Chapter 172: Happy Girl (5)
When Kim Jin-woo arrived at the deserted construction site, he could see a man tied up with ropes.
“You’ve got some guts. Even thinking about ramming me with a car.”
“Untie this!”
Thwack.
At the demand to untie the ropes, Kim Jin-woo threw a punch.
“Haa… What should I do with this? It was going so smoothly, but now you’ve messed it up again… Hmm… Cause of death: drunk and fell from the construction site. Let’s go with that.”
“What? Let… let me go!”
“Get your posture right. If you land on your head, it’s instant death.”
“N-no… please!”
At Kim Jin-woo’s words, the thugs forced alcohol down the man’s throat and prepared to drop him from the top of the construction site.
The real reason Kim Jin-woo’s father had come out of it relatively unscathed was because he had been riding in a specially modified vehicle prepared precisely for situations like this.
If he had been in an ordinary car, he might have been seriously injured.
“Pushing him with a truck… You were planning to kill him, weren’t you?”
“Arrrghhh!”
Thud.
The man who fell from the construction site hit the ground and lost consciousness immediately.
“Then I’ll leave the cleanup to you guys.”
“Don’t worry, just go.”
“Thank you, hyungs.”
After entrusting the cleanup to the thugs, Kim Si-woo returned to the hospital where Choi Soo-yeon was.
“I’m back.”
By the time Kim Jin-woo returned to the hospital, Choi Soo-yeon had fallen asleep, exhausted.
***
It felt like an endlessly long dream.
Every time I fell asleep and woke up, I thought this nightmare would finally end and Mom would greet me with a smile.
But this dream never ended.
Even after sleeping and waking, the gutter-like life remained unchanged.
Realizing my situation every single day hurt more than I expected.
Mom, Dad, the people in the village…
Not a single person loved me. I was a cursed child.
After giving up on everything and just living day by day, I met a certain male student—and from that moment, my nightmare slowly began to fade.
I don’t know what kind of magic he used, but because of him, everything started to change.
The father who used to beat me disappeared.
The students who cursed at me and picked fights ran away the moment they saw me.
The ajumma who never sold me bread now gave me extra for free, and the mart owner gave me change with an awkward smile.
And three people came to care for me.
Kim Jin-woo…
The boy who claimed he had a crush on me.
He was handsome and, on top of that, incredibly smart.
And yet he was so kind to me—honestly, from my perspective, there was nothing to complain about.
Rather, that kind of perfection only made me anxious.
The thought kept creeping in that one day he would abandon me just like everyone else.
I no longer had the strength to endure that.
My heart had been broken and pieced back together so many times.
Now even the smallest shock shattered it into pieces, and it had reached a point where it could no longer be mended.
Perhaps knowing how fragile my heart was, Kim Jin-woo always comforted me.
He gave me faith.
He built trust.
But in the end, I was a child who could never be loved…
A child who could never be happy.
In the end, Kim Jin-woo’s father got into an accident.
It was all my fault.
It happened because I dared to want happiness.
This was a warning.
A warning not to crave happiness anymore.
In that moment, I made a resolution.
Once this was over, I would leave them…
I would leave this village…
I would go anywhere and live alone…
But that resolution didn’t last long.
They gave hope to someone like me.
They told me it wasn’t my fault, that I was allowed to be happy.
The warm hope kept prying open the tightly locked door in my heart.
For the first time, it felt like I might actually be able to wake up from the nightmare.
When I finally woke up and opened my eyes, I saw a familiar ceiling.
“Huh?”
“You’re awake? You fell asleep at the hospital, so I brought you home.”
“Thank you….”
“Dad and Mom will come tomorrow.”
“I see… That’s a relief.”
After that, Kim Jin-woo just smiled silently while looking at me, and feeling a bit burdened, I spoke up.
“Is there something on my face?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
At Kim Jin-woo’s words, I hurriedly tried to wipe whatever it was off my face.
“Beauty got stuck on there.”
“…”
I froze at the cheesy line and glared at him. Kim Jin-woo just grinned mischievously as if he didn’t care.
