WAK 22

Chapter 22

“Hm-hm.”

Hana hurriedly grabbed her phone, cleared her throat, and answered.

“Hello.”

[“What are you doing?”]

“I’m at my sister’s.”

Jua watched her younger sister talking on the phone with narrowed, meaningful eyes.

[“I’m at the airport. I’ll be boarding the plane soon.”]

Hana glanced at her wristwatch and quickly calculated the time in her head.

[“Want to see me for a little while tonight?”]

His words made her heart flutter, and she barely managed to suppress the corners of her mouth that wanted to curl into a smile.

But her answer came out cool and casual.

“Sure.”

[“I’ll come to your place.”]

“Okay.”

After ending the call, Hana put down her phone and cautiously glanced at Jua.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What kind of expression am I making?”

“You look like you have a lot to say.”

Jua grinned and moved closer, sitting right beside Hana.

“You know me well. Who was it?”

“What?”

Hana pretended not to understand and looked away.

“You can’t fool my eyes. Hello?”

Jua exaggeratedly put on a coquettish expression and imitated Hana’s voice.

“When did I ever say ‘Hello?’ like that?”

“You totally did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Auntie, you didn’t say it like that.”

Ara, who had been watching from the side, took Hana’s side.

“Right, Ara? Auntie didn’t say it like that, right?”

“Yeah. Auntie said, ‘Hello?’ like this.”

It wasn’t as exaggerated as Jua’s imitation, but Ara had definitely embellished the voice.

“Huh?”

When Hana became flustered, Jua burst out laughing, clutching her stomach.

“See? I told you. You answered the phone in that weird voice.”

“There’s no way I did that… Hm-hm. My throat was just hoarse…”

For some reason, Hana felt her face growing hot. She busily fanned herself with her hand and pretended to be interested in something else.

“Who was it? Did you finally start dating someone?”

“Who’s dating anyone?!”

Hana became far more defensive than necessary, which only made Jua give her an even more significant look.

“Then is it someone you’re seeing?”

“No, it’s not like that. We’re just… going to do something together.”

Unable to find a straightforward way to explain their relationship, Hana gave a vague answer.

“What kind of relationship is that, if you’re blushing while answering his call? And you even used that nasal voice.”

Jua refused to give up.

Her mother and Jua’s main concern was Hana’s love life and marriage.

Hana was competent in every other area, but romance and marriage were the two subjects where she was unusually particular. And there were plenty of reasons for that.

“Is Mom’s wish finally coming true?”

At Jua’s words, Hana’s expression stiffened slightly.

“No. Don’t even dream about it.”

At her younger sister’s firm response, Jua clicked her tongue and gently stroked Ara’s hair.

“Mom wants you to have a family too.”

“Do a man and a woman have to get married to become a family? There are all kinds of families in the world. I just want to have a child.”

As soon as she said it, Jeonghan came to mind again.

Come to think of it, she and he seemed to have quite a few things in common.

“Why are you so negative about marriage?”

“Because I grew up in an unhappy family?”

Hana smiled lightly, deliberately making light of it.

“We grew up in the same circumstances, so why are you different from me? I want to get married as soon as possible.”

Jua, who had grown up without a father, had wanted to build a complete family of her own as soon as possible.

So when she met her current husband, they had fallen passionately in love, and she married young, before even graduating from university.

There were things she had to give up because of that choice, but Jua was satisfied with the stable life she had now.

She had struggled for several years because she couldn’t have a child after marriage, but thanks to Ara, who had finally come into their lives later than expected, she was enjoying even greater happiness these days.

“You at least have good memories of your father, even if they only lasted for a short time.”

Although the two were sisters, their circumstances had been somewhat different.

They had different fathers.

Jua’s father had been their mother’s first husband, while Hana’s father had been her second.

After their mother lost her first husband, a kind and family-oriented man, she remarried. That second husband was Hana’s biological father.

“You know what kind of person our father was.”

Unlike Jua’s father, who had been incredibly affectionate and devoted all his love to his only daughter, Hana’s father had been an irresponsible man.

And on top of that, there had been domestic violence.

Whenever Hana thought about the terrible things she had experienced as a child, she felt nothing but disgust.

“Thanks to him, I learned one thing for certain. That the only person in this world I can rely on is myself.”

Hana’s father had spent whatever money he earned solely on his own pleasures, abandoning his family as though they didn’t exist.

“Getting married just because you want to have a family is foolish. I’m only going to rely on myself. I’ll make lots of money and give Mom a comfortable life, and I’ll buy Ara lots of delicious things.”

Hearing Hana’s words, Jua could only sigh sadly.

She knew better than anyone why her younger sister had studied so relentlessly and become a lawyer.

Just then, the food delivery arrived.

Jua went to the front door, while Hana pulled Ara into her arms.

“Ara, let’s eat tteokbokki.”

“Tteokbokki is spicy. My mouth will hurt.”

Ara’s earnest little complaint was unbearably cute to Hana.

“I’ll rinse it in water for you. Sis, did you order cheese sticks?”

“Yeah!”

