I Became a Mother (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 12
“From now on, don’t assign any tasks to Teacher Bong.”
“What?”
Ja Hyun, who had arrived at Sangrimwon and was seated across from her son in the reception room, sharply raised her eyebrows.
“Yul has a tutor. She was hired to teach Yul, not to run errands for you. If you really need someone for chores, hire another person.”
“Are you trying to lecture your own mother now?”
No matter that he had personally chosen her, managing and instructing household staff was clearly Ja Hyun’s domain as the lady of the house.
“It’s not just anyone—it’s Yul’s teacher. If you, Mother, don’t show her respect first, how can you expect Yul to respect and follow her? You know how perceptive and sharp Yul is.”
The moment a child realizes their teacher is merely a puppet carrying out adults’ orders, it’s only natural they start looking down on them.
“Aren’t you happy Yul, who used to change tutors as casually as eating meals, has finally settled down and begun respecting this teacher?”
“How should I know what tricks you pulled to win her over?”
The same child who once tattled that the teacher had cursed was now suddenly completely changed.
“It’s not just anyone—Father personally recommended her. Do you really think Grandfather would’ve introduced someone without thoroughly vetting them?”
“Who do you mean by ‘Father’? He’s been gone for ages! Is that man really planning to interfere in our Yul’s life forever? Can’t he gracefully step back now that he’s an adult?”
“It’s not that Father is interfering—it’s that I’m relying on him.”
What a frustrating child. He was pushing away the mother who had supported him all his life, while reaching out elsewhere instead.
“Please be careful—don’t let this happen again. If you overstep your authority with Yul even once more…”
Kyo Hwan deliberately paused, tightly closing his lips, and stared directly at Ja Hyun.
“I’ll take Yul and leave.”
Ja Hyun’s eyes hardened as she let out an exasperated sigh.
“Is that really what you’re saying to me? Did that old geezer Kim Yong Hoon put you up to this?”
This was no different from a president abandoning the nation and fleeing overseas.
“Yul is at a very critical stage right now. If things get worse here, there won’t even be another school willing to accept him. Everyone already knows—it’s a small world, and you, Mother, know that better than anyone. Thankfully, he’s still young for now, but if he causes trouble later, you might even have to remove your own beloved grandson from the family register.”
“How can you say such harsh things to a child still growing? You don’t have many children—Yul is all you have.”
“That’s exactly why I’m saying this. Can you really afford to risk a company with thousands of employees just because of one child?”
“Then get married. You already promised Han Na you wouldn’t put it off any longer this year.”
This time, Kyo Hwan’s mouth fell open.
“Why are we suddenly talking about marriage?”
“This whole situation happened because Yul doesn’t have a mother.”
“What do you mean Yul doesn’t have a mother?”
“She’s dead! What good is it just to give birth if you’re not there for them?”
“So you want me to marry right after Yul’s mother died, even before a year had passed since her mourning period ended?”
“Oh my, listen to you. Anyone hearing this might think I prayed for Yul’s mother to die.”
“Don’t use Yul as an excuse to pressure me into marriage.”
Ja Hyun cut him off sharply, calling out to Kyo Hwan’s retreating back as he stood to leave.
“Try showing Han Na the same devotion you lavished on your late wife. Do you really think we could be living like this today if it weren’t for Han Na’s father?”
“Are we back to this again? Noël belongs to our family—it was left to us by Grandfather, not by Kang Jae Ik!”
It was Attorney Kang Jae Ik who had received Grandfather’s favor as an adopted son, yet Ja Hyun acted as though he were their benefactor, which deeply irritated Kyo Hwan.
“So what? You were only seven years old back then!”
“…!”
“No matter how clear Grandfather’s will was, do you honestly think we could’ve held onto everything without Director Kang?”
At that time, his seven-year-old son had innocently run around in front of the altar, hidden behind folding screens,
As if he were at a celebration, not a funeral.
Grandfather’s face, carefully prepared before his casket closing, was cold as ice. Kyo Hwan wrapped his small hands around the wrinkled, icy cheeks, trying to warm him.
“Grandma, why is Grandfather so cold?”
