Chapter 84
I gazed at his profile, relying on the dim light. He had his forehead buried against the steering wheel and his eyes open. Captivated by some thought, the long shadows of his eyelashes trembled faintly inside his glasses lenses.
Further delay would only drive him more insane. Gripping the neck of the water bottle tightly with my hand, I squeezed out my voice.
“Our… respective positions don’t seem very good.”
Still in his leaning position, he turned his head to look at me.
“What positions?”
And he pressed again.
“What positions.”
“When a chaebol family member and an actor meet, you know what everyone talks about, don’t you, Lee Han-ssi?”
He stretched his arm holding the steering wheel and raised his upper body. His brow furrowed and his lips twisted like someone who had heard absurd nonsense.
“Because you’re afraid of what people say behind our backs, we can’t be together?”
The reason we can’t be together.
If you found out about what happened between your brother and me, the pain you would feel. And the pain I would feel watching you beside me. Cowardly me doesn’t have the confidence to endure that.
But since I couldn’t tell him the truth, I had prepared an excuse. People’s perception of relationships between chaebols and actors. As expected, he couldn’t easily accept it. But it wasn’t entirely a fabricated excuse either.
The experience of having unwanted physical relations as a condition for giving Yang-bu the head chef position left me with a kind of aftereffect. Not only did I reject direct and indirect sponsor offers, but I also felt aversion and discomfort toward what UB’s CEO called “business gatherings for simple networking.” Having made one wrong choice, I had tried to avoid such situations somewhat excessively in my subsequent life, like someone trying to make up for it somehow.
Once I broke the ice, I felt like the confusion in my head was somewhat organized. What I should talk about and what I should hide. Actually, I already knew without needing to think about it. I just… didn’t want to accept the fact that I had to push him away.
My gaze and voice facing him settled calmly.
“Aren’t you afraid of what people say behind your back, Lee Han-ssi?”
“……”
“Since it’s not said to your face, since it’s talk behind your back… didn’t it hurt?”
“……”
Just because it was talk behind one’s back didn’t mean it wouldn’t reach the person’s ears.
Not only people around him, but countless strangers I didn’t even know consumed my past, secrets, pain, and life as entertainment, arbitrarily tearing it down and inflating it, writing several third-rate novels… how could one ignore that?
After staring at me motionlessly for a long time, he sighed and averted his eyes.
“Let me smoke a cigarette.”
He completely turned off the music that had been playing at a barely audible low volume. Until then, I hadn’t even known music was still playing.
After rolling down the window slightly, he took out cigarettes and a lighter from the center console. With a heavy click, the smell of oil briefly filled the interior. It was an oil-fueled lighter, now hard to find.
He didn’t speak until the cigarette was about half burned.
It was the first time I saw him smoking so deeply and inhaling the smoke so deeply. Like me, he was more of an occasional smoker who had a cigarette or two when he remembered, rather than a heavy smoker.
The capricious rain rushed toward the passenger seat window and then moved away. As he flicked ash for the seventh or eighth time, he finally spoke.
“I have no memories with my birth mother.”
The story began at an unexpected point.
“My parents divorced when I was two, but they separated as soon as I was born.”
“……”
“Even among chaebol families, there are differences depending on family traditions, but my parents’ marriage was… from the number of times they slept together to how many children they had to ‘produce,’ the items constituting grounds for divorce and the specific amounts of alimony for each item… it was all a ‘contract’ written and agreed upon in documents, and upon divorce, we three siblings couldn’t have private meetings with our mother.”
His voice was flat, like summarizing a movie character’s life.
Only the restlessness evident in his hands as he inhaled smoke and flicked ash during the brief pause in his story represented his emotions.
“Anyway, so for me… what people call my stepmother, actress Moon Seyeon-ssi, is my emotional mother.”
His stories, which had been painted over and inflated by the media and public’s crude curiosity, were revealing their truth before me in his own calm voice.
Forgetting I even had water in my hand, I swallowed dry saliva to moisten my parched throat.
“My father is the chairman of Hanseo Group and my mother is an actress. A remarried second wife at that. Not just the rumors about me, but… I couldn’t help but know what people said about my mother and father’s relationship, especially about my mother.”
He ran his fingers through his hair two or three times while resting his cigarette hand on the steering wheel. Watching his profile as he lowered his head and scraped his lower lip with his teeth, my hands and lips twitched. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to wrap him in comforting words.
But at the same time, my heart felt heavy as if I had participated in their stories at the dinner gathering earlier, chewing on his misfortune like gum for entertainment.
