“What? A bug? Wh-where?”

Ha Yeon’s body stiffened like a statue. But Ji Hoo firmly said what he had to say.

“There. On your hand, sister.”

Hearing that there was a bug on her hand, Ha Yeon screamed in panic.

“No! I really hate bugs!”

She almost threw away the sweet potato stems in her hand as she ran forward. She was too startled to think of anything else.

As a result, she ended up rushing straight into Min Je’s arms, who was directly in front of her.

Gasp, Ha Yeon, who had buried her nose in Min Je’s chest, jerked her head back in surprise. The hat she was wearing flipped back from the momentum.

“Looks like bugs are scarier than me, huh?”

Hearing Min Je speak coldly, Ha Yeon felt her mind go blank. What have I just done?

She was so shaken that she didn’t notice Ji Hoo smiling contentedly, or the fact that there hadn’t actually been any bug at all.

“No. You’re scarier than… I mean, bugs are just gross, that’s all.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

Min Je replied in a tone that didn’t sound like he understood at all, as he put Ha Yeon’s hat back on her head.

Their proximity was so close that it seemed like even their heartbeats could be heard. His embrace, which she had unintentionally leaped into, was firm yet broad. As a cool yet alluring scent wafted over, Ha Yeon blinked rapidly.

Ah, this isn’t right. Ha Yeon forcibly collected her increasingly hazy thoughts. Otherwise, she might have clung to his embrace indefinitely.

As she barely regained her senses, she remembered the sweet potato stems she had just thrown.

“Oh no! That was supposed to be for dinner tonight!”

Looking around, she saw the sweet potato stems that had been trampled to death under her feet and others scattered messily across the flower bed.

“What makes you think people can eat that stuff?”

Min Je said, raising one eyebrow. Sheesh, he has no idea!

“What do you mean ‘that stuff’? It’s organic, you know!”

“Hmm, even organic food needs to be edible to be called organic.”

That was true. Even with clean and fresh ingredients, it wouldn’t be enough, and the sweet potato stems were quite damaged. So Ha Yeon couldn’t argue back and just rolled her eyes.

“At least take these.”

Ji Hoo picked up some sweet potato stems that had fallen nearby and handed them to Ha Yeon. It was only about a handful at most. What would Mi Ran say if she brought this back? Somehow, she could almost hear what she would say.

Sure enough.

“Huh? Who am I supposed to stick this up their nose?”

Mi Ran’s face clouded with bewilderment. But Ha Yeon, who was presenting it, was just as perplexed.

“It’s not much, is it? But… this is all there is.”

She had come out boasting, but the result was embarrassingly disappointing.

“We can’t make side dishes with just this.”

Mi Ran clicked her tongue. Seeing this, Min Je spoke up from the side.

“Buy what you need from the store. Get anything else you want to eat too.”

“Then… shall we?”

As if nothing had happened, Mi Ran’s face brightened.

Witnessing the evils of capitalism right before her eyes, Ha Yeon snorted. This dirty world where money solves everything!

But as she ate the delicious side dishes served at dinner, Ha Yeon’s complaints quickly subsided. She too was unavoidably a human tainted by capitalism.

After Ji Hoo had fallen asleep, the portrait painting session was continuing in the studio tonight as well.

Ha Yeon, who was darkening the outline along Min Je’s jawline, was once again in a rather awkward state as questions resurfaced.

‘What could have happened? Could it be a wound too painful to even recall?’

Not being able to see a loved one again must truly be an enormous wound. Is that why he erased all traces? She tried to suppress her curiosity, but humans are the kind of creatures who only regret after opening Pandora’s box.

Seeing her expression become dull unlike before, Min Je tilted his head. What kind of delusion was this woman caught up in now?

Before, she would flinch every time she drew a line on the canvas, but now it was as if her soul had left her body entirely.

“You look like you have something you want to ask?”

When he opened his mouth, Ha Yeon’s shoulders flinched. How did he know when she hadn’t said anything? Had he learned mind reading or something when she wasn’t looking? Ha Yeon racked her brains trying to find something to say.

But it was too sensitive an issue to ask directly, so she couldn’t easily bring herself to speak. What should she do? Should she ask now that it’s come to this? Or should she laugh it off as if nothing happened? As she was deliberating, Min Je continued.

“Why? Is it something difficult to ask?”

Once again, Ha Yeon’s shoulders twitched.

“It’s okay. If you have something you want to ask, go ahead and ask.”

As he laid the groundwork so she couldn’t avoid it, Ha Yeon stared at him with a deepened gaze. She didn’t want to hurt him just to satisfy her curiosity.

It would have been nice if he had just backed off seeing her hesitate like this. But his gaze continued to urge her for an answer. Ha Yeon slowly let out a sigh before opening her mouth. While inwardly muttering that what she was about to say was his responsibility.

“I was curious about what kind of person Ji Hoo’s mother was. Since there are no traces of her anywhere in the house…”

“…”

Min Je couldn’t answer right away.

Ha Yeon unconsciously gripped the pencil in her hand tightly. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. Why did I have to ask this question? As she was self-deprecating like that, an unexpected answer came back.

“I don’t… really know either. What kind of person she was.”

