Chapter 69

The nights at Jaedamjae were always quiet.

Having finished the day’s business, Joo Tae-baek was turning the pages of the newspaper in his study, just about ready to get into bed.

It had been a peaceful night — at least until the door flew open hard enough to break.

Bang—!

Startled, Joo Tae-baek shot up from his seat. Any other time, such rudeness would have brought down a thunderous scolding, but the moment he saw the face of the one who’d burst in, all he could do was draw in a sharp breath.

“……Sae-i?”

It was his granddaughter, Joo Sae-i.

Not a trace of her usual neat composure remained. She looked as though someone had struck her, and Joo Tae-baek’s heart dropped.

He had weathered every manner of hardship in his life, but seeing the granddaughter he treasured above all else in such a wretched state made his vision swim.

Had she been hurt somewhere……

Every terrible imagining flickered through his mind.

Sae-i braced her hands on her knees, gasping out ragged breaths, a rasp of metal in her throat. Just as Joo Tae-baek reached out with a trembling hand to grip her shoulder, Sae-i abruptly thrust her own hand forward.

“The wish.”

“……What?”

“The one you said you’d grant me, no matter what…… I’m using it now. Right now.”

Sae-i’s eyes glittered with a desperation bordering on madness.

Joo Tae-baek doubted his own ears.

The wish he’d given Sae-i had been meant as a chance for her, someday, to claim her rightful share of the vast Dongwoo Group. Even if she’d asked him to build her a house out of solid gold, he would have done it.

And she wanted to use it now, in the dead of night, arriving in a state like this?

“Just what on earth is going on, that you’d need to use it right this moment……”

“I need money.”

“……Money?”

Joo Tae-baek was dumbfounded. Here he was, chairman of one of Korea’s foremost conglomerates, and his granddaughter had come running to him white as a sheet, only to blurt out “give me money”?

What on earth has she gotten herself into?

Tens of thousands of worst-case scenarios flashed through his mind in an instant. Was someone threatening her? Had she run up some debt she couldn’t handle?

“I need to…… save someone’s life.”

The sum his granddaughter named was, to a conglomerate head like him, no more than pocket change.

“A conglomerate’s granddaughter, using her one wish over a sum like that? Hah, I’m speechless. Tell me the whole story, properly. Just where, and why, do you need that money?”

With trembling lips, Sae-i laid out the situation. That her friend and fellow actor Woon Seong-ha’s grandmother was critically ill. That without the money for surgery, they couldn’t even book an operating room. And above all……

“I’m the one who talked him into it. I’m the one who stepped into his life…… It’s because of me that he wasn’t there.”

Guilt dripped from Sae-i’s eyes.

The terror of having twisted the future she once knew. The horrifying self-blame that her own interference might become a butterfly effect, harming an innocent friend’s family.

“If things had gone the way they were supposed to, he’d have been right there beside his grandmother. But I got greedy…… I kept him at the practice room, telling myself I was making him into an actor……”

Sae-i swayed as though about to collapse onto the floor, biting down on her lip.

“If something happens to her like this, I won’t be able to live with myself for the rest of my life. It would be the same as if I killed her…… So please, Grandfather.”

All through Sae-i’s account, Joo Tae-baek’s eyes had settled into a quiet calm. When she finished explaining, he spoke, his voice heavy.

“Sae-i.”

“……Yes.”

“I’ll ask you once more. You truly mean to use that wish on nothing more than saving someone else?”

Joo Tae-baek stared at his granddaughter intently, as though testing her. His eyes glinted sharply.

“You know exactly how much weight that chance carries. One day, when you want to stand at the very top — as an actress, or as a member of this family — that wish could be a card worth ten thousand soldiers.”

“…….”

“And you’d throw it away on something as trivial as a friend’s hospital bill?”

It was a cold, clear-eyed point. To the calculating eyes of a businessman, this made no sense at all — it was like tearing up a blank check to use as tissue paper.

But Sae-i didn’t hesitate for even a single second.

“Yes.”

She wiped away her tears and nodded firmly.

“Her life matters more than hundreds of billions. If someone dies because of me, what good is success like that?”

“…….”

“I won’t regret it. And even if I do, that’s mine to carry.”

Her gaze didn’t waver. That foolish, unshakable resolve of putting a person before her own gain. Facing it, a faint, bitter smile flickered across Joo Tae-baek’s mouth.

