SERIES: An Impure Reunion
CHAPTER: An Impure Reunion Chapter 6
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Chapter 6.
After leaving Grace, Taejun immediately started his car.
His expression remained hard and tense the entire drive into downtown London.
‘I’m not your wife anymore.’
Jian’s voice, suddenly surfacing in his mind, brought the speeding car to a screeching halt.
A loud *screeeech* grated on Taejun’s ears.
Thankfully, there were no cars behind him, so he avoided an accident, but he could feel his composure fraying.
“Damn it.”
Muttering a low curse, Taejun quickly pulled the car over to the side of the road.
The moment he stopped, her voice echoed again.
‘So why should I have to stand here and smile at you like an idiot?’
Heo Jian had changed.
She was the same Heo Jian who used to be too busy stammering to speak in front of him, yet now she was raising her voice as if that had never been the case.
Recalling his conversation with Jian just moments ago, the line of Taejun’s mouth hardened even further.
His face contorted for a long moment before he leaned his head back against the headrest and let out a deep sigh.
The memory of his last moment with Jian suddenly flared up, and with it, a surge of rage.
‘I have another man besides you, Mr. Taejun.’
What had he felt when he heard those words from Jian’s own lips?
He couldn’t recall the feeling, but it was as if all the blood had drained from his body.
‘I’m pregnant with his child now.’
When he heard that, a chill ran down the back of his neck.
‘It’s my fault, so I’ll be the one to leave. And we… we never even registered our marriage, so there’s nothing complicated, is there? All I have to do is leave.’
When he heard her speak of leaving so matter-of-factly, he had barely managed to cling to his fraying sanity.
‘But if it gets out that your wife is pregnant with another man’s child, you’ll suffer a great loss. Is that what you want?’
And when he heard that pathetic attempt at a threat, the thread of reason he had been holding onto finally snapped.
By the time he regained his senses, it was after he had already taken her.
Seeing her collapsed, cheeks flushed red as she panted softly, he had a moment of sharp regret.
But then, the series of words she had spoken came flooding back.
Another man, pregnancy, and her saying she would leave.
Anger seeped back into the nape of Taejun’s neck.
Afraid he would lose control to the surging rage and hurt her again, Taejun had stepped out for a moment.
But he had never expected Jian to leave in that brief interval.
After checking the CCTV footage of the car that had left that dawn, he learned that the “other man” Jian had spoken of was Lee Kangjae, the older brother of her long-time friend.
He had assumed she would leave Korea immediately after departing with him, but there was no record of her ever leaving the country.
Taejun had turned the entire nation upside down searching for Jian.
He scoured even the smallest islands for any trace of her, but he couldn't find so much as a single strand of her hair.
After nearly four years had passed like that, one day, he received news that Jian had left the country.
It seemed that, just as he’d suspected, she had been living quietly for the past few years, moving from place to place within Korea where his reach couldn't extend.
After living so quietly, it seemed she thought it was finally safe to make a move.
Taejun confirmed her destination.
It was London, England. The moment he confirmed it, Taejun was on his way.
And after several years, he found her.
Working at a guesthouse called Grace.
The moment he saw her smiling so brightly, a storm of emotions, relief, anger, betrayal, raged within him.
The emotion that consumed him most was betrayal.
As he was barely managing to control his fury, something else caught his eye.
It was Jian and her other man, Kangjae, looking affectionate.
The sight of Jian, who had always kept her head down in front of him, now smiling so radiantly was seared into his mind.
‘I have another man besides you, Mr. Taejun.’
The image of Jian that had always been in Taejun’s mind was of her confessing her feelings to him with a pure expression.
When she had told him she had another man, he had been furious, but he had also assumed it was a lie.
But it wasn’t.
‘Oppa! Look, our Seol-ah is already writing! How can she be so smart?’
The sight of her beaming at that man and a small child proved it.
The fact that she had really met another man was true.
Why had he been so angry?
Jian was nothing more than a convenient pawn for him to use.
Taejun had turned his back on the scene and returned to Korea.
But he hadn't given up on Jian.
Immediately upon his return, Taejun bought the Grace Guesthouse building, paying well over the market price to get it in his hands.
Then he had people send him regular reports on Jian and those around her.
The reports were mainly about Jian and her child.
The occasional photos showed Jian walking hand-in-hand with the child, a happy expression on her face.
However, there were almost no reports about Jian’s man, Kangjae.
For the first couple of months, there had been some mention of him, but soon, his name disappeared entirely.
Then, a few months ago, Taejun ran into Jian’s man, Kangjae, in an unexpected place.
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Lee Kangjae.’
