Chapter Text
There was a lot that In-kyung had learned during her lifetime. And yet the longer she lived, the more she realized just how easy it was to still surprise her. Perhaps the most shocking lesson she had been shown was that she still possessed the capability for happiness.
And that in the end, love was still possible.
She did love him, she had finally realized. Maybe she had always loved him. But it had been her understanding of what love meant that had prevented her from knowing it. All those years, wasted, and for what? Because she was too stubborn? Too proud?
But no, wasted wasn’t the right word. She had been doing important work. And in the end, hadn’t it been worth it?
Those were questions that she would never know the answer to. And frankly, she wasn’t sure if she cared anymore. Because what she had now was more than she had ever dreamed of.
In-kyung rolled over in bed and looked at Jong-ho. He was still asleep, but he looked just as tranquil as he always did. She remembered once telling him, incensed, that she couldn’t love him, because he calmed her down. Because he didn’t make her heart race. Now, she saw that statement for how laughably stupid it had been.
Jong-ho brought her peace. Something she had been searching for her entire life.
His eyes opened and he blinked at her, the sleep still heavy on his face. “You’re awake,” he said in confusion.
“Am I?” she asked. “It’s hard to tell.” She didn’t explain what she meant. She didn’t have to.
“You know something?” he said quietly. “Every time I wake up, I’m grateful. Just because you’re here. Every day. It never goes away.”
The sun was coming in through their window. The apartment they lived in was far nicer than anything In-kyung had been used to during her life. Even the light looked different here.
“I don’t ever want to get used to it,” she said. “Because if I do, it means I’ll have forgotten what it cost.”
She thought back. To the madness they had gone through. The trials they had faced. Things that would have killed any other person. Things that should have killed her. She, along with her sisters, had changed the world.
And this, then, was her reward. She couldn’t have imagined anything better.
America was... different. She couldn’t say that it was everything she had ever dreamed of, because she hadn’t thought much about it before she had arrived. But now that she was here, now that she was with Jong-ho, she realized that this sort of freedom was what she had been looking for. It was a strange concept, being free while being with someone else. Once, she wouldn’t have believed in it.
Now, it had become her entire reality.
“I love you,” she said. It wasn’t a whisper. There was no fear or hesitation in her voice. She said with absolute calmness. But at the same time, as she spoke the words, her heart sped up.
And she knew that yes, this was the life she had never dared to dream of. To be free. To be happy. To be safe in all the ways she had never been able to experience.
Jong-ho smiled at her—that soft, steady smile of his. “I love you,” he said simply.
That was all he needed to say.
Often, she thought of her sisters. Of In-joo and In-hye, both living their own perfect lives. She talked to In-joo rarely now, only a few times over the past year. And In-hye... well, she was still somewhere out there in the world with Hyo-rin, creating the kind of art that most people could only dream of. The only contact that In-kyung had with In-hye was the single letter that the younger girl had sent, explaining the sudden appearance of the money. The letter had painted a strange picture, one that In-kyung had barely recognized. For all their strife and all the conflict that had arisen between the sisters, In-hye had never stopped loving her family.
But like so many other young girls, she hadn’t know how to show it.
In-kyung stared at the ceiling and watched the beams of light play across it. It really was true. Even the light looked different here.
---
“When we’re old, what do you think we’ll be like?”
In-hye looked at her friend with confusion. “What?”
“You know. In the future, when we’re old ladies. What will be like? Will we be the same?”
In-hye smiled to herself. She couldn’t help it. Sometimes, Hyo-rin just said things like that. Seemingly ridiculous questions that at their heart, really did mean something. And that deserved a proper response. She took a moment to gather her thoughts before responding.
“I don’t think people change that much,” she said finally, not taking her eyes off the canvas she was working on. “I think that when you’re old, you’re still the same. You don’t change.”
“Then why are adults always so...?” Hyo-rin’s voice trailed off, but her implication was clear.
“Sometimes, people lose themselves,” said In-hye. “It’s just that when you’re old, you’ve had more chances to get lost.”
Hyo-rin nodded solemnly. She always took In-hye’s word as pure truth. It was strange to In-hye, even though they had been together, traveling the globe for over a year now. Hyo-rin had seen so much more, had experienced so much. In-hye had just been the daughter of a penniless woman. What made her words matter more than anyone else?
But sometimes, there weren’t answers to questions like that. Sometimes, things just were.
“So who are you?” Hyo-rin asked.
