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“I moved in here with nothing but my diplomas and active case files,” Joong Won tells her amidst open cardboard boxes, half-filled with the remnants of his career. “I didn’t expect there to be so much to clean up.”
The paintings on his walls, his awards have been wrapped in brown paper and nestled in packing peanuts. His books sorted and stacked inside boxes. All of his signed baseballs in their plastic cases put away. It’s just furniture, now. A set of sofas and wooden shelves empty of everything that’d made the office his.
The lights are dim, Seoul in the night streams in through the uncovered windows, and Hye Kyung is so, so, so.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into her coffee mug half-filled with the last bit of whiskey in his mini-fridge, “Joong Won-ah, I am so sorry.”
He tugs on her elbow and pulls her close, so she’s standing between his legs. With his hands on her waist he leans forward. Presses a gentle kiss to her forehead, his lips soft against her skin. “No. Don’t be.”
It makes her chest ache.
“I wish,” she sighs, then takes a long drink, the whiskey full-bodied and smooth on her tongue, “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
He looks at her with hooded eyes, a smile tugging at his lips. “I’m not actually going anywhere.”
“I know that,” she rolls her eyes.
He likes to do this: to deliberately miss her point when she’s trying to be sentimental, and it annoys her as much as she’s grateful for it. Sentimentality had gotten her a fifteen years-long lie. Practicality and something of a selfish ruthlessness had gotten her the rest, had gotten her here.
“But I just. Really liked working with you, you know? It won’t be the same without you here.”
Joong Won looks at her, long and hard, his eyes hardened but still warm, heavy-lidded and searching, always looking at her, for her. It still unnerves her sometimes; that he can look at her and just see. That she can just shrug and he’ll understand. That she’ll laugh off his concern when she’s at a loss and he’ll come and wrap her in his arms and hold her until she knows what she needs to do. It’s the kind of intimacy she’s never had, not before her marriage and not once in the fifteen years she’d given Tae Joon. And as much as it scares her—that it’s so easy to be with him, when everything is still so messy, so twisted up in Tae Joon’s web, it’s a comfort.
“You know, it was after you joined MJ that all of this started meaning something to me again. But it’d been too late. These past few years…” he shakes his head, “The truth is, there hadn’t been much left in here for me to fix. The bribery hearing, my resignation…it needed to happen.”
It’s not fair. The words sit at the tip of her tongue, bitter in their childish simplicity. Because it isn’t. That Tae Joon still has the power to ruin everything that’s good about her life, just because he wants to. Just because he can. That Joong Won has to give up everything he’s worked so hard for, because Tae Joon refuses to let her go.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she juts out her chin, “There’s plenty that’s good about your career. We couldn’t have won the Elvatil case without you.”
“You’re biased,” he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, “And that was after you.”
“I’m not biased! Whatever else you’ve done, you’ve always protected your clients.”
“Even when they didn’t deserve it,” he adds with a rueful smile, “Even when they shouldn’t have been.”
“Joong Won-ah,” she cups his face in her hands, tilts his head until he has no choice but to look at her, really look at her, “It’s okay if leaving all of this behind is painful. No one’s going to judge you for not wanting to let go.”
“Is it so hard to believe that I’m really okay with all of this? Because I am. Maybe I’ll feel differently about it in the morning, but look at how things turned out. I’m here instead of in prison, I still have my license, and,” he leans forward until his forehead rests gently against hers, “I have you. Right?”
She closes the gap between them, twining her arms around his neck, her lips parting, Joong Won swallows her sigh, and oh. She could do this forever, she thinks.
They’re both breathing in gasps, still close enough that their lips brush when she says:
“You have me.”
Hye Kyung sits the kids down on a Saturday night, takes their hands—bigger than her own now, but still so small and god, they don’t deserve this. They’ve done nothing to deserve Tae Joon and the way he warps everything. And that’s the thing; she can cut him out of her life, but he’s their father. They won’t ever be able to erase that. They were born into his web, they’ll always be caught up in his strings, tied to him by blood and not promises that can be broken with a red stamp pressed over a name.
