Episode 162: Unexpected Encounter (6)
It hurt.
It felt like someone had slammed a hammer hard into his head.
‘Zia…’
Zia, whom he had thought was an orphan without any family, actually had one.
And not just any family — an incredibly powerful one in many ways.
‘They say reality is stranger than fiction…’
It was the kind of situation you’d only see in dramas, but there was no way not to believe it.
‘And it’s not just anyone — it’s Woo Hye-yeon.’
She was the person who, in the not-too-distant future, would rise to the position of Vice Chairman — the actual head of the group — when Chairman Woo Hyung-chun stepped back for health reasons.
There was no way someone like her would create a meeting like this and drop such a bombshell based on unconfirmed facts.
‘And compared to regression…’
There was no direct causal link, but compared to what he had personally experienced, this at least made some sense.
Still, that didn’t change the fact that his throat was painfully dry.
“…”
“My older brother’s existence was completely erased. That’s probably why my secretary didn’t report this immediately. In both the group and the family, the only ones who know about my brother are us siblings.”
While he filled his empty glass with water and gulped it down as if it were alcohol, Woo Hye-yeon continued with an explanation that sounded almost like a monologue.
“I don’t know what happened between Chairman and my brother. It was probably a small conflict… but there’s no way to find out. I won’t hear it from Chairman’s mouth in the future, and even if my brother is still alive, he probably never learned the reason either. The people in our family are strangely stubborn about useless things.”
Hearing that, one part suddenly made sense to him.
The Zia from before his regression, who had delivered the breakup notice, turned away, and cried so bitterly, yet never contacted him even once.
‘So that stubbornness ran in the family…’
He unconsciously bit his lip for a moment.
“You don’t need to feel too burdened. Whatever you’re thinking right now, what I want to say is a little different from that.”
Woo Hye-yeon wore a faint but deeply bitter smile and spoke without avoiding his eyes, despite the heavy atmosphere around her.
There was no need to ask, ‘How do you know what I’m thinking?’
“Something like ‘I’ll take that child home’ or ‘Make sure that child never appears in the media’?”
She had brought it up herself.
‘I wasn’t thinking that.’
No matter how hard he had been hit in the back of the head, he wasn’t so rattled that he couldn’t distinguish right from wrong.
‘If that was the plan, she would have handled it quietly.’
If she were going to act according to the typical ‘chaebol image’ shown in the media, there would have been no need to go about it in such a roundabout way.
There were countless ways to prevent Zia from getting work.
However, there was no need for him to bring that up first.
‘Anyway, I am curious.’
The reason she was telling this story to him, not to Zia herself.
“I probably don’t have the right to say this to you. The fact that I didn’t even pay attention to something I could find out so easily just by reaching out was clearly my own choice.”
Following the sayings that when you’re too shocked you can’t even scream, and that reality is stranger than fiction, a third realization came to him.
‘The saying that blood can’t be denied is true too.’
Was it because he had watched Zia for so long?
Even though it seemed like she was revealing everything, he instinctively sensed that Woo Hye-yeon was still holding something back.
The photo in front of him right now was proof of that.
The fact that, aside from the faded colors left by the passage of time, there was no other trace on it clearly showed how precious this photo had been to her.
‘She probably respected Zia’s father’s choice.’
Her mood made him strongly believe that his guess was not wrong.
“The reason I decided to meet you today… is simply because I wanted to say thank you. It’s a slightly different kind of gratitude from what I mentioned earlier.”
“…”
“Even without the investigation, I could clearly feel from your songs and from the things you’ve said about her how precious that child is to you.”
As he silently listened to her words, Woo Hye-yeon continued speaking like a monologue, occasionally wetting her throat.
“She really looked so happy. If her family had been us, it would have been hard for her to make that face. That was definitely thanks to your role, so I felt I had to say this thank you face to face.”
“…”
“I really am unmistakably a person from this family… Anyway, bringing up this fact to you is also my stubbornness. It feels like I’m burdening you with too heavy a homework… I’m truly sorry. Still… I thought that if it’s you, Yujin-ssi, you would make the choice that allows that child to be happy…”
Well.
It was true that it felt self-righteous.
If she was truly grateful and had no intention of interfering with Zia’s path, staying silent would have been the best course.
The mere fact that this information had been passed to him was already a burden.
But when he saw Woo Hye-yeon trailing off and lowering her head to avoid his gaze, the desire to point that out vanished.
Her drooping shoulders spoke louder than words that her wish for Zia’s happiness was immeasurably great.
“Eat. The food here is delicious.”
A moment later, Woo Hye-yeon lifted her head and awkwardly offered, but neither of them moved their chopsticks toward the fine meal placed between them.
Neither his nor Woo Hye-yeon’s.
***
He started walking toward the house where Zia was waiting when his hands had grown stiff from the increasingly cold night air.
What greeted him was not Zia’s voice, but only the sound of the TV coming from the living room.
