LLU 44

How should I put it into words.

“…What?”

The fleeting moment that passed before my mother asked me that in return.

Loud music and people’s chatter pour into my ears. I sit motionless like I’ve turned into a statue, silently taking in every change in my mother’s expression. Her widely opened eyes, her trembling lips, and her pupils slowly enlarging as they fill with shock.

Gradually, the noise ringing in my ears fades. As if my hearing has gone completely white. Yet at the same time, my senses have sharpened to the point where I can even see the floating dust particles.

The world’s time continues to flow as usual, but it feels like time has stopped only between my mother and me. With my mouth shut, I read every single one of my mother’s expressions using my keenly honed five senses.

My mother’s eyes blankly search me before finally asking. Is it true? It’s not a joke? Her gaze repeatedly asks the same thing wordlessly, now even looking desperate. It can’t be. I must have heard wrong. The clear intent to deny the plainly existing reality is so strong it’s almost solid.

I just sit there and endure that time. I answer with silence instead. Soon my mother’s face turns deathly pale.

“…Oon-ah.”

The moment the silent question-and-answer ends, the two of us blend back into the flow of time in the world. In a voice that’s almost completely gone, my mother asks.

“It’s not true, right? I—I must have heard wrong. There’s no way. Junghan… to you….”

“You didn’t hear wrong.”

“…….”

“Choi Junghan beat me and raped me. From the very beginning until now, continuously.”

I state the reality in a calm voice, as if playing back a recorded recording.

“The scar on my face when we first met—that was from Choi Junghan hitting me. The first time I was raped was when the four of us went to the villa.”

“…O-Oon-ah, w-wait, just a moment.”

“The day the house caught fire, it happened at Chairman Choi’s family home too. From that day on, I was locked up in Choi Junghan’s house. Being beaten, choked, raped, over and over.”

I close my eyes for a long moment and open them again. A voice inside me criticizes me. Is it really necessary to explain this in such detail to a mother who’s already in shock? But at the same time, the self that has been wounded and violated for far too long raises its head alongside it. I can no longer resist that part of me.

“I’ve never attended a single university class. I took a leave of absence. No—I was forced to take a leave of absence.”

“…W-What does that mean!”

“Choi Junghan forced it. He canceled the dormitory too.”

“…….”

“That’s… how I’ve been living all this time.”

My mother’s face has gone so pale she looks like she might collapse backward at any second. Keeping my eyes fixed on that face, I finish speaking in a flat tone.

“This is everything that’s happened to me until now.”

It took less than three minutes to say all of this. Because I couldn’t bring myself to say these very short words until now, I was dragged around by Choi Junghan all this time.

I feel no regret or self-blame about it. Back then, that was all I could do, and even just a few weeks ago I was stubbornly holding the same position. Because I wanted to protect my mother. Because it wasn’t my fault that I failed to realize from the start just how much of a monster Choi Junghan really was.

Still, it’s true that a sense of emptiness and futility washes over me. If I had told my mother the truth from the very beginning—before Choi Junghan’s obsession with me grew into something this twisted—maybe things would have turned out differently.

If I had, maybe my life wouldn’t have been twisted and ruined to this extent. Maybe I could have lived a modest but peaceful life together with my mother, even if it was worn and shabby. Maybe I could have walked across a campus with flower petals scattering, wearing a jumper with my school name on it, and laughed like other friends…

“How….”

With an expression as though she might faint any second, my mother barely manages to open her mouth and whisper.

“…How could such a thing….”

Repeating those words a couple of times, my mother blinks once with trembling eyelids. A single transparent drop falls with a plop. That marks the beginning—the moment all denial of reality shatters. From my mother’s eyes, fierce tears begin pouring out as if they could tear through skin.

Without even thinking to take out a handkerchief, my mother buries her face in both hands. Her shoulders slump completely; unable to bear the heavy breathing, her frail body starts shaking violently as she cries.

“Oon-ah, Mom… Mom is sorry….”

Mixed in among the sobs pouring out so hard she can barely speak are those intermittent words. With bloodshot red eyes, my mother pleads with me.

“Mom… Mom is the sinner. Mom didn’t know anything, because of Mom, our Oon-ah went through something like that and Mom didn’t even realize, Mom was just drowning in happiness….”

“…….”

“I’m sorry, Mom really… I’m so sorry….”

I should have comforted her. Because my mother is crying like a little child right now. I should have said it’s okay. That it’s not Mom’s fault, that I’m fine, so let’s calmly think about what comes next for now. Like I’ve always done my whole life, I should have coaxed and consoled my mother.

But the words don’t come out easily. Like someone who doesn’t know how to speak, I just sit there with my mouth shut, dazed.

It isn’t because I resent or hate my mother. It’s because I couldn’t bring myself to say “it’s okay” even as an empty comfort.

I’m not okay. I’m really not okay at all, so I couldn’t say those words. No matter how heartbreakingly my mother cries, no matter how many glances start turning toward us one by one from around us, I just watch her with an emotionless expression. Like someone who doesn’t know how to comfort anyone.

I didn’t even have the time to fully feel sadness. The more time passed, the more impatience simply welled up inside me. After watching my mother cry without stopping, I pick up a napkin and hand it to her, speaking.

“…There’s no time. Later. We can talk later.”

“Huu, huuuhk….”

“Let’s talk later. Right now we have to go somewhere—anywhere.”

“What… suddenly go where….”

