Pen and Paper Translations

T/N: Bonus chapter yay!

Lee Hyoeun shook her head from side to side at what she was hearing through the receiver, as if she couldn’t believe Kim Woohyun’s words.

No wonder.

It was news that someone she had never expected and had never even heard of before was asking to see her.

“Could there be some kind of mistake?”

She forced her trembling voice to steady and asked.

— Just in case, Security ran several rounds of verification. He didn’t bring any official documents, but he did bring a photo taken with you when you were little….

Trailing off, Kim Woohyun paused, then added quietly,

— On the back of the photo it says in old handwriting, “September 6th, happy birthday to our beloved daughter.” Is that… right?

At that, Lee Hyoeun murmured, “September 6th….”

That date was indeed her birthday.

What’s more, it was not the resident-registry date, but the day she was actually born.

“That’s not my birthday. H-he’s not my dad.”

She hurriedly jabbed the end button and gulped for air.

It was the father she had so longed to see, to meet, the one she had missed.

“Haa…”

Only a short while ago she’d listened to “Villain daddy” every day and yearned for her father.

If only she could meet him just once.

If not, then at least learn that he was alive.

But not now. Right. One day she’d read the comments under an article about her interview.

[ Maybe my brain is just rotten, but in cases like this, tons of parents show up to suck the marrow out of their celebrity kids. Why does saying she wants to see the dad who walked out on her give me such a bad feeling;; Are we going to see a lawsuit article later?]

A comment that poked at the uncomfortable truth she had briefly forgotten.

↳ Right; there are lots of cases like that; there are even parents who use their celebrity kid’s name to run scams;

↳ Sigh. Why want to see a dad who dumped you? I don’t get it. If he did it once, what says he won’t do it twice?

The replies below etched themselves into her heart like a deep intaglio.

It wasn’t that everyone hated her, but she kept finding herself seized by the feeling that, strangely, everyone did.

And so, slowly, gradually, Lee Hyoeun shut the door of her heart. That bold pledge that she’d handle things herself… perhaps it had been nothing but bluff.

Of course.

Maybe her father had come cherishing the same wish, just to see her.

But hadn’t even her once-kind mother flipped in an instant and treated her like a slave? What guarantee was there that her father wouldn’t be the same?

However sacred the blood bond… however “blood is thicker than water”…

She hadn’t seen him or heard a word since childhood, so wouldn’t his affection be just as absent?

Whip, whip!

Hyoeun shook her head hard and made up her mind.

From now on, she would neither lean on anyone nor burden anyone, and she would steel herself all the more for her own life.

---

Meanwhile.

Click—cut off mid-call, Kim Woohyun let out a troubled hum.

“Hm-mm.”

Watching his face, Hyunseung spoke.

“She says he’s not her dad?”

“Yeah. Says he’s not.”

“If she says he’s not, then he’s not.”

“Right,” Kim nodded, yet went on as if something still nagged at him.

“If the person involved says no, then no, but…”

“Just hurry up and send him away.”

“It’s just… I kind of feel like he is.”

At that, Hyunseung raised his upper body from its sideways lean and said,

“And if he is, what changes?”

“She said she wanted to see her dad.”

Startled by the resistance in his tone, Kim went on,

“She said she wanted to find him after becoming a singer, and in that solo interview she said listening to your ‘Villain daddy’ made her think of him a lot.”

“Sounds like not anymore.”

Hyunseung flopped back down across the table and added,

“She’d know if it was her dad. But if the person concerned doesn’t want to see him, we can’t go making it happen.”

“That’s true, but if she ends up not being able to ever see him again…”

“I don’t think that’s something the agency should meddle in. Sir, look at it rationally. You’re being way too nosy right now.”

Kim couldn’t say more.

Because Hyunseung was entirely right. Learning Hyoeun’s circumstances had stirred up a pitying, meddlesome impulse.

On top of that, Kim’s father had died early, so even if he wanted to, he couldn’t see him. Maybe that’s why he wanted Hyoeun, at least, to meet her father and find happiness now.

“They say nosiness is contagious. Did you catch it from Hyoeun already?”

Joking to break the heavy mood, Hyunseung asked.

“Looks like I caught it from her,” Kim answered with a wry smile.

“She’s probably soured inside from the weird rumors lately.”

“Soured?” Kim repeated.

“Yeah. Friends—so-called friends—changing, tearing her down… maybe she’s scared now that even the part of her that wanted to see her dad was a mistake.”

“Ah… hearing her father had shown up, I guess I forgot that for a moment.”

“No matter how tough a person’s heart is, if you keep tossing pebbles at it, little cracks form, and at some point, it just shatters.”

