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Chapter 2: Secrets Revealed – February 13, 2021

It had been New Year’s Eve 2015.  She had gone to a party at his house.  The palatial mansion.  Where they had hung out with all his high society friends all the time.  She’d never fit in with them, and she’d known it.  But he hadn’t seemed to mind.  He’d shown her off to them like she was some fine prize.

She hadn’t known what he’d seen in a farm girl like her.  But on the first day of her sophomore year in college, he’d approached her in the cafeteria and offered to buy her lunch.  They’d been dating ever since.  How could it be only four months?  She felt like she’d known him forever.

He’d romanced her.  Wined her and dined her.  And brought her home to sleep with him between satin sheets.  He’d convinced her that she was the light of his life.  And he loved her.  And they had a glorious future together.  

She still wasn’t sure how she’d ever fit into this beautiful world of privilege into which he’d been born.  But it didn’t seem to matter.  He loved her for her.  He was happy just being with her.  

She felt confident as she lay entwined with him between those pristine white bed sheets of his.  The light of a glorious morning sun flowing through his floor-to-ceiling windows.  When he’d bend his head and whisper sweet nothings into her ear.  His breath passing over her skin and making her yearn for more of him.  Or he’d tickle her until she was breathless and begging him for another kiss.  She smiled as she remembered such a moment just this morning.

She had decided she would tell him her news after they kissed at midnight.  The New Year seemed the right time to announce the coming of a new life.

Except that her beautiful boyfriend was nowhere to be seen at five minutes till midnight.  Minha had begun to search the mansion, looking for him.  She’d traveled throughout the ground floor seeking him.  To no avail.  So she’d headed upstairs.  

She interrupted a couple making out in the first bedroom she’d entered.  Embarrassed, she fled.  Yet she still found the courage to enter the second bedroom.  It appeared empty, or so she thought.  She’d stepped into its dark interior to take a closer look.  Maybe he was lying on the bed in the dark, napping.  Beopdung had been fighting a headache earlier tonight…

As she’d shut the door and treaded lightly across the carpet, a cool voice had accosted her.  

“Minha.  You’ve come for me, I see.  I knew my time would come.  You’ve tired of Beopdung, haven’t you?  So now you’ve come to give your lovely self to me?”

It had been Eunho.  He’d been, quite obviously, drunk.  But that hadn’t stopped him from hauling her roughly up against him, his mouth descending upon hers.  No matter how she’d pushed at him, she hadn’t been able to free herself.  

“He’ll be furious with you!” she shouted against his invading mouth as she debated biting him.  “I’m his girlfriend!”

He had laughed at her then.  That eerie echo a warning of what was to come, it mocked her still.  Even in memory.  Then he had spoken again, his voice laced with scorn.

“He’s busy making out with that new girl.  Why don’t you go see?  After you’ve proven it to yourself, you’ll come back.  You’ll want me then.  I’ll show you what a real man is like.”

He had released her then, and she had sent up a silent prayer of thanks that she wasn’t going to be raped tonight by her boyfriend’s best – and very drunk – friend.  She had never liked him.  He had always made her feel uncomfortable.  Now she knew why.

She slipped out the door and headed back downstairs.  She wasn’t braving any more bedrooms.  Not tonight. 

She found him then.  At exactly midnight as voices were shouting New Year’s greetings all around her, she stepped into the living room just in time to see him locking lips with another girl.  The new one.  And her heart had snapped in two.  But nothing had hurt as badly as his reaction when she’d told him a few minutes later that she was pregnant.

“You’re pregnant?” he’d sneered.  “Whose baby is it?”

That had hurt.  “It’s yours, of course.  I’ve never been with anyone else.  You know that.”

“I don’t want a baby.  Get rid of it.”

Those words had struck her to her core.

“I will not get rid of my baby.”

“Then it truly is your baby.  Good luck, babe.  The last thing I need is some sniveling brat and some whiny wife.  You were fun in the sack, but our ride has come to an end.”  Then he’d laughed.  “Gave the little filly a colt, apparently.  Dumb girl.  Doesn’t even know how to prevent a pregnancy,” he’d muttered to one of his friends.

She had stumbled from that mansion – a place she’d always known she didn’t belong – with tears streaming down her face.  Out into the cold night air.  But nothing was as chill as the embrace of his voice had been as he had disparaged both her and their daughter in one breath.  

She had made a vow to herself that day.  She would never trust another man again.  Not ever.

—

As she stumbled away from Beopdung’s house, she turned to look back, but the mansion morphed suddenly into Naru’s home.  She gasped as she gaped at it.  The door flung open then, and he appeared in the doorway beckoning her.

“Come, love.  I just want you.”

But then she saw that he wasn’t talking to her.  He was looking to her right.  She saw him squat down in the doorway as a blur caught her eye from her peripheral vision.  She turned her head to the right in time to see her own little daughter running towards him.  

