Flashback: Seo Eun-ah, Han Ga-eun (18)
Flashback: Seo Eun-ah, Han Ga-eun (18)
I was furious — insanely furious.
But strangely enough, I was extremely calm right now. I didn’t feel like shouting or smashing anything.
I was just worried about Eun-ah.
More precisely, I was worried about what would happen to Eun-ah after what I was about to do.
Setting aside the fact that I broke my promise, she would definitely feel uneasy seeing her mother suddenly acting so
differently because of hypnosis. She would probably confront me about it…
It would be easy to just hypnotize her and command her not to question anything. But I didn’t want to do that.
Even if I had a good reason, breaking a promise was still breaking a promise. I felt like I had to face the
consequences.
That’s how it should be. I didn’t want to run away from it like that.
‘Let’s think about it later.’
Yeah. I’d think about it later. Thinking about it now would only make me hesitate.
I turned on my phone and searched for Professor Han Ga-eun on the internet. I had been so focused on raising Eun-ah and
dealing with everything else that I hadn’t even thought of searching for her until things blew up.
A flood of photos and text filled the screen.
Korea University’s youngest professor, Han Ga-eun. Age 36.
Five years ago, the math paper she published had shaken the entire academic world.
The United States and other countries had desperately tried to recruit her, but she chose to stay in Korea out of
loyalty to the president of Korea University, who had helped her in the past.
With her beautiful face and well-maintained, voluptuous figure, she should have been extremely popular — but her severe
arrogance and harsh verbal abuse meant no one wanted to stay around her.
‘36 years old?’
Eun-ah is 20 now… so that means she gave birth to her at around 16? Considering pregnancy lasts about 10 months, she
must have gotten pregnant when she was 15 or right after turning 16.
‘Did she get married early? Or…’
Something was nagging at the back of my mind when my phone suddenly rang. It was Eun-ah.
“Hello.”
“Uncle. Where are you?”
“I’m… on my way home.”
I tried to sound calm, but I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking.
“You’re not going to see my mom, right?”
She hit the nail on the head.
“No.”
That’s why my answer came a beat too late. Maybe even two beats.
“You promised me. You said you wouldn’t do anything to my mom.”
“Will that really solve anything?”
“I have my own plan.”
“What plan?”
“I’ll try harder…”
“How much harder? How much more are you going to try? It hasn’t worked all this time — what, are you going to become
president? Do you really think your mom will suddenly see you as her daughter then?”
Oops. The words came out sharper than I intended.
“Mom… is a pitiful person.”
“Pitiful?”
I didn’t see it that way at all.
“Grandma once told me… that as soon as Mom got pregnant with me, my dad ran away. So she left me with Grandma and worked
hard all by herself to become a professor.”
So that’s why she called her a curse. It made a little more sense now.
But what exactly was so pitiful about Han Ga-eun? If anyone was pitiful, wasn’t it Eun-ah?
A husband running away after getting someone pregnant was a common story. Even if I accepted that, how could anyone
defend a mother who constantly hurled insults at her own daughter, calling her very existence a curse?
Eun-ah had grown up without a father from the moment she was born. She was raised by her grandmother while her own
mother hated her.
Despite that environment, she worked incredibly hard and reached the very top. Yet her mother’s attitude never changed.
No matter how I looked at it, the pitiful one wasn’t Han Ga-eun — it was Seo Eun-ah.
“Ah, I just thought of something. What if I introduce Mom to a nice man? Maybe that would help?”
Did she really think that would be a solution? I felt sorry for her. Right now, Eun-ah seemed too shocked to think
straight.
But I kept my mouth shut. Arguing with her right now would only make it obvious that I had other plans.
“Alright. I won’t get involved.”
So I lied and hung up the phone.
“We’ve arrived.”
I paid the taxi fare and got out. The grand, imposing sight of Korea’s top university — Seoul Korea University — filled
my eyes.
