TNS 09

Chapter 9

“I’ve eaten. What about you, Grandma?” “I ate a while ago. I put plenty of tofu in the soybean paste stew my little princess likes so much.”

Baby for the elder granddaughter, Princess for the younger. At Grandma’s unique pet names, Yunsuk’s body—which had been stiff with tension all day—relaxed as if by magic.

“It must have been delicious. Grandma’s soybean paste stew is the absolute best in the world.” “Hmph, listen to you buttering me up.”

Sunja pinched Yunsuk’s cheek gently, her eyes crinkling into crescent moons as she smiled. Yunsuk took off Sunja’s reading glasses as her grandmother refocused on her sewing, and lovingly massaged her legs, which had grown noticeably frail and uncomfortable.

Having spent her entire life moving from house to house working as a domestic helper just to pay off the gambling debts of her scumbag son, Sunja didn’t have a single healthy spot left in her body. It was only when her elderly, sick body got her fired from her live-in housekeeper job and landed her in the hospital from the senior care center that Yunsuk was finally able to reach her. Ever since, they had been living together. To Yunsuk, her grandmother was a past she had to protect and the sole root that anchored her in this harsh life.

“I’ll buy you new socks. Your eyes are dim enough as it is, so why are you sewing in the dark on such a hot day?” “If I mend them, I can wear them for a few more years, you silly girl.” “Give them to me. My eyesight is a bit better than yours, at least.”

Thread-ing the needle in Sunja’s place, Yunsuk actively tried to erase from her mind the conversation she had shared with Seonjae in the car. Compared to his chilly cynicism, the old sock resting against her fingertips felt like a far more tangible, real weight to Yunsuk.

After seeing her grandmother off to her room, Yunsuk washed up and entered her own bedroom, where she saw her younger sister, Yujeong, sitting before a small collapsible table, intently writing in a diary.

Through the open window, the faint scent of early summer grass dusted with night dew drifted in. Unaware of Yunsuk’s approach, Yujeong was pressing down hard on her notebook with crooked, uneven handwriting.

“Our Yujeong hasn’t gone to sleep yet? Did you finish your entry?” Yunsuk asked warmly, stroking Yujeong’s hair.

At that, the child startled and hastily tried to cover her diary. In that split second, what caught Yunsuk’s eye was not a clean sheet of new paper, but a crudely handmade diary put together with crumpled sheets of scrap paper patched together everywhere. On the back pages where the margins had long run out, corporate promotional flyers obtained from who-knows-where were plastered all over.

“…If you used up your diary, you should have asked me to buy you a new one,” Yunsuk said in a gently coaxing voice, but Yujeong didn’t answer.

Even though she wasn’t being scolded for doing something wrong, the way Yujeong hugged the diary tightly to her chest with her tiny hands, biting her lip in tearful silence, looked intensely stubborn. Yunsuk painfully understood the deep, thoughtful consideration hidden behind the child’s actions. That was precisely why she couldn’t bring herself to scold her.

A tiny baby left in Grandma’s care by a father who wandered around gambling dens and extortionately drained his family’s money, suddenly claiming one day that she was a daughter he’d fathered outside. The child had grown up witnessing all of her father’s madness as he regularly trashed the house demanding money, and because of that, she had lived holding her breath while watching her older sister stay up all night tapping away at a calculator.

When they took Grandma in, Yujeong naturally came to live with them as well. At first, Yunsuk had tried not to give a single grain of affection to the child left behind by the father she had spent her whole life utterly loathing. But how could she ignore a squirming, living creature right before her eyes? The child had done nothing wrong. Yujeong’s existence was a wound left behind by their father, but at the same time, she was a small, precious life that Yunsuk had to protect at all costs.

“Sis… Dad took all your money, didn’t he?”

Yujeong’s tiny voice, finally bursting out, pierced Yunsuk’s heart without mercy. Feeling infinitely more apologetic than proud of her mature and grown-up little sister, Yunsuk felt a lump choke up her throat.

