Swallowed - Chapter 54

A person worthy of being loved. Jaeha’s voice was firm. Firmly knocking on Seyoung’s heart. Regardless of his background, his past, or who his parents were, Baek Jaeha judged solely on Han Seyoung. He had been like that from the beginning, and he still was.

“That’s not like you, Sunbae. Han Seyoung works hard enough to spit blood to get what she wants. Even if others say it’s impossible, she never gives up and works until the end to be able to speak, and she even got to go on an exchange program. But why do you give up on me without even trying?”

Jaeha’s tearful expression grew more and more distorted. The resentment and anger in his large, intense eyes poured out onto Han Seyoung. Jaeha gripped Seyoung’s hand even tighter. The force was so strong it felt like it would crush her bones, and Seyoung flinched involuntarily, but she didn’t pull her hand away. She would rather have her hand crushed and broken than be disconnected from Jaeha.

“Why do you give up so easily…”

In the end, Jaeha, unable to control his emotions, lowered his head. His firm voice broke into pieces and vibrated finely.

“You said you like me, so how…”

His voice, shattered into countless pieces, couldn’t form proper words and scattered. These weren’t words thrown out impulsively in a moment of emotional explosion.

It was a question that had been on his mind for the past two months, every time he felt Seyoung’s feelings becoming clearer while living in the same house.

Han Seyoung’s expressions, gestures, even her gaze and breath were all saying that she loved Baek Jaeha, but why didn’t the outcome change? Why did she only try to push him away unconditionally?

He couldn’t understand. The Han Seyoung he knew wasn’t such a weak person. Even if her mother was an obstacle, even if his parents were against it, she gave up too easily. She gave up on Baek Jaeha too easily.

It felt as if Seyoung’s heart was only that shallow, as if he was only engraved that much in Seyoung’s heart, and Jaeha was unbearably tormented.

He wanted to tear out this heart that loved Han Seyoung completely. Even if it meant dying, it would feel better than now.

He hated Seyoung. He really hated Seyoung for saying she liked him but not telling him the reason, not trying to figure it out together, and taking it all on herself and backing down.

If he let Seyoung go without any conversation like this, it felt like it would be forever irreversible.

Even without him, Han Seyoung would live really well. She might feel a little empty, but she wouldn’t miss him enough to come back. She would attend classes as usual, confidently converse in English, make new friends, laugh, and be happy.

Just imagining that he wouldn’t be next to that Han Seyoung made Jaeha feel like his throat was tearing and his heart was shattering. Han Seyoung didn’t know that. Only Han Seyoung didn’t know.

Seeing Seyoung say that she would never forget the memories of their trip together, Jaeha felt as much immense despair as he did great joy.

Han Seyoung was preparing to live alone while being with him now. She was carefully stacking up memories to take out and look at when she was lonely or when she thought of Baek Jaeha. These happy times were a substitute for Baek Jaeha.

“I’m – I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

Seyoung tried hard to speak each word clearly. Although there was a hint of crying in her voice, it was a determined voice. It felt like she meant that even if he clung to her like this, it wouldn’t work, so Jaeha couldn’t lift his head.

He had never tried so hard for anything in his life that he felt like he would die. He was better than others at everything from the start. His mother always said that he understood ten things when she taught him one, and the teacher was amazed to see Jaeha doing things skillfully without being taught.

It was natural for Jaeha. He had few memories of thinking something was difficult in his life. He enjoyed using his brain to solve complex math problems. It was difficult but enjoyable.

But winning Han Seyoung’s love was so painful and difficult. He couldn’t see the answer. He was sure that he was the only one who could fill Han Seyoung’s incomplete gaps, but he couldn’t figure out how to make Seyoung realize that.

“I love you so much…”

Seyoung struggled to utter each word. If she attached a melody of a nursery rhyme like usual, she could have said it more easily, but she didn’t want to put her true feelings into such a light melody. So she tried to convey it as naturally as possible, as if she were speaking.

Jaeha slowly lifted his head. His face was stained with tears, but it still shone. Even though he was standing against the light, Baek Jaeha shone so purely. Seeing that face made it even harder for Seyoung to convey her feelings. The thought that her selfish attitude had broken him down so much.

“You are so precious…”

The only love in the world, an existence she wanted to protect even if it meant sacrificing her own life.

“Sunbae…”

Jaeha called out to Seyoung in a still trembling voice. But soon, he read Seyoung’s eyes and waited for her to finish her words.

“The misfortune, I have… I’m afraid… it might taint… even you…”

Seyoung even bit her tongue, which wouldn’t move as she wanted, and revealed the shameful truth that she hadn’t been able to tell Jaeha.

