The Lie
I barely managed to force out a voice.
But the words wouldn't string together properly.
"Why are you still... here..."
There was a mountain of things I wanted to ask.
Why had she waited for me?
Why had she said nothing when I called off the engagement?
How had she spent the last ten years?
But none of those questions made it past my lips in any coherent form.
Before her calm, unreadable gaze, every question of mine seemed to lose its strength and scatter into nothing.
Guilt tightened around my throat once more.
What right did I have to ask her anything?
She simply received my confused stare in silence.
I could read no emotion in her eyes—like a still lake whose depths could not be measured.
That very quiet unsettled me more than anything.
And then—
"Taejun! Oh, my son!"
A desperate, trembling voice burst from inside the house.
It was a voice I knew by heart, though ten years of time had surely silvered it—my mother's.
With the voice came the sight of both of them bursting through the front door.
Mother ran to me with tears streaming down her face and threw herself into my arms.
Her body was so much smaller than it had been ten years ago. Her gaunt back trembled faintly against me.
I couldn't bring myself to hold her tightly. I only patted her back with careful hands.
"My baby... my baby... you've come back alive... It really is... it really is my son!"
Her sobs would not stop. Hot tears soaked into my shoulder.
My own throat closed; I couldn't speak a word. All I could do was repeat I'm sorry over and over inside my head.
Father stood behind her, watching me.
He had always been a taciturn man, clumsy with emotion. But his bloodshot eyes and the faint quiver of his lips spoke for him completely.
He approached slowly and clapped my shoulder with a rough hand. The weight in that touch came through clear as day.
"It's enough... You're home. That's enough, son..."
The voice he forced out carried relief and sorrow and the longing of long years all tangled together.
I steadied Mother and faced Father.
A reunion after ten years. In tears and silence, something thick and binding called family was knitting itself back together.
Yet even in that overwhelming moment, my eyes kept drifting to one side.
Yoon Seoa.
She had already taken a quiet step back, as if she had no right to share in the joy of this reunion.
She simply watched the three of us with that same composed expression—neither crying nor smiling. Just standing there, quietly observing.
Whatever she felt seemed thoroughly hidden behind that peaceful face.
Father's gaze flicked to her for the briefest instant before returning to me. In that short glance I caught apology and pity.
I could roughly guess what it meant.
Ten years. While I was gone, this girl had stayed by my parents' side.
To an orphan like her, my parents must have been the only family she had. And they, in turn, must have leaned on her as if she were their own daughter.
And now I had returned—the man who had once told her the engagement was over.
Seoa's unbelievable composure. My parents' endless tears. And the subtle, awkward air hanging between them.
In this tangled, uncomfortable situation, I had no idea where to begin or how to untangle any of it.
With Mother's sobs and Seoa's calm all knotted together, I didn't even know what to say first or where to rest my eyes.
Mother's weeping showed no sign of quieting. Ten years of piled-up longing and worry seemed to pour out at once; her thin frame kept shaking.
Father wiped his reddened eyes with the back of his hand, barely holding himself together.
Watching them, something hot surged up in my own chest. But instead of tears, a deep guilt sealed my throat shut.
All I had given these people was ten long years of pain and fear.
"Mother, let's go inside first. Standing out here like this..."
I managed to speak and patted her back. I couldn't bring myself to ask if she was all right. Of course she wasn't—because of me.
Mother nodded at my words yet still couldn't take a step, only stroking my face again and again. In those dry hands I felt the full weight of ten years.
"Yes, yes. Let's go in. You must be tired too, Taejun."
Father stepped forward to support her. I carefully took her other arm. The thinness of it made my heart ache.
We moved slowly through the front door into the house. Behind us, Yoon Seoa followed quietly; the soft click of the door closing sounded low and final.
The air inside was both strange and familiar.
The furniture arrangement hadn't changed much from the day I left ten years ago, nor had the old family photos on the walls. Yet the mark of time lay over everything.