“More importantly, are your parents coming in the afternoon tomorrow?”
“Probably?”
“Then let’s go grocery shopping together during the day so I can cook for them.”
“Sure.”
The next day, I searched the internet for recipes, wrote them down, went shopping, and started cooking.
Thanks to Kim Jin-woo’s help, I was able to safely serve the meal to his parents.
His parents, perhaps experiencing homemade food like this for the first time, were deeply moved and scolded Kim Jin-woo.
“The day finally came when I get to eat something my son cooked… Thank you, Soo-yeon.”
“No, really, it’s nothing.”
My face turned red at the grateful words from Kim Jin-woo’s parents.
After that, happy days continued one after another.
While living with them, I kept studying, and I successfully passed the qualification exam.
However, to get into the same university as Kim Jin-woo, I also had to prepare for the college entrance exam.
But perhaps because Kim Jin-woo was such an excellent teacher, my scores shot up quickly. I started to enjoy studying more and became fully immersed in it, and before I knew it, my grades reached the level needed to get into the university Kim Jin-woo was aiming for.
On the day of the CSAT.
His parents treated me like their own daughter and prepared lunch boxes together for me. I did my very best to solve every problem.
As a result, Kim Jin-woo and I got into the same university—a well-known business administration department in Seoul.
And right after the acceptance, Kim Jin-woo confessed to me.
With a trembling heart, I accepted his confession, and from then on, we became a couple.
Time passed, and the day of university enrollment arrived. Kim Jin-woo and I left our hometown and headed to Seoul.
“Today’s our last day here…”
“Yeah…”
It hadn’t even been a full year since I met Kim Jin-woo.
In that short time, my life had turned 180 degrees.
Actually, after the CSAT ended, Kim Jin-woo told me the truth.
My father had delusional disorder, and everything that happened was due to people’s misunderstandings.
In other words, even the small bits of good luck that existed were mistakenly attributed to me, and that’s how it all started.
After hearing that, I no longer gave up on my own happiness.
I resolved to become even happier than all the happiness I had thrown away until now.
“Goodbye…”
I said farewell to the old me—the young, broken me—and left my hometown behind.
***
When the movie ended, Lee Hae-soo hurriedly wiped her tears with a handkerchief.
In truth, she had been dabbing at her eyes throughout the film, trying not to draw attention.
No matter how she thought about it, this movie felt like it had been made just for her.
After they broke up, the film Kim Si-woo made seemed to convey all the things he wanted to say to her on his behalf.
Be happy.
You deserve to be happy.
There doesn’t have to be a reason to like someone.
Don’t sell yourself short…
Become even happier than all the happiness you’ve discarded.
“Unnie. Your ex-boyfriend is way more impressive than I thought…? What on earth was Mom thinking?”
“Haa…”
Lee Hae-soo, who had been savoring the lingering emotions, snapped back to reality in an instant because of her younger brother, Lee Hae-shin.
“Hae-shin-ah, could you be quiet sometimes? That’s probably why you don’t have a girlfriend.”
“What are you talking about? I have a girlfriend.”
“What?”
Hearing that her brother had a girlfriend, Lee Hae-soo widened her eyes and stared at Lee Hae-shin.
“I mean, I’m pretty good-looking, right?”
Lee Hae-shin, who resembled Lee Hae-soo, had quite a handsome face. Right after being discharged from the military, he got a girlfriend through a friend’s introduction.
“So that’s why you’re always broke?”
“…”
Even after sending money home, Lee Hae-shin was receiving quite a lot compared to his peers—but he hadn’t saved a single won.
And having finally understood the reason clearly today, Lee Hae-soo raised her hand to smack Lee Hae-shin on the back but lost strength midway and lowered it again.
“Forget it. I don’t even have the energy to argue with you today.”
“Phew… Thank goodness. By the way, how much does a movie ticket usually cost? I should take my girlfriend next time.”
“Roughly fifteen thousand won.”
“What?”
Lee Hae-shin made a troubled face, clearly far off from the price he had in mind.