Every time young Kyo Hwan spoke, his mother and grandmother only cried harder.
“Back when your grandfather was alive, people couldn’t even look him in the eye and trembled in fear—but now they strut around so arrogantly.”
They demanded he relinquish his status as heir, supposedly for the company’s sake. They might as well have been armed robbers, minus the knives.
“If Director Kang hadn’t stepped in then, Grandmother and I would’ve lost everything and been living quietly overseas like frightened mice.”
Jae Ik, appointed interim CEO by the firm’s senior advisors, smoothly handed over his role as head of M&A and legal advisory when Kyo Hwan, now an adult, joined the law firm—without a single complaint.
For Ja Hyun, the only way to fully reclaim everything was for Kyo Hwan to marry Director Kang Jae Ik’s daughter and become family.
“Marry Han Na right away and give Yul a mother. Then I’ll let it go.”
Despite this ultimatum, his answer remained unchanged.
“Yul’s mother is Se In, and only Se In. No one else can ever take her place.”
A memorial park on the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province.
“Darling, happy birthday.”
Kyo Hwan placed a bouquet of roses and a clear tulip-shaped glass on the tombstone engraved with his wife’s name, pouring her favorite champagne into it.
“Yul’s doing well. Thanks to Father’s recommendation, we have a new tutor, and luckily, Yul seems to get along with her. He even likes her.”
Kyo Hwan’s gaze deepened with tenderness as he looked at the photo of his wife, smiling brightly.
“But Se In… I’m not doing well at all.”
It’s still hard to look Yul in the eye and talk to him—I’m afraid he’ll find out I’ve been lying.
“Someday, our Yul will find out why you died. Father and I worry he’ll blame himself, just like when Guppy or Puppy died.”
Kyo Hwan gently traced his wife’s name carved into the stone, as if caressing her face.
Kim Se In Seong Do.
November 10, 1987 – May 16, 2014
It was already the eighth year he’d come alone to commemorate her birthday instead of her death anniversary—since their dates nearly coincided with their son’s birthday.
Had she lived, she’d be thirty-five now, just like me.
But she remains twenty-seven.
No matter how old Yul gets, even when he marries and has children of his own, and I become a white-haired grandfather—she will forever stay twenty-seven.
Like the brilliant early-summer foliage bursting into life.
He first met her when he was seventeen.
Having completed secondary education early, he’d entered Seoul National University School of Law and studied fiercely, aiming for the bar exam.
Ordinary college life—drinking all night at MTs or going on group dates after class—simply didn’t apply to him, a teenager focused solely on his goals.
“Professor, in your Criminal Law textbook, isn’t this case considered aggravated theft rather than simple theft?”
Professor Yong Hoon never looked down on Kyo Hwan for his youth and treated him just like the other students.
“Kyo Hwan, have you eaten?”
Kyo Hwan enjoyed spending time eating cafeteria meals and passionately discussing legal theory with Yong Hoon far more than chatting with his peers.
He first encountered his wife in her school uniform when he visited the professor’s office to return a borrowed book.
Seventeen and his exact age, she naturally assumed the university student before her was her older brother. While waiting for her father to return, she casually asked for help with a math problem she couldn’t solve.
“Oppa, how do you solve this?”
“Hmm…”
Though she used honorifics, Kyo Hwan didn’t bother correcting her about his actual age and simply helped her solve the problem.
Three years later, she entered the same university and finally realized they were the same age. Her father, Professor Kim Yong Hoon, granted his blessing for their marriage on the condition that Kyo Hwan complete his mandatory military service as an Army Judge Advocate.
Guests at their wedding, remembering how he’d lost both grandfather and father on the same day and become chief mourner at such a young age, rejoiced that spring had finally come to Sangrimwon.
But spring at Sangrimwon didn’t last long.
“It was a traffic accident. The engine caught fire on impact, and her burns are severe.”
Kyo Hwan rushed to the hospital the moment he heard the news during a court session.
To protect the baby in her womb, his wife had curled her entire body around her belly inside the burning car.
The skin on her back had melted, fused with her clothes, and her arms and hands—wrapped tightly around her stomach—were swollen with blisters.