Ajin catapulted herself into his arms at the last moment.  Her forward momentum knocked him onto his back as his arms locked around her.  Minha could hear his laughter blending with that of her daughter’s.  Her heart caught in her throat.  If only Ajin had an appa like that one.

Minha began to weep again.

—

“Love, please wake up.”

Naru couldn’t take much more.  She’d been sobbing off and on for hours.  She would surface for a few moments, complain of a crushing headache, and then surrender to sleep again for an hour or so.  A few times she’d cried out in pain, or fear, or heartbreak.  She’d mentioned a Beopdung twice.  And she’d sobbed as she remembered him.  She was clearly distressed by the memory of him.  Ajin’s name was on her lips several times too.

But now she was sobbing quietly, brokenly.  And clinging to him.

“Love,” he whispered into her ear.  “What’s wrong?”

“He’s taking her from me.  Naru has stolen Ajin’s heart.  She doesn’t love me any longer.  But what will she do when he breaks her heart too?” 

His heart was the one breaking.  

“No, love, Naru doesn’t want to break her heart,” he murmured in her ear as he held her gently in his arms.  “He loves her.  So very much.  She’s like…she’s like a daughter to him.”  His voice broke on a sob.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she stared at him.

And he recalled the last six weeks.  He had taken a leave of absence from his appa’s company.  To visit Miss Choi’s family every day.  He’d spent hours researching how to mend fences and paint walls and fix creaky floorboards.  The sink had been the most daunting task.  But he’d figured it out eventually; he’d called a plumber and paid him for a tutorial.  

Truthfully, Naru was still helping his appa.  He had done some work from home.  In the evenings.  But he hadn’t set foot in the office since before New Year’s.  He was learning how to love people.  To sow time into their needs.  Instead of into his own wants.

He had developed the habit of taking Jungju out for breakfast every day before dropping him off at school.  Then he would head to Miss Choi’s house for several hours.  Her lovely grandma made him lunch each day, and he sat at the table and allowed Ajin to charm him.  Some days he’d spent a good part of the day just lying on their living room floor playing dolls with her.  Or board games.  Or watching a movie.  Or helping her color a picture.  Or building something with Legos.  

Before he’d met Ajin, he would have thought he’d be bored stiff doing such things.  But she was such an engaging, little creature.  And she spoke often of her eomma.  Just listening to her daughter, he felt closer to Miss Choi.   

He had also begun to teach Ajin how to read.  He loved it when she sat in his lap and showed off her newfound knowledge.  She was beginning to devour books.  Elementary ones, anyway.  She was as smart as a whip.  Rather like her eomma.

He had also found everything he could to fix in the house or outside on the property.  He’d done his best work.  The first few days he had visited them, he had spent the majority of his time mending broken things.  He suspected that was how he’d wiggled his way into the grandmother’s heart.  Then he had spent several afternoons talking to her grandmother and learning of their financial affairs and concerns.  She’d confided that she was close to having to sell yet more land.  He could tell that it brought a great deal of sorrow to her heart.  

So he had asked some pointed questions and quickly realized that the solution was an easy one.  He had done the research, found people to lease her land, and had the contracts drawn up.  He’d overseen the whole thing.  And possibly sown a little bit of his own money into making it happen.  Their home would be secure for years now.  

He liked his new role as hero.  Fierce protector.  It felt good.  For the first time in years, he felt like he was doing something worthwhile.  But his ultimate goal was something so much more precious…

He was storming the gates of Miss Choi’s heart. Hoping to win it. But he knew that he had chosen a daunting task.  Her grandmother had revealed a little bit about her darling granddaughter.  Not much.  But she’d dropped a few hints about a broken heart and a beautiful baby who had been abandoned by her appa.

—

Minha stared at Naru.  Had he just said that Ajin was like a daughter to him?  

She shook her head.  “No, Ajin has no appa.  No man wants her.  The man is blind.  Deaf.  Dumb.  How – how could he reject her?  She’s just perfect!”

“She is,” he responded with heat.  “Who rejected her?”

She blinked and closed her eyes.  “Beopdung.  Her appa.”  She let loose of a sob.  “I told him I was pregnant, and he told me to get rid of it.”  

She continued to weep.  “Can you imagine what I would have to live with if I had extinguished that tiny life?  That wonderful, beautiful baby girl?  How empty my life would be without her?  How could he be so cold?  

“He made love to me in the sunlight in his room for weeks.  But it was all a lie.  It wasn’t love at all.

“Love is…sacrifice.  Selflessness.  Compassion.

“How could he just drop me to kiss that other girl?  How could he turn his back on an innocent baby?”

She buried her face in his chest and wept.  But after a few moments, she came fully awake.  And shoved herself away from him.  She jumped up, stumbling from his bed.  Her eyes grew wide.

