“But there was no trace of murder at all.”
At his firmly uttered confirmation, Tae Joon offered him the sake bottle again, asking,
“Are you certain?”
At his low but piercing voice, Heo Gyeong Jun unknowingly extended his empty glass and nodded.
“I know it’s an unwanted truth. But I’ll stake my career on it… Yes, I’m certain.”
Heo Gyeong Jun’s eyes were directed towards his offered glass.
The sound of clear sake filling the small glass echoed unusually loud in the silent space.
Trickle, trickle, trickle.
Just before the filled sake was about to overflow the small glass, the tilted sake bottle stopped.
“If you say so, Chief……”
“……”
“Yes, I understand.”
Thankfully, this time the sake didn’t overflow.
In the study, where the yellow moonlight seeped in.
There, Seo Rin was sitting in a chair with only the desk lamp on, lost in thought. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting like this without thinking.
However, her capable brain was already saturated due to a single picture she had seen a while ago.
What on earth had she seen?
It felt like she was dreaming.
Yes, this seemed to be another nightmare. But this time, she wasn’t terribly scared. It was just a picture that reminded her of the past, someone she had tried hard to forget was terribly missed.
But Seo Rin knew. She knew that the picture she had seen a while ago was not a dream.
She carefully reached out her hand to flip the picture she had turned over. As the image of the woman once again pierced into her eyes, the rims of her eyes reddened.
She carefully stroked the picture. From the clear image of young Tae Joon as a little boy to the woman who gripped and shook her heart, it was all there.
Then, the past, which was once happy but remained as the most painful memory, squeezed her emotions.
Another person Seo Rin had tried to erase.
“Hello, you’re… Seo Rin, right? From now on, I’ll always be by your side when your dad isn’t around.”
That person, she was the first to approach warmly after she had become aphasic after the accident.
“Are you frustrated because you can’t speak, Seo Rin? How about pressing this bell when you need me, so I can know? Then I will come to you when I hear this sound. Day or night, always, whenever and wherever.”
To Seo Rin, she was a superwoman who appeared like a miracle.
And then,
“Ah… ma… I’m… thirsty.”
“What… did you just say? Seo Rin… did you call me? Did you speak? You spoke… huhuhuhuk…”
Seo Rin regained her speech eight months after meeting her.
The woman who silently melted the frozen heart of Seo Rin after her mother and sister’s accident.
“My loving… my… nanny.”
The woman in the photo was indeed Seo Rin’s nanny.
Only then did she recall the nanny’s words about going to the amusement park for her son’s birthday.
“Can’t I come too? Seo Rin wants to go too. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to an amusement park.”
“Why not? It’s better if we go together, isn’t it? I’ll ask your father for permission.”
“Yay! I’m so happy. So, am I friends with your son?”
“No, our Tae Joon is a year older than you, so he’s your older brother.”
“I don’t have a brother. I like having a brother. So, can I write a birthday card for my brother?”
“Of course! Your brother will love it.”
“What’s my brother’s name?”
“Tae Joon. Kang… Tae Joon.”
As she recalled that moment, Seo Rin unknowingly stood up and began to open her secret box that she had been hiding all this time.
A small box that had been stashed in the most secret place of the study for a long time.
Inside were traces of people she once loved so much. From the brooch her mother loved the most, the pencil case her sister used, and several photos.
However, there was nothing belonging to the nanny who had taken care of her.
Her own angel who came down for a while to heal her during her most painful moment.
But God was cruel.
The moment she opened the door of her heart, as if waiting for that moment, He took the nanny away.
And Seo Rin was the first to discover the nanny’s end.
She couldn’t forget that moment.
With a card she had written all night with deep thought, she ran in barefoot first thing in the morning to show it to the nanny.
So excited that she forgot the nanny’s words that knocking was the norm and flung open the door.
“Nanny! I wrote a card for my brother. Look at this! This… Aaahah!”
The nanny’s end was gruesome. And Seo Rin lost consciousness at the scene.
That’s how the nanny who opened Seo Rin’s heart became the reason she forever closed the door of her heart.
Her heart, crushed with shock and horror, could no longer give affection to anyone.
As Seo Rin rummaged through the box, she found an old card. As she opened the neatly folded card, there were crooked but earnestly pencilwritten letters.
They were letters written with a fluttering heart by an eightyearold child. The first card ever written to someone she had never met before.
Eightyearold Seo Rin was much more cheerful than the thirtytwoyearold Seo Rin.
She was bold enough to write without hesitation that she wanted to get along well with someone she hadn’t met yet. And even the audacious hope that her brother would be handsome.
The birthday card that she couldn’t hand over in the end was concluded with, “To brother Kang Tae Joon, from younger sister Baek Seo Rin.”
“To brother Kang… Tae Joon, from younger sister Baek Seo Rin.”
She choked back her emotions as a hot rush of feelings surged up.
That name that she had completely erased from her mind after the nanny’s death.
Now she understood.
“My name is Kang Tae Joon. I… I’m also Korean!”
Why, at the moment she met you, that name flew in like a wind and lodged painfully in her.
She hadn’t erased this name. She just hid it deep in her heart to avoid recalling painful memories.
“Seo Rin?”
At that moment, Tae Joon, who she didn’t know when he had come in, was standing at the door, calling her.
His figure, illuminated by the lighting, looked very much like the young Tae Joon in the photo.
Why didn’t she realize it? That it was you.
But fate tied them together again.
A name became a connection,
“So that’s why… why you didn’t feel unfamiliar…”
So they could recognize each other.
lu lu lo la ▪️ net (lululola.net)
Turns Out He’s Been Secretly in Love with Me
One-line summary: He acts like he doesn’t like her but is actually playing hard to get.
Synopsis:
Xu Muzhou like her. He has liked her for a very long time, and through repeated schemes, he finally closed the distance with her.
But this is still far from enough.
He wants to be the one who stands out among her many suitors, to fight for her attention, and to make her take the initiative to pursue him.
_____
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