She hates it, hates that there’s nothing else for her to do, but to hope that this will put enough distance between them. Enough that they aren’t exposed to Tae Joon any more than absolutely necessary.
“I want you to know, that no matter what happens, you two are always my first priority.”
She doesn’t have to say divorce for the two of them to understand what’s coming next. But she talks through it anyway, stopping in the middle because their little faces are pale and drawn and she’d known it was going to be hard but she hadn’t imagined. Seo Yeon bites her lips and then her nails—a nervous habit she’d lost way back in the third grade, and to see her do it now makes her look so—too young to have weathered what she has.
“It’s okay, Omma,” Seo Yeon says wiping furiously at her eyes, “We’ve gotten used to not living with him.”
“We understand,” Ji Hoon adds, and he’s squaring his bony little shoulders, but he’s trembling. Too old to allow himself to cry, but young enough that it still cuts him up. “And it’s not like we saw him all the time when we still lived together. So.”
They put in the second Harry Potter movie and spread blankets and pillows on the floor and huddle together in front of the television. Seo Yeon with her head in Hye Kyung’s lap, Ji Hoon curled up against her side, his head resting on her shoulder. Eventually, Seo Yeon’s tears dry up, and Ji Hoon stops trembling, and though Hye Kyung’s still twisted up inside—the storm has yet to pass—she’s at peace. There’s no one missing in their huddle on nights like this. Because they’ve always been her babies before they’ve been his or even theirs, and Seo Yeon and Ji Hoon are realizing it too.
They bounce back faster, this time. They’ve become resilient.
Or maybe just resigned.
Hotel rooms are an extravagance they should probably stop indulging in—what with Joong Won being unemployed, and her salary tied up in tuition and rent and the thousand other things that go into raising children. But Joong Won lives with his sister, who happens to be her boss, and Hye Kyung has her kids. There’s little else for them to do. She thinks about going without, at least until the other parts of their lives are on more solid footing, but that line of crazy lasts about a half second before she laughs it off.
It might’ve worked if she hadn’t known what it could be, and now that she does, she can’t give it up. It’s the few hours of her day that belong to her and not her clients or her children or David harping about how difficult Tae Joon’s being. And she needs it.
So they get their rooms and make it count.
“I loved it once,” he tells her once, in the hush after. “Cross-examining witnesses, tearing testimonies to shreds, staring down the opposing counsel. Making objections and the judge sustaining. And winning, you would not believe how addicted I was to winning.”
“And now?”
They’re tangled up in white sheets, hair mussed, lips bruised, her legs slung over his. The water bottle she’d taken to keeping at arm’s reach is empty, drained in a matter of gulps by her and then him. And though the air conditioning is blasting hard enough that she can hear its whirring even over her ragged breaths and pounding heart, her skin is still damp.
“I’m tired,” he sighs, rolling on his back and staring up at the ceiling. “You know, I’ve never had as much free time as I do now? And you’d think I’d go crazy, wanting to go back to work, but I don’t. I like who I am when I’m not defending some client or another, and I don’t want to go back to it. To being that person obsessed with winning, no matter the cost.”
“So don’t go back,” she whispers against the bare skin of his shoulder, “Reinvent yourself. Start fresh.”
“I don’t think I know how to.”
“I do,” and because she can, because he’s hers and only hers, she presses a kiss to his collarbone, his neck, and he shivers, pulling her closer. “I’ll help you.”
And maybe the rumours about her being Son Dong Wook’s kryptonite have just a little bit of truth to them, because she faces him for the fourth, fifth, sixth time and wins. The kind of win that’s splashed across newspapers, her face with a hundred microphones shoved at her as the cameras flash furiously, taking front and centre in that day’s news reel.
There’s a dozen lawyers from other firms at the congratulatory party they have later that evening, all of them handing her their cards and asking if she’d be willing to meet with them. It unsettles Joong Won a little bit.
“You’re not going to leave Noona without notice, right?” he asks under his breath as she gives him another business card to tuck into his pocket for safekeeping.
