Jae-hyuk couldn’t help but cynically smile at his mother’s persistent behavior, even after experiencing that terrible event.
Up until that point, he hadn’t even dreamed that Mrs. Jeong had visited Arin before he could.
“End the call.”
“How can I just…”
“End it now.”
When Han, Jae-hyuk’s secretary, hesitated, Jae-hyuk snatched the phone away and pressed the end call button. Han’s face turned pale, knowing Mrs. Jeong’s temperament.
“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it. But Han, about today…”
Jae-hyuk passed the phone back with his left hand while pressing his throbbing temple with his right. Han, seeing Jae-hyuk’s sharp gaze, spoke out nervously.
“I swear I didn’t leak any information. You know I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know. But there’s a saying, ‘even a stone bridge should be tapped before crossing.'”
“Are you saying you can’t trust me, Han Joo-hyuk?”
As Han took the phone back, he raised his arms in a gesture of innocence. Jae-hyuk stared intently at him, his gaze penetrating as if trying to see right through him.
Just then, Han’s phone vibrated. It kept ringing incessantly.
“Seems like Mrs. Jeong is determined to talk to me today.”
Jae-hyuk remarked to Han, who seemed stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“Give it to me.”
Reluctantly, Han handed over the phone. Jae-hyuk pressed the call button.
[Han, you insolent thing. You know who I am, and you dare hang up on me? Want to lose your job? Not answering? What is Jae-hyuk doing in Jeju right now?]Mrs. Jeong’s sharp voice came through the speaker.
“I’m hanging up.”
“I was the one who ended the call. And Han is my man. How dare you assume the right to fire him?”
[Oh, Jae-hyuk. I didn’t mean that…]Jae-hyuk’s expression turned even colder. He didn’t want a long conversation with his mother.
“What is it?”
[I was worried. You weren’t answering my calls.]Worry?
That’s laughable.
Jae-hyuk found his mother’s pretense of concern ridiculous. If she truly cared for her son, she wouldn’t have driven Arin away.
Just wanting to keep him in her sight…
“A grown man like me, what would happen?”
[To a mother, you’re still a child…]“Just get to the point.”
[Why are you like this, Jae-hyuk? After everything I… ]“If there’s nothing else, I’m hanging up.”
[Hey. Hey. Jae-hyuk.]Jae-hyuk was the first child born after seven years of marriage.
He never saw the hardships his mother went through before and after his birth, but he knew of them from stories. That’s why he didn’t want to go against his mother’s wishes.
If Arin hadn’t left him, he wouldn’t have spoken to his mother like this.
[Even if I’m your mother, I had to call someone else to talk to you… What will Han think?]
“I thought I asked you not to call unless it’s something important.”
Jae-hyuk was sick of his mother. She was as nauseating to him as anything could be.
Mrs. Jeong’s voice trembled slightly in response to Jae-hyuk’s cold demeanor.
[I’m worried about you, especially with your busy schedule and lack of sleep. Why did you even go there?]Jae-hyuk’s face twisted in an instant.
Perhaps his hatred towards Mrs. Jeong was just a cowardly act to lessen his guilt.
Jae-hyuk swallowed his boiling anger and said,
“Don’t interfere. I don’t need it, whether it’s concern or whatever.”
[Jae-hyuk, I’m still your mother.]“If you have nothing else, I’m going to hang up.”
Just as Jae-hyuk’s finger was about to hit the end call button,
Jae-hyuk’s eyes sharpened at the mention of Arin’s name by Mrs. Jeong.
“I told you never to mention Arin’s name again.”
[How can you speak like that? She was once my daughter-in-law. What right do I have not to speak of her?]Jae-hyuk clenched his fists so hard that his veins threatened to burst.
“Mother, don’t forget what I said. Don’t meddle in Arin’s affairs. If you touch even a single hair on Arin’s head, I will have no choice but to reveal everything to Father.”
‘I realized too late. No, I just pretended not to know. So now, I have to make things right.’
The realization that Arin was the biggest victim of his greed……. He only started to seriously consider the cruel things Mrs. Jeong had done to her after Arin left.
But what he regretted most was something else.
[The one who tormented Arin the most wasn’t Mrs. Jeong or anything else. The one who made Arin wither away to death was you, the Vice Chairman.]
It was what Ji-yoon said to him three years ago when he asked where Arin was.
Arin left not because of his mother, but because of Jae-hyuk himself.
‘How did you endure all that humiliation and disgrace to stand by my side for so long?’
Every time such a situation arose, it was painful. Whenever he faced his mother, he felt excruciatingly how difficult it must have been for Arin.
[Brother, I love you. It’s not for the money that I want a child. I want it because it’s your child, because it’s our child.]It was what Arin, who couldn’t drink a drop of alcohol, said before bed one night after drinking.
My Step-brother Is Obsessed With Me (Female-dominant)
A gentle female protagonist vs pitiful in the early stage, and a sick male protagonist in the later stage
Cheng Songer transmigrated into the body of a vicious cannon fodder female supporting character with the same name as her in a female-dominant novel.
In the original story, the cannon fodder female supporting character was inhumane, committing domestic violence, gambling excessively, being lustful, and even wanting to sell her stepbrother to a brothel for money.
As luck would have it, she just happened to transmigrate at this time.
Seeing Cheng Qingzhi biting his lip, enduring the tears in his eyes, looking pitiful, her heart softened.
She stuffed the money back into the Madam’s hand and reached out to him.
“Brother, come home with me.”
