My Snail Bride, Aunt Min-jung — Learning of Her Absolute Love That Happened Behind My Back... [Awakening][4]
“....”
In the inner room of the night-duty office, Geum Tae-yang still sat with his head bowed, hands locked in his hair. He had been like that for thirty full minutes.
Zombie Geum Il-bong must have drifted farther from the inner room; the knocking at the door had finally stopped.
Then, slowly, Tae-yang lifted his head and looked forward — toward the desk.
This room had been Il-bong’s night-duty post for roughly four days. In that sense, the desk was his father’s.
Dad’s diary…
There, on the desk, sat a leather-bound diary with a snap clasp. Geum Il-bong’s journal. He had been writing in it right up until the moment he bound himself.
Step by step, with a vacant expression, Tae-yang walked toward the desk. He sat down in the chair.
“....”
He looked wretched. Without a word he stared at his father’s diary. It was locked.
Click.
The snap came undone. In the end, Tae-yang had decided to read it. He wanted to feel the last traces of his father.
But the place he opened was not the final page. He turned to somewhere comfortably in the middle — because he could not yet bear to read the words that held his father’s last moments.
Our son got into Taejong University. “Proud” doesn’t even begin to cover it. I was so grateful I nearly cried — but showing that would have been too embarrassing, so I pretended to be calm. What a stiff, pathetic father I am.
Il-bong’s diary was not the kind he wrote every day. He wrote on important days, or whenever a thought struck him hard enough to demand the page. That was why an entry from about a year and a half ago — Tae-yang’s university acceptance — was sitting there.
All this time I couldn’t even put him through a private academy, let alone tutoring. And still our boy got into a university like that. Half of me is overjoyed. The other half is so, so sorry.
Our son loves sports. He takes after his mother — the talent is considerable. But I never had the strength to support that path, and he gave it up. When he made that decision, I couldn’t even manage to tell him not to quit.
What a useless father. And somehow, from a father like me, such an outstanding son was born. It must be Ye-jin’s doing. The fact that he grew up right even in such a lacking environment — I believe that’s because Ye-jin has been watching over him from heaven.
Seo Ye-jin was Geum Il-bong’s wife — and Geum Tae-yang’s mother.
“No… I take after Dad too… People always say how much we look alike when they see us together…”
He sniffled. Once, then again.
Il-bong almost never spoke about Seo Ye-jin. He knew how deeply Tae-yang missed her. But he missed her just as much. Whenever something good happened, he credited Ye-jin. Whenever something went wrong, he wrote in the diary asking her for help. Feeling that tender love his father still carried for his mother, Tae-yang’s tears came again.
Tae-yang says he won’t enroll at Taejong University. He told me he’s going to aim lower and go to a national university instead. He’s worried about the tuition.
My pride got hurt, and like a fool I snapped at him. After everything he’d done to get there, I wanted — just this once — to be more than a worthless father. I wanted to help his path.
Then I heard him say he was giving up on Taejong, and it made me face my own uselessness. That’s what made me angry, I think. I have no face left to show my son.
I talked so big… and it looks like I still won’t be able to put enough money together. The worry is crushing me.
Taejong University was private. Tae-yang had only shown his father the acceptance letter; his real plan had been to switch to a national school. But for Il-bong, university was the one thing he wanted to give his son regardless of the household’s means. Even as the tuition deadline closed in, he still couldn’t raise the money.
I have never been so grateful… so grateful I ended up on my knees. The landlady, Min-jung, helped cover our son’s tuition. She must have been waiting for word that Tae-yang had enrolled at Taejong. When she heard nothing, she got worried, looked into it, and came to me carefully with an envelope of tuition money.
The hand that reached out in that crisis belonged to Kim Min-jung.
Ah… back then… it wasn’t some sudden business deal of Dad’s… it was Auntie…
Tae-yang had never known. At the time he had been tracking the household finances closely, ready to pivot to a national university at any moment. He had already decided Taejong was impossible and resolved to tell his father firmly. When he went to do so, Il-bong told him a sudden business opportunity had come through and filled the remaining gap.
When I dropped to my knees in thanks, Min-jung knelt right down with me and took my hands. She comforted me, saying the happiness she felt watching Tae-yang grow up so well was greater than a hundred million won.
She truly is an angel. I still remember — after he lost his mother and shut his heart, Min-jung worked for such a long time to help our Tae-yang open that door again.
That he grew up so sturdy and healthy — I believe that is Min-jung’s doing as well. Using work as an excuse, I never fed him properly, and in elementary school Tae-yang was smaller than his peers. Ye-jin and I are both quite tall, so that was entirely my fault.
Min-jung looked after that boy like a real mother. Thanks to her, once he hit puberty, Tae-yang shot up in both body and spirit. How could I ever repay a grace this large?
And this time, once again, Min-jung took care of our Tae-yang.
Il-bong could endure Park Do-chul’s abuse toward himself. What he could not endure was anything that harmed his son. Even so, he thought carefully about what nourished the young shoot that was Geum Tae-yang the most. The answer was his relationship with Kim Min-jung. Receiving from her the love he had wanted from his own mother, and growing under that love — that, Il-bong decided, was what mattered most. So in the end he chose to stay in this house, clinging to it.