Yet miraculously, her belly remained completely unharmed—a fact that even stunned the emergency responders as they pulled her out and began treatment.
The doctor said they needed to perform an emergency C-section to save her, but the baby’s heart wasn’t fully formed yet, so survival couldn’t be guaranteed.
“It’s fine. The mother comes first over the baby.”
We can always have another child. Just please save my wife.
“Honey… don’t. It’s our child. The one we made out of love—let them be born into this world.”
Even in the throes of death, she pleaded desperately not to give up on their child.
“Don’t worry about anything. I’ll handle it.”
Without a trace of guilt, he signed the surgical consent form, accepting full responsibility even if something went wrong with the baby.
Her skin was already melting from the burns, risking secondary infection—so he couldn’t even hold her or take her hand as she was wheeled into surgery.
He’d never felt so utterly powerless, forced to stand by helplessly.
Time crawled slowly. While he waited outside the operating room, dermatologists, obstetricians, anesthesiologists, and surgeons rushed in and out without pause.
Then, when night fell and the hospital—once as bustling as a marketplace—fell tomb-silent, a faint cry of a newborn drifted from the operating room.
“Family member, would you like to come in?”
The operating room, filled with heat and the metallic scent of blood, bore clear signs of the earlier urgency.
As the baby, umbilical cord freshly cut, was moved to an incubator wailing inconsolably, his wife’s breathing monitor flatlined, tracing a straight, unbroken line.
Beeeep—
His own heart stopped at the same moment.
“We declare time of death: Kim Se In, at 11:19 PM.”
While one side recorded the newborn’s birth time, the other noted the mother’s death time.
Overwhelmed by this cruel irony, Kyo Hwan let out a bitter laugh instead of a cry.
“Se In… open your eyes just a little.”
Her cheek, still warm beneath his palm, made it all the harder to believe.
“It’s a boy. Remember? We said if we had a baby, we’d name him Yul.”
He asked, but she remained silent, her long lashes resting gently closed.
The newborn, umbilical cord still severed, cried bitterly—and looked painfully like him.
If only the child had resembled her, this pain might have been easier to bear.
“Honey… I’m sorry.”
Even now, the pain cuts so deep he can barely endure it.
Why did her final words before entering surgery have to be “I’m sorry”?
You gave your life so our child could carry my name.
I’m sorry, Se In. I couldn’t protect you.
If only you hadn’t married me…
You’d be thirty-five now, just like me.
You’d be painting—doing what you loved so much.
Holding exhibitions and concerts wherever you wished around the world.
Instead of lying alone in this cold tomb, you’d be wearing a beautiful dress, not a shroud of hemp.
Kyo Hwan’s hot tears fell as he stared with desperate longing at his wife’s photo—forever smiling, forever unchanged.
Male lead fell into her trap — and shattered when she walked away
This is also on my reread list!
This one is a slow burn, but when it burns, it burns hard.
Definitely worth a read, y’all!
The story follows a thousand-year-old seductive spirit who, on a bet, sets out to charm the male lead—a once-promising but unfortunate cultivator.
But just when she succeeds in making him fall for her, she heartlessly leaves, driving him to madness.
Determined to find her at all costs, he captures her, keeping her by his side no matter what, even if she hates him.
I love this kind of trope—I enjoy watching the male lead suffer in agony.
The ending drags a bit with unnecessary filler, but that’s fine.
As long as I enjoy the beginning, I’m good.
Intro
As an enchantress, Su Heng possesses captivating eyes and charming beauty, easily manipulating the joys and sorrows of living beings at her fingertips.
But to enchant a god, making him taste the bitterness of love’s separation, long-lasting resentment, unattainable desires, and inability to let go…
Do you dare?
Su Heng assists a divine lord in his cultivation, aiming to make him experience all the sufferings of love, so that he can attain the Great Dao.
Only after being chased down from the heavens by the divine lord, confined and completely possessed by him, does she realize how successful she has been.
The once gentle and polite youth has transformed into someone she no longer recognizes.
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Took back his own words real fast, funny man. Wonder what her message is
He really is a bad father. Kinda sad how he just left his son alone.