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#Would It Have Been Different If I Had Known?
Dawoon turned his head away from him and looked back towards the river.
“Did you put a location tracker on my phone?”
Hayun didn’t answer. His lack of denial was answer enough. Haah. A laugh that sounded like a sigh escaped.
“Is it just location tracking?”
He wondered if there might be other things too. Again, no answer came.
“At least deny it. Even if I expected it, honestly, it’s getting tiresome at this point.”
As he spoke, he couldn’t tell if he was reproaching Hayun or just grumbling to himself.
“It’s not like you didn’t guess. You knew and chose to ignore it.”
Dawoon had no response to Hayun’s retort. Maybe that was true. Perhaps he thought it didn’t matter as long as the surveillance wasn’t blatant. Well, there was no need for Hayun to say or do anything since Dawoon hadn’t deviated from his usual routine in the first place.
“Since when?”
He wasn’t particularly curious. He just asked as his thoughts flowed.
“Around when you graduated high school.”
Hayun answered honestly. Dawoon didn’t even sigh. He just accepted it as it was.
“How long have you known?”
At the follow-up question, Dawoon felt Hayun’s gaze fixed on him.
“Known what?”
Even though he must have guessed what Dawoon meant, he still sought confirmation. Dawoon took a deep breath and turned to face him.
“That I…”
He opened his mouth but couldn’t continue as his heart tightened. Face to face with Jeong Hayun, all sorts of emotions welled up, making even his eyes sting. He took several breaths, but the surging emotions wouldn’t settle. So he turned his head and bit his lip. Only after swallowing hard once more could he look at Hayun again.
“That I’m not your brother. That you and I don’t share a single drop of blood.”
He spoke each word with emphasis. Though he was almost glaring at Hayun, there wasn’t a hint of emotion on his face. He seemed to have already guessed that Dawoon had found out everything. Well, if he had been tracking Dawoon’s location, it was natural that he knew where Dawoon had been.
Hayun just stared at Dawoon silently without answering right away. Dawoon stubbornly glared back. After a long while, Hayun’s chest heaved slightly as if taking a deep breath.
“Much earlier than you think.”
He didn’t lie at times like this. His honest answer was even more shocking.
“Did you already know when you first laid hands on me?”
“…”
“Ha!”
A hollow laugh escaped.
“Then why didn’t you tell me? If you had told me…”
His voice choked as his emotions intensified.
“What would have been different if I had told you?”
The calmly asked question made the emotions bubbling in his throat increasingly harder to contain.
“At least!”
He raised his voice, then took a deep breath.
“At least I would have felt less guilty about doing such things with my own flesh and blood.”
It felt like it would burst if touched even slightly. He answered while desperately trying to suppress something that felt like it would explode.
“Is that all?”
Hayun asked with an expressionless face. Dawoon looked at him, wondering what he meant.
“Wouldn’t you have tried to run away before even considering this or that?”
Dawoon’s eyes widened at the calm but chilling voice. Hayun reached out and lightly grasped Dawoon’s chin. His pitch-black eyes stared straight at Dawoon’s face with frightening intensity.
“I know you better than anyone.”
That short sentence weighed heavily on his heart.
“This time too, you were going to leave without a word to me just because you were caught by grandfather.”
Hayun traced Dawoon’s lips with his thumb, then pressed lightly. Dawoon frowned at the pain and knocked his hand away. Hayun withdrew obediently and smiled faintly, almost imperceptibly. It wasn’t a painted-on smile, nor one mixed with affection. Rather, it was deeply tinged with bitterness.
“When did you find out? When exactly is ‘much earlier than I think’?”
How long had he been hiding it? How long had he been deceiving him? As Dawoon tried to get a clear answer that Hayun had smoothly avoided, Hayun stared at him and smirked.
“Why does that matter?”
“It matters to me.”
“…Before I entered middle school.”
Dawoon doubted his ears at the unexpected answer. Did he mean before Dawoon entered middle school, or before Hayun did? That was confusing to begin with.
