The house was a mess, just as the landlord said.

They could take household items that could withstand being wet, but there were many things that had to be thrown away.

“Oh dear, what should we do about this?”

The landlord frowned, not knowing what to do.

“What do you mean, what should we do? You have to compensate us.”

Just as Seol Ah was about to open her mouth, Seung Jun, who had been giving instructions over there, came over and spoke.

“C-compensation? But we didn’t know either…”

“Even in cases like this where you didn’t know, everything is guaranteed by law in our country. Our lawyer will go and explain it one by one, so just do as they say. Don’t worry too much.”

The landlord closed his mouth, which had turned into a triangle shape.

The landlord, who had been communicating with Seol Ah until now, had a personality that wouldn’t properly compensate even if something like this happened. So Seol Ah also had a headache going through this incident.

Fortunately, Seung Jun was not the type to easily let this kind of thing slide.

“First, let’s gather everything. Put that over there.”

Seung Jun instructed the workers again. It was a polite voice, but with a force that made it impossible to resist recklessly.

What if Seung Jun hadn’t been here? The landlord would have stubbornly insisted on not compensating them, and since there was no money, they wouldn’t have been able to call separate workers, so Seol Ah would have had to gather all the luggage alone, fretting.

Above all, it would have been daunting since there was nowhere to go right away.

Seung Jun was reliable in many ways. The conflict with the landlord, gathering the luggage, and now even the immediate place to go was no longer a problem.

‘But even so.’

Seol Ah raised her head and lowered it again.

The other person was a man from a chaebol family. A man from a different class than her.

Unlike her, the weight of dating and marriage was different for him.

Right now, he might just be treating her well out of a sense of responsibility as Yu Min’s father.

If she were to demand him as a man despite that.

It would be an unfortunate thing.

Moreover, if she gets swept up in the waves of emotion, even Yu Min will be in danger. So she had to strive to protect herself.

“Thank you.”

At Seol Ah’s words, Seung Jun turned his head to look at her with a surprised expression.

“I know. You’re helping as Yu Min’s father. But I felt like I had to say this. As Yu Min’s mother.”

Seung Jun’s brow furrowed.

“You don’t have to go that far…”

Seung Jun closed his mouth. He swallowed the words he was about to say and cleared his throat.

“You don’t have to. We’re just playing our respective roles.”

Keeping boundaries was a more brutal thing than she had thought.

*

“Here it is.”

Jin Cheol handed a thick stack of documents to Seung Jun. Seung Jun narrowed his eyes and flipped through the documents quickly.

“Is this all?”

“Yes, this is all the information sent by the real estate agency.”

“This one is too far, and this one doesn’t have a bathtub. This one is too old. It’s a place that was built over ten years ago. Parking is difficult here.”

In any case, since Seol Ah’s place was far from his house, he was looking for a house to stay near her house for the time being.

However, getting close to Seol Ah’s house was not as easy as he thought. No matter how much money he offered, there weren’t many people willing to clean up where they lived and move to another place quickly.

So there was no place that caught Seung Jun’s eye among the candidates.

“I apologize. I will look for more.”

Seung Jun shook his head as he watched Jin Cheol bow his head. No matter how much they searched, it wouldn’t be easy. Finding a house wasn’t as simple as buying groceries at a store.

“Then, is there no other alternative than that house?”

Seung Jun looked at Jin Cheol with eyes that seemed to say it would probably be the case. Jin Cheol gave a vague smile.

*

She sorted out the unnecessary things while roughly organizing the luggage.

Since the house was much larger than the previous one, even after organizing all the luggage, the space was still empty. Still, Seol Ah didn’t want to fill it with anything more and left it as it was. Seung Jun tried to buy her something, but she refused.

Suddenly, Seol Ah felt as if she had returned to that day when she was nineteen years old and had to live alone after leaving the orphanage, facing the biting wind. She had only 3 million won in her possession. They called it independence support funds, but she couldn’t do anything with it.

It wasn’t long after she became independent that she heard the news that an unni she was close with had taken her own life. That unni had been independent for almost a year.

The support funds were already spent, and she had nowhere to stay properly, so she went here and there doing all sorts of jobs. In the end, she wrapped up her end with an extreme choice.

It wasn’t because of money. It was because she had nowhere to rest her heart, rather than her body.

She was just lonely, the suicide note said. How much did Seol Ah cry while looking at it? She beat her chest again when she saw that even the funeral was jointly arranged with someone in a similar situation whom she didn’t know at all.

Born the same as others, but in a situation that could never be the same. Seol Ah couldn’t live with peace of mind after that, as if that was her future.

No matter what she did, it seemed like she could see that unni. As if that end would become her end.

“Mom, are we going to live here?”

Seol Ah smiled as she watched Yu Min shake the hand he was holding and speak.

Yes, there was something else. I have Yu Min. I don’t have to live alone anymore.

Although she didn’t learn to be a mother, she could still be called one. Maybe life would be a little better.

“Yes. For the time being.”

