The Season I Loved You Without You - Chapter 71

CHAPTER 71

Go-yeo and Ga-eul looked at the night sea. This was where the last photo of Ji-hyuk and Go-yeo on a day when the winter wind blew fiercely was burned. Even though that photo had disappeared without a trace, it seemed impossible for the scars of Moon Ji-hyuk to be completely erased.

There was no lingering attachment for him, but it was not possible to completely erase his memory. Just as water flows from a river to the sea naturally, sporadic thoughts of him would come to mind, but they would be let go effortlessly. Unconcerned.

The moist wind, carrying the scent of the sea, tousled Go-yeo’s hair. She leaned her head to one side and leaned against the deck railing. The vast sea, juxtaposed with the deep night sky, blurred the boundaries between where the sky ended and the sea began. Go-yeo smiled at the soothing sound of the gentle waves.

Go-yeo turned her head to look beside her and met Ga-eul’s gaze, who was looking at her. Perhaps because his gaze always reached her, it had already become familiar, and she didn’t notice.

Ga-eul smiled, showing his dimples. He tucked Go-yeo’s hair behind her ear, gently murmuring about hurting her arm, he gently moved the strand of hair he was holding. Go-yeo couldn’t help but laugh at how amusing the situation seemed.

As Ga-eul looked at the smiling Go-yeo, he pondered his own worth. The person who could make Go-yeo smile. It felt simple yet profound. Choosing his words carefully, struggling to express his overflowing emotions, but they felt meaningless, like catching floating dust.

Expressions like “liking” or “loving” seemed too simplistic, unable to capture everything. Yoon Ga-eul’s world was filled with one Go-yeo, but was there a word to express this?

“Shall we go?”

“Yes.”

Go-yeo reached down and held Ga-eul’s hand, walking along the deck together. Ga-eul’s intertwined fingers found their way between Go-yeo’s. His thumb lightly stroked Go-yeo’s hand, the soft touch comforting. Though there were no words exchanged between them, the sound of the waves filled the space between them, and it wasn’t unpleasant.

“About today.”

Go-yeo wanted to talk to him about what happened that day. She thought it was her way of showing consideration. Without telling him this fact, he would never know, but by saying it, she wanted to express that her relationship with Ji-hyuk had come to a complete end.

“There was an event at Wushin Group, and unexpectedly, I met Moon Ji-hyuk there.”

Go-yeo heard a sigh, almost audible, come out unintentionally. Ga-eul stopped in his tracks, looking at Go-yeo with concern.

“Did something happen?”

Go-yeo didn’t immediately understand his reaction. But upon reflection, she thought it was natural for him to worry, considering how he had seen how Ji-hyuk treated her at the hotel restaurant. She lightly smiled and shook her head. As they resumed walking, Ga-eul followed Go-yeo. Go-yeo remembered Ga-eul, who had seen her struggling to forget Ji-hyuk beside her.

“We just talked for a moment and parted ways. That’s all.”

Ga-eul nodded silently.

“I felt it wouldn’t be polite if I didn’t mention it… There have been things you’ve seen up until now, so I thought you might still have them on your mind.”

Ga-eul was about to habitually say it was okay. Instead, he held Go-yeo’s small hand a little tighter.

“Thank you for telling me.”

After that, Go-yeo and Ga-eul didn’t bring up that topic again.

They walked along the beach connected to the deck, feeling the quieting wind. Go-yeo felt like the only slow-moving water amidst a swift current. His ordinary conversations always put her in a good mood. She smiled faintly and focused on his voice.

“She’s always thinking about raising her grades without studying.”

He brought up gossip about a student he tutors. Go-yeo thought she didn’t seem to know that hardworking kids like Ga-eul were rare.

“Eun-jae said she’s a stubborn girl, but I don’t think that’s true.”

Although Eun-jae never directly said it, she thought mentioning it would sow discord between siblings. Since she was always talkative in front of Go-yeo, Eun-jae’s description didn’t quite resonate.

“Oh! I’ve been talking too much.”

Ga-eul’s face flushed suddenly. Go-yeo felt sorry for his evident embarrassment.

“It was a joke.”

Ga-eul looked at Go-yeo with wide eyes. Despite wanting to kiss Go-yeo’s lips due to her playful expression, he restrained himself.