Ha Yeon’s eyes widened in an instant. She couldn’t immediately understand his words. It was not only uncommon to refer to one’s wife as ‘what kind of person,’ but saying he didn’t know well was really strange.

“Wh-what do you mean by that?”

She barely managed to squeeze out her voice and asked back with trembling eyes. Then Min Je sighed, ran his hand through his hair once, and said with a pained intake of breath.

“I’ve never been married.”

The more she heard his answer, the more her hands trembled. No, now it felt like her whole body was shaking. Not knowing whether it was simple surprise, relief, or confusion, Ha Yeon asked in a daze.

“Then, what about Ji Hoo?”

“Ji Hoo is my child.”

It was a maelstrom of confusion. Does that mean he had a child without getting married? Seeing Ha Yeon’s eyes wavering back and forth, Min Je hastily added.

“Ji Hoo is a child I bore in my heart.”

Not knowing how to respond, Ha Yeon froze like a statue. She really had no idea that the weight of truth could be this unbearably heavy.

She had only hoped he wouldn’t be hurt recalling his deceased wife, but she never dreamed such a secret was hidden.

For a moment, Ji Hoo’s face flashed in her mind, and emotions welled up inside her.

“Then what about Ji Hoo’s parents?”

“They’re both in heaven…”

Her heart raced uncontrollably. At the same time, past events that had been incomprehensible flooded her mind in no particular order.

Why Min Je had been such an awkward father, why he said he didn’t know how to deal with children, and why Ji Hoo seemed more mature than his peers.

“Ji Hoo? Does Ji Hoo know about this?”

Min Je shook his head at Ha Yeon’s slightly agitated question.

“I’ve actually been agonizing over this issue for quite a while. At first, I thought it would be better for the child to grow up thinking I was his biological father. So I hid the existence of his parents, but lately I’ve been feeling like I’m not doing the right thing. Because I can’t tell him anything about what his mother was like.”

He added that it was a serious problem, with a bitter smile. It was a complex smile that seemed both sad and painful.

It wouldn’t be easy to tell a child who believes you’re his biological father that there’s actually another father. But at the same time, he couldn’t keep deceiving the child forever.

“I was planning to tell you and discuss it with you soon.”

Min Je let out a sigh that made his shoulders drop. Ha Yeon sighed along with him. Knowing it was something they’d have to go through eventually, but that it wouldn’t be easy at all, she couldn’t easily say anything.

“I hope this doesn’t make Ji Hoo feel uneasy, or create distance between us…”

The words he muttered were full of the worries of how much he had agonized over this.

‘And I had no idea, trying my best to somehow get this problematic father and son to reconcile.’

Thinking about it now, she had been acting like a fool, knowing nothing and running around wildly on her own. How pathetic must she have looked to him? Just thinking about it again made her face feel hot and flushed.

“I guess I’ve been acting too presumptuous all this time. Without knowing anything…”

She needed to apologize first. After all, she had done quite a few things trying to make him properly act like a father.

“Don’t say that. Thanks to you, I’ve gained the courage to tell Ji Hoo.”

“What? What do you mean…?”

The man who had casually dropped such heart-fluttering words looked into her eyes seriously.

“Seeing you put in more effort than me made me reflect a lot. Looking back after seeing how you treat Ji Hoo, I think I was unconsciously keeping my distance from the child. Well, even if I had something to hide, I shouldn’t have done that.”

It was similar praise to what Mi Ran had said earlier. But she hadn’t done anything to deserve such words.

“I haven’t done anything special.”

Min Je smiled faintly and said gently.

“The older sitters we had before quickly figured out Ji Hoo’s secret. So naturally, they must have felt sorry for the child. They were overprotective and spoiled him too much. But Ji Hoo hated that. He was so cold to them that none of them lasted long and quit. And it was Ji Hoo who brought you in. Even asking for you to become his mother…”

As she listened to him, memories from a few months ago came flooding back. From first meeting Ji Hoo at the convenience store to all the time they had spent laughing and talking together since then.

“I guess Ji Hoo takes after me in having a good eye for people.”

Min Je smiled with a complicated expression. Ha Yeon’s face, which had been smiling thinking of her first meeting with Ji Hoo, suddenly hardened. To her ears, it sounded like he was saying she was special to him just as she was to Ji Hoo.

To make such a potentially misunderstandable statement so casually and smile with such an innocent face. Ha Yeon tried her best not to be shaken.

“You’re just seeing me in a good light. Haha.”

After laughing awkwardly, Ha Yeon tried to focus only on the painting. But her gaze kept meeting his.

Having chosen Min Je as her model, she had to look at him to paint. That was only natural and the set procedure.

But it felt quite strange to make eye contact every time she looked at him.

His intense gaze that seemed to see right through her scanned her every detail. Though she was the one painting, for some reason she couldn’t shake the feeling that their positions had been reversed.

Moreover, she felt as if the heat submerged deep in his pupils was transferring to her.

Thump thump, her heart beat violently.

“I’m not just good at looking at paintings, I’m good at looking at people too.”

As if confirming that she hadn’t misunderstood on her own, he smiled faintly, lifting the corners of his mouth.

And their eyes met again.

Ha Yeon was caught in his gaze, unable to move. Like an animal caught in a snare.