“Two people would be thirty thousand… Your ex-boyfriend must be making a ton of money…”
“He’s probably unrivaled in the film industry.”
“I should tell Mom today. She’s going to regret it so hard she’ll be beating the ground.”
“Don’t. You’ll just end up tired yourself.”
“Mom deserves to feel some regret.”
Lee Hae-soo and Lee Hae-shin chatted about this and that as they headed home.
Once she arrived home, Lee Hae-soo took out her smartphone and kept typing messages only to delete them again and again.
“What should I even say…”
She was trying to send a text to Kim Si-woo.
But the moment she tried, every word felt awkward.
“Was I always this bad at writing?”
Lee Hae-soo, who had once been a highly successful lawyer, began doubting her own abilities once more.
It wasn’t until dawn that she finally sent the message to Kim Si-woo.
“Huh? It’s already… this late…”
Only after sending it did she realize how late the hour was. Lee Hae-soo fidgeted anxiously, but the reply came almost immediately.
- Glad you enjoyed the movie… Take care of yourself from now on. If you ever need help, feel free to contact me anytime.
Reading the response, Lee Hae-soo gave a bittersweet smile and fell asleep.
***
The audience preview reactions were positive, and Lee Yoo-jin let out a sigh of relief.
“Why are you so nervous?”
“No… I just have traumatic memories of when I made that indie film and it completely bombed… I lost all the money I’d saved and ended up becoming an assistant director because of it.”
“That was before you learned anything properly. And the cast was completely different back then.”
“I know, but still…”
“It’s fine. This movie absolutely cannot fail.”
“Why not?”
“Because Choi Do-hyun is the lead.”
“Ah…”
Choi Do-hyun.
He had such an enormous fanbase that his presence alone made a film failure-proof.
“In a way, it’s a double-edged sword…”
Of course, handling someone like Choi Do-hyun was anything but easy.
In this industry, very few people could manage him—Kim Si-woo being the exception.
“But the effect is that good. Anyway, we need to start casting new actors.”
“Yeah. Losing about half the cast leaves things feeling kind of empty.”
“Let’s be more careful with the selections this time.”
“Yes, Writer-nim.”
Afterward, preparations for the official screening proceeded smoothly. On the day of the event, film industry people gathered at a pension in Gyeonggi Province.
“We’re all together again.”
The actors and staff had gathered for a commemorative party to celebrate the screening.
Except for Kim Si-woo and a few others, everyone was in high spirits from the start, but Kim Si-woo—who didn’t particularly enjoy loud environments—quietly drank alone in a corner.
“Oppa.”
“Hm?”
Hong Soo-yeon approached him cautiously and spoke.
“Have you… sorted out your feelings?”
“Uh… I think so?”
“Then when are you going to give me an answer? I won’t get hurt even if you reject me now…”
Hong Soo-yeon lowered her head, embarrassed, as memories of her past mistake came back to her.
“What’s this! What are you two talking about?”
“Ah… it’s nothing.”
At that perfectly timed moment, Lee Yoo-jin approached and spoke to Hong Soo-yeon and Kim Si-woo.
“What’s with the atmosphere? Did someone just confess or something?”
“…”
True to being the star of the gathering, Lee Yoo-jin was already quite drunk.
“…Soo-yeon-ah. Honestly, just give up on the writer. You’re still young. And don’t a writer and a director make the perfect match? Right?”
“Why don’t you give up, unnie? And honestly, a writer and an actress pair much better than a writer and a director, don’t they?”
As the two began to bicker, Kim Si-woo quietly slipped away from the spot and hid among the crowd.
“Writer-nim?”
“Ah! Actor Jung. Please hide me for a bit.”
Jung Pil-gyu quickly grasped the situation at Kim Si-woo’s words and hurriedly shielded him behind his back.
“You’ve got it rough, Writer-nim.”
“Haha…”
“Still, as a married man, let me give you one piece of advice: it’s better to make your choice quickly.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes… The longer you drag it out, the bigger a woman’s resentment grows… Uuuugh…”
As he spoke, Jung Pil-gyu shivered with a goosebumps-covered expression.