<Episode 47>
“Mom! Yesterday, my math teacher–”
“Sorry, but Mom has to go out right now. The housekeeper prepared lunch, so eat that. Seriously, what kind of company has this much work to do?!”
Juhee pouted as she watched her mother disappear before she could even respond.
A delicious meal had been laid out on the dining table, but she had no appetite whatsoever.
‘I got praised by my math teacher for the first time this time around.’
She had been a hopeless math student… someone who had practically given up on the subject.
Yet she had raised her math score by a full twenty points on her midterms.
She had spent countless nights forcing herself through tedious studying just to hear a single word of praise from her parents, so she couldn’t help feeling hurt.
She buried her face in her desk, trying to swallow her disappointment, when the bedroom door creaked open, and someone stepped inside.
“Why does our princess look so gloomy?”
“Geez… I told you not to call me that.”
“Why not? I’m just calling a princess a princess.”
It was Gong Juwon, her brother, who was six years older than her.
Unlike their parents, who were constantly busy with work, he was the only family member she could actually talk to.
She grumbled for a moment, but when he gently asked what was wrong, she finally handed over the math test paper she had been keeping folded away.
Juwon’s eyes widened as he looked at it.
“Wow! Why did our princess’s math score improve this much?”
“Well, the questions were a little easier this time.”
“Even so, that’s amazing. We should frame this. We ought to hang it in the living room.”
“Come on! Don’t exaggerate.”
Even as she said that, the corners of Juhee’s lips slowly curled upward.
Juwon roughly ruffled her hair.
“You really did great! Did you show Mom and Dad? They’ll be happy.”
“I was going to tell them, but they said they were busy…”
“Mmm, I see. They have been especially busy lately.”
Her father rarely came home.
Her mother would occasionally stop by, but only long enough to pick up things she needed before leaving again.
“Still, don’t be too upset. You’ve got this big brother by your side, don’t you?”
Juwon puffed out his chest and told her to come to him whenever she needed anything.
In the end, she couldn’t help but smile.
Juhee was fifteen years old.
To her, Juwon, who was six years older, was both mother and father… the only person who could bring laughter into an otherwise cold and empty house.
‘I’m glad I have my brother beside me.’
But that small happiness didn’t last long.
When she entered high school, her parents’ company began to falter.
***
“You’re saying this is my fault? I never thought those people would do something like that!”
“What’s the point of talking about that now?! We need to fix the situation first! At this rate, everything’s going to collapse!”
Juhee didn’t know the exact details of the company’s situation, but from the arguments that occasionally drifted through half-open doors, she could tell things were serious.
Juwon, who had only just begun learning the business, was forced to jump directly into practical management.
Perhaps it started then.
Whenever she tried talking to him, a faint trace of annoyance would flicker across his face.
“Oppa, do you know what happened at school today? Hyejin actually–”
“Juhee, sorry. Oppa’s really tired. Let’s talk another time.”
“…Oh. Right. Sorry. I wasn’t being considerate. Get some rest.”
Watching her brother rub at his tired eyes, Juhee quietly closed the door and returned to the living room.
Burying her face in a sofa cushion, she muttered the words she hadn’t been able to say to him.
“Hyejin bought me a headband because it’s my birthday. You probably don’t even know today’s my birthday, idiot.”
Even her brother, the only family member who had ever remembered her birthday… had changed in the end.
What exactly was this thing called business that stole everyone away from her?
‘Do all adults become like that?’
If so, she never wanted to become one.
Thinking about how unusually quiet the house felt today, Juhee remained buried in the cushion for a long time, nursing her hurt feelings.
Then the incident happened.
—” A D-rank Gate has appeared near XX Rest Stop! A D-rank Gate has appeared! All nearby citizens are advised to evacuate immediately to a safe location. We repeat…”
They were on their way home from a short two-night, three-day school trip.
A Gate suddenly appeared at a rest stop where they had briefly stopped.
“W-Why is there suddenly a Gate?!”
“Kids! Don’t go over there!”
The unexpected appearance of the Gate threw everything into chaos.
Monsters that people had only seen in videos burst forth.
Screams and cries erupted from every direction.
Fortunately, nearby Hunters responded quickly, and the Gate was dealt with before long.
But instead of calmly following their teachers’ instructions, the terrified students called the people they trusted most.
“Mom! I’m at XX Rest Stop right now… A Gate suddenly appeared. Yeah… Could you come pick me up?”
“Dad, where are you? Hurry up and come. I’m really scared.”
Juhee, huddled inside the bus, also picked up her phone with trembling hands.
After hesitating for a long time, she finally dialed Juwon’s number.
—…Hello?
“Oppa, are you busy right now? I’m at XX Rest Stop and a Gate suddenly–”
Just as she was about to explain the situation and ask for help, she heard someone calling for Juwon on the other end of the phone.