But she doesn’t even mind his unfounded paranoia—he’s the best sort of arm candy in his tailored navy suit and thick-rimmed glasses. Though that might just be the part of her that always wants him, thinking about how he’d looked as he worked. Late nights in his office, his tie hanging loosely around his neck, the top buttons of his white shirt undone, his hair mussed because he can’t figure it out and he’s frustrated. The glasses are new, the hassle of contact lenses forgone for comfort, and oh. Hye Kyung definitely has a thing for them.
She might be blushing.
The thing is, she wants to introduce Joong Won to her kids, but she doesn’t know what to expect. And that’s the problem. She knows if the circumstances had been different, if Joong Won had stayed a part of her life after the Institute, if he hadn’t been such a stranger to them, it would’ve been that much easier.
But they know him as her boss, and there’s those damned rumours, and even though there hadn’t been any truth to them, she’s afraid of how it might look. Mostly, she’s afraid they won’t like him, even though Joong Won is the most amiable person she knows—unless you talk to the opposing counsel or Judge Choi who doesn’t like anyone, so. But it’s different when he’s their mother’s lover, and she’s in the middle of a messy, messy divorce with their father who’s pulling out every card he has, trying to keep them married.
Her kids are smart, though. She doesn’t have to tell them for them to start putting two and two together, and she’s pretty sure they’re halfway to knowing for sure when she decides she has waited long enough. She loves Joong Won and she loves her kids, and they love her. The logistics of their whole situation can be figured out later.
After one particularly nasty negotiation session with Tae Joon; he threatens to take the kids from her, and she laughs in his face to hide the fact that she’s shaking, that she’s afraid there might actually be some strength to his threats, she decides she’s had enough. When everything else is so warped, she needs this part of her life to be straightened out. She needs her kids to at least like Joong Won enough that they’re okay with having him in their lives.
“There’s someone I’d like you guys to formally meet,” she tells them after dinner that night, her leg shaking nervously under the dining table, “You’ve already seen him, but he’s going to be a part of my life—our lives going forward, and I’d like to introduce him to you two for real.”
“You’re…” Seo Yeon hesitates, biting at her lips, “…dating someone, right?”
Hye Kyung takes a deep breath, then nods. “Yeah. I am. And he’s a very good person.”
Ji Hoon clears his throat. “Do we know him?”
“You’ve seen him,” she curls her fingers around her coffee mug, lets the hot ceramic warm her fingers, “He’s Seo Joong Won.”
And maybe they hadn’t known, because their eyes get kind of wide, and they exchange this look. They’ve been doing that a lot these days, sticking together, a united front against the questions everyone and their mother is asking. It’s one of the small blessings to come from the chaos of the divorce. That her children for once in their adolescent lives, get along more often than they fight.
“But he’s your boss,” says Seo Yeon, her round eyes growing rounder.
“He’s not anymore. And before he was my boss, he was my friend. My very best friend.”
“Is he the reason you’re divorcing Appa?” asks Ji Hoon, his voice small, and he refuses to look at her, and shit. Her hands and feet grow cold. She’d thought they might think that, but hearing him say it is another story entirely, and she knows how it might look, but it hadn’t been like that at all, and she needs them to understand—
“Ji Hoon-ah, no, it’s not that,” she pleads, “After everything that happened between your father and me, I just couldn’t live with him anymore. It’s not because of Joong Won or anyone else.”
“But the rumours, then—”
“The rumours are just that,” she reaches for his hands, and relief floods her when he doesn’t pull away. “Rumours, lies. No matter what anyone will tell you, the truth is that Joong Won and I weren’t together until after your Appa and I broke up.”
“Do you love him?” asks Seo Yeon, and Hye Kyung is so startled, she can do nothing but stare at her blankly for a long minute.
There’s a right answer to this. An answer that won’t hurt their feelings. But she’s demanded honesty from everyone around her, and if she isn’t truthful, it’ll make her the biggest hypocrite. And she doesn’t want to be that, do that to them.
“Yes,” she answers, smiling with tight lips. “I do. You two are most important, but he’s…very special to me.”