Hyunseung closed his eyes like someone who could doze off at any moment.

And then, he swallowed the words “I’m sick of this” and kept them inside. Why are people so desperate to hack others to pieces?

A witch-hunt, or witch trial.

A term for the mass killings perpetrated by Christianity in Europe starting around the 12th century.

In modern society, it means an unspecified multitude in a community fiercely hounding and condemning a person or minority.

Taken at face value, it’s something a human shouldn’t do, but it happens all the time around us.

Especially in show business.

He knew. He’d suffered it not just in a past life but in this one. Hyunseung wasn’t just sick of it; he was disgusted.

Do people who stand before the public deserve to be cursed for things they didn’t do? Are they supposed to “accept” that?

Of course, even if you shout that it’s false and cry injustice, there’s no help for it.

A collective like society doesn’t change that easily.

And no, Hyunseung had no intention of changing the world or society. He wasn’t some hero.

But he did want the indiscriminate slashing that kept repeating around him to disappear.

Because in his previous life the public’s indiscriminate hacking had broken even him, who’d prided himself on being dull to it.

Even now, Lee Hyoeun would be breaking.

Screeech.

Shoving his chair back, Hyunseung stood and spoke in a low voice.

“People all pretend they’re fine, but they’re really not fine at all.”

Something pricked in Kim Woohyun’s chest. Somehow it felt like Hyunseung was saying that to himself.

Right.

Hadn’t Hyunseung also been tormented by a vicious rumor not long ago? Though it was resolved, there would be a deep scar left inside.

Thud, thud.

Wondering if he was going to check on Hyoeun, Kim followed him out of the studio and asked,

“Where are you going all of a sudden?”

Hyunseung crossed the corridor in silence.

“Hyunseung?”

He was taciturn, but he did take decent care of his own. He was probably worried about Hyoeun.

Our Hyunseung, that rascal…

From now on, I shouldn’t tease him calling him “precious” or “bronze boy.”

Thud, thud.

But the direction he was heading was odd. At this hour, Hyoeun should be in the practice room…

“Where are you going? The practice room’s not that way.”

“Why would I go to the practice room?”

“Ah, no, I mean, Hyo— Hyoeun…”

“Are you going to see her? Then you should hurry.”

“And you?”

“Today’s lunch is pork bulgogi. If I don’t get there fast, there’ll only be vegetables left.”

With that, “I’ll go on ahead,” he said, and in a flash, he was gone.

“Ah.”

Kim stopped awkwardly in the corridor, unsure where to go.

“That bronze-and-gold punk….”

Setting the mood for nothing and making people misunderstand.

“Fooled me again. Again.”

Well, what could he do?

He’d probably be getting fooled by Hyunseung for the rest of his life.

---

Inside the security office, a man couldn’t even sit. He kept darting glances here and there.

That man was Lee Changjoon, Lee Hyoeun’s father.

“Hmmm….”

When he said he’d come to see his daughter, the guards reacted with a “Again…,” ran a few checks, then told him to wait in the security office and nothing since.

Even so, thinking he might be able to see his little girl, Lee Changjoon couldn’t just sit and wait.

If they met…

What should he say? His mind went white; cold sweat trickled as he failed to marshal his thoughts.

From the extreme tension his lips dried out, and the ticking second hand sounded unusually loud.

The reason he was so nervous—

He thought his daughter might hate him.

When the girl was about five, his wife’s business failed, the household fell on hard times, and their fortunes went into a steep decline.

But looking back now, what collapsed wasn’t the business, it was the family.

“Meeting you is what made my life turn out like this.”

Unable to withstand the extreme stress, his wife grew increasingly vicious.

“If I hadn’t met you, it wouldn’t have become like this.”

Always blaming others, she deteriorated more and more. He tried to understand, but there seemed no way it would get better.

Verbal abuse and slaps kept getting worse….

In the end, thinking of his daughter, Lee Chang-joon decided to get the divorce he had long endured and held back.

But his wife wouldn’t let him go. She hounded him, saying he had a woman stashed away.

Finally.

She even took their daughter hostage and threatened him. She’d only agree to a divorce if he gave up custody.

“She’s my daughter. I carried her and gave birth to her. Who are you to take my child?”

“She’s my daughter too. Then at least let me see her sometimes.”

“No, absolutely not. You think I’ll hand my girl over to that woman?”

“How many times do I have to say there is no woman! Stop accusing the wrong person!”

After tremendous agonizing, he decided it was better for the child to grow up in her mother’s hands. She was the child’s mother; surely for the child’s sake she’d soon come to her senses.

