A Choice That Demands Sacrifice

Hyung and Morae, their hands clasped tightly, walked through the lobby and into the coffee shop. It wasn't a sight you saw often. Hyung's face was stiff, his eyes sweeping their surroundings, but Morae spotted me right away, waved, and came over exactly as she always did.

"Nice spot you found, Seo Yeehyeon."

She dropped onto the sofa across from me — I was seated by the window, a grand piano at my back — and carried on about how lucky we were to get a window seat, as if she'd come here to enjoy her afternoon.

The lobby coffee shop of a five-star hotel on Namsan. She had chosen this meeting place herself.

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, which had to span at least three stories, the hazy gray city spread below, rain still drifting across it. Beyond the Han River everything was blurred and washed out by the downpour and the mist it made, but on a clear day you could probably see far into the distance.

"Your Director isn't running a private detective agency on the side, is he? Or maybe he has some experience going on the run himself."

Once the staff member who had taken our order left, Morae leaned her arms on the table, tilted her upper body forward, and asked with a playful lilt. Her usual tone made me wonder if I'd somehow misread why we were meeting.

Around noon, he had called to say it would be best if hyung and nuna moved out of their place immediately — he had a temporary residence ready. He'd also suggested holding the meeting with my uncle there, since the security was tight. He added that if the two of them were mentally prepared, he could have everything arranged for them to leave Seoul tomorrow, or even tonight.

I had been sunk in a sleep that felt like death, and with my mind still dulled, I couldn't keep up with his pace. I'd expected his work to be efficient rather than slow or clumsy, but I couldn't help being surprised by how much faster and more meticulous he was than I'd imagined.

As soon as I finished the call, I got out of bed and phoned nuna. I told her everything — the reason I had disappeared so abruptly the night before, the matter of the deposit, the plan he had prepared. It ended up being a full hour.

After listening to all of it and filling in the gaps with a few questions, Morae said she couldn't trust him. Not right now, not yet.

I found myself agreeing, at least partly. It wasn't that he seemed suspicious — it was that right now, in this situation, she couldn't bring herself to trust just anyone easily. To me, he was someone I could trust. To her, he was a man she had never even seen. And she was also, by nature, a very cautious person.

For the time being, Morae and Yeehan put all of his suggestions on hold, quickly moved their things to the owner's place from "What Happened in Bali," and set this coffee shop as the meeting spot. Everything else would be decided after speaking with my uncle.

"He's probably... not, I don't think."

I shook my head, trying to picture him dressed like the head of the detective agency Morae nuna, Yeehan hyung and I had once visited — dealing with a client on the fourth floor of some rundown building without an elevator, asking for evidence of a spouse's affair.

"I only thought maybe he'd gotten help from a professional. The escape plan was so meticulous."

Morae had been leaning sideways against the table, sipping her water as she said that, but then she set her glass down abruptly and leaned toward me. Her eyes widened a little.

"Wait — what happened to your lip?"

I flinched before I could stop myself and pulled back.

"Oh, I ate ramen before bed... Is it that swollen?"

I instinctively touched my lower lip as if to hide it while asking back. I was surprised at how calmly I deflected. Even the part where I asked if it was really that swollen felt unfamiliar — it was a fairly practiced response for me, but cold sweat was already gathering on my back.

"Your lower lip's a bit... like that. I thought something had bitten you. You don't swell up easily. What happened?"

As if brushing off her own curiosity, Morae leaned back into the sofa, tilted her glass, and dropped an ice cube into her mouth.

The moment Morae's back touched the sofa, hyung suddenly jumped to his feet — and my attention, which had been fixed on my lip, scattered at once. Morae and I both turned to follow his gaze.

Crunch. The sound of Morae biting down on the ice was unusually vivid. Her eyes had cooled, arming themselves with the easy nonchalance she always wore.

A thin khaki summer jacket with a collar, hiking pants, sneakers, and a worn baseball cap, its brim bleached white along the edge. My uncle had appeared in the coffee shop of a five-star hotel looking suspicious to anyone who saw him.

I thought how easily a person could cross from ordinary, decent citizen to someone suspect. At the fishermen's co-op auction back in the village, my uncle had blended in like he was wearing camouflage — a plain, unremarkable fisherman among the crowd. Here, he had become a suspicious figure, receiving wary glances from the hotel staff and curious sidelong looks from certain guests.

A tall, polished middle-aged man who looked roughly my uncle's age was striding briskly across the hall, deep in conversation with a foreign man in a suit. As he passed, he glanced sideways at my uncle. For some reason I couldn't watch it, and I looked away.

"I'm sorry for asking you to come somewhere like this. It must be uncomfortable."