“Does this mean we’re going to live with Appa when all of this is over?” asks Ji Hoon. “So you and…”
“No,” Hye Kyung shakes her head vehemently, “The reason the divorce is as long and messy as it is, is because I can’t be without you two. You understand, don’t you?”
There’s a long beat of silence, as Seo Yeon and Ji Hoon exchange looks and she drinks the remnants of her coffee that’s gone cold. What feels like a lifetime later, Seo Yeon gets up with a screech of chair legs on the floor and walks over to her, wrapping her arms tightly around her shoulders, resting her chin atop her head. She’s warm and sweet, and there’s a lump in Hye Kyung’s throat when she swallows.
“I can’t make any promises, Omma. But I love you, and if that Ahjusshi makes you happy, then I’m willing to keep an open mind and meet him.”
Ji Hoon squeezes Hye Kyung’s hand. “I want you to be happy. And I’ll try, but. If I can’t like him, then I want you to let me go live with Appa.”
Hye Kyung clutches his hand fiercely, almost desperately. “Ji Hoon-ah, no. I can’t—you’ll like him, I promise. Just keep an open mind. And don’t think about what-if yet.”
“I won’t,” he promises after a long beat, and she tugs him out of his seat and over to her.
They stay like that for a while, Hye Kyung with her arms around her children, her children with their arms around her.
She invites Joong Won over to the apartment for dinner a few nights later, and he’s full of nervous energy for the days until, texting her at all hours of the night, asking about the silliest little things. It’s cute, really. That he’s so eager to meet them, to make a good impression. She appreciates it so much. That he’s in this enough to make such an effort, to get her kids to like him. That he understands her children are everything to her, that their age doesn’t make them afterthoughts in her life.
Hye Kyung has breakfast and dinner with Seo Yeon and Ji Hoon as often as she can, tactfully working Joong Won into the conversation. Telling them about what the Institute had been like. They smile and nod and sometimes they laugh, and honestly. It’s more than she could’ve hoped for. Leading up to the big day, they’re not excited exactly—teenagers rarely are, but they’re not apathetic, either. It gives her hope; that they might actually beat the stacked odds and make this work.
Dinner is—interesting. Joong Won arrives exactly on time, and she’s pretty sure he’d stood outside the door until the clock turned to seven. He doesn’t kiss her, but he’s all nervous energy and ruffled feathers; the polar opposite of his lawyer persona, and it’s the actual cutest. His hair has grown out in the days since he started his extended leave, and it sticks up at the back. She’s laughing at him and smoothing it out when Ji Hoon and Seo Yeon file into the foyer.
She takes a deep breath and then, “Guys, this is Joong Won—my…person.”
They shake hands, and Joong Won is earnest and awkward, and the kids aren’t uncomfortable exactly. Seo Yeon makes conversation, and Ji Hoon’s manners are as sharp as they’ve ever been. But there’s no ease—though, that much is expected. First meeting, and all.
He tells them a super-exaggerated story of their Institute days, when she’d beaten him so hard he’d allegedly gone back to his dorm room and cried, and she rolls her eyes and calls him a softie. Ji Hoon smiles and Seo Yeon asks if Omma had been as cool back then.
Joong Won grins. “From way back then to now—I’ve never met anyone as cool as her.”
She can’t help herself; she reaches under the table and gives his hand a squeeze.
Hye Kyung comes home late a few nights later, and she’s about to go see if the children are asleep when she hears their voices in Ji Hoon’s room.
“He seems nice,” says Seo Yeon, “And it’s really obvious he loves Omma.”
“No one’s saying that he isn’t,” Ji Hoon replies tersely, “But can you forget about Appa that easily?”
“That has nothing to do with this!”
“It has everything to do with this! Appa’s going to be all alone, and Omma’s…”
“After everything, Omma deserves to be happy,” Seo Yeon tells him, “You said that to me a few days ago.”
“And I meant it,” Ji Hoon sighs, “It’s just—it makes Appa really pitiful, doesn’t it?”
“I know you don’t really believe Appa’s pitiful, since you were there when we heard what he was talking about with Prosecutor Park Ahjusshi the other day. He’s obsessed with all of that, and Oppa, honestly, you can’t expect Omma to stay with him.”
