Looks Like I Got It Wrong (2)
A family dinner out for three — everyone except Min Cheong-ha, who was away on a business trip overseas. Except one distinctly unordinary member had been folded into the party.
"Um… are you sure it's really all right for me to come, sir?"
The housekeeper was under an enormous amount of pressure about being suddenly drafted into the meal. It would have been fine without Jin Gyeo-wool — but with Gyeo-wool included, it was a four-person dinner.
And it was Gyeo-wool who had insisted so hard that the guest list had ended up like this in the first place.
"Gyeo-wool… said you should come. So of course you should. Haha. Haha!"
With Gyeo-wool briefly gone to the restroom, the three people left at the table traded sighs in turn.
"Why is she suddenly acting like this…? Is she seriously planning to cut Mom off completely…?"
"Surely not. It's probably just a creative new way of venting her anger."
"I hope you're right…"
Jin Ju-yeong muttered as he eyed the housekeeper, who was sitting bolt upright in a rigid formal posture, wound tight with tension.
"Still, though. Isn't Mom coming? She said it so bluntly it was even scarier."
That was right. Tonight's dinner had originally been planned for three.
But as the housekeeper saw them off at the front door, Jin Gyeo-wool had turned a questioning look on her.
Isn't Mom coming?
…?
The moment those words left her mouth, the other three people's minds spun into overdrive. If they didn't handle this right, Gyeo-wool — who had finally been willing to go out — would march straight back to her room.
Jin Ju-yeong tried to talk her down with the facts.
What's with you all of a sudden? Mom is— mmph—
But their timid father clamped a hand over Ju-yeong's mouth. Then, with shameless theatrical flair, he launched into a bit of roleplay.
That's right, that's right. We should bring Mom along too. You said you didn't have much appetite, didn't you? Still, come eat with us. Gyeo-wool wants you to. Hmm?
The housekeeper could not refuse the desperate plea in her employer's words and eyes.
It was pure, uncut desperation.
The atmosphere was less family outing and more bomb-disposal unit approaching a high-yield explosive named Jin Gyeo-wool.
W-well then. I suppose I have no choice~!
And when it was settled that the housekeeper would join them for dinner, the smile Gyeo-wool wore was a masterpiece.
Great.
It was simply the smile of someone pleased to see her family getting along. To everyone else, however, it translated as: I was about to shave you bald if you didn't listen…
A short while later, Jin Gyeo-wool returned from the restroom — and the moment she sat down, the exclamations started pouring out.
"Wow, even the bathroom here is amazing. The food's going to be incredible too, right?"
For the family, it was pure torment. Please. Please just sit quietly and don't say anything, Gyeo-wool. Why do you keep talking? Now we have no choice but to answer!
But Jin Gyeo-wool had her reasons too.
Why is everyone… so quiet?
He hated stifling, suffocating atmospheres. Back when he had been Bae Do-hyun, being stuck at the dinner table with parents who had stopped speaking after yet another fight had been genuine agony.
So whenever a table went silent, he naturally started talking to himself — tossing out whatever came to mind in the hope that some scrap of conversation might catch and carry on from there.
Of course, back in his Bae Do-hyun days, nothing resembling a real conversation had ever grown from those tossed-off remarks. Being Jin Gyeo-wool was different.
Everyone was scrambling to keep the mood alive by any means necessary.
So Gyeo-wool decided this was a good thing, and resolved to talk even more going forward.
As far as he could tell, the cold-war barrier that had gone up between Jin Gyeo-wool and her mother(?) still hadn't fully come down.
A good stretch of time passed, and around when the main courses were due to arrive, the housekeeper — her stomach in knots — leaned over to whisper to Jin Man-ho.
Um… I think I'm going to get indigestion, sir.
Oh. Really?
Well. Who at this table could possibly eat in peace? His wife would have managed it, he supposed. Jin Man-ho muttered that to himself, then spoke to the housekeeper.
Pretend you're going to the restroom and step out for some air.
Yes… I'll do that. I'm sorry, sir.
Not at all…. This is my fault.
And so the housekeeper excused herself to Gyeo-wool and left the table.
Or rather — she tried to.
"Hurry back. The main meat dishes are coming out soon. I hear they're really good?"
The housekeeper scrapped her plan to kill time outside getting air. The overly bright lilt at the end of Gyeo-wool's sentence made it impossible to guess what intention was packed inside those words.
"R-right…. I'll be right back, Gyeo-wool."