"No."

Morae had stood to wait for my uncle to approach, and now guided him respectfully to the seat beside me.

"It's not that we don't trust you, uncle — it's that we don't trust my father. We thought he might be planning to use you as bait to bring us in. That's why we wanted to meet here. He's exactly the kind of person who would do that. As you know."

My uncle nodded as if he understood, picked up my water glass, and drained it in one go until only ice was left.

Iced coffees were served for Yeehan and Morae, and when the staff asked if he'd like to order, my uncle answered simply, "Coffee." His rough, thick hands kept clenching and unclenching on his thighs, the side of his face rigid with tension.

The situation I had briefly outlined over the phone was laid out again through Morae, as if to confirm it. When she asked calmly whether this was indeed how things stood, my uncle nodded. Morae let out a heavy sigh and added a sincere apology.

He showed no reaction to the apology. After a long silence, he opened his mouth with a tired face.

"So... what are you planning to do now?"

"About what?"

Yeehan started to push forward, his voice thick, but Morae grabbed his hand and held it firmly.

"We're going to stay together. Until we ourselves decide we no longer want to be."

From under the deep brim of his cap, my uncle watched them both in silence for a moment. Then he let out a low, wounded groan — the sound of something carrying far more than words — and looked away.

A group of four or five elegant middle-aged women passed by us, exchanging cheerful pleasantries on their way out. When the surrounding noise died down and only Schumann's piano trio remained, low in the background, my uncle spoke again, heavier than before.

"If I were to... kneel here and beg you... is there truly no way you'd come back?"

"......"

Everyone at the table went silent.

Hyung's face was the first to twist, flushing dark red, as if he had just been asked something deeply insulting. Then his eyes began to burn.

"Who's asking to watch Father kneel? Does this look like we're trying to hurt someone and win? If you kneel, do you think I'll be happy about it — like this is what I wanted, and cheerfully fall in line?"

I understood what was upsetting hyung. I also understood that this anger wasn't aimed at my uncle. Morae nuna and Yeehan hyung hadn't divided the people in this situation into victims and perpetrators. They believed their choices were justified, and at the same time they were suffering under guilt toward their parents.

If this were on a boat, at the port, in the cement-paved yard of my grandfather's house, my uncle would have struck hyung without hesitation with that heavy palm of his. But here, even in the face of hyung's raised voice and defiance, he only lowered his head deeper, like a condemned man.

Seeing that, hyung clenched his fist and turned away. Morae remained still, as if preserved in place — her face empty of any detectable anger or sorrow — staring down at the ice melting in the glass on the table, lost in thought.

Because he had only said "coffee," my uncle's coffee had been served hot. But it probably wouldn't have mattered what kind it was. As if unable to feel the heat or the taste, he lifted the cup — which looked impossibly small against his thick hands and fingers — took a sip of the hot coffee, set it down, and spoke.

"I'm an uneducated man, so I don't understand the things you talk about — freedom of choice, the self, all of that. Honestly, I do think this is just youthful passion, emotions running hot, a kind of childish game. I understand how you feel right now, like you'll die if you're apart, like you can't live without each other... I'm not entirely unaware of how you kids feel."

While listening to my uncle speak, I had to clench my own hands on my lap. His words made me more anxious than back when he used to simply shout without trying to listen. Empathy is more effective at persuading people than coercion or pressure — and the two of them were already struggling under guilt as it was.

Unaware of my quickening breath, my uncle continued.

"But having lived this long... I've learned that even a flame that feels like it will last forever eventually dies out. Hani — and you, Morae — for your parents at least... is there truly no way you can endure the pain for now and let go?"

I nearly flew out of my seat as I grabbed my uncle's forearm.

"If you separate those two, don't you know what will happen? Can't you see it from what happened to my father?"

It wasn't like me, and it wasn't my place — I was nothing more than a third party. But I couldn't stand by and watch, wondering if the two of them might waver in front of their parents showing weakness.

My uncle's yellowish eyes, the borders of his irises murky and opaque, turned toward me. They seemed to say both how could I not know that and Morae and Yeehan are different from your father.

But I knew. Having spent more than five years by their side, I understood them far better than my uncle — far better than Mr. Lim.

I could have used his exact words from the night before.

Hyung and nuna weren't simply a couple romantically drawn to each other. They were a set that could only be complete together, and the tragedy that occurred when such people were unnaturally torn apart was my father — and the ruined work that tragedy had created was the person standing here now. I couldn't allow that to happen again.

Morae, who had been staring at a fixed point on the table, opened her mouth in a voice stripped of all emotion, dry and tight.