“You!”  Disoriented still, she looked around.  “Why am I in your room?”

She glanced down at the dark red dress.  She was still wearing it.  Then her eyes met his as the events of the last twenty-four hours swirled through her mind.  Her eyes grew wide.  It was coming to her in fragments.  Nothing definitive.

“What did you do to me?”

“Well, I can assure you that I did not make love to you in the sunlight.  Or by moonlight, either,” he sighed.  “More’s the pity.”  His eyes slid over her.  “I can also assure you that if we ever made a baby together, I would want to keep her.”

She swallowed.  She closed her eyes as she grappled with it all, trying to put it all together.  As she was waking, she’d been remembering Beopdung’s rejection and Naru’s joyful embrace of Ajin’s legs as she’d ridden around on his shoulders.  Ajin’s joy had been written all over her face.  She’d delighted in her high perch and in the man who had raised her up to that height.  She’d never have made it all the way up there on her own.  Her reach just simply wasn’t high enough.  But Naru had effortlessly lifted her to that great height and empowered her to help him paint the walls.  He had built her confidence in him and in herself.

“Tell me,” her eomma murmured.  “Why have you been visiting my daughter, Naru?”

He glanced up at her.  “Because I want to know you…everything there is to know about you.  Including your daughter.  She is an extension of you.”

“No!  She is not!  She is her own person!  And you will not use her to get to me!”

“I wasn’t.  I delight in her.  I have since the very first time I met her.  I felt sorry for her – that she had no appa.  I wanted to – I don’t know – do something nice for her.  I wanted to help you in some way.  So I went to talk to your Harmony.  And to see Ajin again.  And they invited me in.

“You captivated me, love.  That very first day.  At the school.  But then again in Jungju’s room.  You were so sweet to him.  And then I kissed you, and I was lost.  I wanted you.  But you shoved me away.  Still, I wanted to know you.  So I came after you.  To woo you with flowers and sweet words.  But I found you un-woo-able.  Yet I discovered the treasure you were hiding from everyone.  But the thing is…she deserves to be seen.  She’s nothing to be ashamed of.  Your beautiful treasure.  Ajin is a darling.  I love her.”

She just stared at him.  “How can you say that?”

“Because it’s true!  I’ve spent six weeks playing with her, teaching her, talking to her.  And I love her.  She’s absolutely captivating.  Just like her eomma.  And the idea that I might never see her again – that you would keep her from me – it’s stealing my breath.  Please, love, please don’t keep Ajin from me.  I want to know her.  I want to know you.  I want the chance to get to know you.”

“What are you suggesting?” she asked, still leery.

“Five dates.  With you.  And Ajin.”

“What?” she asked, perplexed.

He nodded.  “We can go to the aquarium one day.  The zoo another.  A play park a third.  Anywhere else you want to go…”

She furrowed her brow.  “You want to take me and Ajin on a date?  Like we’re a family?”

“Exactly.”

Oh, dangerous heart.  

This was so much more terrifying than crawling into a bed with him for one night.

“And when you’ve tired of us?  When you’ve tired of this game you’re playing, and you’ve left us, what am I to tell a tiny girl with a broken heart?”

“You’re going to have to tell her that you broke my heart.”

She gasped.  “What?”

“I’m not planning on going anywhere.  I really love her.  And I think I could love you too, you stubborn, brave, amazing woman.”

His eyes held hers while hers dueled with his.  She couldn’t figure him out.  What was his game?  Was he just disappointed because he hadn’t been able to bed her last night? So he was trying to use her daughter as leverage against her again?

“Look, I know you’re disappointed that we didn’t have sex last night,” she began.

He suddenly leapt out of his bed.  “Stop that!  You keep acting like the only thing I want from you is to use your body!”

“Isn’t it?” she asked with wide, dark eyes.  “Isn’t that all any man ever wants?”

He stood directly in front of her as sorrow filled his eyes.  “No.  I admit I used to be like Beopdung.  I mean, I can’t say for sure what I would have done if any of my girlfriends had told me she was pregnant with my child.  I hope I would have acted more responsibly than your boyfriend did.  Certainly, not as heartlessly.  But I did use girls.  Every single one that would let me.  

“But last year, I dated a girl who changed my mind about some things.  And when I met you, well, you’re different.  You’re not like the girls I’ve dated.  You’re special.”  He read the skepticism in her gaze and rushed to assure her, “I’m not just saying that.  I mean it.  You.  Are.  Different.  And I want that difference.  That thing I see when I look at you.”

She stared at him, captivated by both the expression in his eyes and the words flowing from his lips.  Was there any chance – however tiny – that she could actually trust him?  That she could safely believe the words flowing from his lips.  That she could take confidence in that look in his speaking eyes.  The man had beautiful eyes.

She took a deep breath.  “All right.  Five dates.  I’ll consider it.  Let’s start with one and go from there.  On one condition…”