Students running around in sloppy clothes with backpacks, too busy studying to care about their appearance, and couples
(probably campus couples) laughing together as they walked by.
None of that mattered to me.
“Excuse me, where is Professor Han Ga-eun’s office?”
“Oh my.”
When I stopped a female student and asked, her eyes sparkled. Before I could react, she held out her phone.
“If you give me your number…”
“Just look at this.”
Not wanting to drag it out, I hypnotized her right away. After a brief dazed moment, the girl turned around and started
leading the way.
That’s how I found Professor Han’s office. I implanted a few positive suggestions into the hypnotized student (regular
lifestyle, exercise, positive thinking), released the hypnosis, and then opened the office door without knocking.
“Who…!”
There was no one else in the room except Professor Han Ga-eun, who looked visibly startled.
Perfect. If an assistant or anyone else had been there, it would’ve been annoying.
I gave her a cold look and locked the door with a click.
“Professor Han. You remember me, right?”
“Sigh… You’re that guy who was with Eun-ah earlier.”
The moment she recognized me, she pressed her index finger against her temple in clear annoyance.
“So? Did you come here to complain?”
“Yes.”
I could have hypnotized her immediately. But Eun-ah had told me not to do anything to her mother.
And honestly, I had also grown curious about why she behaved this way. So I decided to talk first — to hear her side of
the story and try to persuade her.
Eun-ah probably just meant “don’t do anything weird,” but for some reason it bothered me. I wanted to save hypnosis as
the last resort.
“Get out. I’m going to call security.”
“Professor Han. Are you sure you can handle the consequences?”
“What the hell are you trying to do?!”
Han Ga-eun suddenly shouted. But I didn’t flinch at all and just stared straight into her eyes.
“W-what are you looking at…?”
“The world doesn’t know what kind of relationship you and Eun-ah actually have.”
“Hah, are you threatening to expose us? Eun-ah would get hurt too, you know?”
“No. She wouldn’t get hurt. People would just become annoying and say ‘So that’s what happened.’ Hundreds of articles
with titles like ‘Mother and Daughter’ would flood out. Actually, it might even be good for Eun-ah. But can you handle
it, Professor? If you keep rejecting your daughter in that kind of situation, it’s going to get very noisy.”
“……Ha. Fuck.”
A professor swearing so crudely — she let out a long, heavy sigh into the air.
“So, what do you want me to do?”
“Eun-ah has been running toward one single goal her entire life: to be loved by her mother, to become a daughter her
mother can be proud of.”
“And?”
“She worked incredibly hard and reached the very top. Isn’t it too cruel to reject even the gift your own daughter
prepared for you?”
“……”
I took out the gold watch case that Eun-ah had wanted to give her mother (the one that had been rejected) from my pocket
and placed it on her desk with a loud clack.
“Please accept this and treat Eun-ah just a little better. It’s not that hard, is it? If you promise me that, I’ll leave
right now.”
I meant it.
Hypnosis was the final option. No matter how much I wanted to ignore the promise, since Eun-ah had asked me, I didn’t
want to solve it with a simple snap of my fingers.
“Why should I?”
“Because she’s your daughter.”
“That thing?”
Calling her own daughter “that thing”…
“I’ve roughly heard the story from Eun-ah. That her father ran away as soon as you got pregnant.”
“What…!?”
Her face twisted violently. It looked like I had hit a raw nerve.
“As you know, Professor, none of that was your daughter’s fault. If you want to hate someone, you should hate the
father.”
“He’s already dead, so what the fuck am I supposed to do?”
“…Excuse me?”
“That bastard got caught doing street robberies, received a life sentence, and then slit his wrists and killed himself
in prison.”
“Then there’s no reason to hate your daughter like this, is there?”
“Why not? She has that bastard’s genes. Every time I look at Eun-ah, I see that son of a bitch. Every time I hear her
voice, I remember that asshole’s voice when he was sweet-talking me into sleeping with him. And the fact that her eyes
look exactly like mine just pisses me off even more.”