At the sudden suggestion, my mother lifts her tear-soaked eyes. Confusion and bewilderment slowly spread across her flushed, grief-filled face.

“…Choi Junghan.”

The words get stuck in my throat. Gritting my teeth, I force out words that will be far too cruel a reality for my mother.

“He harmed even the women Chairman Choi used to be with in the past.”

“…What?”

“I’m saying Mom isn’t the first. Having a child seems to be the first time, but… anyway, every woman who got involved with that family ended up with a bad aftermath. Choi Junghan made sure of it.”

Leaning my body toward my mother, I speak quickly in a low, almost whispering voice.

“So don’t rashly think about reporting to the police or trying to do anything to Choi Junghan. That man is not someone we can win against. We just have to get out of that house right now—even at this moment. We can’t get any more involved. Not just me—Mom has to escape with me too.”

“Then, then the baby?”

My words momentarily stop at my mother’s sharp, almost wailing voice. I lick my dry lower lip and swallow hard with difficulty.

The right thing is to run far, far away before Choi Junghan can threaten our safety. But I couldn’t casually tell my mother to leave the baby behind and run away together. Even though I’m her child, I couldn’t do that. No—precisely because I’m her child, I couldn’t.

I don’t know what kind of heart my mother had twenty-some years ago when she decided to raise me alone. It’s probably a heart I’ll never understand even if I live my whole life.

To a mother like that, I couldn’t bring myself to say leave the baby in that mansion and come away. Not after I’ve already seen with my own eyes what kind of face she made when looking at the child, what kind of face she made when holding the child.

Instead of the words I couldn’t say, I laboriously bring out the next-best option.

“…Mom… will need time to think about the baby and prepare, so for now I’ll hide myself alone. As far away as possible. Let’s decide on a region together right now—where I should go. Choi Junghan has my phone right now. So it’ll probably be hard to contact each other immediately. Mom, finish sorting out everything around you, and then we’ll meet.”

“Oon-ah. Wait, wait just a moment…!”

My mother calls out to me in a voice full of despair. The end of her words jumps out hysterically.

“To Mom… to Mom, this is all too sudden right now.”

“…….”

“So please… give Mom just five minutes… time.”

I don’t say that it was sudden for me too, that the existence called Choi Junghan who suddenly burst into my life was an unbearably heavy and unlucky accident for me. I just wait quietly. Holding back—even though I don’t know why—the surge of emotion trying to spill out.

My mother must be in enough pain right now. Her happy, peaceful daily life has been turned completely upside down without any warning. I simply endure with silence until my mother speaks again.

It feels like an hour has passed subjectively. Yet even as time flows, my mother’s state doesn’t calm down at all—it only grows more unstable. Clenching and unclenching her fist, fiddling with the strap of her handbag then throwing it down repeatedly, my mother finally lifts her gaze after all that restless movement.

With urgent hands she rummages through her bag and takes out an envelope, placing it on the table. Then she pulls out a thick wad of bills from her wallet, stuffs them into the envelope, and pushes it toward me.

“Oon-ah. T-Take this.”

“…….”

“I put in all the cash I have right now. Wherever you go, you’ll be able to sleep somewhere warm. At least take this, go eat properly, huuuhk, and rest for now.”

It was the answer I expected. I bite down hard on my lip and release it. Even though I knew my mother would answer exactly like this… still, I can’t help the feeling that a corner of my shattered heart is being swept away with the outgoing tide.

I don’t resent my mother for not being able to let go of her attachment to the baby. It’s just that now I will never again be my mother’s top priority. Even if it’s childish and immature thinking, in this moment that fact feels heartbreaking.

Unconsciously, deep down, I think I had hoped my mother would lose her reason a little more when she heard my story.

I must have imagined—without realizing it—my mother hugging me without thinking about anything else, saying let’s run far away together like before, that we could live together again. If she had, maybe we would have put our heads together right then and discussed how to safely bring the baby left behind in the mansion.

But even after hearing my story, collapsing wretchedly, crying that she’s sorry, my mother never lost her reason. She never forgot the young child left behind in the mansion. In truth that was the natural thing, yet the emptiness still stabbed my chest like a needle.

Perhaps feeling sorry toward me, my mother hurriedly adds.

“Oon-ah, I’m sorry. Mom is really sorry… even after hearing something like this, sending you off alone, I’m… so sorry….”

“…I understand Mom’s situation well. I never expected us to leave together right this instant. When you’ve prepared enough, bring the child out then.”

“Oon-ah.”

“…….”

“…That is….”

My mother begins shedding tears again after pausing for a moment. I stare at her in a daze. It feels ominously familiar—too familiar.

It strangely overlaps with that moment when my mother first told me she was pregnant, when I said I’d go to the hospital with her and she hesitated, awkwardly calling my name. The very moment when I began to be helplessly swept away by a storm-like situation without being able to do anything.

“I don’t have the confidence to raise Roa as a fatherless child….”

Covering her face with both hands, my mother starts sobbing wretchedly.

“…I don’t have the confidence to raise that child alone again… for all those long years….”

The moment I hear those words, every drop of blood in my body freezes cold.

The heated emotion cools rapidly. The tangled flow of thoughts swimming chaotically in my head knots all at once.

I just want to disappear from this place without a trace right now. The emotion crashing over me so violently that my vision turns pitch black is not so much betrayal as utter futility.

Of course I knew my mother wouldn’t leave that child alone in the mansion. But the situation is far beyond what I had imagined.