“I don’t!”
“Then?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ji Hoon snaps, “What do you want me to say? That I think Ahjusshi’s a good person? Because I do. That he makes Omma happy? I know that. But we have Appa to think about. How’s he going to feel when we stay with Omma and play children to her boyfriend?”
“Appa didn’t think about us when he went to that other woman.”
“I know.”
“Omma did. She tried to make it work with Appa and when she couldn’t, she was honest with us. She thought long and hard before she introduced us to Ahjusshi. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Of course it means something.”
There’s some rustling, and Hye Kyung jumps away from the door, her ears growing aflame. She hadn’t thought things were this serious. She hadn’t imagined Tae Joon would be careless enough that they could over hear him and his plans. God, she can hear the disillusionment in Seo Yeon’s voice, and it hurts. They hadn’t been close, but he’d still been her Appa, and now.
She just sounds so grown up.
It takes everything Hye Kyung has to not walk into the room and wrap them in her arms.
“Don’t do this to Omma, Oppa,” Seo Yeon pleads, “You promised you’d make an effort.”
Ji Hoon says nothing, and Hye Kyung takes a deep breath and knocks on the door before opening it. “You guys aren’t asleep yet.”
“I…” Ji Hoon starts, his eyes wide, “Omma, I—”
Hye Kyung shakes her head. “I know. Just,” she opens her arms and beckons them closer. “Come here, you two.”
They scramble over and she holds them to her, wondering when they’d gotten so big.
(She’s not giving up full custody for anything, she decides that night. She won’t leave them with their power-hungry maniac of a father who can’t even be bothered to consider the kids when he’s scheming.)
Seo Yeon warms up to Joong Won first. Maybe because she’s never really been attached to Tae Joon, and Joong Won is around with loads of time and he heaps it on her. On all of them really, but Ji Hoon still has his father on his mind, and though he isn’t cold, he isn’t warm either. But they’re working on it. And Ji Hoon’s smiling more, so that’s something.
They break out the old monopoly board one night, and it’s the biggest free-for-all in the history of all the games she’s played with them. Joong Won’s competitive, and so is she, but she’s got years of experience on him. Before long, she’s bought up all of the green properties and the red and yellow, and she’s built hotels on them. He’s unlucky enough to land on them on practically every turn, and she amasses a pile of his coloured money.
Between her and the kids, he’s flat broke by the fifth go-around, but he’s Seo Joong Won, and he’s stubborn. She insists he give up and:
“Nope. No way. Not happening,” he shakes his head vehemently, “I’ll let all of you hit me, if I have to. I’m staying in this thing. Just give me a loan.”
“You’ll have to pay me back by the next round,” she warns, “Or I’ll get to flick you every turn until you do.”
“Fine,” he says, and they shake on a few thousand.
By the time the game’s over—she wins—he’s got a red patch on the middle of his forehead.
“It’s okay Ahjusshi,” Ji Hoon says sympathetically as they’re packing up, “Omma’s the loan shark in our family. We’ve all gotten the treatment at one point or another.”
“Do you still think our Omma’s cool?” Seo Yeon asks, dumping the hotels into their little container, her eyes animated.
“She just got a little bit cooler,” Joong Won says, and Ji Hoon laughs.
It’s more perfect than she’d ever imagined.
“Appa never played with us,” Seo Yeon tells Hye Kyung, when she goes to check in on her after coming home from work the next evening. “It was always the three of us. You, me and Oppa.”
“That’s right,” Hye Kyung says softly, tucking a strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear. “It was always the three of us, wasn’t it?”
“Appa was always at work. I guess we kind of forgot about that when he came home before his trial, and couldn’t go, so he had no choice.”
“You two deserved better, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t say that,” Seo Yeon shakes her head, “We have plenty. Omma, Oppa and I—we’re okay with all of this. And I think Ahjusshi’s a great person. So if you want to be with him, you should.”
“I love you,” Hye Kyung wraps her in her arms, “You know that? You two are the best parts of my life.”
“I know,” Seo Yeon rubs circles on her back, “And we love you most.”