Feeling strange that the voice he should have heard wasn’t there, he poked his head in before even taking off his shoes and saw Zia dozing off with her head nodding against the sofa.
“Pfft…”
Seeing her dozing without knowing what had happened to him today brought a slight sense of unfairness, but a strange sense of relief quietly settled in between.
‘Yeah… maybe it was fortunate she didn’t grow up in that family…’
It wasn’t for him to judge arbitrarily… but well, even Woo Hye-yeon herself had said as much.
“Slurp. Uh… you’re back…?”
At the sound he made, Zia blearily opened her eyes, wiped the drool mark that had trickled between her lips without any shame, and smiled brightly.
The woman in front of him, smiling so casually in private, didn’t seem like someone who could have lived happily in that cold household where she had to call her own father “Chairman” even at home.
There was a bit of his own selfishness mixed in too.
If Zia had been born and raised in a place like that, there was no way the boy abandoned by his parents could have met her.
‘Well… still, I think we would have met somehow.’
Was it the baseless confidence that melted away the tension frozen solid like his stiff fingers? Or was it Zia’s smile directed at him even through her drowsy sleepiness?
Only then did his body react a little more honestly.
Growl.
Of course — since lunch, nothing but water had entered his stomach.
Zia tilted her head as if she had heard something she shouldn’t have.
“Didn’t you say you were eating dinner out?”
He had told her in advance that he had a dinner appointment, so from Zia’s perspective it was naturally confusing.
But from his perspective, it was like that.
Even if he went back to the past once more at this timing, he didn’t think he would be able to fill his stomach properly there.
“It’s just… the atmosphere wasn’t right for eating.”
When he simply answered like that, Zia let out a light sigh, shook her head lightly as if to chase away the sleepiness, and stood up to head to the kitchen.
“You must have brought back another pile of work again… I don’t know. If the president says something later, you handle it yourself, Yujin. Um… I’ll heat up rice… but there aren’t really any side dishes…”
Even while giving a half-hearted scolding, Zia took instant rice from the cupboard and stared into the refrigerator as if deep in serious thought. Her back view was literally begging to be hugged.
“Ugh. Whatever. Just mix whatever greens we have. I’ll make you a fried egg!”
As if possessed, he followed her and wrapped his arms around that small frame, causing a reflexive scream to burst out.
“Ha… Here we go again. Go wash up first. And eat your food. Whatever you want to do, do it after.”
Of course, since this had become their daily routine, Zia quickly regained her composure and spoke as if tired of it, but unfortunately today was a little different.
“Zia.”
The fact that he, who had spent enough time outside for the waiting person to doze off, was standing here now meant he had come to his own conclusion.
Woo Hye-yeon had said it.
That she had no right.
That the right to choose whether to tell this fact or not belonged to him.
‘No.’
But the answer he had reached was not that.
‘Well… if it had been last winter’s Zia, that might have been the right answer.’
If it had been the Zia back then who couldn’t even properly look at what she wanted and only started walking that path after he and Lee Ahjeong pushed her from behind, it might have been different.
But the current Zia was judging and moving forward based on herself, not on him.
‘Making the judgment about happiness is no longer my role.’
That was the answer he had written to the homework Woo Hye-yeon had given him.
“What if.”
“Huh?”
He whispered the heavy fact lightly into Zia’s ear as she lightly shrugged her shoulders without forcibly shaking him off.
“If you had family… what would you do?”
“Ah, Han Yujin. You were quiet lately and now you’re starting again. I told you clearly. Our marriage comes after you win the grand prize.”
Of course, Zia seemed to think it was just another one of his tricks.
But after spending time in each other’s arms, it wasn’t only him who had learned to read the other’s true intentions through silence.
“What is it? Who did you meet today, Yujin?”
When he slightly loosened the strength in his arms, Zia slipped out of his embrace and looked at him with trembling eyes as she asked. He told her everything about the unexpected encounter that had come to them today without hiding anything.
And then,
Thud.
When Zia slammed her head against the refrigerator door hard enough to make a loud sound, he unconsciously called her name loudly.
“Zia!”
“Huh?”
What came back to him was Zia’s white palm.
“The number. You got it, right?”
“Uh? Well… yes…”
“Give it to me.”
Zia’s dry, emotionless voice — the one he never wanted to hear again, the one that reminded him of the day she had delivered the breakup notice.
The voice that had once been close to trauma now felt completely fine.
‘Because I know this is Zia’s way of showing she has made up her mind.’
So he silently placed his phone, with Woo Hye-yeon’s number displayed, onto her white palm.
“…”
Zia stared at the number for a long time before she seemed to make up her mind and started walking.
Toward his studio in their home, which had the best soundproofing.
And a short while later, he confirmed that the answer he had given was not wrong.
“Han Yujin, heat up three more bowls of rice. I’m going to eat too.”
The moment she came out of the studio, Zia spoke with a face so refreshed that he didn’t even feel like asking what she had talked about with Woo Hye-yeon.