“I happened to go into father’s study and saw that a drawer that was always locked was open. Human psychology is like that, right? Like Pandora’s box, when you see something locked, you wonder what important things are inside. It’s a terrible curiosity.”
From his continued explanation, it seemed to be before Hayun entered middle school.
“There were two genetic test results inside. With your name and father’s. One was a test done the year you were born.”
There was no need to ask why there were two genetic test results. Nor was there any need to confirm the result of the test done the year Dawoon was born. Mismatch. Father had known even then. Yet he chose Dawoon and his mother. More precisely, he didn’t want to lose the mother, so he deceived everyone by saying Dawoon was his son.
The second genetic test must have been to show grandfather. The test subject’s name was Jeong Dawoon, but the actual subject was probably Jeong Hayun. Just like how Jeong Hayun had deceived grandfather by doing a paternal lineage test with Jeong Haram’s sample instead of Jeong Dawoon’s. Perhaps Jeong Hayun had just followed exactly what his father had done.
“Haha…”
He could only laugh emptily, it was so absurd. How could father and son be so alike? Is this why they say blood doesn’t lie?
“What on earth were you thinking… Ha…”
Words failed him. How must the middle school-aged Hayun have felt when he learned that Dawoon wasn’t his real brother? How could he treat Dawoon the same as before, knowing that their father had deceived everyone? How could he act exactly the same as usual without showing any sign of knowing?
The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became of Jeong Hayun. Beyond sympathy and pity for him, his fear grew at his behavior that defied common sense.
“The only thing that mattered to me was whether I would lose you or keep you.”
Hayun continued calmly. He still showed no sign of emotion.
“When we brought you and your mother in, father must have presented the paternity test to grandfather for recognition. Even so, grandfather didn’t believe it. After our parents passed away, he secretly tried to do another genetic test with father and you.”
Hayun explained that even in the midst of the chaos of the funeral, he had heard grandfather ordering someone to find and bring father’s personal items. So Hayun, one step ahead of grandfather, disposed of all of father’s belongings to prevent a paternity test with Dawoon.
“To convince grandfather who was still suspicious, I needed a paternal lineage test result.”
Dawoon couldn’t understand even with his explanation.
“How can you tell such lies without blinking an eye? How can you deceive everyone so calmly!”
Even when questioned accusingly, Hayun’s expression didn’t change.
“Because if I hadn’t done that, I would have lost you.”
Dawoon was struck speechless by the unwavering answer. Even when he was younger, even in the face of their parents’ death, the only thing that mattered to Hayun was keeping Dawoon by his side.
“You were just a middle schooler then. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t protected you?”
He was beyond calm, almost proud. Hayun seemed to have no concept of guilt.
Of course, he was right. If all the truth had come out when Dawoon was still a minor, there was no guarantee what would have happened to his life. At that time, Hayun hadn’t even graduated from university yet. If grandfather had tried to drive Dawoon out, even Hayun couldn’t have protected him.
Jeong Hayun needed time. Time to gather enough power to protect Jeong Dawoon even if the truth came out.
Rationally, he understood, but that didn’t mean his emotions followed suit.
“At least… at least you could have told me. If you had told me the truth when you… did that to me…”
He could no longer hold back the surge of emotions. His throat tightened and suddenly his vision blurred. Tears that had welled up in his eyes began to fall, drop by drop.
Hayun, who had been watching, reached out to wipe the tears flowing down Dawoon’s cheeks, but Dawoon turned his head to avoid his hand.
“Do you know how I felt all this time? How I felt every time we did that…”
“I know.”
The calm answer made him even more frustrated.
“How can you do this if you know? How can you keep deceiving me if you know!”
“What do you think would have happened if you had known the truth?”
Hayun asked in a tone devoid of any inflection. Dawoon looked at him with intense eyes.
“Answer me, Jeong Dawoon. What do you think you would have done if you had known earlier that you and I don’t share blood?”
“Of course, I would have…!”
The moment he saw Hayun’s eyes blazing with an intense light, as if about to devour him, the rest of his words wouldn’t come out.
I would have left the Haedo Group.
Hayun already knew that answer.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
