Chapter 9: The Envelope

Tae-seong's POV

A black sedan was parked across the front of my shop at eight in the morning.

Seung-hwan was standing beside it in a gray overcoat.

I wiped my hands on a rag and did not hurry.

In the first life, I had seen my cousin perhaps six times in eight years.

Every time, he had looked past me, politely.

"Tae-seong," he said.

"Seung-hwan."

He glanced around the garage at the lifted cars, the oil-stained floor, the calendar from a tire company.

"My father never let me come here. He said it would be an insult to yours."

"It was my father's shop. He'd have liked you to see it."

"Would he?" Seung-hwan took a long white envelope from his coat. "I came with an offer."

He held it out.

I did not take it.

"Twenty million won," he said. "And a lease on a better garage, in Busan, if you want it. A fresh start, far from here."

"From Seoul."

"From my wife."

"She isn't your wife," I said, as gently as I could. "She's a woman who signed a paper. You told her so yourself."

His face flushed under the cold.

"There is a photograph," he said.

"I know," I said.

"My mother's people have it."

"I know that too," I said.

"Then you understand what that does to her name."

I leaned on the hood of the car beside me.

"I understand it better than you," I said. "Put your envelope away, Seung-hwan-ah."

He did not.

"You have nothing," he said. "You have a shop and a grandmother who has not forgiven you."

"You were put out of the house for good reasons."

"I was put out because I told your father he was wrong about the bridge loan."

He frowned.

"It was in the minutes," I said. "Ask the board secretary. He'll tell you who told whom."

For a long time he held the envelope in both hands, saying nothing.

"Last night," he said, "my cousin stood on a stage and mocked a guest in front of two hundred people."

"I heard."

"I have known her all my life. I have never heard her say a word like that aloud."

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