Yujeong had grown into a child who constantly read the room around adults and worried about her older sister’s wallet. She was so pure and spotless that it was impossible to imagine she shared the blood of such a rotten father. As the overlapping images of her grandmother—unable to throw away worn-out things—and her little sister—unable to ask for new things—crossed her mind, Yunsuk’s heart instantly grew heavy.

Yunsuk sank to the floor and pulled Yujeong tightly into her arms. The actual substance behind the gains and calculations Seonjae had sarcastically questioned in the car was this exact small warmth. It was a desperate pledge blooming out of the mud—something Cha Seonjae could never comprehend.

She had sworn to break free from her father’s suffocating shackles and ensure that Yujeong, at the very least, could live freely, unburdened by those cruel chains. Whatever else happened, she had to keep that promise. A life where she could casually buy a new diary for this child and didn’t have to worry about her grandmother’s medicine costs—that was Yunsuk’s long-standing wish and the sole driving force sustaining her life.

Yunsuk whispered quietly into Yujeong’s ear, “I got a bonus at work.”

“…Really?” “Yeah. So tomorrow, let’s go buy the very best diary. Okay?” “…Mmhmm!”

At Yujeong’s question, fluttering with unhideable anticipation, Yunsuk held the child even tighter. Confessions she couldn’t dare utter out loud surged up to the edge of her throat.

Yeah, really. From now on, I won’t let Dad steal money from me anymore. I’ll make sure you can do everything you want to do, Yujeong.

“Of course. Has your sister ever lied to you? Should we buy one with a princess drawn on it, or one with sparkles?” “Hmm, Yujeong likes sparkles. Something that sparkles brightly like you, Sis.”

Yunsuk asked in a deliberately bright voice as she wiped away the tears pooled in Yujeong’s eyes. Only then did Yujeong look relieved, burying her face in Yunsuk’s shoulder and nodding softly.

As Yunsuk gently patted her back and read her a fairy tale, Yujeong soon fell into a deep, sound sleep.

Stepping quietly out of the room, Yunsuk sat down alone in the dark living room. Outside the window, the faint sounds of night insects drifted in occasionally. Inside the quiet house, only the rhythmic ticking of an old wall clock echoed. Yunsuk pulled out an old household ledger and a single manila envelope she had tucked deep inside the living room cabinet.

The documents pulled from inside the crisp envelope contained tables densely filled with numbers. It was a detailed tracking report showing that Executive Director Cha Junhyung was siphoning off key raw materials ahead of the launch of a new drug—a launch backed by a massive investment crucial to the very survival of Hankyeong Pharmaceuticals—and distributing them through an illegal cartel linked to private gambling dens. In short, it was a copy of the secret ledger that guaranteed Director Cha Junhyung’s complete ruin.

Underneath it lay dozens of letters of guarantee personally written by her father. Cha Ikhyeon had secretly bought up her father’s private loan shark debts behind her back. Then, he had made a gruesome offer: he would burn one sheet every time she reported on Executive Director Cha Seonjae’s every move.

The reason she had been helplessly driven into a corner by Cha Ikhyeon all this time was because he had threatened her, saying he would spread a scandalous rumor about an improper relationship with his secretary as a card to bring down Cha Seonjae.

Cha Ikhyeon—who had hired people to illegally trail her and dig up all of her family’s dirt—even brought up the fact that Cha Seonjae was helping her family out of goodwill, sneering at it as “touching secretary love.”

She hadn’t wanted to be swayed by Cha Ikhyeon’s malicious blackmail, but it was true that a sudden wave of fear had taken hold of her.

She was terrified of the world finding out that he had an improper relationship with a secretary deemed highly capable, and that he occasionally backed her behind the scenes.

Unlike her, a mere employee, it was obvious that Cha Seonjae would suffer immense damage not only to the gains he stood to make through an advantageous political marriage, but also to the flawless, perfect successor image he had meticulously built over a long time. Rather than watching Cha Seonjae be manipulated by Cha Ikhyeon, she deemed it far better to take that stigma upon herself instead.