Chapter 117

Baek Hanje answered without looking at him.

“...Sometimes this thing gives the wrong result.”

“.......” 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

“We’ve already got enough urgent shit to deal with, and now it’s spouting nonsense. ...Right?”

Splash.

Water sprayed near their feet.

It was the sound of Gowon himself stepping back.

He had moved out from under Baek Hanje’s umbrella, and rain began pouring over his head again.

“.......”

“Gowon.”

Thump. Thump.

His heart pounded hard enough to smash apart the tangled mess inside his head.

Ah. So this is what it is.

This is what liking someone feels like?

Not the beautiful, amazing kind of feeling they show in music videos... It can be this ugly and cowardly too.

Jealous of the people around him when he had nothing to offer in return. Craving his attention and concern in a form as pathetic as this.

Splash. Splash.

Without even noticing the puddles beneath his feet, Gowon kept backing away.

I... Hanje...

Through his rain-blurred vision, he saw Baek Hanje speaking to him and reaching out a hand.

“Gowon. Hey, snap out of it!”

The sound of feet churning through the water seemed like the sound of sinking into a mire.

“Gowon...!”

Gowon couldn’t bring himself to answer that call. He turned and fled, running straight into the dark alleyway.

For a while, he could hear footsteps following him.

Then, as though finally letting him go, they stopped.

Even then, Gowon kept running for a long time.

***

The DNA test came back as a match.

Chief Manager Park said it was fine because they had fully expected the result, but he couldn’t hide how much of a headache it was.

The other side filed a petition for the return of Suhyeon while simultaneously requesting visitation rights.

“Then we need to start preparing to argue that she’s the less suitable guardian.”

In the end, the person they decided to put forward as the child’s guardian was Gowon, his older half-brother.

Suhyeon was going to have visitation with his biological mother, and they judged that having his grandparents accompany him would not be particularly useful. As much as possible, Gowon would attend every step of the process.

Perhaps because that kept him busy.

Or perhaps for some other reason.

Gowon stopped coming back to Hanje’s home.

Even now, in the conference room, he sat far away with his head lowered, desperately avoiding Hanje’s eyes.

The instant the meeting ended, Gowon shot to his feet and went straight outside.

“Gowon really doesn’t look good....”

“How could he? Something this huge blows up when he’s twenty, and he’s still holding together this well. While this is going on, we need to be careful with him too. ...Got it, Baek Hanje?”

“Huh?”

Hearing his name out of nowhere, Hanje jerked his gaze away from the closed door he had been staring at blankly.

As if agreeing that it needed to be said, Chief Manager Park pointed at him too.

“Yeah, you punk. If Taeyoung hadn’t said it, I was about to. Normally it wouldn’t matter, but at times like this... what do you call it? Even one little joke from some incredibly successful senior who makes him compare himself to his own situation can make his mental state collapse completely. So just leave the kid alone.”

“What did I even do...?”

“What do you mean, what? You were staring holes through Gowon the entire meeting.”

“No, that was... Ugh. Fine.”

In truth, Hanje had already wrecked Gowon’s mental state from a completely different direction, so there wasn’t much he could say.

But that wasn’t my fault... No.

After casually taking advantage of his ability to peer into someone’s private feelings without the slightest guilt, trying to make excuses now would be ridiculous.

Hanje knew that Gowon had lowered his guard around him considerably and had started thinking of him as a good older figure in his life.

Watching that affection slowly grow in someone who had once kept such high walls around himself had made Hanje proud, too.

Gowon

Current Status: I like you.

Judging from Gowon’s reaction at the time, it seemed to have been an emotion even Gowon himself hadn’t fully recognized yet.

And instead, Hanje had been forced to discover it first.

...Ha....

The bewilderment and shock that had left his mouth dry were still there.

But just as Chief Manager Park had said, Gowon was already suffocating under his own problems. Hanje couldn’t add himself to the pile.

And there was also one thing Hanje clearly had to take responsibility for.

He rose from his seat.

“Where are you going?”

“To rebuild his mental health!”

And then he ran in the direction Gowon had gone.

Granted, Hanje wasn’t exactly in a position where he had many useful things to say.

But neither this situation nor the state the two of them were in suited his temperament at all.

“Gowon.”

Gowon had clearly heard him, but the figure in the distance only kept walking.

Hanje strode after him and caught his arm.

“.......”

Gowon looked both resentful that Hanje had forced him to stop and consumed with guilt.

And in the time Hanje hadn’t seen him properly, he had lost weight.

Not the controlled slimness he aimed for while preparing for promotions.

He looked dry and gaunt.

“...This isn’t the time for you to be doing this.”

Damn it. There goes the senior instinct again, making me start like an asshole.

Hanje softened his voice as much as possible.

“I’m not saying your feelings don’t matter.”

“.......”

“I’m sorry I put you in this situation. I am.”

Those were private feelings Hanje never should have seen without permission.

Why had the Current Status that was usually covered in black squares suddenly appeared so clearly at that exact moment?

He still had questions for the quest window about what kind of intention might have been behind it.

But for now—

“Just... put everything about you and me on hold for a while. No plus, no minus. We don’t do anything with it.”

“.......”

“First, let’s finish the lawsuit. You know perfectly well what has to be dealt with right now and what can wait until later.”

“.......”

When Hanje patted his unresponsive shoulder, Gowon finally managed a nod.

Before anything else could escape those miserable lips, Hanje hurried to get ahead of him again.

