Prenup of a Third Son novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Pour for Your Son

For a moment the only sound was the wind moving the pine in the courtyard.

Then the chairman put down his chopsticks.

"Do-hyun." His voice was heavy and quiet. "Your place is at my right hand. It was your father's place."

"I know whose place it was, Uncle."

"Then sit in it."

"I'm comfortable here." Do-hyun reached for the clay teapot, found it empty and set it down. "The tea's better."

The Teacher made a small sound into her cup that might have been a cough.

The eldest son laughed. He was a heavy man of thirty-six in a grey silk vest, with his mother's thin nostrils.

"Our cousin prefers the servants' end," he said to the room. "He always did. He used to hide in the kitchen at Seollal."

Nobody laughed with him.

The Teacher didn't look up at the eldest son.

He had walked past her twice a year his whole life, Seo-yeon thought, and he still didn't know who she was.

Seo-yeon watched the Teacher pour more tea for Yu-na with a steady hand.

She watched the eldest son reach for the plate of jeon. Her mother's jeon, on a Kang platter.

Her chest hurt for her mother.

"Ms. Baek."

The new bride's mother was looking down the table at her. A sharp-faced woman in lavender silk with diamonds in her ears.

"We saw your little performance on television," she said. "Waving that page around."

"It wasn't a performance," Seo-yeon said. "It was a page."

"My daughter signed the same agreement on Monday." She said it with satisfaction, as if Seo-yeon had lost a bet. "Every serious family has one."

"Some of us read contracts without crying to reporters."

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