At the same time, the place felt strangely well kept—floors free of dust, windows gleaming, household things neatly ordered. Small potted plants here and there gave off a fresh green scent.
All of it spoke of someone's steady care over the past decade. And I didn't need to wonder who that someone had been.
I carefully settled Mother on the living-room sofa and sat awkwardly beside her. Father took the chair opposite and looked at me with a long, heavy sigh.
None of us seemed to know what to say. Only a thick silence filled the room. Mother still wiped at her tears; Father merely worked his dry lips without sound.
It was Yoon Seoa who broke the choking awkwardness again.
She must have gone to the kitchen without my noticing; she reappeared carrying a tray with two teacups and a small teapot. She approached without a sound and set the tray on the low table in the center of the room.
A clear little sound as warm tea filled the cups. A rich, familiar fragrance tickled my nose.
Corn silk tea.
The kind I used to love—the kind Mother had often brewed for me before I enlisted.
How did she remember that?
No—perhaps the fact that she remembered wasn't what mattered. The fact that she had lived in this house with my parents, remembering the things I liked—that was what drove the sharp fragments of guilt deeper into me.
Seoa first offered cups politely to my parents, then finally set one in front of me. In the process the tip of her finger brushed my knee, just barely.
I flinched; my body went rigid without meaning to.
She withdrew her hand as if nothing had happened and returned to her place, sitting quietly. Across the awkward river flowing between my parents and me, she seemed to exist alone, like an island.
"Here. Have some tea. You must have had a hard journey."
Father lifted his cup first. I reluctantly took the still-warm cup in my hands, but I couldn't bring it to my mouth.
Under my parents' eyes—and under Seoa's gaze that I both felt and somehow didn't—I still felt completely lost.
"Taejun..."
Mother spoke carefully.
"Your body... is it all right? You aren't hurt anywhere?"
"I'm fine, Mother. Perfectly fine."
A lie.
There wasn't a sound place on my body, and my mind was in tatters. But I couldn't tell the truth. I couldn't make them worry again.
"Thank goodness... truly, thank goodness..."
Mother looked relieved at my words, yet her anxious eyes still roamed over my face and arms, as if I might vanish at any second.
Silence again. Only the steam rising slowly from the teacups drifted through the air.
This couldn't go on. We couldn't sit here forever in this awkwardness.
I had to ask first—the fundamental reason for all of this.
"Yoon Seoa."
My voice came out lower and rougher than I expected. My gaze turned to her of its own accord.
She showed no surprise, only met my eyes with the same calm. Those unfathomable light-brown irises.
"I told you clearly. The engagement was off."
A direct question. It might have sounded cruel. But I had no talent for softening things, and right now I had no room for it either.
"Why didn't you leave?"
At my question my parents' faces stiffened at once. Father shut his mouth heavily; Mother fidgeted, watching my expression.
But Seoa—still almost no change in her face. She quietly set the teacup she had been holding onto the table. The small sound of porcelain against wood rang unusually loud.
"......"
A brief silence. She seemed to think for a moment, lowering her gaze before slowly lifting it to meet mine again.
"My parents..."
At last her lips parted. Her voice was unexpectedly steady.
"They died in a Gate accident when I was very young."
"...!"
I caught my breath. This was the first I had heard of it. I had never known she had lost her parents so early to a Gate accident.
"After that... the people who took me in when I had nowhere to go were your parents, Taejun."
Her gaze flicked briefly to my parents before returning to me. There was no resentment in it—only the calm of someone stating facts.
"Even after you left... if I weren't here, it would just be the two of them. How could I have left?"
She seemed to smile faintly. But the smile looked sad.
"I had to repay the kindness. The kindness they showed me was so great."
Kindness.
The word flew like a dagger and buried itself in my chest.
The responsibility I had abandoned. The promise I had turned my back on. This young woman had carried it all in silence for the past ten years.