MOON Ch 18

As she slightly tilted her head and looked at him, her white cheek trembled as if she felt humiliated. After that, they repeated the same act a few more times. Bending her knees, picking up the handkerchief, and meeting his gaze that made no effort to hide his disgust toward her, she held out the handkerchief for the fifteenth time.

“You should offer it politely.”

When he pointed out her insolence, she pressed her lips together and finally held it out with both hands. Grasping the handkerchief that gave off a strong scent of fabric softener, Taeha assessed Chaeon.

What should I do. Should I push further here, or…

The corners of her eyes, glaring at him with her anger at its peak, had somehow become red. She wouldn’t cry until the end even after all that. Without taking his gaze off her tearful eyes, Taeha asked in a low voice.

“Feel wronged?”

At his question, Chaeon glared at him while biting her lips hard.

Ah, yes. That kind of face. A bare face far more vivid than when she dared to put on pretenses in front of him. A strange sense of satisfaction rose.

“You’re going to make that kind of face over just this much, so what’s with the attitude.”

“…”

“So act according to your place, Chaeon. Climb up only as much as you should.”

He shifted his gaze from her swollen cheek to the corners of her eyes, just as red as that cheek, and tucked the handkerchief he had been fiddling with into the inside of his suit jacket.

“Sometimes, when something is too upright, I want to break it.”

Jang Yeonjun’s gaze never left Yoon Chaeon, and Yoon Chaeon’s gaze frequently stole glances at Jang Taeha. The directions and intentions of their interest were bound to differ, but one thing was clear: in order to dig into Jang Yeonjun, she first had to tame Yoon Chaeon, who was within his line of sight.

A gaze with remnants of desire and curiosity that had not been fully put away. There was no use for clumsy disguise that she could not even properly hide. He intended to break her useless stiffness and make her reveal her bare face in front of him.

Everything in Songbaekwon was to become Taeha’s, and ‘his things’ ought to go according to his will, whatever they might be.

Taeha, who had glanced at her pale face, turned around with a cold expression.

∞ ∞ ∞

Heejung, who learned belatedly of what Chaeon had gone through, stroked her daughter’s swollen cheek and cried for a long while, her heart aching.

“Mom, not even knowing, kept being away, so…”

“Mom, I’m okay. I’m really okay.”

“Oh my. It’s this swollen. My pretty daughter, what am I going to do.”

“I’m really okay. So stop crying, okay?”

Rather, Chaeon had to calmly soothe Heejung. But Heejung’s heart ached even more at the sight of Chaeon like that. Because she had met such a man, lived such a life, and given birth to Chaeon in such an environment, it seemed her one and only daughter had become a precocious child who knew nothing but to endure.

“What good does it do if Ma’am’s feelings are hurt. Does that mean the hitting never happened then?”

She said she would quit right away, then said she would go and confront them. Each time Heejung did that, Chaeon forced a smile and calmly dissuaded her. Finding a job with these conditions at Heejung’s age was not easy, and if she got on someone’s bad side in a place like this or got tangled up in complicated circumstances and had to quit, it might actually be even harder to find another job.

She had that much sense. So if she thought about it a little realistically, even if it was dirty and loathsome, in the end it was something that could be resolved if only Chaeon endured.

There were only two people who left that incident as a painful wound. Chaeon was merely the daughter of a servant at Songbaekwon. Something that happened to a girl like her would soon be forgotten by everyone as if it were nothing.

Holding such bitter thoughts, several more nights passed.

∞ ∞ ∞

“Yoon Chaeon. The homeroom teacher says to come to the staff room.”

It was when she returned to school after the weekend ended. Chaeon, who had gone to the staff room without knowing why, was just about to enter when—bang! Someone pushed the door open so roughly it seemed the door itself might be torn off.

“You, you! Hey! Choi Hyeji! Do you have business destroying the staff room door, you!”

“Fuck, what are you saying. You fucking old fart.”

A curse chewed and spat out roughly under her breath. A whiff of cigarette smoke, piercing marks above her eyebrows. A girl with hair nearly frizzy from frequent bleaching, tied up carelessly, spotted Chaeon standing in front of the staff room and glared coldly at her.

The leader of the group that had always tormented her. The kid who supposedly liked Kang Gyuhwan. Her family was well-off, so no matter what trouble she caused, the school supposedly could not really discipline her.

