CHAPTER 36
“Have you gotten over him, or do you still want him?” Ms. Lee asked, her voice edged with irritation as she picked up another piece of abalone sushi.
Chung-Hee quietly set his chopsticks down. “My feelings go far beyond mere sympathy, mother,” he replied, each word measured and deliberate.
“I will never allow you to be with him.” Her answer came without hesitation. “You can be with anyone else. Just not him.”
For the past several nights, she had barely slept. She had cried, remembered, prayed. Tried to convince herself that hating Noeul would be easier.
It wasn’t.
Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw two different boys. One was Gong. The other was the quiet child who had sat at her table, laughed with Haneul, thanked her for every meal, and bowed before leaving her home. She wanted to erase that boy from her memory. She couldn’t.
Life had been cruel to all three of them. She had buried her youngest son. Chung-Hee had fallen in love with the one person she could never accept. And Noeul had survived when everyone wished the past had unfolded differently.
“My relationship with Noeul is my personal matter,” Chung-Hee said, unable to hide the irritation in his voice. “I’m an adult. I can make my own decisions.”
Ms. Lee laughed quietly. “Do you really believe that?” She looked at him for a long moment. “You don’t even recognize yourself anymore.”
Chung-Hee frowned.
“You adore him. You rearrange your life around him. You follow him like a lost dog.” Her expression softened for only a moment. “And I refuse to lose my remaining son too.”
“My love for him is real,” he said. There was no hesitation. No embarrassment. Only certainty.
“And that’s exactly what terrifies me.” She leaned forward slightly. “You’re giving everything to someone who cannot give you peace.”
“He doesn’t have to.”
Ms. Lee stared at him. “He will destroy you,” she whispered. “Just as Gong destroyed Haneul.”
Silence settled between them.
Chung-Hee looked down at the untouched food. His mother’s words irritated him, yet they also found the places he tried hardest not to look at.
“He isn’t Gong.”
“No.” Ms. Lee nodded. “He isn’t.” Then she looked directly into his eyes. “But he knew.”
The room suddenly felt smaller.
“He knew what Gong was doing to Haneul.”
Chung-Hee’s jaw tightened. “He was just a teenager.”
“So was Haneul.”
“He didn’t understand.”
“He chose his brother.”
Her words hung in the quiet.
Haneul’s final note had said otherwise. I don’t think Noeul knows.
Please don’t blame him. But Chung-Hee had spent years convincing himself that Haneul had been protecting his best friend, even in death.
Then he had overheard fragments of Noeul’s conversation at the hospital and treated his guilt as confirmation.
Haneul’s words had offered one truth. Noeul’s self-punishment appeared to offer another. Chung-Hee had chosen the one that gave his anger somewhere to go.
His hesitation must have shown. “He covered for his brother,” she continued quietly. “Whether out of fear, denial, or loyalty, I don’t know.” Her eyes filled. “But my son still died.”
She wiped at them impatiently. “You’re trying to separate Noeul from Gong.”
“I am.”
“But Noeul has spent three years trying to separate himself from Gong too.”
Chung-Hee looked up. “What do you mean?”
“If he truly believed he had no responsibility,” she said softly, “why would he spend every day punishing himself?”
He remembered Noeul crying at Haneul’s grave. Offering his own life. Apologizing. The memory hurt as much now as it had then.
Chung-Hee looked away. “You will understand one day,” she said quietly. “Sometimes, even when you love someone, the kindest thing you can do is let them go.”
Chung-Hee slowly shook his head. “I can’t.”
She closed her eyes. “I know.”
A few moments later, the doorman called to announce a visitor. Ms. Lee looked toward the intercom.
“It’s him, isn’t it?”