The owner of a private restaurant in Seoul that he wanted to absorb into his franchise was none other than Lee Kangjae.
He was running the restaurant there with his younger sister.
‘How long have you been residing in Korea?’
‘I’ve always lived in Korea. Is there a problem?’
Here, not in London where Jian was.
The moment he registered that fact, Taejun felt like his insides were twisting into knots.
She had driven him half-mad and left, and yet the man was in Korea while she was living alone in London.
He was intensely curious why they weren't living together when they had been so desperate to do so.
Suddenly, a suspicion began to form.
Could the child she had with her be his?
In truth, this question had crossed his mind in the past.
He had planned to resolve that question as soon as he found Jian.
But the sight of her smiling so brightly next to Kangjae had seemed to erase that doubt completely.
The moment the suspicion resurfaced, Taejun boarded a flight to London.
He personally obtained the child’s DNA and sent it for testing.
Finally, after six years, the day came when he would have the answer to his question.
[Paternal relationship not established.]
Taejun, who had seen that sentence just before boarding the flight to London, was in a state of near insanity.
In fact, he had been so afraid of learning this result that he had deliberately not prepared any kind of contingency plan.
But this proved it. Jian truly had another man.
He felt like he was going crazy.
But strangely, the crazier he felt, the more he thirsted for Jian.
In the end, unable to overcome the thirst, Taejun had revealed himself to her.
‘Five years. Did you have fun?’
It was so strange.
Knowing she had cheated on him made him feel like he was losing his mind,
but tragically, Taejun couldn't let her go.
Heo Jian. He felt like he would go mad if he didn't have her right in front of him.
“It’s a shame, Heo Jian. But you will never escape my grasp again.”
He would now hold in his hand the woman he had let go of five years ago.
“From now on, I will never let you go.”
Taejun’s car, which had been stopped, began to move again.
But not toward downtown London as before. It was heading back the way it came.
To Grace, where Jian was.
That night, Jian couldn't fall asleep easily.
She was thoroughly caught in the aftermath of Taejun’s visit.
After stroking the head of the child sleeping soundly in her arms for a long time, Jian finally drifted into a light sleep.
How much time had passed? Jian was startled awake by a whimpering sound and shot up.
The room on the first floor of Grace was Jian and Seol-ah’s home.
So if the whimpering sound wasn't hers, it meant Seol-ah was the one making it.
Jian fumbled to turn on the lamp and check on the child.
“Seol-ah?”
In the dim light, the child’s face was covered in a cold sweat.
When she stroked the sweat-drenched face with her hand, it was as hot as a ball of fire.
Jian was struck with fear.
Her heart would tear just seeing her perfectly healthy child come home with a tiny scratch on her hand from playing outside.
If even that made her heart drop, how could she possibly remain calm seeing her child’s body burning like this?
Jian rushed to the kitchen and made an ice pack.
Then she took off the child’s damp clothes and wiped her body with a wet towel, praying and praying for the fever to break.
She poured all her devotion into caring for the child, but the fever showed no signs of subsiding.
Her heart aching, Jian called her child’s name.
“Seol-ah. Seol-ah?”
“Uungh, M-Mom.”
The child, suffering from the high fever, was delirious as she barely managed to answer Jian’s call.
Watching her daughter, Jian was suddenly reminded of her grandmother.
Her grandmother had come down with a sudden high fever and started groaning, and was hospitalized that very day.
She never got up from her hospital bed for a full year, and then she passed away.
When it occurred to her that the warning signs were similar to Seol-ah’s symptoms, Jian fell into a state bordering on panic.
“Seol-ah, Seol-ah.”
Calling her child’s name desperately, Jian held Seol-ah and scrolled through the contacts on her phone.
The only person Jian could possibly ask for help was Tom, the owner of Grace. Her finger stopped on his name.
She was about to call him, but she stopped herself abruptly.
Unfortunately, Tom had left for a trip to Switzerland a few days ago.
Other than him, there was no one in her contacts she could call right now.
Besides, this wasn't Korea, but a distant foreign land. Even if she could call someone for help, they were all in Korea.
In the end, Jian left the building with Seol-ah in her arms.
She hoped that perhaps, just perhaps, a passerby might be able to help them.
“Seol-ah. Seol-ah.”
Jian patted Seol-ah’s back several times, frantic with worry.
Just then, a voice reached her ears.
Author : Donggeurami (Son Yun-seo)
Publisher : Toonplus
Email : [email protected]
ISBN : 9791157738274
© Donggeurami (Son Yun-seo), 2022
※ This e-book has been published by <Toonplus> under contract with the copyright holder, and unauthorized reproduction and redistribution are prohibited. Violators may be subject to legal liability.
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