Holding hands tightly, my brother and Morae crossed the lobby and stepped into the coffee shop entrance. It wasn’t a sight you often saw. My brother’s face was rigid and on guard, but Morae—who spotted me right away, waved, and came over—was the same as always.
"Nice job snagging a good spot, Seo Ihyeon."
Dropping onto the sofa across from me, back to the big grand piano by the window, she talked about the luck of getting a window seat as if she’d come here just to relax.
The lobby coffee shop of a five-star hotel on Namsan. She had picked the place herself.
Through a front wall of glass at least three stories high, the city lay below in a blurred gray wash, rain still spitting down. Beyond the Han River, the city on the far side was smudged by the rain and the mist it raised, but on a clear day you’d probably see a long way, sharp as anything.
"Your director isn’t moonlighting with a private detective agency or something, right? Or did he spend his past running from place ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ to place?"
When the server left with our order, Morae leaned on her forearms and tilted toward the table, teasing. Her usual tone made me wonder if I had misunderstood why we were meeting.
Around noon he had called to say my brother and Morae should move out right away and that he’d prepared a temporary place for them. He suggested we even meet my uncle there since the security was tight. If the two of them were mentally ready, he said he’d arranged it so they could leave Seoul tomorrow—no, even tonight.
Sunk in sleep like death, I couldn’t keep up with him with my dulled head. I hadn’t expected him to be slow or sloppy, but the speed and precision of his push still surprised me.
As soon as I hung up, I climbed out of bed and called Morae. I told her everything—from why I’d vanished last night, to the deposit, to the plan he’d set up. We talked for a full hour.
After hearing it all and filling in what I’d missed with a few questions, Morae said that for now she couldn’t trust him.
Not because he was a suspicious person, but because at the moment she couldn’t blindly trust anyone—that much, I agreed with. To me he was someone I could trust; to her he was just a man she’d never even seen. And she was very careful by nature.
For now she and my brother put all of his proposals on hold, quickly moved their things to the house of the owner of What Happened in Bali, and set this hotel as the meeting place. The rest would be decided after meeting my uncle.
"Pr...obably not."
I shook my head, imagining him dressed like the head of a back-alley detective bureau, in a fourth-floor walk-up with no elevator, taking on a client who wanted proof of a spouse’s affair.
"His escape plan was so meticulous I wondered if he’d hired a pro."
Half-reclined against the table as she drank her water, Morae suddenly set the glass down and leaned in farther. Her eyes widened a little.
"But what’s with your lip?"
I flinched back before I knew it.
"Uh... I ate ramen at dawn and crashed.... Did it swell that much?"
I caught myself touching my lower lip, half hiding it, and asked back. I was surprised at how calmly I deflected. Even asking if it was really that swollen felt unlike me. It was a pretty deft response for me, but cold sweat prickled hot along my back.
"Your lower lip’s a bit off. I thought something bit you. You never swell—what gives?"
As if losing interest, Morae leaned back and tipped the glass to drop an ice cube into her mouth.
The moment her back touched the sofa, my brother suddenly shot to his feet, and the focus I’d been keeping on my lip scattered. Morae and I turned to follow my brother’s gaze.
Crunch. The sound of Morae chewing and swallowing the ice was oddly vivid. Her eyes cooled, stripping away her usual slack ease.
A thin khaki summer jacket with a collar, hiking pants and sneakers, a faded baseball cap with the brim bleached white along the edge. In a luxury hotel coffee shop, my uncle looked suspicious to anyone’s eye.
It struck me how easily anyone could go from a decent citizen to a suspicious person. At the co-op fish auction in the village, my uncle blended into the crowd like he wore camouflage, just another ordinary fisherman. Here, he became a man drawing wary looks from hotel staff and puzzled glances from some guests.
A tall, sharply dressed middle-aged man about my uncle’s age passed through the hall in brisk conversation with a suited foreigner, and he gave my uncle a sidelong look. Watching it was somehow hard; I turned my head away.
"Sorry to ask you to come somewhere like this. It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it?"
"No."
Morae, who had risen to greet him and wait for him to approach, politely guided my uncle to the seat beside me.
"It’s not that we don’t trust my father... It’s just, he might use you as bait to drag us back, so we asked to meet you somewhere like this. He’s the type who would. As you know."
My uncle nodded, as if he understood, lifted my water, and drained it in one go, leaving only ice.
Iced coffees for my brother and Morae arrived, and when the server asked for his order, my uncle just said "coffee." His thick, rough hands twisted on his thigh over and over, his profile set hard with tension.
What I’d already summarized for them by phone was laid out again from Morae’s mouth, confirming each point of the current situation. When she asked evenly if that was correct, my uncle nodded. Morae let out a heavy sigh and added a sincere apology.
My uncle didn’t respond to the apology. After a long moment he spoke, his face tired.
"What... are you planning to do now?"
"What do you mean."
My brother started to burst out, but Morae gripped his hand tight.
"We’re going to stay together. Until the day we ourselves decide we don’t want to anymore."
From beneath the deep brim of his cap, my uncle looked back and forth between them without a word, then drew his gaze away with a deep, wounded-animal sound that seemed to hold far too many words.
A group of four or five elegant middle-aged women passed us, exchanging warm remarks in cheerful voices as if on their way home. When quiet settled again and Schumann’s piano trio flowed low, my uncle spoke, heavier than that earlier groan.
"Even if I... kneel here and beg, you can’t... come back?"
"......"
No one at the table could speak.
My brother’s face twisted first, flushing red as if he’d heard something deeply insulting. Then his eyes reddened, hot.
"Does anyone want to see their father on his knees? Do we look like we’re doing this to torment someone and feel superior? If he kneels, am I supposed to get excited and say this is exactly what I wanted and follow him back?"