In Ga-eun’s neighborhood, there was one particularly handsome and tall boy. He had a delinquent look, but he was good
with words and had outstanding athletic ability.
He set his sights on Han Ga-eun. Even though she was still in middle school, she had developed much earlier than other
girls and possessed a radiant beauty.
He approached her with all kinds of sweet words. Young Ga-eun fell for it completely and started a fluttering first
love.
But from the very beginning, it had only been love on her side.
Less than a month later, he persistently demanded sex. Ga-eun was young, weak-hearted, and terrified of being abandoned
by her first boyfriend, so she eventually gave in.
The feeling was… honestly not good. She instinctively realized that he was simply using her body as a tool to satisfy
his own sexual desires, with zero care for her.
The real problem came after that.
Her body felt heavy and she started feeling nauseous. When she checked, she was pregnant.
Carrying a blessed life in one’s womb is supposed to be a sacred thing. But the words “sacred” and “blessing” did not
apply to Han Ga-eun at all.
She was hit with a shock as if struck by a hammer. She went to her boyfriend and told him the truth. After smoking a
cigarette with a twisted expression for a long time, he told her not to worry — that he would take responsibility.
But a growing belly couldn’t be hidden. Eventually her parents found out. The family was thrown into chaos, and she had
to drop out of the prestigious school she had been attending to avoid rumors.
The only person she could rely on was the baby’s father.
However, Eun-ah’s father didn’t want to take responsibility. To him, the pregnant Ga-eun and the daughter in her belly
were nothing but burdens.
So he told her to figure it out herself and ran away. Even when Ga-eun cried and clung to him, he shook her off.
Ga-eun fell into despair. But her body didn’t wait for despair — eventually, the baby was born.
When she heard the loud cry, Ga-eun covered her ears.
‘Disgusting!’
The fact that this child had both her blood and that bastard’s blood flowing inside her body felt utterly repulsive.
And yet, the child’s appearance resembled her own when she was young. Especially the eyes. They were almost identical to
Ga-eun’s eyes, which had been famous for their beauty since childhood.
She hated it.
It was hateful.
She believed her ruined life was all because of that child and that son of a bitch. It made her stomach turn.
‘Because of you, my life is ruined!’
She had dreamed of becoming a professor. If she hadn’t dropped out to give birth to Eun-ah, she could have gone to a
prestigious high school and then a top university.
If she hadn’t wasted time giving birth to Eun-ah!
If that bastard hadn’t gotten her pregnant!
Han Ga-eun could never erase those thoughts.
But not long after, that bastard was sentenced to life imprisonment for robbery and committed suicide in prison. There
was no one left to direct her resentment toward.
Naturally, the arrow of blame turned toward Eun-ah, who had done nothing wrong. Or rather, it had always been pointed at
her — because from the beginning, Ga-eun had resented her own daughter.
“Mommy~”
When the little girl approached her with a bright smile, Ga-eun screamed at her to get lost.
She left the child she couldn’t stand to look at with her own mother and threw herself into studying. Working multiple
part-time jobs while studying until her nose bled, she eventually achieved her dream of becoming a professor.
She created new mathematical formulas that earned worldwide recognition. Those were happy times.
“Eun-ah says she wants to see you.”
With just those words from her mother, all the happiness vanished in an instant, replaced by burning anger. The trauma
she had barely managed to forget came rushing back.
However, her mother passed away soon after, and she was forced to take in her daughter.
Now she had to raise this cursed creature that carried half of that bastard’s genes but looked like her?
Both the father and the child kept dragging her down.
Naturally, it didn’t last long. She rented a tiny goshiwon (studio) and practically chased her daughter out.
Later, she heard that Eun-ah had succeeded, but to her, the girl wasn’t a proud daughter — she was nothing more than the
main culprit who had ruined her life. So all she felt was anger.