"As you say — we won't die without Seo Yeehan."

"......"

My anxious gaze shifted naturally toward Morae nuna. The grip on my uncle's arm loosened.

"That I'm being unfilial, driving nails into my parents' hearts and my brothers' hearts just to stay with Hani. How could I not know that? I will carry that guilt for the rest of my life."

I had been making foolish worries. If she had been prepared to waver at this point, she never would have left the village in the first place.

"'My life is my own,' 'children are not their parents' property' — to parents, there is probably no more wicked thing to hear. But we are not making this choice out of pleasure in hurting or betraying them... We are living with just as much pain and guilt as the sense of betrayal and worry they must be feeling right now."

After adding that this was not a request for understanding, Morae fell briefly silent. In that pause, her face looked like that of someone who had lived through a very long time. It wasn't that she looked older — she looked like someone who had stepped past all the trivial, suffocating anxieties that drive us into life's traps and drifted slightly outside of time. It might sound like an exaggeration, but I had felt this from her before, not just now.

Even while committing what the world calls filial impiety, she did not want to blame or resent anyone for her life or her choices. To become the true master of one's own life, one must not only claim the freedom of choice but also bear the full weight of its consequences — that was a truth many people, myself included, looked away from. Nuna and hyung were perhaps fighting not against Mr. Lim, not against my uncle or grandfather or the world, but against their own lives.

"As you say, every fire eventually dies out. But it doesn't matter. I don't know if you'll understand this — but Hani and I were never drawn to each other just because of that burning flame, that feeling called romance."

Watching her keep a careful distance between herself and her emotions, delivering her story to him as simple fact, I saw a reflection of him from the night before.

I didn't want to dismiss their detached attitude toward life as merely an inherent Alpha trait. I didn't want to reduce their loneliness, their conflict, their effort to something meaningless that way. Yuni nuna and Juhan hyung were Betas, and yet they hadn't simply stood by while external interference reshaped them into versions of themselves they didn't want to be. In the face of the suffering that life demands in exchange for the strength to live without deceiving yourself, the distinction between Alpha and Beta becomes meaningless.

Unconsciously, I clutched at my chest with the hand I had rested weakly on my uncle's arm. Morae glanced over at me with brief concern, then took a few sips of her coffee — which had grown in volume as the ice melted — and spoke in a firm voice.

"First, I'm going to clear the debt you owe my father."

She had decided to accept the proposal I brought from him.

At the word debt, my uncle's gaze wavered with confusion. His eyes were asking: How?

"Once that's paid, he'll at least lose his pretext for blackmailing you — on the surface, at least. It's best to resolve that first. We'll send you the money."

She didn't explain the source to my uncle. She'd decided that how much to say about the money was my choice to make.

"Of course, even after that, he'll find all kinds of petty ways to make things difficult. He's my father, and I love him... but that's the kind of person he is...."

Morae paused briefly, and this time her gaze turned toward the window. For the first time, a cascade of emotions moved across her face as she thought of her father — whom she loved more than anyone because he was her father, but for whom, if you removed the bond of blood, there was so little solid ground left for love or respect. The emotions rose and vanished in quick succession.

When she slowly turned her gaze back to the table, her face had returned to its earlier state — no emotional openings, no visible vulnerability. Yet it didn't seem unfeeling. Instead, a pain radiated from her, like someone holding a mouthful of something intensely bitter.

With an expression that looked completely steady on the surface, hollow of feeling, she said:

"When you truly feel it can't go on like this anymore, please tell my father. Tell him that his monstrous daughter, his female Alpha... is grateful he raised her. That he doesn't need to live in fear anymore. That he should just... live in peace."

She slowed her words deliberately, not allowing emotion to surge, and hyung and I nearly stopped breathing. My uncle looked as if he hadn't yet understood what he had just heard.

By handing over the fact of her being an Alpha — the weakness her father had most desperately wanted to keep hidden — she was placing a weapon in my uncle's hands to use against him. That heavy secret, which had long been her burden, her shackle, and also a part of herself.

"Just saying that much... he'll understand what it means. Don't worry about what comes after."

Morae moved to pay the bill, but for the first time since sitting down, my uncle wouldn't yield. He took out an old brown wallet he didn't usually carry and produced several bills to cover all four of our drinks. After that there was almost nothing left inside.

After leaving the lobby, my uncle asked at the main entrance whether there was anywhere he could smoke. Following the doorman's directions, we circled around the right side of the building to the designated smoking area.

A wide overhang from the hotel entrance stretched above us, but the rain continued.

The long spell of rain had lowered the temperature, and despite the humidity it wasn't hot — if anything, my bare arms felt slightly cool.