Being with Go-yeo, Ga-eul learned many things about himself that he hadn’t realized before. When she said she saw that man today, he felt both worry and jealousy surge through him. Initially dismissing it as excessive worry due to something that had passed quickly, upon reflection, he realized it was fierce jealousy towards that man and a selfish desire to monopolize Go-yeo. He brushed it off with gratitude, but the lump of those obscure emotions lingered in his chest.

Though he pretended to be okay to not appear immature like a child, the repercussions made him uneasy. Though Go-yeo now spoke as if it didn’t matter anymore, Ga-eul understood her gaze well.

Moon Ji-hyuk still desired Go-yeo as a woman and acted possessively towards Ga-eul. And still, he was confident as if she belonged to him. The two of them had a deep narrative that he couldn’t intervene in.

That deep past was their shared territory, completely unknown to Yoon Ga-eul. Even though she laughed beside Ga-eul now, he felt discomfort creeping up, thinking that Ji-hyuk had more of what he couldn’t possess than he did, despite his absence.

As Ga-eul’s feelings for her grew, he also realized that along with the growing affection, there were sticky and dark emotions he couldn’t show her.

Ga-eul didn’t realize that he was excreting the feelings that had consumed him into s*x. He didn’t know exactly what he was doing with her on the bed, driving her relentlessly, getting more pl*asure from her response. He just knew that it felt good to be with her.

“…Go-yeo.”

“Hmm!”

Today, once again, the two shared the bed. His secretive movements and whispers always brought a tingling sensation to Go-yeo. Ga-eul’s whispered name and sighs sent shivers down her spine. Go-yeo clung to his body, crying out in pl*asure at his intense movements. They spent time as if they were the only ones in the world.

* * *

Seung-ok reminisced about where things had gone wrong. What she thought was meticulous turned out to have many glaring holes, perhaps it was just her delusion. Ahn Pil-jo was a young man who had been laid off while working at her father’s company. She thought she had compensated him enough materially until he reached his age, but she didn’t expect it to turn into a weapon that would stab her.

“A worthless child.”

She didn’t trust people, but she believed in money, and she judged that there was no way a simple human could betray her. So, she didn’t know that he would meticulously record and store everything he had done on her behalf, whether it was for betrayal or not. Regardless of whether the betrayal was justified, the reality undermined her.

Starting with Representative Do Sung-guk, the People’s Party accused MMK International CEO Yun Seung-ok of corruption. Yun Seung-ok’s rotten past included embezzlement, bribery, stock manipulation, and creative accounting. Everything from an affair in the past to instructing company employees to cause injuries, and even subtly leading her husband into drug addiction, was revealed.

The unethical and inhuman acts Yun Seung-ok had committed in the past were not uncommon, and now, the opposition party, the People’s Party, was stirring up issues that shook the entire MMK Group, which was friendly to the ruling party. Although Do Sung-guk’s move was a political maneuver, it was not an atmosphere where he could easily bypass the public’s anger even in the prosecution.

The fatal internal whistleblowing was to the extent that even the MMK Group couldn’t ignore it. So, Chairman Moon Joo-pyeong decided to cut off Yun Seung-ok like cutting off the tail of a lizard.

“You’re mistaken if you think I’ll collapse like this.”

Search and seizure warrants were issued for MMK International, as well as arrest warrants for evidence tampering and flight risk. As Seung-ok stepped on the crumbling ground, she regained her composure. She mobilized various prominent lawyers, not to receive a reduced sentence in the face of solid evidence, but to skillfully obscure the direction of the investigation with evidence Yun Seung-ok had prepared separately.

As the Yun Seung-ok case made headlines day after day, Ji-hyuk visited the detention center where Seung-ok was being held. Though he appeared somewhat disheveled, his gaze was as determined as ever when he looked at his mother. His apparent willingness to endure this, as if it were nothing, seemed like a defiant candle struggling not to go out in the wind.

He still couldn’t quite understand why he had come here. He closed his swollen eyes and pressed his hand against them. The ringing in his ears made him furrow his brow. Many things puzzled him, but many things felt meaningless. So, he threw out random questions that flowed through his mind.

“Why did you go to such lengths?”

At the sound of his cracked voice, Seung-ok let out a bitter laugh. Though Ji-hyuk looked fine on the surface, she knew he wasn’t entirely well. Whether it was medication or lack of sleep, was unclear.

“Looking at your condition, I realize that everything I’ve done has truly been meaningless.”

“Don’t make excuses. Just tell me why you did it.”