“This is that man’s house. My room is the same too!”

The toys and Yu Min’s study were the same. Seol Ah scanned the bookshelf with her eyes, where all the books she wanted to buy for him were placed.

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah, but can’t we ever go back to our house?”

Yu Min roughly knew the circumstances of what had happened, but he couldn’t go directly to see the house where the water had burst.

“I think we’ll have to see after the repairs, but it won’t be the same as before. We’ve thrown away or bought new most of the things too. But I like it, you know?”

Seol Ah stroked Yu Min’s cheek and continued.

“We can throw away the old things and get new ones. Sometimes you need times like that.”

What could that mean? Yu Min was still, shining those black eyes as if he were thinking.

“But then, what about that man?”

After being lost in thought for a moment, Yu Min brought up an unexpected remark.

For a moment, Seol Ah felt her words get stuck.

This place was Seung Jun’s house. So he was asking if they would live together with Seung Jun.

“Ah, that’s… That man considerately let us live here. But that man has a place where he originally lives…”

“Really?”

Yu Min asked that and then shut his mouth.

He seemed somewhat disappointed.

“That man is a very busy person. It will be hard to see him often in the future too.”

Seol Ah said as she lightly patted Yu Min’s back, as if understanding his feelings.

Yu Min sat there without saying anything, and Seol Ah felt her heart sink for no reason.

It felt as if she were talking to herself.

“But it’s that man’s house…”

Yu Min mumbled in a small voice with his lips pouting.

He must have had expectations since it was that man’s house that they would live in together. Perhaps he liked that man more than the fact that the house had gotten better.

Thinking that way made her heart sink more and started to ache.

“Should I ask if he has time?”

“That man?”

“He kept coming even though he said he was busy. But why can’t he come even though it’s his house…”

At Yu Min’s words, Seol Ah made a troubled expression, not knowing what to answer.

She was more afraid that if she contacted him, he would say he would come. That the line she had painstakingly drawn would be ruined.

The line that might already be half erased.

The line that exists only in my heart.

“If you insist, it will make him uncomfortable. But he lent us this house, so let’s not make him uncomfortable. Okay? You’re a good boy, right Yu Min?”

When Seol Ah gently stroked Yu Min’s head, he nodded, though he was still pouting.

Yu Min seemed to fully feel her earnest wish and nodded his head.

“Okay, Mom.”

“That’s my boy.”

Seol Ah hugged Yu Min, patted his bottom a few times, and then got up.

“I saw that there’s a playground and a library in this neighborhood. Should we go see what’s there?”

The most regrettable thing when living in the previous house was that the surroundings weren’t suitable for a child to go around. The alley was located in such a remote place that it was scary for Seol Ah to walk alone at night.

But this apartment complex had parks and playgrounds right nearby and was safe, so it was a much better environment for Seol Ah and Yu Min to live in.

“Okay, Mom!”

“Then let’s finish organizing the luggage here a bit more and go.”

Seol Ah and Yu Min roughly finished organizing the rest of the luggage and left the house together.

At that time, Seung Jun was in the process of moving to the house he had just arrived at.

When he originally bought Seol Ah’s house, he also bought the house next door. It wasn’t for any other reason than to prevent Seol Ah from getting unnecessary stress from the neighbors.

And if an unmarried man of her age happened to live next door… Seung Jun didn’t want to tolerate such a situation.

But he never thought he would enter that place himself.

The house Seung Jun currently lives in had all the interior and furniture arranged to suit his convenience. So that he wouldn’t have to care about anything other than work.

But the apartment, which was now smaller than Seung Jun’s current house, didn’t reflect his desires at all. Both in terms of interior and in many ways.

So he tried to find a wider and better place if possible, but it wasn’t easy to find one.

For now, he called a company to clean it and had the furniture arranged to be as similar as possible to Seung Jun’s current house. For the interior, they had to agree on just wallpapering.

He wondered if he really had to do this. But now that he had gone this far, he was too proud to let go. He couldn’t understand himself well either.

Seung Jun gave a bitter smile.

He got on the elevator, pressed the floor, and casually crossed his arms.

It was the moment he was about to reach the designated floor.

The sound of chattering could be heard.

“But is that man really not coming?”

“Oh, oh. I told you he’s very busy.”

“How busy can he be? He should at least stop by. We moved here.”

It was clear who it was without even seeing their faces.

Seung Jun unknowingly pressed the floor below the one he was going to. His fingers were a bit faster, so the elevator stopped without delay.

‘Why am I doing this?’

There’s no need to avoid them. That house was originally Seung Jun’s house too.

But he didn’t want to meet them like this either.

After he got off the elevator, the elevator went up one more floor. And then the sound of them boarding there was heard.

“Not busy at all.”

As they passed the floor Seung Jun was on, Yu Min’s grumbling could be heard.

Busy, he said. That he came squeezing in time even while busy!

Seung Jun barely stopped the words that were about to pop out of his mouth and gave a bitter smile.