I knew what hurt him. I knew this anger wasn’t aimed at my uncle. Neither he nor Morae divided the people involved into perpetrators and victims, and though they believed their choice was right, they were suffering guilt toward their parents all the same.
If we were on the boat, at the harbor, or in my grandfather’s cement-paved yard, my uncle would have smacked my brother without hesitation with those thick palms. But here, even faced with my brother’s raised voice, he only lowered his head deeper like a man at fault.
Seeing that, my brother clenched a fist and turned away. Morae sat frozen, as if cast in resin, her face blank of both anger and grief, staring at the melting ice beading the glass on the table.
Because he had only said "coffee," my uncle’s coffee arrived hot. It wouldn’t have mattered which coffee came. As if he couldn’t feel heat or taste, he lifted the cup—so small against his hands and fingers—and took a sip, then set it down.
"I’m an uneducated man, so I don’t know about the freedom of choice and the self you keep talking about. To be honest, I think you’re intoxicated with young blood and playing a childish game. Right now you feel like you’ll die if you’re apart, like you can’t live if the other’s gone... I can’t say I don’t know how you feel."
Listening to him, I had to wring my hands on my knees too. He made me more uneasy than in the old days when he just scolded without listening. For persuading someone, empathy works better than force or pressure, and they were already plagued by guilt.
Unaware of my quickening breath, my uncle continued.
"It’s just, after living this long... I know that even a flame that feels like it will last a lifetime eventually dies down. Hani, you, and you, Morae... for your parents’ sake... can’t you endure the pain right now and let it go? You really can’t?"
I grabbed his forearm, clinging, almost snapping out of my seat.
"If you tear them apart, what do you think will happen... haven’t you seen it in my father?"
It wasn’t like me, and as a third party I had no right, but standing by while they wavered in front of a parent showing weakness... I couldn’t.
His yellowish irises, the rims of the pupils cloudy, turned to me. It felt like he was saying, Do you think I don’t know that, and also like he was saying, Morae and my brother aren’t your father.
But I know. I’ve lived beside them for over five years; I know far better than my uncle, better than Mr. Im.
I could borrow his phrasing from last night.
My brother and Morae weren’t merely romantically in love; they were a set that only became complete together. The tragedy that happens when people like that are unnaturally split was my father, and the ruined work that tragedy produced is me now. I couldn’t let that repeat with my brother and Morae.
Staring at one spot on the table, Morae spoke in a dry voice with all feeling pared away.
"As you said, we won’t die just because Seo Ihan isn’t there."
"......"
My uneasy gaze slid to her. My hand on my uncle’s arm lost strength.
"I know exactly what we’re doing—nailing our parents’ and brothers’ hearts to stay with Hani. I’ll carry that guilt for life."
I’d been worrying foolishly. If she were going to falter here, she never would have left the village.
"People say life is your own, that children aren’t their parents’ property.... To our parents’ ears, there’s nothing more wicked than that. But it’s not like we get a thrill out of outwitting and hurting them... We’re living inside pain and guilt that match the betrayal and fear they must be feeling now."
After adding that she wasn’t asking for that to be understood, she fell silent. For a moment her face looked like someone who had lived a very long time. Not older, exactly. Like someone who steps aside from time, past all the messy anxieties that drive us into life’s traps. It sounds exaggerated, but honestly I’d felt that from her now and then, not just now.
Even if the world called it unfilial, so that she would never blame or resent anyone else for her life and choices. So that she wouldn’t just claim the freedom to choose, but take on the responsibility that follows, returning it squarely to herself—the truth most of us, me included, look away from... Maybe she and my brother weren’t fighting my uncle or Mr. Im or my grandfather or the world, but wrestling with their own lives.
"Like you said, every fire dies down someday. But that doesn’t matter. I don’t know if you’ll understand, but from the beginning Hani and I weren’t drawn to each other by that hot blaze alone, the feeling of romance."
In the way she put distance between her feelings and herself, passing only the facts to the listener, I saw him from last night overlap with her.
I didn’t want to write off their detachment about life as some Alpha trait. I didn’t want to make their loneliness, their conflicts, their effort into nothing. Yuni and Gwon Juhan are Betas, but they didn’t sit and watch while outside forces twisted them into shapes they didn’t want. Faced with the weight of the pain life demands in exchange for the power to live without lying to yourself, the labels Alpha and Beta meant nothing.
Without realizing it, I pressed a hand to my chest with the one that had been resting weakly on my uncle’s arm. Casting me a brief worried look, Morae took a few swallows of coffee—now more in the cup than at first, with the melted ice—and spoke firmly.
"First, we’re going to clear the debt you owe."
It sounded like she’d decided to accept his proposal I’d brought.
At the word debt, my uncle’s eyes wavered with confusion. They asked, How?
"Once that’s paid off, at least on the surface your father won’t have a pretext to blackmail you anymore, so it’s best to settle that first. We’ll send the money."
She didn’t explain the source of the money. How much to say about the money—she left that to me.
"Of course, even after that he’ll harass you with every petty, shabby trick he has. He’s my father, whom I love... but that’s the kind of man he is...."
Her gaze shifted to the window for a moment. Because he was her father, no one loved him more; but barring the blood tie of father and daughter, the practical grounds to love and respect him were painfully thin. For the first time, emotions rose and fell across her face.
When her gaze returned slowly to the table, her face had returned to what it was—no emotional openings. But it didn’t look numb; rather, it carried a pain like holding a mouthful of bitter juice.
In a voice and face that looked empty and steady from the outside, she said,
"If it really can’t go on like this, please tell my father this for me. To the monstrous daughter who’s a woman Alpha—thank you for raising me until now. And now, please stop fretting like that... and just live at ease."
