Chloe let out a hollow laugh and sent Gru behind her.
Gru, who had hurriedly hidden behind Chloe’s leg, wrapped her arms tightly around her.
At that warm body temperature, the corners of Chloe’s mouth loosened slightly.
Then, feeling a gaze staring intently at her, Chloe lifted her eyes.
It was Jurim.
Come to think of it, why was On Jurim here?
Because of his older brother? Did he really have to?
As if sensing her puzzled gaze, Jurim pointed at his own neck.
“You have a mole in the same spot as Gru.”
“……?”
“……?”
Chloe rubbed her neck with her palm, and Ijo snapped his head around with an audible whoosh, staring holes into Jurim.
Watching the scene, Chloe indifferently spat out,
“Ah…… could it be that you’re hitting on me?”
“What?!”
As Ijo’s eyes widened as if asking what that was supposed to mean, Jurim curled up the corner of his lips.
At his younger brother’s meaningful reaction, Ijo grabbed Jurim’s shoulders and shook him.
“Jurim? You should say no, right? How can you not answer there?”
But Jurim simply let himself be shaken with a placid face.
“What did I do.”
“I mean deny it. Why did you even follow me here? Aren’t you going to the training center? Please just go, okay?”
As Ijo pressed him urgently, Chloe, who had been watching, suddenly let out a small laugh.
At that small laugh, Ijo showed clear signs of feeling slighted.
She kept feeling laughter bubbling up, so she let out a loud fake cough before speaking.
“Enough with the jokes. I’m going to get ready for work now, so get out of my house while I’m still being nice.”
Having issued the order, Chloe pushed the two men in the back and sent them outside.
After warning them not to wait out there either, she slammed the door shut, went into the bathroom, and washed her face with cold water gushing from the tap.
Yet a calm smile hovered at her lips.
Recalling On Ijo desperately trying to kick his younger brother out, she burst into giggles, then suddenly touched the corners of her mouth at her reflection in the mirror.
*Do you think you’ll fall in love with him?*
It was as if the her in the mirror was asking herself.
*
“Daddy, America is the land of opportunity.”
Her father would say that whenever he had the chance.
“The harder we work, the better we’ll be able to live.”
Those words were filled with hope and faith.
Her father wore worn-out clothes and worked at construction sites until calluses formed on his fingers; her mother worked at a restaurant day and night.
Chloe knew well that they worked harder than anyone.
To her, that was what love was.
Chloe Han, who had been exceptional even among the long genealogy of the Han clan, knew herself well.
A quarter Korean on her grandfather’s side.
Pretty, so foul-mouthed she couldn’t speak without slang, with platinum blonde hair so fine it would poof up toward the sky if left unmanaged, and believing there was no god who pitied humanity.
A living witness who had achieved the American Dream through nothing but indomitable effort, amidst a family of wretched illegal immigrants.
A tenacious overachiever who graduated early from the Ivy League despite coming from the slums.
A relentless go-getter who, instead of becoming a government researcher, obtained citizenship for her illegal immigrant family members.
Having accomplished all that, there was only one way she knew how to love someone.
Devotion, blindness, sacrifice, consumption.
That was the love she had learned from her parents.
But such love doesn’t actually end with a happy ending.
Her parents had dreamed of the American Dream their whole lives, and the moment they escaped the status of illegal immigrants, their health rapidly deteriorated, and they passed away.
Chloe despaired, and that was the end of the sacrificial, all-consuming love that Chloe and her parents had devoted their entire lives to.
Only when her parents passed away did she learn:
that all her achievements had become meaningless.
*What a load of crap.*
Chloe hid her discomfort and dunked her face in the cold water once more.
Affection disappears into meaninglessness by nature.
To avoid feeling a maddening sense of loss, one must not possess it from the very beginning—that was something she now knew.
Chloe briefly thought of On Ijo.
Act like an adult, Chloe.
He might be pretty enough to make you want him. But it’s the adult thing to endure it, right?
So it’s best not to get entangled now…….
*
…She had thought that just yesterday, so why did he appear the moment she opened the door?
As Chloe, about to leave for work, opened the front door, Ijo tilted his head, holding a bouquet of roses.
“Are you going out? To work? It’s Saturday.”
“I got an urgent call from the company…….”
As she gave a rough answer, Gru, who had been holding Chloe’s hand tightly, ran to Jurim beside Ijo and threw herself into his arms.
Jurim lifted the child with practiced ease.
It seemed Chloe wasn’t the only one who found this quite strange and unfamiliar.
As Chloe felt an inexplicable sense of dejection toward Gru, who was clinging fast to Jurim, On Ijo stood with his mouth hanging open as if his jaw would unhinge.
“Have you two met behind my back?”
“It looks like they knew each other before…….”
Chloe and Ijo spoke at the same time.
Reflexively nodding at that, Gru had her cheeks grabbed tightly by Jurim, who shook them back and forth.
Then he answered shamelessly.
“No.”
Gru, her cheeks still caught, agreed.
“Nwo!”
“…….”
“…….”
Regardless, Jurim spoke as if he were Gru’s guardian.
“If you’re going to work, I can watch the child, right?”
“What?”
Chloe’s gaze sharpened, but Gru, pressing her cheek against Jurim’s face, sent a sparkling look full of anticipation.
It was a face that clearly said she wanted to stay with Jurim.
Then, looking at Gru like that, Ijo took his younger brother’s side.
“I guess Jurim has grown attached to Gru during that time. We’ll take the little princess and play with her. Don’t worry and go.”
Chloe glanced at her wristwatch and let out a deep sigh.
They were people with confirmed identities.
Today was a day without Gru’s check-up, and she had only been bringing her along because there was no one suitable to watch her, so this wasn’t bad, but…….
After some deliberation, Chloe clicked her tongue.
“I’ll call often, so answer.”
“Yay—!”
And so, today’s babysitting duties were entrusted to the brothers On Ijo and On Jurim.
It was all according to Jurim’s plan.
*
The bustling kids cafe on Saturday.
Wearing caps pulled low, the brothers entered holding a child, in a place packed with children and parents.
The Tower was still being raided, and they were faces that appeared whenever the news was on, so hiding their faces was preferable.
“Shall Uncle build you a castle with blocks?”
“Yeees.”
“But you have to give Uncle a kiss on the cheek.”
As Ijo, holding Gru, whispered playfully, Jurim raised an eyebrow.
Jurim glanced around the inside of the shop for a moment—
Swish!
“Huh?!”
He snatched off Ijo’s cap.
“Ah!”
“It’s On Ijo…….”
The commotion inside the kids cafe was instantaneous.
“Wow! On Ijo!”
“Are you On Ijo?”
As children and guardians crowded around, On Ijo laughed lowly and glared at Jurim.
Jurim, holding Gru’s hand, waved at his brother as if telling him to do his best.
Then he settled at a secluded table.
Gru sat across from him.
“On Gru.”
Flinch. At his rigid tone, Gru stiffened her shoulders and answered.
“Yeees…….”
“What happened?”
Gru, who had been rolling her eyes around, finally squirmed and spilled all the knowledge she had received.
“So, Julian isn’t an ordinary puppy either…….”
“Sowwy…….”
Well. Has there ever been anything ordinary among the things our kid picked up?
I should have known when she gave a puppy such a grand name as “Julian,” which was unlike her.