He let out a long sigh, then immediately picked up the intercom receiver.

“……Write this down right now. Emergency room, Hyeim Hospital. The patient’s name is……”

Joo Tae-baek glanced at Sae-i to confirm the patient’s information, then gave his orders in a voice like frost.

“Get the hospital director on the line right now. Use my name, and tell them to open the operating room immediately. Say I’ll cover the surgery, hospitalization, and every treatment cost going forward, in full. Tell them to put the best medical staff on it and bring her back, no matter what.”

Click.

Having given his orders without a moment’s hesitation, Joo Tae-baek set down the receiver and went to Sae-i, who was swaying on her feet.

Perhaps because the tension had finally broken, her body trembled precariously, like an aspen leaf.

He picked up the blanket resting on the sofa and wrapped it around her small shoulders.

“You’re ice-cold. Tch, where on earth did you leave your senses……”

“……Thank you.”

Sae-i crumpled with relief, her voice thick with tears. Joo Tae-baek looked down at his granddaughter and tossed off a single line, as though it were nothing at all.

“……And as for this — let’s just say it was my own idea.”

“What?”

Sae-i stopped wiping her tears and looked up. Joo Tae-baek, feigning indifference, gazed out at the dark window.

“It means I’ll count the wish as unused. You didn’t come here tonight to ask for a wish. Just say an old man took pity on his granddaughter’s friend and had a change of heart, that’s all.”

“But……!”

“Don’t argue. Not before your grandfather changes his mind.”

Joo Tae-baek carefully stroked Sae-i’s tangled hair with his rough hand. The touch of the grandfather who had always been strict and fearsome felt achingly warm, today of all days.

“You foolish child……”

Looking down at his granddaughter gazing up at him with wet eyes, Joo Tae-baek let slip, inwardly, the words he couldn’t swallow back.

……She really is just like her mother.

That same foolish kindness, putting someone else’s pain before her own interests.

That reckless purity, willing to throw away even the hilt he himself had placed in her hand, just to save someone else — it resembled, achingly, his daughter Joo Jeong-wol, whom he had loved so dearly and sent ahead of him.

The regret of having failed to protect his daughter turned, now, toward the granddaughter before him. Just this once, he wanted to protect this child’s foolish kindness.

With a smile both bitter and tender, Joo Tae-baek drew his granddaughter — the very image of Jeong-wol — into a tight embrace.

At Jaedamjae, the night was, at last, deepening.

After that night, Sae-i avoided Woon Seong-ha with absolute thoroughness — as if something terrible would happen the moment their eyes met.

“Sae-i, this math assignment……”

“Oh, sorry. I need to go to the nurse’s office right now. My stomach’s a bit off.”

Whenever Woon Seong-ha tried to talk to her, she hurried out through the back door. Pretending to be sick, pretending to be busy, pretending to be asleep — she drew on every ounce of acting skill she had to push him away.

If she even caught a glimpse of Woon Seong-ha’s silhouette far down the hallway, she’d reflexively duck out of sight.

“I can’t find Sae-i anywhere……”

Disappointment dripped from Woon Seong-ha’s voice as he looked for her, but Joo Sae-i never turned around. She didn’t have the courage to meet his wounded eyes.

I almost ruined his life.

When she got home and lay down in bed, the ceiling would spin, the scene from the emergency room that night overlapping it — Seong-ha’s hand, trembling white, his voice sunk in despair.

Thanks to the favor she’d asked of her grandfather, the surgery had gone successfully, and his grandmother had pulled through the crisis like a miracle.

Still, guilt pressed down on her chest.

A suffering that wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t carelessly interfered. If Seong-ha had simply been working his part-time job and coming home as he was meant to, in the future she knew, his grandmother would never have fallen into such a dangerous state.

I have to set this right, even now.

I can’t be beside Seong-ha right now.

What if Grandfather hadn’t helped?

What if I hadn’t managed to get the money in time?

Seong-ha might really have been left alone, and broken apart.

That thought caught at Sae-i’s ankles and wouldn’t let go.

So Sae-i made up her mind.

To quietly disappear, so that Woon Seong-ha could walk safely toward his bright future.

To stop interfering in his life, and remain, from now on, a complete stranger to him.

But Woon Seong-ha wasn’t foolish enough to simply let that happen.