Dirty Sweet Baby Chapter 63

Even in the midst of it all, she was consistently noble and elegant. She was sipping Flowery Orange Pekoe grade black tea, made using only the youngest buds, from an antique teacup, a beautiful smile on her face.

“Didn’t your son-in-law Cha’s father pass away more than ten years ago? It was before you two were even married.”

“Yes, that’s right. My husband met that woman before he met me. Since then, he’s gone to visit the grave for ten days every single year, without fail, and holes himself up there…”

“It’s fine. I have a good eye for people. Son-in-law Cha is no fool. From what I hear, that woman has a husband and a child too… Nothing will happen.”

“I know. I know very well that my husband is a thorough man… It’s just that there’s nothing else between us.”

“What do you mean, nothing? What do you lack? You have everything. Love? Don’t you even let such a childish word pass your lips.”

“I don’t covet things like love. It’s just… it feels like that woman has something that I don’t.”

“And what would change if she does? It’s pointless. You just look after Moogyul. You only need to love your child.”

“Just as you love only me, Mother?”

“Yes, my beautiful daughter. Don’t get too invested in a man. Cherish your own bloodline, and live your own life. If you need a shoulder to lean on, don’t lean on son-in-law Cha, lean on me, your mother.”

The beginning passed lightly. It seemed to flow by without any trouble.

Until Lee Eunhong’s husband, Baek Heeheon’s biological father, suddenly passed away in a terrible car accident. They said a vehicle that slipped on an icy winter road crashed right through the guardrail and rolled down a mountainside. Cha Kwon Il made a large monetary contribution, and Lee Eunhong returned it all, the check untouched, without spending a single penny.

Lee Eunhong, now a single mother, quit her family business as a gravedigger to raise her young son, Baek Heeheon, and moved to a residential district to get a job in a factory. It was from then on. That Cha Kwon Il started using people to look into Lee Eunhong’s life.

Having people report on her residential information and looking into her living conditions—if that interest was a background check, then it was a background check. Or, to put it more maliciously, was it stalking?

Only the Cha Kwon Il of that time would know what his true intentions were, but Cha Moogyul’s biological mother was not particularly pleased with the fact, either way.

A woman her husband had long held in fond regard. Raising a son on her own, and that son happened to be exactly one year older than her own child. When Cha Moogyul was nine, Baek Heeheon was ten, and when Cha Moogyul was ten, Baek Heeheon was eleven.

Perhaps, unconsciously, she thought that the other was a year ahead.

“Our Gyeol is so brilliant. Whatever he does, he’s more outstanding than the older boys. Whose son is so gifted.”

Her actions contained no direct or explicit questioning, pressure, or coercion. She was not at all the ugly figure blinded by the kind of envy and jealousy seen in a third-rate drama. She only said things any parent might say, but unfortunately, Cha Moogyul was a natural prodigy, a child who was noticeably brilliant and exceptional in every aspect.

That was why, even at that young age, he could read the intentions subtly underlying his biological mother’s words.

That a subject of comparison existed for Cha Moogyul, and that it was Lee Eunhong’s son.

Well, it didn’t particularly matter.

He wasn’t a worthy opponent anyway.

Because among his peers, Cha Moogyul was the unrivaled best, a diamond in the rough. With his innate intellect and outstanding skills, backed by the best possible environment, it was like giving wings to a dragon. He received early education from the foremost scholars of each field, and it was a daily reality for him to be called a child prodigy and a genius. He was confident he wouldn’t fall behind not only his peers, whether one or two years older, but even when compared to adults, so someone like Baek Heeheon meant nothing to Cha Moogyul.

A few years passed like that. Cha Moogyul became a middle schooler and started wearing a uniform, his height shot up, and his frame grew solid. Just around the time the lines of his face began to grow more defined, making him resemble his father even more, an accident occurred.

It was a car accident.

A truck, whose driver had dozed off, collided hard with the vehicle Cha Moogyul’s mother was in, and she died instantly at the scene. The funeral was incredibly large and grand, and a line of mourners continued for days on end without break.

And there, Lee Eunhong, that woman, came. With her son.

Lee Eunhong’s eyes reddened, and she offered some words of comfort to his father where they couldn’t be heard. And in that moment, his father’s gaze… the gaze of Cha Kwon Il as he looked at her was intensely unfamiliar and foreign.