—Sigh… I’m a little busy right now. Let’s talk later.
“O-Oppa?”
Without even listening to her explanation, Juwon ended the call.
Juhee stared blankly at the phone screen.
‘At least listen to what happened. At least ask if I’m okay…’
Something inside her snapped.
The fragile thread of family that she alone had been desperately holding onto.
“Juhee, did you call your brother? Is he coming?”
One of her oblivious friends spoke up.
Her own mother was apparently already on her way.
Without thinking, Juhee lied.
“…Yeah. He’s coming right away.”
“I knew it! You and your brother are close. He must be super worried about you, right?”
“Y-Yeah. Right.”
Maybe he would call back once he understood the situation.
Holding onto that hope, Juhee sent him a message and clutched her phone for hours.
But even as one classmate after another left with their families, her phone never rang.
In the end, the people who came for her were the security guards from her family’s estate.
“Are you alright, miss? We have a vehicle waiting nearby.”
Juhee remained silent the entire drive home.
In the end, business had been more important to her brother than she was.
That fact hurt far more than the terrifying incident she had experienced that day.
“Would you like to go to the hospital?”
“Why would I suddenly go to the hospital? Ah…”
Only then did she notice the scratches scattered across her body.
‘Maybe if they see these injuries, my family will worry about me?’
The childish thought surfaced involuntarily.
Juhee violently shook her head.
‘Who am I kidding? They wouldn’t care anyway. What kind of family are they! Fine. I won’t care anymore either.’
Her eyes stung, but she bit down hard on her lip and managed to hold back the tears.
From that day onward, Juhee sealed her heart shut.
***
‘So that’s what happened between them.’
On the way home after parting with Juhee, I let out a small sigh, weighed down by an indescribable frustration.
Juhee and I had only ended up in the same class during our senior year of high school, so I had never known these details.
All I knew was that she had an older brother who was quite a bit older than her.
‘The more she relied on him in place of her busy parents, the deeper the wound must have been…’
I remembered how she had secretly wiped away tears while pretending the tteokbokki was too spicy.
‘If I meddle clumsily, I might only hurt her even more.’
The next day, I finally called Mr. Juwon and apologized.
Speaking in a voice dripping with disappointment, he replied:
—” Now that I think about it, it wasn’t something I should have asked you to do from the start. If I want to repair our relationship, I’ll have to work harder myself.”
Even so, he thanked me for trying.
Unable to suppress my curiosity, I carefully asked:
“But if you care about your sister that much, why didn’t you go pick her up that day? Juhee was really hurt by it.”
When I had called my parents, they had closed the shop and rushed to pick me up immediately.
Yet someone who clearly cared this much about Juhee had coldly turned her down.
It didn’t add up.
—” It sounds like an excuse, but the situation was terrible. The new product we were about to launch had been leaked externally, and our investors all turned their backs on us as though they’d planned it together.”
Pausing briefly as he recalled the memory, he continued:
—” I was sleeping less than three hours a day and working nonstop. My mind was completely exhausted. To be honest, I even forgot that Juhee had called me.”
It had taken three full years before the company stabilized.
But by then, Juhee’s heart had already closed itself off.
No matter how hard he tried, repairing their damaged relationship had proven difficult.
— “Looking back, family was more important than the company. But at the time… why couldn’t I see that?”
“Some things only become visible after enough time passes. Someday, Juhee will understand how sincere you were. I’ll be rooting for you.”
After that day, Mr. Juwon stopped lingering around the shop.
However, he would occasionally stop by at dawn and make food reservations under his own name.
Whenever Juhee visited the shop, he asked that those reservations be given to her.
Juhee only snorted and called it a pointless gesture.
—”…It doesn’t seem to be working at all.”
The next time he called after a long while, he sounded depressed after hearing that Juhee had completely ignored his reservation.
“Mm. I suppose it’s not easy to repair a relationship overnight.”
A bitter laugh came through the phone.
From time to time, Mr. Juwon would call and ask whether Juhee had accepted one of the reservations he had made.
Judging by the tone of his voice, however, it felt as though this might be the last such call.
—” Anyway, thank you for everything. I’ll try a different approach from now on…”
Just as he was giving his final farewell in a dejected voice, a burst of commotion erupted nearby.
Then a breaking news report played from someone’s phone.
—” This is a breaking news report. The Snowfield-type Gate, originally predicted to be D-rank, has been reclassified as B-rank. The Hunter Management Bureau stated that “the internal mana density increased sharply, causing the estimated rating to change,” and has dispatched emergency support teams to the site…”
“What do we do?! Isn’t that the Gate Juhee unni entered?”
I hurriedly checked the news report.
In doing so, I failed to realize that Mr. Juwon had heard the entire exchange through the phone.
—” Juhee was caught in a Gate incident…?”
Then, amid a burst of frantic noise, the call abruptly disconnected.
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