“He’s not a bit like Appa,” she overhears Ji Hoon admit to Seo Yeon, “And I like him. I actually like him a lot. Does that make me a bad son?”
“Then I’d be a bad daughter,” Seo Yeon says, “Because I like him too. He’s good for Omma.”
“You know…” Ji Hoon sighs, “I don’t remember the last time Omma was so happy. Not even before everything turned bad.”
“I know.”
“You think Ahjusshi’s here for good?”
She can’t see their faces, but she can almost hear the smile in Seo Yeon’s voice when she says, “I hope so.”
Tae Joon finally stamps the divorce papers when she’s this close to going ahead and filing for a contested divorce in court. He knows that she’s well within her rights to get one—given that evidence of his adultery is splashed all over the internet. That court will be messy for her, but infinitely worse for him. So he gets every other weekend with the kids, but the rest of the year is hers, the house and her car are hers, and he’s paying David for his services. She’s not going to say no her spoils—she’s earned them—but honestly, Hye Kyung wouldn’t even care if he kept all of their assets.
She’s free—or she will be in three more months—and she gets to keep what’s most important to her. That’s a win, no matter what.
“Are you happy?” Tae Joon asks her as she leaves, “That you’ve ruined our kids’ futures? If you hadn’t been selfish, if you’d stayed with me, we could’ve made a run for congress. They would’ve been a congressman’s kids. Do you understand that?”
“And now they’ll be a junior partner’s kids—one that beats their father’s prosecutors in court on a regular basis,” she tells him, and maybe it makes her a little vindictive, but she doesn’t care. His annoyed silence is a healing salve for her soul.
“Give Prosecutor Park my regards.”
Seo Jae Moon President-nim gets into another accident, and they’ve all had enough of worrying about him at this point. Myung Hee pleads, and Joong Won snarks, and Hye Kyung offers concern disguised as legal advice. In the end, the only way to get him to agree to a round-the-clock caregiver is if either Myung Hee or Joong Won takes over his new practice. Which is pretty small, but still.
In the end, Joong Won has no choice but to get all of his tailored suits dry-cleaned and break the stuff from his office out of storage. She teasingly asks him if he’ll still fit in them, and he rewards her with a withering glare and an enthusiastic demonstration of just how fit he really is. But as the day of his inauguration as managing partner of Seo and Associates draws nearer, he drags his feet. They have dinner at home every night that week, sometimes getting takeout, other times cooking together while the kids do their homework on the dining table.
“I don’t want to go to work tomorrow,” Joong Won complains, “I don’t even need to.”
“Then why go?” Seo Yeon asks with a tilt of her head.
“It seems like you’re having more than enough fun, not working,” Ji Hoon adds.
“Don’t encourage him,” Hye Kyung warns, shaking her wooden chopsticks at them, “He’s procrastinated enough, as it is. The legal community needs some balance.”
“You’re balance enough,” Joong Won grumbles, “Abbeoji should’ve just made you managing partner.”
“I’m not experienced enough to oversee the business aspects of a still-growing firm. You know that as well as I do.”
“This sucks,” Joong Won sighs, “Now I can’t even use the rest of my season tickets! And knowing my luck, I’ll meet you in court!”
“Oh,” Ji Hoon nods, “That does suck.”
“Ahjusshi, is Omma really that scary?” Seo Yeon asks, propping her chin on her hands and leaning forward.
“You’ve met her, right? What do you think?”
Seo Yeon and Ji Hoon wince in unison.
“That’s enough out of all of you,” she says through gritted teeth, schooling her features into one of sternness, though she’s all warm and fuzzy inside, at all of them. “Now go and set the table.”
She’d hoped once, that they’d like each other, but she’d never imagined. That Joong Won would fit in so well with them, that they’d open themselves up having another older male figure in their lives. That he would no longer be an extra in their dinner rituals, but a part they miss on the rare occasions he can’t make it.
This is their new normal; a successful Omma and a maybe-someday Se-Appa who adore them.