Instead of touching his shoulder, I could only twist the water bottle with both hands like wringing water from laundry.
“So… what hyung is talking about, what you’re worried about. I’m not unaware of it. Rather, I know it… too well.”
Just from the content described in internet encyclopedias, I could imagine the vulgarity of the speculation and scandals surrounding him, so even while searching for his articles over the past few days, I hadn’t searched further into matters related to his family history.
Who was whose sponsor, who was whose father or not, who was having an affair with whom… all of it just malicious rumors with nothing confirmed as fact. But stories that drew more interest from people than the truth.
All those rumors were connected to his three parents, and thus simultaneously linked to his birth.
In the capricious sound of rain, I fumbled through my flickering past.
Those few days of that summer I spent with him at twenty.
After having drinks with the theater company people in Naples, we had stayed one night at a shabby hotel.
He had been desperate not to hear from any family member that he wasn’t qualified. Twenty-year-old him had carefully revealed the weight he was carrying.
And the beginning of my feelings for him changing from vague fondness to something special was definitely that night.
Our feelings toward family had similar aspects. So even without revealing specific stories, we could empathize with each other. Now that I knew the specific stories too, I could understand him even better.
There was no moisture in my throat at all, so I had to clear it two or three times. My voice was awkward like someone trying to speak after a very long time.
“That you can understand… that’s a relief.”
“But, hyung.”
His resolute voice followed immediately.
His face toward me was no longer conveying a pitiful plea. Eyes filled with strong conviction and demand glinted in the darkness.
“My mother never tried to let go of my father because of that. My father was the same. It wasn’t that my father unilaterally sacrificed my mother because he wanted to keep her by his side, but it was the result both of them chose to be together. Even knowing full well what the world would say…”
Whether Chairman Lee Wooyeol and Moon Seyeon really began their relationship through an affair. Whether that was the reason for his birth father and birth mother’s divorce. I couldn’t know that far. As far as I knew, Chairman Lee Wooyeol and Moon Seyeon’s marriage was when he was around four years old.
But I could be certain of this.
Even if I told the public exactly what he had just told me, they would have no interest and wouldn’t believe it either.
That the chaebol group chairman divorced his ex-wife through dirty lawsuits to spend his final years with the actress he had secretly sponsored for a long time… that was the stimulating truth they wanted, and they would only accept the truth they wanted.
“Am I not someone worth enduring such gossip for you, hyung?”
I couldn’t answer. I opened the water bottle I had only been gripping and took three or four sips. Then I looked for cigarettes. The lighter I had taken from the karaoke was still in my pocket.
I concentrated on the cigarette for two or three puffs. Though I couldn’t even taste it, I just repeated the action, then brought out the words I had prepared in advance.
“Since we’re both men… unless some really vicious media goes crazy, the possibility of it becoming known to the public would be slim. But as Lee Han-ssi knows, it’s only a matter of time before rumors spread within the industry. Everyone who should know will know.”
“……”
“Every role I take… every advertisement I shoot… everything becomes thanks to a sponsor… I’ve seen enough of that to be sick of it. I don’t have the confidence to endure that.”
Just as I was about to reach for the ashtray in front of the cup holder to flick ash, his right hand gripped my left shoulder. It was the first time he had touched my body since getting in this car.
“Whatever people think, it’s not true. Since we know it’s not true, isn’t that enough?”
“……”
His face, which had come close, was throwing his sincere feelings at me as they were. My heart ached. I felt like a cold-blooded person trying to shake off a small animal that was infinitely fragile and defenseless, depending on me alone for life.
Ignoring that feeling, I brushed off his arm and flicked my ash.
“Whether there’s really no connection at all… I think I’ll end up doubting it myself.”
“What… do you mean?”
“This Knox advertisement offer, you said it had nothing to do with you, Lee Han-ssi?”
“……”
“The role of ‘Lee Su’ in <Eternal Night>… your influence didn’t go into that at all either, right?”
“……”
While his expression remained unchanged waiting for my next words when I mentioned the Knox advertisement, when I brought up <Eternal Night>, his face contorted with displeasure.
He took off his glasses. He folded the arms and put them down on the center console as if throwing them. Rubbing the bridge of his nose with a tired face, he spoke in a dry voice.
“Because you’re an actor… isn’t your imagination too dramatic? The broadcasting station isn’t even owned by Hanseo Group, so I can’t easily manipulate internal affairs like that.”
“But if you were determined to do so, it wouldn’t be impossible, would it?”
“……”
He didn’t deny it.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
