Dry Monsoon

Chapter 11 Part 1

Unlike me, who was surprised by the unexpected reunion, he grinned as if he had expected this moment. Without approaching where he was standing, I turned back towards the road.

At the other end of the call, the driver’s voice was heard over the phone.

— “Yes, where are you?”

“Oh, I’m on my way up to Gapyeong Guhyeol Valley. There is also an old market, and this is exactly–”

But again, I couldn’t complete what I was to say to the taxi driver. Out of nowhere, Lee Hyun appeared behind me, snatched my phone from my grasp and pressed the end button. I turned around in surprise to see a frowning Lee Hyun. He returned my phone and said as if complaining,

“I’m not used to being ignored. And so openly at that.”

“I didn’t ignore you…”

“Let’s say this is also a coincidence. I didn’t know that Ms Lee Ji-Eun was the guest that Mr Kim mentioned.”

Unlike his stern voice, Kwon Yi-Hyun’s expression was like a cool spring breeze. The genuine smile that appeared on his face shook my heart.

I cleared my throat and said with a tight smile,

“I had to visit there for After-Sales Service.”

(T/N: After-sales service is like customer support.)

“I see. I just saw Lim Soo-wan’s car. He went down alone… Did he ditch you?”

“Uh…rather than ditching me, he ran off. Again, it was because of a certain someone.”

He pointed at himself skillfully and shrugged his shoulders. I was surprised that neither his secretary nor his attendants who stuck to him 24/7 weren’t here. But there was something else I was more curious about.

That heavily pregnant woman who leaned on him earlier.

Out of curiosity I glanced at his parked car in the sideway and felt a sense of relief when I didn’t see anyone there.

What on earth was I relieved for? And why was I feeling embarrassed?!

“So, did you walk all the way down here?”

He was staring at the droplets of sweat running down my forehead. I gave a small nod awkwardly.

“By the way, what are you doing here?” I tried to change the subject.

“I ran out of cigarettes. This is the car I was thinking about buying a pack and going back again.”

“Why? Did you leave something behind?”

“No. Why?”

He smiled happily and gently swept my sweaty bangs to the side. Embarrassed by the unexpected gentle touch, I took a step back and raised my head while fiddling with my earlobe.

“I heard that the person you were earlier with was Mr Kim’s granddaughter.”

“Yeah. She is Yoon Jae-sun.”

“Looking at her, she seems to be near to giving birth…”

“There is about a month and a half left until the due date. That’s why I was in a hurry.”

A ridiculous question tried to squeeze out of my mouth at his calm response. Where on earth was her husband? Why was Lee-Hyun the one who is coming? Asking that I guess I would cross the line. Was it because of the child that the request he asked of me had to be a secret?

I felt this is more like a soap opera. It is said that excessive delusions are harmful to health. He looked at my distorted face and smiled awkwardly.

“Don’t imagine anything weird. It’s all over your face. Making up a fucking drama.”

I rubbed my reddened cheeks and blinked my eyes embarrassedly. .

“Can you tell? Really?”

“Yes. I can see it clearly. Are you curious about who Yoon Jae-sun is?”

Instead of answering, I glanced from side to side. It would have been inappropriate if I said yes, and awkward if I said no. Lee Hyun looked around and opened the passenger door as if avoiding the curious gaze of the old market owner.

“This doesn’t seem like a good place to have high-level conversations, so we’ll move on.”

“There’s a level?”

“If you want to know how high the level is, hop in.”

While I was contemplating, Lee Hyun’s phone rang. He picked up the call and responded in an ice-cold tone, which was totally different from the way he talked to me a while back. The whole time he was on the call, I was standing near the passenger seat with the door open like an idiot. He lightly grabbed my shoulder and pushed me towards the seat. Pretending to give in, I got into the passenger seat, buried myself in the soft seat, and let out a long sigh.

My heart heated up as we were going down a gentle downhill road, I felt as if it was the road to my resignation.

***

“Yoon Jae-sun is my brother’s wife. His legal wife.”

He finally spoke when the downhill ended and the car entered a two-lane road. His voice was mixed with faint annoyance and compassion.

“I didn’t know you had an older brother…”

“We are identical twins. My brother was born a minute earlier than me.”

“You must have felt unfair since it was just a minute difference.”

He chuckled at what I said.

“My brother was an architect. A person who had a free soul unlike me. But he died in an accident eight months ago. There was an earthquake that day and we were at a construction site. He got buried by the earthquake and it was me who was in charge of the construction. I feel like I killed him.”

I quickly ran over the timeline in my head, with the hint of eight months. If it is a project that was carried out by SR and quit due to a disaster accident, there is only one project in the past year. I recalled the overturned cranes I saw in the news and the interviews with SR executives I had seen in the New York Times.

“Only after my brother died, Yoon Jae-sun appeared. At first, I didn’t believe that my brother had a secret marriage with a woman. Well, if it had been that far, I would have divided the property and finished it clean. But…”

After a silent pause, he continued, “She was pregnant.”

Unlike the drive to Mr. Kim’s villa earlier, the road back was quiet. He glanced at me after stopping the car in front of the traffic lights.