episode_0028

‘The inside is a total pigsty.’

Unlike the beautifully decorated garden, the house was wildly messy, as if three wild dogs had been let loose.

Although I was an uninvited guest who had suddenly shown up without contact, scattered lingerie in the living room and even trash piled high at the entrance, seemingly too bothersome to throw away, easily caught my eye.

I wondered if it wasn’t a projection of Chaewon’s chaotic inner self.

“Sit anywhere.”

Despite her flaws being exposed, Chaewon-imo was deeply unconcerned.

As if feelings like shame had long since faded, she just threw a cushion and sat across from me at the low table.

Or, she seemed to not want to be too conscious of the presence of her nephew in front of her.

It was a stance that implied, ‘You’ve got what you came for, so say what you need to and then get out.’

“So, what do you want to say?”

“Now, now, please listen with a bit more patience, Imo.”

While it would be good for me to finish the story in one go, I stuck to the sequence for now.

Since I had to bring up stories from a distant, unknown past, I carefully organized the order of what I needed to say.

On the other hand, Imo openly frowned and showed a deeply uncomfortable expression towards the nephew who was so gently coaxing her.

“Don’t call me Imo. I don’t want to hear it from you.”

“If you consider the relationship, you are my Imo, aren’t you? Even though Imo is still relatively young, she’s now in her mid-thirties.”

Sisters with an age difference of more than 10 years from Mom.

She was a late-born child who grew up showered with affection, but in the end, age comes equally to everyone.

The agitated Imo further crumpled her face into a deep frown,

“My age isn’t the problem; it means I don’t want to hear you call me Imo!”

“Is that because of Mom?”

“……What do you mean by that?”

“Well, it’s because the relationship between Imo and Mom doesn’t seem good at all.”

As I pointed out this point, Imo’s face quickly looked like she craved alcohol.

Indeed, judging by how much she usually poured and drank, there were quite a few empty liquor bottles gathered around. Even so, she refrained from drinking straight soju in front of me.

Instead, she roughly scratched her head until it was messy, then,

“Ha… damn it, I let you in after you begged, and now what kind of bullshit are you─”

“Ah, my mistake. More accurately, it would be right to involve my deceased father, wouldn’t it?”

“……!”

Sisters with a significant age gap.

At an age gap where she could even be mistaken for her own daughter, Mom cherished Imo greatly, but there was a decisive turning point that strained their relationship.

No, for now it’s merely speculation; more accurately, such an incident ‘must have happened.’

“…Why is your father suddenly popping up?”

Though she put on a full display of bravado, indelible discomfort and hatred were visible on her face.

As soon as my father, Cha Seongtaek, was mentioned, the atmosphere sank to the very bottom of the basement.

*Smirk.*

At that, my head became even more defiant.

At the way the puzzle pieces were easily fitting together, I deliberately scanned the needlessly spacious house, drifting slightly away from the center of the conversation.

“Imo, what have you been doing lately?”

“……What?”

“You graduated from a prestigious university, as if to show off alongside Mom, but I really have no idea what a smart and beautiful Imo like you has been doing lately.”

“What does that have to do with you…?”

“We’re family, aren’t we? From the looks of it, it seems like you’re just cooped up at home… I’m saying this because I’m worried.”

“Mind your own business, you bastard! Don’t beat around the bush; just say what you were trying to say properly!”

If my paternal family was Hwaryeong Group itself, my maternal family belonged to the upper class who lived comfortably.

My maternal grandmother was a prestigious university professor, and my maternal grandfather was a high-ranking public official who worked for the nation.

If my paternal family were business people, my maternal family mainly produced civil servants and educators.

Although their lineage cleanly ended with my mother’s and Imo’s generation, it means they were a respectable family in their own way.

The point to definitely make is that they weren’t business people, so they didn’t have an enormous amount of money.

“You suddenly show up and what on earth do you want to say…? Don’t babble on and beat around the bush like a prick! State your position clearly! Otherwise, I’ll kick you out!”

I had probed enough.

As she was about to kick me out if I didn’t answer, I decided to slowly get back to the main point here.

“!”

Instead of answering, I showed her a single headline from an internet article I pulled up on my phone.

As soon as I showed it on my phone, Imo openly bit her lip.

It was a briefly written article dating back quite a long time ago.

The content of the article, without needing to look further, was a direct attack on the messy flaws of a certain large corporation.

Specifically, it was about the private life of the deceased Cha Seongtaek of Hwaryeong Group.

“It’s an old news story that circulated even before my father passed away, but did you happen to see this?”

“…Aren’t you going to put that fucking trashy tabloid away from my face?”

“Well, for a tabloid, the content is quite specific and interesting, you see.”

As expected, Chaewon also saw the article at the time.

After confirming that fact, I moved on to the next step.

“Do you know? This one managed to slip by because it didn’t mention real names, but the reporters who first wrote and spread the article… they say they were completely taken down without anyone knowing.”