In-hye considered that question while she continued to paint. The image on the canvas was beginning to take shape. In-hye could see already, of course. But someone else, someone without her prodigious skill, would see little more than a blend of color. For now.
“Why don’t you tell me?” she asked.
Hyo-rin smiled. “That’s cheating. And anyway, wouldn’t you know better than me?”
In-hye thought back to the months they had spent together, the countries they had visited. The sights they had seen. She thought back to that first night they had disappeared together, to the feeling that had come with their departure. And she realized that she didn’t know the answer to that question.
When In-hye opened her mouth to respond, she spoke with great care. “I spent a long time thinking that who I was didn’t matter. Because the world only saw me for what I appeared to be.” Her brush continued to move, seemingly with a mind of its own. “Oh In-hye, the poor girl. The one who could never be like the rest of her peers. And maybe that was true. But that was only one truth. It turned me into a flat image.” She smiled and her brush began to add another series of long, smooth strokes. “In the end, there were so many images layered on top of me that the only thing left was a blurred mess.”
Hyo-rin said nothing. Her face was a still mask of concentration. Her eyes looked like pools of glass.
“So what do you see when you look at me?” In-hye asked, finally taking her attention from her work. “Because I think I lost sight of it a long time ago.”
Hyo-rin looked at In-hye thoughtfully. She didn’t say anything for a long time. When she did speak, her voice was almost shy.
“You tried to hide it, I think. From the moment I met you. You tried to make it look like you were only pretending to care. But you did. About your sisters. About... me. I saw someone who was afraid of the future, but not for themselves. For other people. And then when time went by... I think you forgot the mask. You stopped making it look like an act. That was when I knew I had always been right about you.”
In-hye didn’t know what to say. She just stood there, in front of her canvas. It took a moment for her to realize that she was smiling. She was hard pressed to say why.
Eventually, though, she understood.
Someone had seen through her lies. There had been one person, at least, who had always believed.
---
When she had been a child, In-joo had dreamed of a life just like this one. High rises and boardrooms, black dresses and flawless jewels. But in all of those dreams, she had never seen a path that would bring her to that goal.
She certainly had never dreamed of the events that had actually occurred.
The world was different now, but it seemed like few people knew just how much it had changed.
Sometimes, In-joo worried. Not about money—she didn’t think she would end up having to worry about money ever again. No, she worried about the money she now had. About how she had acquired it. About who had acquired it for her.
Her thoughts were cyclical in nature, a labyrinth with no exit. Does it not make me just as bad as the ones I was trying to stop? How do I deserve freedom anymore than Hwa-young?
She knew the logical answers to those questions, of course. But logic fell easily to the impassioned arguments of her heart.
People told her that she had transformed. When they said this, she smiled and nodded, agreeing with them on surface, but only blankly considering their words on the inside. Had she transformed? Or had it only been her circumstances that had done that? She knew they meant well, but it was hard for her to understand their point of view.
Of course, once, she had thought just like that. She could have easily been one of the faceless crowd, taken aback by a fine display of wealth. Instead, she had learned something different.
But what she had found and what she had learned were two different things.
Now, she was the ruler of a vast domain. Her aunt’s legacy had fallen to In-joo. That meant her estate. Her debts. Her business.
And that meant digging the business out of the hole that it had apparently fallen into. Anyone else might have turned up their nose at the prospect and walked away. But In-joo hadn’t forgotten what Hye-suk had said. As long as she had a place like that apartment, then she could find a way to start over.
Starting over. What a strange phrase. Because what she had done wasn’t so much start over as it was step into an entirely different life. And she had done it alone, which was a state of being that she had never had much experience with. Her whole life had been spent with her sisters, and then she had been practically side by side with Choi Do-il the entire time they had been facing the Jeongran Society.
Now, she had none of them.
In-kyung was in America, happy and in love. In-hye was... always somewhere new. And Do-il...
In-joo tried to not think of him.
Their final moments had been too brief for her, even if she couldn’t explain why. There was a terrible nagging sense of incompleteness. There were words that she had wanted to say, but even now, even a year later, she didn’t know what they were. And it was that uncertainty that made her loathe to remember him, even if at the same time, all she wanted to do was think about the few brief quiet moments they had been able to share.
He had promised that she would see him again. But she knew now how hard promises like that were to keep. She hadn’t heard a word from him since he had left for Greece. And she knew better than to expect anything other than that silence for the rest of her life. It wasn’t his fault. She didn’t blame him.
But at the same time, she missed him terribly.
