The Chaebol Family Drowned Me, So This Time I Wrote the Contract novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Gate in Seochon

Tae-seong's POV. Halmoni opens her gate to Yu-ri's soup and says he will sit at her right hand.

Tae-seong's POV

My grandmother's gate had a new lock.

I stood in front of it in the cold lane in Seochon, with my hands at my sides.

I rang the bell that I had stopped ringing eight years ago.

Nothing happened.

I rang again.

A crow walked along the top of the tile wall and looked down at me.

Behind this wall was a hanok she had lived in for fifty years.

It had a courtyard, a persimmon tree and a floor that was warm in winter.

She had raised me in it after the highway took my parents.

The Chairman, my uncle, had put me out of the family for taking her side.

She had said nothing against it.

That was the part I had never forgiven, and had never stopped wanting to ask about.

I rang a third time.

"She won't open it for you," said a voice behind me. "Not for you alone."

Yu-ri was coming up the lane with a heavy steel pot in both arms.

She had changed out of the formal suit into a plain gray sweater, and her hair was tied back.

The mole beside her left eye was the same one.

I had looked at it on the bridge for the last time, in the dashboard light.

"What is that?" I said.

"The ajumma's soup." She lifted the pot an inch.

"She said an old woman will refuse a grandson. She will not refuse a pot of beef bone soup."

"She's never met my grandmother," I said.

"She said she's met every grandmother in Korea."

I should have laughed.

Instead I stood and watched her walk up to the gate, steady, with a heavy pot and a stranger's lock in front of her.

In the first life, I had watched her at that tower and thought: she has no idea what she's walking into.

I had said it once, badly, and gone home.

On the second warning, over the phone, she had hung up on me.

By the third, I was too late.

"I'm not here to apologize for her," I said. "I'm here because I can't ask you to do this."

"You don't have to." Yu-ri put the pot down on the stone step. "I'm asking for me."

She pressed the bell.

The courtyard stayed silent a long time.

Then the latch turned.

The door opened a hand's width, and my grandmother's face appeared in the gap.

She was eighty-six, small and straight, with white hair pinned back, and her eyes went to Yu-ri first.

Not me.

"You are the girl," she said.

"I am Jeon Yu-ri, Halmoni." Yu-ri bowed from the waist, deep and correct. "I'm sorry to come without calling. I brought soup."

"I did not ask for soup."

"No, Halmoni. But it's cold out here and it's very good."

My grandmother looked at the pot.

Her mouth twitched, very slightly.

"You have a mouth on you," she said.

"I was raised by an interpreter. It's the family trade."

"Hm."

She did not look at me.

"Halmoni," I said.

The door began to close.

Yu-ri put her hand out and caught my wrist.

I felt it all the way up my arm.

Her fingers were cold from the lane and entirely sure.

"Please," she told my grandmother. "Only for the dinner on Saturday week. Madam Ahn will give me your jade bracelet in front of forty guests."

The door stopped.

"My daughter-in-law's bracelet," my grandmother said.

"Yes, Halmoni," Yu-ri said. "The one she took when she took over the house."

"What does she intend with it?"

"She intends to say I stole it."

I felt Yu-ri's hand tighten on my wrist.

She did not know whether she should say the rest.

"I came to ask you to be in that room," she said. "Not for me. Because she cannot do it to someone while you're watching."

"Why should I care what Ahn Soo-ryeon does to a contract bride?"

"Because she will do it to the next person too, and the next. And the one after that will be him."

She did not look at me.

She did not let go of my wrist, either.

The courtyard was silent.

I could not move, and the cold was not the reason.

My grandmother stepped back, and the door swung open.

"Bring the soup in," she said to Yu-ri. "Put it in the kitchen. The big bowl is above the stove."

Yu-ri picked up the pot.

She went in first, and I stayed on the step, unable to make my feet follow.

"You," my grandmother said to me.

I looked up.

Eight years was a long time.

She had grown thinner, and the lines at her eyes had deepened.

She looked at me with something that was not forgiveness and was not its opposite.

"Close the gate behind you," she said. "I do not heat the lane."

I stepped through and closed it.

In the kitchen, a cupboard door opened, and I heard Yu-ri's voice, low and easy, asking about a bowl.

My grandmother watched me listen.

"That one will do a great deal of damage to your family," she said.

"Yes, Halmoni."

"Good." She turned and walked slowly across the courtyard. "I will go to that dinner."

I let out a sound that was not quite a word.

"And you, Tae-seong-ah," she said, without turning around.

"Yes?"

"You will sit at my right hand. In the family's seat. In front of every one of them."

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