Gu Sinhu shuddered and brushed off his shoulders.
“Good grief.”
On Suhyeong, On Jurim—both of them had suddenly gone round the bend, as if they had eaten something they shouldn’t have.
For Gu Sinhu, who had been recovering his petty jealousy and wounded pride by belittling Jurim and Hyeonak, it was not a welcome change.
“Do people change like that just because they brought in one adopted daughter?”
That father and son of the On family were fussing over her as if that child were On Jurim’s own flesh and blood.
His own flesh and blood. What a laugh.
It wasn’t as if On Jurim had a wife hidden away somewhere.
“……?”
Gu Sinhu narrowed his eyes.
“Is there something there?”
*
Suhyeong quietly asked Geuru, who was sitting on the sofa.
“Are you upset?”
“Vewy, vewy……”
Geuru, who had been pouting sulkily, seemed to grow angry all over again. Her eyebrows shot up, and she spoke in an indignant voice.
“Vewy, vewy, vewy, vewy!”
Suhyeong smiled gently, as if he found her adorable.
“There are more than a few people like that out there.”
“Geuru saw them on YouTube too.”
In videos and in the comments, there were terrible people everywhere.
“You don’t need to deal with each one. There’s no end to it. So you don’t need to keep each one in your heart either.”
“But what if I get weally, weally mad?”
Suhyeong knelt down and met Geuru’s eyes.
“From now on, you’ll learn how to keep your center. Right now, even a small breeze may feel overwhelming, but as you become an adult, you’ll grow used to it. Lowering your head and swallowing things down will become easier too.”
“Being a gwown-up sounds hard.”
“It’s all right to be shaken right now. That’s how you grow. In the meantime, we’ll help you so that you don’t become too sad.”
Geuru nodded.
As if something had occurred to him, Suhyeong suddenly let out a laugh.
“Jurim has a natural talent for that sort of thing.”
“Was the Guild Mashter like that when he was a kid too?”
“He was so much like that, I wondered if he had come out of the womb already fully grown. Tiny little thing, but he was a complete old man in a child’s body.”
At the phrase old man in a child’s body, Geuru burst out laughing.
“You’re finally smiling.”
Geuru smiled shyly, her face flushing.
“Actually, I was twying to come here together with the Guild Mashter today, but I failed. I’m sowwy.”
“What do you have to be sorry for?”
“Well…….” Geuru lowered her head and fidgeted, clasping her hands together.
“I wanted the Guild Mashter and the Chairmun to get along better.”
“…….”
“Geuru, um, I wasn’t getting along with my friend last time.”
“Something like that happened?”
“Back then, I was upset and my heart hurt a lot. I was mad too.”
Falling out with a friend was harder than with anyone else. Back then, she had learned that the closer a relationship was, the harder it was to be hated—and to hate in return.
“So we fought!”
When a child who looked gentle no matter how one looked at her said she had fought, Suhyeong’s eyes widened.
“You fought?”
“Geuru got mad and made a scawy face like this.”
Geuru took both index fingers and pulled up the ends of her eyebrows.
“Why are you doing this to Geuru? Don’t bully me! Then my friend cried and cried.”
“What?”
“Then my friend cried and told me honestly. Geuru became a Hunter, and I got popular with the other friends. So she was jealous because I didn’t play with her as much.”
“Ah, yes. That does happen sometimes.”
“This is a secret, but Geuru wasn’t going to forgive her no matter what. Because I was vewy, vewy mad.”
Suhyeong smiled and nodded.
“That’s understandable.”
“But…… when I heard her talk honestly, my heart just suddenly got all warm and melted into mush. Like magic.”
It must have been because her desire to mend the relationship was greater. Thinking that, Suhyeong praised her for being wonderful.
“So. Geuru wanted to help the Guild Mashter and the Chairmun talk honestly too.”
“……I see.”
“But I failed.”
Geuru let out a deep sigh.
“Perhaps it was for the best.”
“Huh? Why?”
Suhyeong wore a self-mocking smile.