At that time, all he could do was shoulder all the debt for his daughter’s sake in exchange for giving up custody and getting divorced.

After that,there was nothing he didn’t do. Courier work, day labor, designated driving—anything that made money. He scraped and clawed to pay off the debt.

When he dragged his weary body home, the fact that there was no daughter there to greet him was a piercing sorrow.

But he couldn’t saddle his child with a mountain of parental debt, so he had to endure, and endure again.

Ah.

When a certain amount of debt had been cleared, he mustered up courage to try to find his daughter, thinking he wanted to buy her a good meal.

But they had already moved, and since he had given up custody, no matter that he was her father, there was no way to learn her whereabouts.

He thinks that’s when he realized.

“I’m not Hyoeun’s dad anymore.”

A grief hard to express in words swallowed him whole. But he couldn’t collapse.

Someday.

If the day ever came when his daughter came looking for him, he had to be able to give her all the things he hadn’t been able to before.

So he went back to grinding it out.

Then one day, he learned his daughter had become a singer. Seeing her on TV… just like when she was little, she had grown so pretty and bright.

He hadn’t done anything for her, but wasn’t she so admirable? He wanted to run to her and hold her tight. To tell her she’d done so well surviving, living without a dad.

But he couldn’t just go. He worried he’d look like a shameless father who’d shown up to leech off a successful child.

So he wrote letters every day. He didn’t send them. He filled each page with the things he wanted to say to his daughter and spent his days that way.

Someday….

Yes, someday perhaps he’d be able to deliver them.

Then he saw an article about his daughter. At a glance it was obviously negative.

“That can’t be.”

His daughter wasn’t like that. From childhood she’d had a warm heart and was full of consideration.

She couldn’t just pass a stray puppy; she was the kind of child who would give candy to the grandma selling vegetables.

More than anything, on nights when the couple’s fights dragged on and his heart felt shredded, she would hug him tight. She was a child with a deep soul.

And that daughter of his bullied and used someone?

What a brazen nonsense. Where else in the world would you find such a thing?

“What do you even know about my daughter?”

So Lee Changjoon headed straight to the office of LS Entertainment, where his daughter was signed.

It was a reckless visit. He knew it himself.

But what father in the world could sit by when his daughter was going through that?

Even if his daughter didn’t want him, even if she hated him, it didn’t matter.

He wanted to tell her:

Even if the whole world hates you and dislikes you, there is a father who will love you with no conditions, so don’t let it defeat you.

You can always come hide behind Dad. My girl would never be that kind of person. Dad knows everything.

“Hyoeun….”

Clutching a worn photo tight to his chest as if it were treasure, he held it close.

It was the only photo of his daughter he had left.

Right before the divorce, on his little girl’s birthday, he’d scraped together what little money they had to take her to an amusement park one last time; the photo was from then.

“I wonder if she still likes amusement parks?”

Ah.

“Now that she’s a celebrity, maybe she can’t easily go to places like that.”

Smiling at such idle thoughts…

Knock, knock, knock.

A rapping sounded from beyond the security office.

Gulp.

The tension that had loosened while looking at the photo pressed in on him again.

Creak.

But the person who came in wasn’t his daughter. It was a man he’d never seen before.

He had the build of a security guard, but judging by his attire, he seemed to be a senior executive.

“Sir, are you Ms. Hyoeun’s father?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Unlike the other guards, the man didn’t look at him with suspicion.

“I can tell just by your face. I was wondering who Hyoeun took after. She takes after you to a tee.”

He treated him with formal courtesy, gesturing for him to sit.

“Ah, is that so. But my daughter’s much prettier.”

“No, no—the gentle look is exactly like yours.”

The man bit his lower lip for a moment, then—

“I’m truly sorry to say this, sir, but Ms. Hyoeun doesn’t wish to meet anyone.”

Watching his expression, he added in a firm tone,

“You may already know, but given how things are right now, I think her heart is a bit tangled, so please don’t be too disheartened.”

He had expected as much. He’d anticipated it when he came; he was sure of it when the man entered alone.

“It’s all right.”

Forcing a smile, Lee Changjoon slid the bundle of letters he had stuffed into his jacket across to the man.

Please.

As if asking him not to refuse.

“Could you give her these, instead?”

The man looked at the bundle with a complicated expression.

“Ah…”

Then picking up the bundle of letters, he nodded.

“Yes, of course I should deliver them.”

Then he bowed ninety degrees, politely showing him out, and left the security office first.

Click.

Left alone in the security office, Lee Chan-joon was smiling.

Though he would leave without seeing his daughter’s face, the knowledge that there were good people around his girl eased the weight on his heart.