The three of us watched blankly as the smoke rising from the tip of my uncle's cigarette — which looked like an extension of his body — was swallowed into the rain.

"You two have liked each other since middle school."

My uncle's eyes were drifting through the curtain of rain.

"It must have been the winter of Hani's third year of middle school... Morae, you steamed lobster at home and said it was unbelievably good, so you brought three or four over to our place around dinnertime so we could try them too. In the dead of that freezing winter. You said it was for us to try, but how could I not know you really came because you wanted Hani to eat them. That day, I was washing up at the tap when I opened the door... Your face standing at the gate holding that pot — I don't know why, but it stayed with me for a long time."

With a sharp, short breath, my uncle drew deeply on his cigarette and flicked the ash with the practiced ease of his blunt fingertips.

"I'm an ignorant man who's spent his whole life just trying to put food on the table, so I've never really lived my life sorting through things like love... but when there's something good in front of you and you want to give it to someone, and until you do you can't even swallow the finest thing yourself... I suppose that's love."

Having said the word love out loud, or perhaps simply amused that he had attempted to define it at all, my uncle shrugged his shoulders and let out a small laugh.

"Wherever you go... don't tell anyone. Not even me. If I find out, I might break under your father's threats and let something slip. Just... go, without saying a word to anyone."

He said it evenly, then exhaled the last drag of his cigarette in an unusually long breath that came out like a sigh.

"Your father too — with time, won't he forgive you someday? He's been that intense about everything involving you since you were small."

That was when Morae burst into tears.

At a timing no one had expected. In fact, none of us had ever imagined Morae nuna crying. Especially not in a situation like this — I had thought she was the kind of person who would swallow any tears by sheer will, even if they came like a storm, and never expose her naked emotions.

But Morae cried.

Like a child who suddenly trips and falls alone on flat ground without a single stone to catch on. Without any warning.

At that one sentence: he's been that intense about everything involving you since you were small — won't he forgive you someday?

She didn't just shed quiet tears. She sobbed. Yeehan pulled Morae into his arms — she had her right hand pressed over her eyes, lip caught between her teeth.

To the rest of the world, her father was the ruthless "Mr. Lim," a man who cared only about money. But he was also a father who would have laid the entire world at Morae's feet if that was what she wanted. Because he was endlessly weak when it came to her, she must have suffered even more on the way here.

The prejudice I had unknowingly held — that she wouldn't cry, that not showing tears was strength — wasn't that part of what had driven her into situations where she couldn't cry until now?

Unable to look directly at her, I stared at the ground. Then, worried that my uncle might have said something unnecessary, and seeing him completely at a loss in the face of Morae's tears, I guided him back toward the main entrance.

"I'll go with nuna and hyung. Please be careful on your way down. The money... we should be able to send it soon."

My uncle turned to look at me, one hand in his pocket, the other rubbing at his mouth.

"About that — what money do you kids even have to send something like that?"

His worried expression made the lines around his mouth look even deeper.

Honestly, the advance payment I was set to receive before I had even begun the painting felt no different from a debt — which made it hard to feel entirely comfortable. I hesitated, my lips moving slightly before I pushed out the answer like a sigh.

"I'm... painting again."

"......"

"Someone who thought highly of my old work offered me good terms to start again... It's not strange or dangerous money, so please don't worry. Just pay off the debt first."

I shook my head firmly at my uncle, who was insisting on sending me a portion every month.

My parents were the sort of people who were satisfied as long as they could keep painting while maintaining a minimal livelihood, so there had never been anything in our household you could call savings or real assets. I wasn't too young to understand that taking on my father and me in that state must have been a significant burden. And unless some major change came over my father, he would likely never leave that place. Paying off this debt gave my uncle no reason at all to feel indebted to me. If anything, I was the one who should have been apologizing.

I watched my uncle's back as he removed the plastic from the automatic umbrella dispenser and was about to open it. After a moment's hesitation, I finally spoke.

I hadn't wanted to ask — it felt like a defiance no one would even acknowledge, a pointless one. But I couldn't not ask. Something in my blood pulled at me, and a helpless surge of injustice rose up.

"How is Father...?"

"......"

My uncle turned back and simply pressed his lips together once, without a real answer. I managed a weak smile — as if to say I understood — and rubbed the back of my neck.

The reason I had revealed the source of the money was partly to reassure my uncle by framing it as payment for returning to painting. But I couldn't deny that part of me also wanted the news that I had started painting again to reach my father's ears.

Still, I didn't want to go so far as to ask him to pass on a message.