It was irrefutable, crystal-clear proof. There was no need to reconsider. The moment he witnessed the way Cha Kwon Il’s eyes crumbled and took on a different light as they held her, he knew. Within them, emotions like affection, or perhaps lingering feelings, fondness, or if not that, an engrossment close to obsession, were held precariously in a suppressed and twisted form.

Cha Moogyul was dumbfounded.

Among it all, the absolute peak of absurdity was the fact that his mother’s body was scheduled to be buried in that very cemetery.

The Cha family burial ground, the place where those two first met.

The very same cemetery where his paternal grandfather, who had died before he was even born, was buried, where Cha Kwon Il went for ten days every year without fail to visit the grave, the stage for their secret rendezvous where they may or may not have fallen in love at first sight.

Meeting Lee Eunhong through the occasion of his paternal grandfather’s death, and then meeting Lee Eunhong again, in the same way, through the occasion of his mother’s death… To the fourteen-year-old Cha Moogyul, a first-year middle school student, it all looked like a single, well-scripted play.

A woman of no consequence, a father who was infatuated with her, and the son who, knowing nothing, had followed her to attend the funeral of a complete stranger. Those three were the main actors on the stage. Cha Moogyul almost burst out laughing right there in the funeral hall.

Because everyone was right, and at the same time, everyone was wrong.

That woman possessed what his mother did not, his father was a fool, and the “nothing” that wasn’t supposed to happen, had happened.

Cha Moogyul stepped back behind a wall and remained hidden until the mother and son in question had finished offering their flowers and left the funeral hall. In that moment, he felt a stronger sense of otherness than ever before. The material things he was given, the environment he was born into, even his parents who were the foundation that provided it all—they were different from Cha Moogyul. Now, Cha Moogyul felt otherness, not kinship, even from his own mother and father, and this meant that Cha Moogyul had entered a life of complete singularity and solitude.

The day all the funeral proceedings were over and his mother’s body was interred in that family burial ground. Cha Moogyul, wearing mourning clothes and placing a chrysanthemum on his mother’s grave, calmly posed a question to his father, Cha Kwon Il. With his dark, cool eyes, he clearly pierced through the otherness emanating from his own father.

“How did you come to be that way.”

Although he did not specify the subject of what he was talking about, Cha Kwon Il read his son’s intention.

“I see. I couldn’t help it.”

“You should have just gotten a divorce.”

“Yes… that would have been one way.”

That day, for the first time, Cha Moogyul saw his father as small and insignificant.

“Was she that incredible? That woman.”

“It is love that is incredible. Any person is weak…”

“Haha, now you call it love without hesitation. At my mother’s grave.”

“We were a couple bound by practical benefits and understanding. Emotion was not part of the agreement from the start. Neither of us wanted it.”

“Yes. Is that why you did it.”

The car accident.

Lee Eunhong’s husband.

Cha Moogyul’s mother.

Two consecutive, unfortunate, and tragic…

“Father, was it you?”

“I did not.”

“You did not.”

“That’s right. It wasn’t me.”

After that, things proceeded along a predictable course.

After his wife’s death, Cha Kwon Il gradually began to court Lee Eunhong, becoming a considerate and gentle man, and to her son Baek Heeheon, he became the friendly and good-natured Mister Kwon Il.

The position of a conglomerate’s owner was not one that could be maintained with a personality that was only soft. One had to be ruthless, calculating, and at times, merciless. To Cha Moogyul, who knew his biological father’s true nature, that farce was simply laughable and astounding.

Love.

Was love such an incredible thing?

Enough to change his father into a different person to that extent.

Two years passed like that, and when his father finally said he would remarry that woman, Cha Moogyul put his father to the test with a sneer.

If the first marriage was bound by practical benefits and understanding, making love unnecessary, then wouldn’t the second marriage, which he was trying to form with love, make practical benefits and understanding unnecessary?

“Let’s proceed with the succession first. Reorganizing the governance structure of the holding company should come first, I think.”

If they married, Lee Eunhong and her son Baek Heeheon would become Cha Kwon Il’s legitimate heirs. So he was telling him to hand over management rights before remarrying.

“Since I am young, a public succession will be noisy, so if you transfer the shares under a borrowed name, I will remain silent. If you refuse, I’m sure you can imagine what I might go on about when I meet that woman.”

What would it be?

The Musan Group, which Cha Kwon Il had dedicated his entire life to building, and Lee Eunhong.

To which side would the scales tip?

Perhaps a third unfortunate and tragic accident might occur…