Tears pricked at the housekeeper's eyes.
Here she was, face-to-face with lavish dishes she would never normally spend her own money on — and she couldn't even properly enjoy the taste. That was why she was crying.
But what choice did she have? Right now, Jin Gyeo-wool was saying: If you don't come right back, I'll shave you bald.
Jin Man-ho watched her trail weakly out of the restaurant, his face full of pity.
The food was excellent.
Even the menu name — Dragon King's Table — telegraphed an ambition to pile every delicacy under heaven onto one spread.
The appetizer was abalone porridge. For the mains came a parade of dishes built from expensive ingredients: fresh live sashimi, a royal hot pot with wild pine mushrooms, grilled live abalone, grilled tiger prawns, grilled Korean beef tenderloin, and on and on.
A lineup that couldn't have tasted bad if it tried.
But the only person who actually enjoyed any of it was Jin Gyeo-wool.
"Thanks for the meal~"
With a cheerful little thank-you, Gyeo-wool slipped straight off to her room. The moment she disappeared behind her door, peace finally descended on the remaining three.
"Should we… rest a bit?"
"Yes… Dad."
"Sir…"
"Yes, go ahead."
And the housekeeper requested the day off.
"I'd like tomorrow off, just the one day…. I think the food really sat wrong…"
"……"
Jin Man-ho had no choice but to grant the request.
"Of course…"
The next day.
Worried that at this rate the housekeeper might actually quit, Jin Ju-yeong decided to step in.
She had put up with Gyeo-wool's insanity for years, but lately the psychological warfare had gone too far. Keep this up and even she would hit her limit — that much was certain.
So, steeling himself for the very real possibility of having half his scalp ripped out, Ju-yeong stormed into Gyeo-wool's room.
"Hang on. Wait."
"Ah. You were in-game. Sorry!"
Of all times, she was busy first thing in the morning playing League of Council. You did not interrupt Jin Gyeo-wool mid-game. A tiger on the hunt, a dog at its bowl, a third-year exam repeater mid-study — that kind of energy.
The champion she was playing was Ornn. Released in catastrophic shape in the middle of last year, his win rate had scraped the floor until a string of buff patches turned him into a frequently picked teamfight champion on the pro stage.
Afraid his presence might bother her, Ju-yeong put as much distance between them as he could. Then he started watching her play from afar.
Her style the moment she headed top was unmistakable.
Blow open a massive lead on the enemy top laner in lane, then use that advantage to seize the upper jungle and slowly grind the map from top to bottom. Brains over brawn — a style built around stable tanks and bruiser-tanks who could still soak damage.
The Ornn Gyeo-wool had locked was comfort food: unless the enemy picked an ADC top, there was almost no matchup that seriously stressed her.
Knowing that cold, she didn't hesitate for a second on her starting items. Straight into the inventory went a 500-gold potion — thump. Not a ward, but a lens — thump.
Ju-yeong checked the current matchup. Ranked game; the enemy team was a mix of Diamond and Platinum.
Not an easy bracket for Gyeo-wool. And yet, instead of fretting over the early setup, her Ironclad Sovereign strode straight into the brush along the top-lane wall.
Contact…!
The gathering place of real men: top lane's second bush. There, the enemy top laner on Sion and Gyeo-wool's Ornn met.
The two laners locked eyes and, as if they'd been waiting for this, crashed into each other at once. Tank versus tank — neither side had to fear getting bursted — so the two broad-shouldered bruisers simply charged.
The moment the gap closed, the enemy Sion's Q, Decimating Smash, came flying in. But Gyeo-wool didn't flinch. She had taken W, Bellows Breath.
Ornn's W came with unstoppable status and a shield, and landing the hit applied a mark that dealt bonus damage. The enemy had leveled a skill first and thrown out a play — and Gyeo-wool had simply answered it.
(Unstoppable: a state immune to all CC and status effects.)
Countered from the jump, the trade swung in Gyeo-wool's favor. Sion tried to charge the Q all the way for maximum damage, but the instant he brought the fully wound Decimating Smash down, Ornn's auto came out a fraction faster. The stacked smash broke with a knockback.
That was the knockback effect that triggered when the mark from Ornn's W detonated.
In the trade that followed, of course it was Gyeo-wool's Ornn pressing forward. Both sides had burned their skills; what remained was an auto-attack fight — and Ornn was holding a Corrupting Potion.
Top off the health lost to one auto with the potion, and let the potion's on-hit burn ride on every subsequent auto?