She missed the way he spoke—quietly, but without a shred of doubt. The way he tried so hard to control every aspect of the world around him. The way he just always seemed to know what to say, even in the most impossible of circumstances.
His infuriating habit of being right, especially when it came to her own safety. Positively maddening.
She missed it just the same.
But she was starting over, and that meant there was no Choi Do-il to catch her if she fell. Everything she had done since taking over for Hye-suk, she had done by herself, with her own abilities. And she had been quite successful.
He would be proud, she often found herself thinking. Sometimes followed by, He would be surprised. Sometimes followed by, Well, there’s no reason for him to be surprised! And then she would remember how frustrating he could be. And how comforting that frustration had ended up being.
She was lost in a series of thoughts just like that one when the door to her private open was thrown open. No knock. No warning. Just the loud crashing of wood striking wall, followed by a commanding voice.
“Oh In-joo, you’re under arrest.”
She looked up from her desk, her eyes wide. She knew what expression was on her face. It was one that she had worn many times, but not recently, not in the past year. One of utter surprise and shock. The kind of confusion that was brought on by innocence.
In-joo’s eyes widened as several suited men stepped into her office. The man who had spoken approached her with handcuffs. In-joo found herself frozen, though not mute. “For what? Who are you?”
The man flashed a badge at her and she felt the blood drain from her face. Interpol? What on earth was Interpol doing here? Everything she had done since rising to the head of the company had been strictly above ground. She had made sure of it.
And then she knew. The answer was obvious. Everything she had done since becoming the head. But before...
“Misappropriation of funds, theft, and fraud, to start with,” said the Interpol officer. He was young, perhaps not much older than she was. But he had a kind of weariness in his eyes. Like he had already seen too much. In-joo understood that better than anyone.
She rose from her desk, attempting to remain calm. “There’s no need for the cuffs. I’ll come with you. I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding.”
The man looked strangely, almost apologetic. “I wish that were the case. You’ve been doing good work here. I’m sorry, ma’am, but I have a job to do.” He lifted the cuffs gingerly. “So if you don’t mind?”
In-joo did mind. She minded quite a bit. But she couldn’t let him know that her heart was pounding, that she was beginning to sweat. That for the first time since she had taken this position, she was finally understanding just how alone she really was.
The cuffs closed around her wrists. But it felt more like they were locking around her throat.
---
A pile of papers sat next to the desk. They were crumbled, torn, mostly unreadable. But a few still bore legible words, written in a careful, neat script. And on the ones that could still be read, there was a name that might stand out to anyone who looked close enough.
In-joo.
He had tried. He had tried to write to her. It was the only safe way to still communicate with her. But every time he had sat down to write something, it hadn’t sounded right. It never sounded right. And now, all that remained was a pile of papers that he was simply unwilling to throw away.
Eventually, he had given up. Too much time had gone by. Anything that he wrote now... it would just sound forced. Like he was trying to make up for missed time.
And what was there to say anyway? “I hope you are well.” “I wish you the best.” Phrases that amounted to nothing.
However, what was not in the room was more interesting than what was. Because the room was unoccupied, which was a rarity for these days. It had been unoccupied for the past twenty-four hours, after the owner of the room had received an urgent transmission.
They know. They’re coming for her.
Choi Do-il was gone. And he didn’t know if he was ever going back.
Maybe she would hate him. If that was the case, he would accept it. She would be justified. But more than that, she would be safe.
He would never let her fall headlong into danger by herself. No matter how much distance separated them, no matter how impossible the circumstance—
He would find a way. There was always a way.
Anyone who knew him might be surprised to learn that was how he thought. After all, his personality was that of a realist, perhaps bordering on cynicism. And maybe, for someone else, that might be true.
For him, it was much simpler.
His thoughts weren’t guided by optimism. Nor were they guided by faith in a higher power.
There will always be a way. All I have to do is find it.
And like clockwork, he never failed to find the way.
So as the private jet rose into the sky, Do-il found himself looking at the window with a calmness that might have perplexed anyone who knew what he was flying into. For him, it made all the sense in the world.
Soon, he would be where he needed to be.
In-joo would be safe. He would make sure of it. Whatever happened after that...
Well, there was no point in thinking about that which he could not change. Instead, he closed his eyes and leaned back, and dreamed of a different time. One where he had been mired in danger that most people could never even imagine.
And yet, things had been so simple. There had been no pile of papers next to his desk. There had been no need for ink.
Just actions. And words.