A week before the divorce is finally processed, the police raid a room salon. That evening, Tae Joon’s face is splashed across the news—he’d been a regular patron. Hye Kyung isn’t surprised, but what hurts is the look on her children’s faces. Tae Joon calls them and tries to explain, but they’re older now. They know enough to see through his lies, and they struggle with wanting to accept it and hating him for putting them in that position.
She tries to shield them, but there’s only so much she can do.
When she gets out of court the next day and turns on her phone, she has seven odd missed calls. All of them from Seo Yeon. Heart in her throat, her fingers trembling, she stabs at the green icon near Seo Yeon’s name until the call goes through, biting her lips as it rings.
“Omma? Is the trial over? Did you win?” Seo Yeon asks, when she picks up.
“Did something happen?” she asks, her voice high-pitched. She curls her trembling fingers into a fist at her side.
“Oh. It’s nothing, don’t worry,” Seo Yeon says hurriedly, “Oppa got into a fight and had to go to the police station because the other kid is dumb and cried assault even though he started it. But we called Ahjusshi and he took care of it, so it’s all good. I forgot you had the Han So Min trial today.”
“Are you guys at home?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry about it. We’re going to go hit some baseballs with Ahjusshi, and later we’ll bring you dinner?”
“Doesn’t Joong Won have work?” she frowns. Because yeah, he’d gone back and his year-long vacation hadn’t made him so rusty that he lost trials or anything, but still. There’re limits to how much he can slack off and still continue winning.
And he must have some incredible kind of hearing because she hears him say, “Tell her I’m done for the day!”
“Okay,” Hye Kyung sighs, shaking her head, “I’m going back to the office now, so call me once you’re done. I’ll come home for dinner.”
“Will do! Good luck on your work, Omma,” Seo Yeon says, and she hears her call “Wait for me!” before hanging up.
“Thank you,” Hye Kyung whispers in the night, “For being so good to them.”
“Thank you for letting me be a part of your lives,” Joong Won smiles against her forehead. “They’re great kids. They make it easy.”
Tae Joon has enough dirt on everyone that they still can’t fire him even after the umpteenth scandal. He remains in his basement office, hiding evidence and playing mind-games. But she’d lived with him for fifteen years. She knows how he works.
Unfortunately for him, she takes most of the cases against him and his prosecutors.
And when he gets caught tampering with evidence, the media has a field day.
Outside the courtroom after the verdict on her murder trial—Jo Soo Jin is innocent, the cameras flash in her face and dozens of microphones are shoved in her face.
“The prosecution doesn’t get to decide who’s guilty and who’s innocent,” she says staring squarely into the crowd. “I’m only here to protect my client and make sure she’s not turned into a murderer because they decide it to be so.”
A reporter shouts to her, “Kim Hye Kyung Lawyer-nim, how does it feel, facing your ex-husband’s prosecutors down in court and winning?”
Hye Kyung grins and pushes her way through the crowd, and it’s answer enough.
Tae Joon’s waiting for her outside the courthouse doors when she exits. His expression is dark, his stubble is darker. The basement’s not very good to him—she’d never thought him pasty, but looking at him in the sunlight, she’s almost afraid he’ll burst into flames.
She shrugs. “Did you really think Dan-ssi and I wouldn’t figure out that you’d left stuff out of discovery?”
“I can’t believe you can stomach still working with her,” he growls, and once it would’ve made her mad. Now she looks at him, and all she feels is pity. He’s losing his power and he’s turning empty. The shell of a man he’d pretended to be.
“What can I say? We’re guilty of making the same mistakes. We’ve got that much in common.”
He glowers at her, and Hye Kyung just shakes her head. “Don’t ask me to make the kids go over to your place ever again. If they don’t want to, then I won’t force them.”
“You’re poisoning them against me!”
“No,” she smiles, “You’ve done a fine job of doing that yourself.”
She walks away then, her heels clicking on the stone steps. Her job is done for the day. And she has Joong Won and her children to go home to.
'Cause they say home is where your heart is set in stone
Is where you go when you're alone
Is where you go to rest your bones
It's not just where you lay your head
It's not just where you make your bed
As long as we're together, does it matter where we go?