“I mean, I’m the adult here. Don’t worry about me.”

...He tried his best to keep pretending that everything was perfectly calm.

“Hanje.”

“...Yeah.”

“There were... a lot of people who liked you, right?”

“Huh? ...Uh, probably?”

Gowon’s lips trembled for a long time before he finally forced out the next words.

“...Were any of them men?”

“.......”

Wow....

That might genuinely have been the hardest question in the world.

And Hanje genuinely had to answer it well.

His thoughts spun as furiously as they did when he was creating music, and eventually his expression hardened.

“Why the hell are you asking that?”

“.......”

“Gowon.”

Gowon sucked in a startled breath.

Hanje continued in a stern voice.

“You’re an artist. You think you can afford to have that kind of prejudice? What, do you believe gay people go to hell or something?”

The more Hanje spoke, the more the anguish drained from Gowon’s eyes, gradually replaced by astonishment.

“N-No.”

“You can’t make art with a narrow mind like that. Don’t ever start thinking that way.”

“...Um... yes.”

“Obviously I don’t have any prejudice either.”

For the moment... combining that with the same old lecturing Hanje usually subjected him to seemed to have eased at least some of Gowon’s misery.

Of course, having no prejudice and becoming personally involved in the matter were somewhat different things.

And Hanje himself still couldn’t define what he felt about Gowon’s one-sided feelings.

Why me?

I’ve helped you in all kinds of ways, sure, but I wasn’t the only person at the company who did.

There was surprise.

Confusion.

And yet Hanje knew that wasn’t all there was to it.

He simply couldn’t name the rest clearly.

Nor was he in a situation where he had the luxury of holding onto that question and thinking about nothing else.

Still, nothing I said to Gowon was a lie....

Just as he had told him, they had to deal with the important problem directly in front of them first.

After that, meetings continued two or three times a week. There were probably even more if he counted the ones Hanje and Gowon weren’t specifically called in for.

Attorney Baek, formally retained by Kwon Taeyoung, packed up with people from her law office, came all the way to Seoul, and checked into a hotel.

Hanje had told his mother she could stay at his place, but she refused, saying that if she saw how her idiot son lived, she would obviously end up nagging him on top of being busy enough already.

...Really, she’s probably being considerate of Gowon in case he comes back to my place.

Fortunately, until the trial, the temporary order concerning Suhyeon’s residence designated the home where he was already living.

His school parent-counseling records listed only the names of the family members he currently lived with, and there were also hospital records showing that his family had accompanied him when he was sick.

Recovering old CCTV footage from around the hospital had cost a considerable amount of money, but neither Hanje, who had paid it, nor Kwon Taeyoung, who knew about it, intended to mention that fact.

Most importantly, Suhyeon himself strongly insisted that he liked his current family.

All Hanje had ever seen was the kid acting childish and getting scolded by his sister.

Whatever sibling relationships really amounted to, apparently Gowon and Sua had been the happiest of anyone when the temporary order came down.

They also had the recording from the conference room, where Choi Jinhwa had subtly tried to get money out of Gowon.

They planned to use that, among other things, to argue that she was not a suitable guardian to raise the child.

“With this much, it’ll be hard for the final ruling to order that the child be sent to her.”

The issue of who would raise Suhyeon, however, was separate from terminating parental rights.

“...There hasn’t been any direct abuse or physical harm. This country is extremely generous when it comes to parental rights... Right now, the only thing we can really attack is neglect. But if they claim they had circumstances all this time and put on a repentant act about doing better from now on, it probably won’t go as far as terminating her parental rights.”

Even if they survived this round safely, she could always invoke the fact that she was his biological mother and try the same thing again.

The other side knew perfectly well that Gowon’s side was reluctant to turn this into a huge lawsuit.

Ultimately, that was the problem.

How could they end this quietly, without allowing it to affect Gowon as an artist in any way?

“...Still, we got a decent result from the temporary order, so maybe the family-court investigation will go well too.”

After hearing Chief Manager Park, Attorney Baek Junhee, who had been lost in thought, finally spoke.

“But haven’t we been thinking far too defensively?”

“What?”

“Maybe this is only occurring to me because I don’t see Gowon as someone who has to be protected the way all of you do.”

“Mother, what do you mean?”

Kwon Taeyoung asked.

“Suppose the child gets sent to his biological mother. Just hypothetically.”

His mother’s gaze flicked toward Hanje.

“Then Gowon’s grandparents should be able to claim reimbursement for the child-support expenses they’ve covered all these years.”

“......!”

“Seven years is by no means a small amount. And if, as she claims, she really wants to become his mother now...”

Attorney Baek exhaled briefly.

“...then it’s only right that she shoulder the father’s debt too, isn’t it?”

“Ah!”

“If money is what she’s after, I think we have plenty of room to pressure her with this during mediation.”

Of course, depending on how the other side responded, it could turn into a gamble.

She might decide Gowon’s future earning potential was worth it and recklessly snatch the child up anyway....

But using what the other side wanted to frighten them in return was an idea none of them had considered even once.

Just as Hanje’s mother had said, they had been too focused on protecting Gowon’s mental state, reputation, and everything else.

The attorneys’ opinions were divided, but Attorney Baek Junhee settled it.

“Taeyoung.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll handle the mediation. I think I can do this.”

A bitter smile appeared on her experienced face.

“It’s better for one mother to deal with another.”

Whether that mother deserved the title or not.

Then, without warning, Hanje’s mother planted a hand on the back of his head and shoved it down.