He was too precious, so she didn’t want to drag him in. She didn’t want that woman who only knew money to cause trouble for Jaeha, and she was afraid that she, the woman’s daughter, might harm Jaeha in any way.

She was afraid that she, like that woman, would end up being someone who only knew herself, and that her love would fade and she would see Baek Jaeha as money. Even if she vowed a hundred, a thousand times that she wouldn’t, the curse that the woman had planted deep in her heart kept coming to mind.

“So… I was thinking… of leaving…”

The happier she was with Jaeha, the more anxious she became, and even though she knew he was waiting for her to change her mind, she couldn’t answer.

She was going to leave so as not to hurt the precious person, but she didn’t think deeply about how much that action would hurt the precious person. The moment she thought about it, her resolve would waver, so she had been trying to ignore it.

But Baek Jaeha described it as losing to that woman. Only after hearing those words did she realize that she was running away, unable to overcome the anxiety that was weighing down on her heart.

“For… me?”

Jaeha asked back in a disbelieving tone. Seyoung was so ashamed of not considering his feelings that she couldn’t make a sound and silently nodded in affirmation. She was so sorry that she had hurt him so much in the name of doing it for Jaeha.

The tension in Jaeha’s body, which had been stiff, suddenly relaxed. Seyoung’s hand, which had been crushed in his hand, was released at that moment. The feeling of blood flowing through her blocked veins was tingling and painful like an electric shock. But that pain felt like she was alive. Seyoung’s five senses were so numb.

“You were going to leave for my sake… for my sake.”

Jaeha repeated the words several times. In a tone that seemed to want to deny that that was the reason, Seyoung lowered her head, and at that moment, he roughly pulled her into his arms. Seyoung, who was suddenly trapped in his arms, was a little surprised and struggled, and Jaeha, misunderstanding that she was trying to get out of his arms, hugged her even tighter.

Seyoung, hugged with a force so strong that she couldn’t breathe, soon relaxed her body. It was uncomfortable and difficult to have her body pressed so hard, but strangely, she felt relieved and all the tension in her body was released.

“I thought you… didn’t like me as much as I thought you did.”

Jaeha slowly breathed and revealed some of the anxiety he had been hiding inside. Seyoung immediately shook her head.

“You are… my sun…”

The sun I swallowed. When they first met, the refreshing boy who approached her after listening to her song resembled the sun. Seyoung could still not forget that brightly shining smile. Jaeha probably didn’t know. How much Seyoung was saved that day.

It was as if he had come from a completely different world. He was the only person who spoke to Seyoung, looking only at Seyoung’s tone without any prejudice or pity. At the time, Seyoung was so unstable that she only sang sporadically, but Jaeha praised her without hesitation with a moved face.

Jaeha would probably never know how desperate and precious that young boy’s existence was to Seyoung.

After the accident, Seyoung was mentally exhausted and her body and mind were worn out. She went to the hospital led by her grandmother, but she couldn’t think of anything to the point where she didn’t know what she was doing. Moreover, she couldn’t be in her right mind because she saw her father die in her dreams every night.

Moreover, before she could even recover from the shock of not being able to speak, her mother, who had revealed her true colors, was unrestrained in revealing how she usually thought of her husband and daughter. She cursed her husband for showing off that he was earning money with difficulty and not allowing her to spend a penny comfortably, and she hated her daughter for monopolizing the money. She thought that her daughter was taking away her things. Even so, she constantly tried to appease Seyoung and kept trying to instill a sense of camaraderie. While giving legitimacy to her words.

When Seyoung didn’t give in and her grandmother’s interference became severe, she eventually abandoned her only daughter and left. Seyoung, who barely returned to school, had to endure bullying with the stigma of being the mute daughter of a murderer.

Her obsession with studying was a desperate attempt not to collapse. If she got good grades, she would be envied and jealous, but she couldn’t be ignored. Knowing that, she clung to it even more. At the same time, she practiced singing from time to time. At that time, it was completely impossible to speak, and she couldn’t even utter her three-letter name as she wanted. Only singing was the voice she could make as she wanted.

The music teacher gladly opened the music room, so she practiced whenever she had time. At first, she sang the existing songs as they were, and later, she rewrote the lyrics to those melodies with the words she wanted to say.

When her friends even refused to communicate with her through songs, she wanted to give up, wondering what was the point of all this. It felt like the whole world had abandoned her. Even her own mother wanted her to die quickly, so there was no way her classmates would share friendship with her.

If it hadn’t been for her grandmother, who cherished her only granddaughter instead of her son who had left earlier than her parents, she might have given up on everything.

‘I like Sunbae’s voice the most in the world. It’s a beautiful and warm sound.’

Like a spring breeze, a cheerful boy with a smile as dazzling as the sun instantly melted Seyoung, who was frozen solid and on the verge of breaking.