There was nothing in it for Sion if the fight kept going.
Boring.
A bland level-one skirmish. Sion turned tail and ran for his life. But if he recalled home right then, the early laning phase would be completely shattered. The first wave of minions was already marching down the lane; the second he abandoned those early CS and went home, a level-two Ornn would slow-push the second and third waves and choke him out relentlessly.
In the end, Sion couldn't even recall. He huddled behind the minion wave on less than half health and waited for his jungler.
Which was good news for Gyeo-wool. From the information on the map, the enemy jungler was pathing top — and so was her own.
Once the wave started slowly pushing toward Gyeo-wool's side, the two junglers would meet at the scuttle crab, and the red side — Gyeo-wool's side — held every advantage. Why? Both junglers cleared at roughly the same speed, and looking at expected damage in a 2v2 skirmish, tankiness, and available CC, neither team had a clear edge.
Except Gyeo-wool's Ornn was ahead on health. There was nothing to lose by taking the fight.
Mid's winning too, conveniently…
Watching the map tilt further and further in Gyeo-wool's favor, Ju-yeong could tell for certain that his little sister was playing smarter than before.
He'd sensed it editing her VODs, but seeing it live made the reasoning behind every call feel vivid. That was how it looked to Ju-yeong, who sat in the same Platinum rank as Gyeo-wool.
In practice, she stomped lane with ease, and the second she hit six she recalled and roamed mid, helping punch a hole in the enemy mid laner.
Once the top side of the map started snowballing, pressure on the bottom lane ramped up naturally. But the allied bot laner held the fort like someone who trusted the top-side lead — and around the twenty-minute mark the game tipped completely, ending in the enemy's surrender.
The 2018 season had only just begun, and remnants of the 2017 bottom/ADC-centric meta still lingered. Closing a game on the strength of a top-side led by Gyeo-wool's Ornn made it a quietly meaningful win.
Even after the game ended, Gyeo-wool stared at the corner of her monitor for a long while before finally registering Ju-yeong's presence.
"Ah. What are you doing here?"
"Ah, well."
But Ju-yeong had been so stunned watching her play that he'd completely forgotten what he'd come to say.
He floundered — and ended up putting his foot straight in his mouth.
"Why do you keep calling the housekeeper Mom? You're doing it on purpose, right?"
Oh no. Ju-yeong clapped both hands over his mouth. Goosebumps crawled up his spine.
That was not how he'd meant to say it. Softly. Without getting on her nerves. He'd only planned to ask, Gyeo-wool, are you calling the housekeeper Mom on purpose because you're fighting with Mom?
Instead he'd said it flat-out — and framed it like an accusation that she was doing it deliberately.
Dear God. I'm going bald today. Ju-yeong sank into despair.
"Oh…. Is that what I was doing?"
But against every expectation — he'd been bracing for a So what? Want me to make you bald? paired with her fist locking into his hair — nothing of the sort happened.
Jin Gyeo-wool went on in a remarkably calm, gentle tone.
"Sorry. I must have mixed things up. So she isn't Mom. I thought something felt off."
As usual, though, her words kept breeding misunderstandings. And Gyeo-wool's own way of thinking only fed them. He had never lived in a house with a housekeeper, never visited one, never even seen it in a drama.
Gyeo-wool gave an awkward little laugh.
"Then what is she…. Earlier Dad called her Ju-yeong's mom…. To me she's just the lady of the house…. Wait, don't tell me — is she our stepmother? Are we half-siblings?"
The reason Jin Man-ho had called her "Ju-yeong's mom" was simple: Ju-yeong was the eldest, and he'd just transferred the form of address he used for Min Cheong-ha straight onto the housekeeper.
Ju-yeong's internal filter automatically twisted Gyeo-wool's words yet again.
Don't tell me — is she our stepmother? = If you don't answer that she is our stepmother, I will make you bald.
Are we half-siblings? = If you don't answer that we are half-siblings, I will make you bald.
That was how it parsed — so how on earth was Ju-yeong supposed to say no? And she was smiling that soft smile again. The smile of a follicle murderer.
"R-right! Ah, you already knew and you were just messing with me. Haha. Haha! I-I'll just be going then! Did you start the recording?"
"Yeah. It's on?"
"Aaaah. I should have turned it on for you…. Wh-when you're done, just say so. I'll come clean it up!"
Clatter, crash. Like a terrified herbivore, Jin Ju-yeong bolted for the safety of his own room.