“…….”

“Well, it would have been a natural measure since a baseless tabloid could damage the group’s image, but the crackdown was unusually suspicious, like nothing seen before. My father didn’t exactly have a clean image when it came to his relationships with women… but for *this* incident, he somehow made sure everyone kept their mouths shut thoroughly. What could be the reason?”

I lingered around the topic, slowly approaching the core of the uncomfortable truth.

As I pressed on Imo’s sensitive spot and tested her reaction, her uncontrollable expression was already spoiling it.

About the truth that should never be known.

“But here’s the thing. These reporters are tenacious… they still secretly had photos that would expose someone’s private life.”

“! No way─”

“Yes, that ‘no way’.”

Personally, I spent money and ‘handled’ the reporters a bit.

At the end of that pursuit, I exchanged a single photo stored on an old USB for security for thousands.

It was thousands for a single photo with bad quality, but looking back now, it was an excellent deal.

“This,”

The photo I had sent via data.

A photo of a man and a woman coming out of a black sedan and embracing each other at the house entrance.

Since it was taken at night without even using a flash, it was hard to clearly distinguish their identities.

However, thanks to the nearby streetlights, the car model and the surrounding background were clearly identifiable.

“It’s a photo of some woman taken with my father… isn’t this house, whose front it is, familiar to you?”

A house with a large garden.

A gate topped with crimson roof tiles, surrounded by red bricks.

Although the detailed elements had changed over time, it was precisely the entrance to this house where we were currently sitting.

The owner of this house was the same person as back then, and the identity of Cha Seongtaek’s mistress he had secretly met in the past didn’t need to be sought far.

“How did it feel, Imo, when you were secretly meeting Dad?”

*Drip…*

As I cornered her, her lips, bitten so hard they bled.

As I slowly closed the distance across the table, her head dropped low to avoid my gaze.

That was it.

Chaewon, who was Cha Seongtaek’s young sister-in-law, was his secret mistress.

Some reporters and acquaintances might have already heard rumors, but it could never be made official; it was truly the biggest scandal in South Korea.

In front of the truth that had returned like a boomerang, Imo’s shoulders trembled.

Soon after, she lifted her eyes while still deeply hunched, and her appearance became like a ghost.

“……So what?”

“What?”

“Now, after all this time, dragging up such a trivial matter, what do you want to do?”

Although I had shoved her past shame in her face, Chaewon’s mental recovery was fast.

Instead, she brazenly challenged me as if asking what I could do.

*Smirk.*

Even this ‘do your worst’ attitude of hers proved that all my suspicions were correct, as expected.

“You’re not very agitated, are you?”

“Why should I… be agitated here?”

“Indeed. This was a scandal that my father absolutely had to keep hidden, but from Imo’s perspective, it would have been completely different, wouldn’t it?”

“……! You really─”

It seemed the shock wasn’t enough, so I willingly delivered a second impact.

After toying with Imo’s true feelings and private life, I finally delivered the last blow.

“Isn’t it quite ironic? The fact that Dad ultimately abandoned Imo, whom he liked so much and met secretly, and chose Mom.”

At that point, she couldn’t even retort with a face full of venom.

To that extent, this remark was fatal to Imo’s life and was a wedge that sealed her lips tightly.

Cha Seongtaek was a figure praised as an entrepreneur.

He was basically born with a golden spoon, but he upgraded the inherited company by at least three stages.

Due to record-breaking trade surpluses, it was even said back then that Cha Seongtaek alone was sustaining South Korea.

However, his private life received no praise at all.

The number of women he received through sexual favors goes without saying, and there were even controversies about illegitimate children.

Among them, Chaewon, who was in front of me, and another foreign woman emerged as the biggest issues.

Especially between the two, Cha Seongtaek somehow managed to suppress the media and block the scandal related to Chaewon.

The reason was obvious.

“After messing with his wife’s young sister, to cover it up as if nothing happened… He must have done it because he was afraid Mom would leave him after doing whatever he wanted, right? Even if he’s my father, it’s really too much.”

“…….”

Mom belonged to the tender-hearted type.

Even if she pretended not to see the bar hostesses her husband slept with according to his male instincts, if the fact that he even touched Mom’s sister spread, it would have led straight to divorce.

When this issue was about to spread, Cha Seongtaek immediately controlled the media, cut off contact with Chaewon, and cut his losses.

He must have tried to silence everyone with money so that it wouldn’t reach Mom’s ears.

To express it romantically, one could say his feelings for his legal wife, Jung Sooran, came first.

Conversely, to express it as it is, it means he abandoned Chaewon, the plaything he enjoyed, through a simple cost-benefit analysis.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!!!”

*Bang… Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!*

He shoved everything onto the woman in front of him and ran away.

Leaving behind a deep-seated anger and resentment in Imo, he left cowardly.