Hana kissed the top of Ara’s head.

“I don’t need a husband. But I’d like to have a daughter like our Ara.”

Perhaps the sound of Hana’s voice resonating above her head tickled her, because Ara giggled and squirmed in her arms.

I wonder if Jeonghan’s plane has taken off by now.

Suddenly thinking of him, Hana found herself looking up at the sky outside the window for no particular reason.

Before the sun went down, Hana returned home.

True to South Korea’s reputation for doing everything quickly, the neighbors had already finished moving.

Hana passed the quietly closed door of the neighboring apartment and stood in front of her own.

She entered her password and stepped inside.

Just then, someone came out of the apartment next door.

It was a man wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his head and a mask.

He glanced at Hana’s apartment, then walked down the hallway toward the elevator.

As soon as Hana got home, she started cleaning.

She vacuumed her already-clean apartment and even mopped the floors.

She wasn’t even planning to let Jeonghan into her home, yet she was moving around busily as though preparing for an important guest.

After dinner time passed and eight o’clock came, Hana gradually began to feel anxious.

She couldn’t do anything.

Around ten o’clock, Jeonghan finally called.

[“I’m outside your place.”]

Hana jumped to her feet, slipped on a cardigan, and hurried to the entrance.

“I’m coming down now.”

She put on her shoes and checked her appearance in the full-length mirror attached to the shoe cabinet.

When she stepped outside on the first floor, Jeonghan got out of his car.

Unlike Hana, who was dressed casually, he was even wearing a tie.

They had only been apart for about three days, but seeing him again somehow felt like they hadn’t met in a very long time.

“How have you been?”

“Of course, I’ve been well.”

Somehow, she had ended up having a full, busy day from morning until now.

“What about dinner?”

When he asked whether she had eaten, Hana burst out laughing.

How had Ryu Jeonghan somehow become the person who cared more about her meals than anyone else?

When they had been in school, she had never once imagined that something like this would happen.

“I ate.”

Although all she’d had in the afternoon was tteokbokki, she wasn’t hungry at all.

“I haven’t.”

He rubbed his stomach as he said it.

“What time do you think it is? You still haven’t eaten?”

“I did have the in-flight meal, but I’m getting hungry.”

Jeonghan had come straight to meet Hana as soon as he got off the plane.

“It’s already almost time for the restaurants to close.”

She tried to think of a decent restaurant in the neighborhood.

There were a few fairly good places, but they would probably all be closed by now.

She couldn’t exactly take someone who had just endured a long flight to a bar, either.

She was at a loss.

“It’s okay. I don’t have to eat.”

He tried to ease her worries.

“Oh, right. This.”

He opened the trunk of his car and took out several shopping bags.

“What are all these?”

“I bought some things because I wanted to make a good impression.”

Hana stared at the shopping bags he held out to her, her eyes and mouth wide open.

She hesitated over whether she should accept them.

“It’s a gift offensive. If you don’t accept them, my efforts will have been for nothing.”

At Jeonghan’s words, she smiled and, after a moment of hesitation, accepted the gifts.

“Next time, just buy one thing.”

“I didn’t know what to buy.”

Hana looked inside one of the shopping bags.

“Gasp! What is this? Why is there a designer handbag in here?”

“I told you. I didn’t know what to buy.”

“Even so, this is way too much.”

“Kang Hana, did you forget?”

“Forget what…?”

“I’m a financial tycoon.”

“Ah, so this kind of thing is basically pocket change to you?”

“Haha. It’s not exactly pocket change, but I could easily buy about a hundred of these.”

“Is it really okay for me to accept this? It feels like too much.”

Despite her words, Hana’s eyes were sparkling endlessly as she looked at the bag.

He quietly chuckled as he watched her.

“If you don’t accept it, all the effort I put into buying it will have been wasted.”

He thought about all the time he had spent looking around for gifts for her.

“Won’t I look too materialistic if I accept this?”

“I like that you’re appropriately materialistic.”

“Who says I’m ‘appropriately’ materialistic?”

“I like that you’re greedy, too.”

He actually hated people who pretended to be innocent or acted as though they had no interest in money.

He knew perfectly well that people like that didn’t really exist, which made him dislike the act even more.

Hana bit her lip and looked up at her apartment.

She had accepted his gifts, so she felt bad about simply sending a hungry man away.

But she couldn’t help hesitating at the thought of letting a man into her home.

“You should go inside. You have to get up early for work tomorrow.”

Jeonghan had only come over briefly to give her the gifts in the first place.

But now that he was actually about to leave, Hana’s indecisive heart finally settled on one side.

“Do you want to come upstairs for a little while?”

Jeonghan looked at her in surprise.

“You said you were hungry. And my sister gave me some side dishes, too.”

Unlike all the hesitation she’d experienced moments ago, the words came tumbling out rather hastily.

He looked back and forth between her and the apartment.

“Just to eat, and then you can leave.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have added that.

It didn’t sound as though she were hiding some other desire, did it?

He gave a small laugh and nodded.

Her heart began to dance with excitement.