“…”

Expecting her to maybe slam her shoulder hard on the way past, Chaeon just stood there staring blankly at her, but unexpectedly, Choi Hyeji, who had been glaring at Chaeon as if she would kill her, moved far away from her as if she did not even want to touch her, then passed by with a chill in the air. It was such an unfamiliar thing that it made her wonder what on earth was going on.

Chaeon, tilting her head as if puzzled, finally came face to face with her homeroom teacher and only then understood the reason.

“Teacher, you said you were looking for me…”

“Oh, yes. Chaeon, you did well to come.”

At the benevolent smile she swore she had never seen before, Chaeon approached him with a slightly bewildered feeling.

“Chaeon. Teacher was trying not to nag from the morning, but.”

“Yes?”

“The kids were harassing you, hitting you. Why didn’t you say that happened?”

“…”

“Ahem. No, you kid. If something like that happened, you should have said something.”

“That’s…”

“I heard your mother works at Chairman Joongwang’s house.”

She had no idea how on earth the fact that she had never told anyone had leaked out, but Chaeon suppressed her awkward expression and answered.

“Yes.”

“The Chairman’s son called the school directly. He said something seems to have happened to you, Chaeon, and asked us to pay attention.”

“Ah…”

“Really, these days there are all kinds of families. They even take care of the servants working at their homes…”

The homeroom teacher’s rambling was already going in one ear and out the other. What rose in Chaeon’s mind was the conversation she had shared with Yeonjun a few days ago as they came out of his room together.

‘You’re really not going to tell me to the end what happened?’

The light brown eyes that had narrowed with a tender light. Yeonjun, who had quietly watched Chaeon keep her mouth shut with a troubled face to the very end, gently curved his lips.

‘I see. Then I’ll have to think about it on my own.’

‘…’

‘If I find out, is it okay if I help too?’

Could he even do that. And help, why would you. As if asking that, when Chaeon only quietly looked at him, Yeonjun spoke as if he had read all her inner thoughts.

‘We agreed to get close, didn’t we. You and I.’

As if they were in a relationship where they had shared something great… It sounded as if he was thinking of her as someone special for no reason, so she tried hard not to misunderstand. But it seemed he had finally noticed something had happened. As Chaeon fiddled with the hem of her school skirt without a word, her gaze lowered, the homeroom teacher addressed her in a voice so sickeningly gentle it chilled her.

“Next time something like that happens, tell me again. He said to report it right away. It seems he thinks of you almost like a younger sister.”

“…Yes.”

“Wow, really. If he hadn’t said anything, I would have had no idea at all.”

Chaeon had to hold back a burst of laughter that nearly escaped.

No idea? That could not be.

He must have found countless signs over time. There was no way he did not know about a situation where so many people systematically treated one person as invisible. She had seen him pretend not to notice the wounds on Chaeon’s arms, the bruises on her legs, her split lips, and such things, several times. Did he really think he knew nothing at all.

Every time he treated her with a clear difference from how he treated the other kids from well-off families, Chaeon had passed through those times thinking that this too would pass if she endured just a little. But then…

If a single phone call from someone as important as the Chairman’s son could do this, then someone who made her doubt whether he even had the qualities of an educator could also become such a gentle educator. Disgust rose at the pretense and hypocrisy.

“Teacher. I’d like to make a thank-you call separately, would that be okay?”

There was no way she would know Yeonjun’s contact information, but even so, if she kept facing that servile face, she felt like she might vomit on it.

“Oh, uh, yes. Sure…”

So he did not even know the contact information. The sound of him muttering to himself like that was repulsive. Chaeon, who looked at the homeroom teacher lost in thought while stroking his chin as if he were filthy waste, turned around and left the staff room.

As soon as she opened the back door of the classroom, gazes flew at her from all directions. Receiving the stares so openly that her whole body stung, Chaeon sat down as if nothing had happened.

After that, from the start of first period to homeroom time, surprisingly, nothing happened. If before nothing had happened because they treated her as invisible, the difference this time was that nothing happened because everyone was quietly watching Chaeon’s mood.

Sometimes kids she had never exchanged a single word with forcibly brought up ridiculous topics like whether she managed her hair or skin separately, trying to talk to her. As if they were trying to help a pitiful classmate who seemed far behind.

The atmosphere that had been turned upside down overnight was so hard to adjust to that her stomach churned.

‘Chaeon.’

Yeonjun’s tender voice lingered by her ear,

‘So act according to your place.’

and another voice that coldly dug into her insides made her feel as if her solar plexus was being blocked.

She could not tell whether she felt like crying or laughing.