Auntie… Aunt Min-jung…
Tae-yang wiped his tears on his sleeve. In one corner of his heart a thought had been festering — that maybe, by looking after Min-jung, he had failed to save his father. It was the kind of thought only a boy whose whole world had collapsed could have. But the words in Il-bong’s diary felt as if they were gently stroking that very wound.
I hurt my back badly. Greed got the better of me and I stopped being careful. My heart is heavy. Because of it, the money my son earned with blood and sweat is going to my hospital bills. That wasn’t why I increased my workload…
From Il-bong’s position, he could not stretch out his hand to Min-jung again for the next semester’s tuition. So he took on more work — and in the process, he got injured.
Do you know what that money is? It’s money our strong son earned working so hard every weekend he could barely get out of bed. Money he scraped together with his teeth gritted, determined to pay off our family’s debts this time — and it’s going to my surgery and hospital fees. What kind of useless father am I?
For Il-bong, it was the period of deepest self-reproach since Seo Ye-jin had left the world. His drive for work had surged — then been broken clean in half.
A-young looked after me again today. I refused over and over, but she said that helping me recover faster was the same as helping Tae-yang, and she took care of me anyway.
Then she threatened me never to tell our son that she’d been nursing me. Hmm… the A-young I know is such a warm-hearted child. I don’t understand why she acts like that…
They’d get along so well if they just talked to each other… It’s a foolish thought, but watching A-young take care of me felt like looking at a daughter-in-law, and it made me happy. Whenever I see A-young and our Tae-yang together, they really do seem like a perfect match.
In those days, the one who gave Il-bong strength was not only Kim Min-jung — Park A-young was there too. It was the period when she had taken leave from school and was stuck at home. In Il-bong’s memory, A-young was still the timid, gentle little girl from when she was small. That little A-young, who could barely manage her own shyness, had still worked so hard to make sure the newly arrived Tae-yang wouldn’t be left out in Hanseong Metropolitan City. That image was so vivid that the foul-tempered A-young of her teenage years never really registered with him.
…
The chaotic tsundere behavior of Park A-young, felt through the pages of his father’s diary, left Tae-yang with no choice but to fall silent, wearing a complicated expression.
My son is coming home today after a long time. Thinking about it, we’ve never been apart this long. I miss him so much. I wanted to call him often from my end, but I was afraid of interrupting his classes.
And every time that thought hits me, he somehow sends a text. I love our boy so much.
Lately, Il-bong had been almost as happy as when his wife Seo Ye-jin was still alive. His body had recovered enough to work again, and his son was studying hard at Taejong University after all. Father and son, he believed, had finally gotten their gears meshed — all that remained was to pull the cart forward together with everything they had.
A zombie bit my shoulder.
That spring did not last long.
I’ve watched zombie movies with my son. This is clearly that. I have a fever. My heart is racing. The bleeding stopped all of a sudden. It seems the zombification is progressing.
A shattered spring day — and yet Il-bong accepted the situation with a strange calm.
I will gag my own mouth and bind my own hands. My son said he would come pick me up this evening. I cannot become a threat to him.
In the moment his life was ending, what mattered to Geum Il-bong was not his own safety — it was his son, Geum Tae-yang. Every thought and every action was for Tae-yang alone.
Facing death seems to make a man sentimental. I find myself thinking that now I’ll be able to go to heaven and meet Ye-jin. I’ve missed her so much. I’ve grown so much older than I was then… what if she doesn’t recognize me?
With that quiet longing for his wife, the human Geum Il-bong settled the accounts of his life.
I am going to meet Ye-jin — but I worry about our son, about the Tae-yang who will be left behind. Honestly, I believe in him. The boy is stronger, smarter, and kinder than I ever was. He has good people around him. He will get through the hardship. I’m sure of it.
There’s just one thing. I’m afraid he’ll blame himself because of me.
Il-bong was worrying about the very Tae-yang sitting here now — the son who could not protect his father and was tearing himself apart over it. He feared that trauma would be a weight the boy carried for the rest of his life.
I want to tell my son this. This father was the happiest man in the world because of you. If you blame yourself over what happened to me, I won’t be able to close my eyes even in death — and I won’t have the face to meet your mother.
You living happily, Tae-yang — that is the path that lets this father die in peace. I hope you live a steady life, receiving the love of Aunt Min-jung and A-young. In all my memories, the only times I ever saw your face as bright and free of worry as when you used to laugh in Ye-jin’s arms… were the times you were with those two.
A father’s care for the son he would leave behind was meticulous to the last. He urged him again and again not to lose the precious bonds of Kim Min-jung and Park A-young out of the pain of losing him. In truth, that was Geum Il-bong’s final will.
And the last line of that will cut even deeper.
With your own hands, send this father who has become a zombie to your mother. Beside the desk, you will find the steel pipe I prepared in advance.
It was consideration for a son who would never have been able to simply walk away and leave his zombie father behind.