It was a solitary struggle — a desperate need to prove to my uncle, to my father, and to myself that I didn't care what my father thought of any of it.

I watched my uncle walk away under his old umbrella along the dignified red brick path where luxury sedans came and went in a steady stream, then finally looked away.

Despite rain that had been falling all day in varying degrees of intensity, many people were still visiting the hotel. Then again, for those who could step out from under a wide canopy directly into a car without ever needing to open an umbrella, the rainy season wasn't much of an obstacle to going out.

Leaning against a pillar slightly off from the main entrance, watching people come and go from the hotel, I felt my sense of reality begin to shift strangely. This was an entirely different world from the old village where my uncle had once represented the standard of ordinary.

The people here, dressed in expensive clothes and carrying themselves with a quiet, unhurried confidence, seemed like the standard of normalcy — as if most people in the world must live this way, as though everyone here shared the same refined air. Like the fishermen at the co-op auction who all resembled each other as they haggled over the saury caught at dawn.

Now that even my uncle was gone, I was the only one here — in my worn Converse and old jeans — that didn't fit.

I felt a faint, uncomfortable distance in the thought. And yet, it was somewhat absurd: I, too, had arrived here in a nice car.

"The clothes you wore yesterday have been washed and dried. I left them on the shelf across from the bathroom, so you can wear those. There's some fruit in the fridge and bread on the table, so try to eat a little before you go out."

After that I'd had to cut him off when he even started worrying about my wet shoes — saying in a voice that had nearly gone to a whisper that it was more than enough, that I was so sorry and grateful. He had taken care of my wet clothes without my asking. I'd slept soundly the whole time, and now I felt almost shameless for it.

He had also said that just to be safe, it would be better for me to use the car he had arranged for the day.

I declined, saying it didn't seem necessary to go that far, but he was firm — this wasn't kindness, he said, but precaution against danger. He didn't know what plans Morae's father might be hiding, and public transportation could be risky.

After finishing my preparations in the empty, slightly awkward house, I stepped out to the front gate and found exactly what he had described: a large black sedan waiting in the rain. An imported car bearing an emblem I recognized. A driver holding an umbrella was already standing in front of it, apparently having received his instructions in advance.

He had suggested I take Morae and Yeehan to the meeting place in that car, but Morae had refused — she suspected it might be a scheme to transfer them directly to her father the moment they were inside.

I was laughing quietly to myself at how similarly he and Morae nuna distrusted things — like siblings who'd grown up in the same environment — when Morae and Yeehan appeared from the far corner of the building. I pushed myself off the pillar I'd been leaning against.

Morae nuna had calmed down. Far from looking embarrassed or awkward about her earlier tears, she smiled at me the way she always did while holding hyung's hand, and I simply smiled back.

Everyone around them — the surf camp owner included — had always told hyung, half-jokingly and half-seriously, that he really needed to treat Morae well, that she was worth a hundred times more. And honestly, somewhere along the way I had unknowingly come to hold the same thought.

But watching the two of them today, holding each other's hands tightly in a way they usually didn't, I understood that view had only ever been a surface reading of their relationship.

I remembered what he had said last night about the relationship between an artist and a supporter — that most people assume it tips toward the artist and fails to achieve balance.

The depth of what passes only between two people like that is something no outsider can ever truly understand. What we can see is only how they behave when they're around others. Trying to define the balance of two lovers based on that alone is as reckless as judging the taste of a restaurant by the sign above the door.

On the surface it had seemed like hyung was the one who couldn't do without Morae. But watching them today, I understood the reverse was just as true. It struck me freshly.

Rudely to both of them — for the first time — I felt relieved that hyung was there beside Morae.

Morae hooked her free arm over my shoulder and said, casually:

"Is your Director someone you can trust?"

"Huh?"

I turned to look at her. With her chin tilted slightly sideways, she spoke with a somewhat awkward expression.

"My situation's like this right now. I've gotten even more suspicious than Yeehan. I'm asking whether there's any real chance he might be making deals behind our backs with my father."

I shook my head.

"He's worked with Manager Han since Hong Kong, and Manager Han trusts him a great deal... And honestly, there's nothing much he'd gain from doing something like that."

He was wealthy enough not to need to involve himself in something like this for money, and unless he harbored some deep grudge against me from a past I didn't know about, there was no reason for him to deliberately put Morae nuna, hyung, or me in a difficult situation.

Morae took a slow breath and nodded carefully.

"Right. If Manager Han's involved too, it should be safe. You said they can leave as soon as tomorrow?"

"Huh? Ah, yeah..."

Then she squeezed my shoulder firmly and made her decision known.

"Let's rely on Seo Yeehyeon this time."