“Ji-hyuk, I’ve always said that all of this was for you. It was a process to give MMK to you entirely. And now, it’s not over yet. Just a little setback, that’s all.”

Seeing Seung-ok speak gently as if she were a loving mother made Ji-hyuk feel disheartened. Even at this moment, he couldn’t tell what was sincere and what was false. Ji-hyuk chuckled and curled up. It was a state where even staying still felt difficult.

‘You were trying to gain your mother’s approval, weren’t you?’

For days, he had been wavering between dreaming and reality. Laughing with Go-yeo and messing around on the bed felt real, but the moment she conveyed cruel words with a calm gaze felt like a dream.

He wanted to be acknowledged by his mother.

Go-yeo casually threw out an unbelievable fact and left. The Han Go-yeo who had risked everything for him was no longer there, and he felt like an insignificant insignificance, crushed by gravity, trying to accept it alone.

“Mom.”

It was a word that came out of his mouth after a long time. And it was a word he had used briefly in his childhood. At some point, he had started calling her mother or boss.

“Why did you do that to me? You pursued me as if you were going to kill me, and now you say it was for my sake. It doesn’t make sense. Just admit that you wanted MMK for yourself. Admit that you wanted revenge on Moon Joo-pyeong who ruined Simho Corporation!”

As if representing Ji-hyuk’s unstable psyche, he shouted and slammed his hand on the desk.

Seung-ok flinched at Ji-hyuk’s words. Simho Corporation was a small company that focused on trade, but it was as solid as it could be. So, even if Seung-ok’s father, the chairman, was lagging with a woman, it wasn’t easily ruined. Simho, which was on the verge of flourishing with exclusive trade rights with a US export company, took a turn when Moon Joo-pyeong anticipated the future and decided that Simho’s exclusive rights were worth taking the whole company for. MMK was already a fairly large company by then, so it easily seized the smaller company.

Seung-ok also later learned the truth, but the target of resentment was solely her father’s mistress. It was not a result of Seung-ok’s rational judgment but a desperate attempt to come up with the best solution to endure the bleak reality. Moon Joo-pyeong was not the target of resentment but rather someone who should be bowed down to, someone who would eventually give wings to her son.

With a shocked expression, Seung-ok looked at Ji-hyuk, whose eyes were red from anger. Ji-hyuk spoke as if he were disgusted with Seung-ok.

“I don’t expect any apologies from you for what you did to me. Just admit it! Whenever I see you, I want to die because I felt so miserable being your child!”

To hope for acknowledgment from such a mother was unacceptable, so at least admit this much, thought Ji-hyuk. Go-yeo’s words became a massive blow, driving him crazy. Initially, he vehemently denied it. But the monster lurking in the abyss knew the truth. Even though he knew that sentimental words like maternal love or family affection didn’t suit Seung-ok, he still couldn’t give up, feeling miserably enough to want to die.

“Please.”

“…Get a grip. Do you know how pathetic you look right now? No matter how dire my situation is, you still have to show some dignity in front of others. Go back and hold your place well.”

The chillingly calm voice swiftly solidified the emotions that had been boiling like lava, pouring into the sea. Ji-hyuk expected this situation. Like trying to break a rock with an egg, Seung-ok’s wall would never crumble. But he hadn’t come here expecting a miracle, so there was no disappointment when things turned out as he had predicted.

“Haha.”

Yes, that’s how it had to be, but the feeling of something deeply held within his chest crumbling away was overwhelming.

Ji-hyuk left Seung-ok behind and went to a secluded area with thick bushes, vomiting. It had become a frequent occurrence lately, so he wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and walked away, feeling weak.

When facing the wall called Yun Seung-ok, Ji-hyuk thought of Go-yeo. Go-yeo often said that talking to him felt like conversing with a wall. Ji-hyuk would either laugh it off or say, ‘It’s because you can’t accept my love.’

‘Was that love?’

Is it loving Go-yeo to encourage unconditional compliance with one’s thoughts because they are right? No matter how much Ji-hyuk thought about the fundamental question, the answer was that it was right. Nevertheless, the reason he was confused was that Han Go-yeo did not do that.

Even though she harbored dissatisfaction with his ways, she ultimately accepted him and gave everything. Because she loved Mun Ji-hyuk. That was the way of loving Go-yeo. She spread love generously to the one she chose to love, giving everything as if she were giving endlessly.

Having received such addictive love to the point of blindness, Moon Ji-hyuk became someone who couldn’t live without it.