“……?”
Some words had to pass through countless stages before they could be brought to the lips.
Choosing the right timing. Worrying whether it might already be too late. Predicting how the other person would take what was said now. Measuring the hurt one would suffer if things did not go well.
And as that happened, tens of thousands of reasons not to speak came into being.
While turning over those countless reasons, one began to hope that the parts one did not want to dig up would simply be buried.
Relying on the negative emotions that time would wear away, and on the blood tie of family that would never be severed in one’s lifetime, one waited for the stroke of luck that the relationship would mend itself as if by magic.
Just then, Geuru looked straight ahead and opened her eyes wide. Suhyeong turned his head toward where the child was looking.
“Guild Mashter……”
“When exactly are you going to be honest and come play?”
The man with the bored-looking expression was leaning his shoulder against the terrace doorway, his arms crossed.
It was Jurim.
The moment Suhyeong rose to his feet, all expression vanished from his face, and he froze like ice.
Jurim held out his hand to Geuru without acknowledging On Suhyeong.
When Geuru hesitated, Suhyeong nodded to tell her it was all right.
Looking a little crestfallen, Geuru got up and approached Jurim.
“Have you been well? How long has it been?”
At Suhyeong’s words, Jurim gave a small laugh.
“Who knows. I think the last time I saw you was when I blew away half the garden.”
In truth, they had seen each other a few times since that day, but those had strictly been meetings between On Jurim, Guild Master of Hyeonak, and On Suhyeong, chairman of Doan Group.
“……Yes, you destroyed all the garden trees back then. It really has been a long time.”
Remembering that day from nearly four years and six months ago, Suhyeong closed his mouth.
It had been a time when every media outlet was chattering about Doan Group.
A cold-blooded father who sold his sons for his ambition.
It was a rather laughable and provocative headline.
“Father, answer me.”
But the reason he had been unable to properly answer Jurim’s question was not because of the facts known to the world.
At the time, it had not even been half a year since his beloved eldest son had died.
The “tragic family history of Doan Group and the On family,” shouted about day and night without pause, had driven him mad.
Wasn’t there perhaps some scheming by On Suhyeong behind his wife’s death as well? Hadn’t it been for the sake of remarrying Chairman Nam, with whom she had been in divorce proceedings at the time?
Doan Group had survived on the brink of bankruptcy by selling his sons to the government, but in the end, wasn’t the fact that only one of those sons returned due to the father’s greed?
All kinds of media outlets spun baseless speculations, and reporters followed him around every time, throwing sensitive questions at him.
They called the sorrow of losing a wife the grief of beating the basin, and the sorrow of losing a child the grief of losing one’s light.
Those sorrows were On Suhyeong’s pain.
And people dissected every last one of On Suhyeong’s pains and shoved them before his eyes every day.
He was so angry he could not endure it. He was never in his right mind.
Because of that, none of the words that came out of his mouth were sincere.
“Is it really an answer you want from me now? Can you even believe what I say? Isn’t it simply that you want to shift the guilt you feel toward Ijo onto me?”
Why was it that words, once spilled, could not be taken back?
“That’s answer enough, Father.”
After that, Jurim never asked for an answer again.
He merely destroyed the entire garden his family had loved and disappeared.
“Then I’ll be taking Geuru with me now, Chairman.”
Even now, Suhyeong was still hesitating.
Leaving Suhyeong behind, Jurim turned back toward the banquet hall with Geuru.
Geuru, flustered between the two of them, looked back at Suhyeong.
Suhyeong wet his dry lips. Countless reasons that kept him from being honest blocked him from opening his mouth.
In the silence, Geuru forced herself to stop and tugged at Jurim’s hand.
“What.”
“You have to wait.”
“For what.”
“The Guild Mashter wouldn’t know because he never went to kindergarden, but……”
“……What?”
“When a friend is presenting, you’re supposed to wait patiently.”
Speaking in the face of a difficult situation is never easy.
But if given just a little time, and if someone waits, even children who had struggled soon find their words.