develop—a healthy parent-son relationship that she knew both sides were in dire need of. If the Kang’s were back to try and ruin their lives, what they needed the most was each other. 

A/N: Wow this chapter was extremely hard to write. I had to be cautious of what I wanted to leak here, and there was a LOT of secrets revealed here so I hope you all liked reading it and that it helped round the plot more ^^! This chapter was 1 page longer than my usual chapters (: Yay! THe way I described love in one of Yongguk's dialogues was taken directly from an essay I wrote in English ^___^ (keke scored 94% booyah!) Leave some comments below? <3