“Fate really works in strange ways.”

On the hill behind the temple, which looked like a small copy of Inwangsan, Jong-myeong walked ahead with his hands clasped behind his back, then turned to look at Jae-geon, who still gave no clear reaction.

“Out of all those restaurants, she just had to end up at your restaurant.”

“It’s not a job. It’s an internship.”

“Why draw the line that hard? You picky bastard.”

Jae-geon’s gaze stole a glance toward Hae-som, crouched by the water tap below. She had refused Jong-myeong’s offer to take a walk together and stayed behind to do the dishes alone.

When had she clung to him and cried, telling him not to go, only to go right back to acting like a proper young employee the next morning?

Sharp, quick on her feet, and for that all the more pleasing.

What kind of tie had brought Seong Hae-som to Hunam-sa? Judging by how Seo Hyeon-cheol had rushed over and left even his nephew behind, they could not be just casual acquaintances.

A cool breeze, out of place for the season, greeted them at the top. Jae-geon drew in a slow breath, filling his lungs with air far cleaner than anything in Seoul.

“Don’t be so hard on her. Be good to her.”

“Why do you care so much?”

“She lived here for a while as a child monk.”

“A child monk?”

“For three or four years, I think. Even after she left, she still came by once a month.”

Snapping off a pine branch that blocked his view, Jae-geon looked down the slope. The stainless steel rice bowl had finally slipped free from Hae-som’s hands and was gleaming in the light.

“Did she not have parents?”

“Why are you killing off two perfectly healthy people?”

“Then why did they leave a kid in a mountain place like this?”

“People have their reasons. Why should I explain every detail? Says the one who hates talking about his own family.”

Taking in the soft pine scent drifting in on the wind, Jae-geon answered in the same calm tone.

“That doesn’t sound like something the main shareholder of a messy family story should be saying.”

Jong-myeong burst out laughing. It was loud enough for Hae-som, who had been piling stones into a little prayer tower on the wall below, to turn around.

Seeing her quickly back away and flee toward the kitchen, Jong-myeong clicked his tongue like he understood everything.

“What kind of fight did you two have, for our Som to get that scared?”

Leaving Jong-myeong’s reproach behind, Jae-geon replayed the feel of Hae-som in his arms the night before.

Worried that her soft body, like a ripe persimmon, might break, he had laid her down carefully on the bedding. After that, his feet would not move easily.

Hae-som’s breathing had slowly settled into a steady rhythm. Jae-geon had spent who knew how long just watching that innocent face.

Then, when the rush in him had climbed to a dangerous point, Jong-myeong texted that it was time for the old folks to eat breakfast, and that was the only reason he came to his senses.

In another sense, it was sheer luck that he had run from the room as if escaping a moment of madness.

Now that he knew she was tied to his uncle, the relationship had already gone wrong. No—maybe it had been doomed from the moment they first met.

A tangle of names crossed his mind.

Cha Ji-won. Seo Hyeon-cheol. And whoever it was Hae-som had held onto last night, begging not to leave.

Jung Jae-geon was not reckless enough to step willingly into a mess tied together that badly. He hated trouble more than anything.

Watching Jae-geon’s hair move softly in the wind that had swept through the pine forest, Jong-myeong suddenly said something odd.

“Is it the face?”

“…What?”

“He kind of looks like him. Then again, maybe he looks better.”

“What are you even talking about?”

“It’s been a long time since that boy left. My memory’s gone fuzzy.”

Judging by the lonely look on Jong-myeong’s face, he was not trying to joke. Either way, Jae-geon could not make sense of it.

A bitter laugh slipped through Jae-geon’s teeth as he tucked a pine needle between them. Snap—the fresh scent burst across his tongue and eased his stress at once.

“I heard her insomnia’s gotten bad again lately. I wondered if work was part of it.”

“Insomnia?”

Thinking of Hae-som fainting like she had seen a goblin in the dead of night, Jae-geon shook his head as if it were absurd.

If she had cried asking someone to stay with her until she fell asleep, then who had that been—Hae-som or Bambi?

“Three or four years, maybe. It must be bad if even the medication she got prescribed barely helps.”

Her face never seemed to show even a trace of worry, so it was hard to connect that image with insomnia. What kind of story was behind it?

“Sometimes I tell myself it’s just the kind of thing people go through while growing up. But then I see her face, and my heart aches.”

Jong-myeong rubbed at his heavy chest and gestured for them to head back down.

“She’s a child with troubles as deep as yours. Take good care of her.”

---

Jae-geon’s Cadillac slid down the slope. The group in pale gray, waving with both arms, grew smaller and smaller, and in their place Hae-som’s breathing grew a little louder.

Her eyes stayed turned toward the window the whole time, and other than clearing her throat with a few light coughs, she said nothing. Her thin back looked sharp enough to say, I’m in a bad mood, so don’t touch me.

“Goodbye, everyone. I’ll head back to Seoul first.”

When she had raised her face to say that before getting in the car, there had not been a hint of fatigue on it. As he stared at that clear face, Jae-geon had reached out and caught her shoulder just as she was turning away.

The one startled by the sudden contact had not been Hae-som first, but Jong-myeong.

“J-Jae-geon can give you a ride. Bundang is on the way.”

“I’m fin—”

“Get in.”

“Really, I’m fine. I already booked my train ticket.”

“If you waste your energy on nonsense and your cooking quality drops, should I send the damage bill to Seong Hae-som? I did you a favor and put you on the special dish as assistant, and you don’t even have that much sense of duty?”

“If you really insist, then at least just to the station—”

“Get in.”

He had managed to put her in the passenger seat by acting like an overbearing elder, but it did not feel rewarding. He had not saved her energy; he had just drained her emotions instead.

Glancing up at the highway sign above them, Jae-geon finally broke the long silence.

“My family home is near here. I wondered why my uncle wasn’t at the family gathering.”

He thought it was a good opening. It gave him a way to explain why he had been at Hunam-sa the night before.

“When he didn’t come down even late at night, I went up to see what was going on. I didn’t want to interrupt someone doing prayers, so I waited.”

No real reaction came back. Since he had not expected one, Jae-geon went on without caring.

“Then Miss Seong Hae-som collapsed out of nowhere, and I didn’t really have the time or the state of mind to think straight after that. Whatever happened, don’t dwell on it.”

Meaning: I’ll let go of how you clung to me all the way from the Main Hall to the monks’ quarters, and how you grabbed my hand and made me pat your back while begging me not to go—so don’t start treating it like some dark history either.

The car entered a tunnel, and a gap opened in the conversation. Sound turned distant, like it had been swallowed by a vacuum, but Hae-som’s breathing still came through clearly.

“Seong Hae-som.”

Her lack of response dragged on too long to feel normal. Jae-geon, who had been staring straight ahead the whole time, cut a glance toward her. The next instant, a dry laugh escaped him.

“Hah.”

At some point, she had sat up straight, hugged her backpack to her chest like a teddy bear, and fallen asleep. Even with the sunlight stabbing at her eyes, she did not move an inch.

“Can you call it insomnia when the moment your head touches something, you fall asleep?”

The more he thought about it, the more ridiculous it felt, but it was not as if he could wake up an insomnia patient sleeping so peacefully.

After giving a couple of small laughs, he shifted his focus to the monitor in the car. He turned on the ventilated seat, lowered the audio volume, reclined her seat a little more…

Then his eye caught the place name on the navigation screen. Bundang was right next to Yongin, where Farm to Table was. Maybe he should stop by and check on the burdock they might use for the fall menu.

“She seemed dead serious about wanting to visit the farm too. You should give her a big reward for being that earnest.”

And while he was at it, he could let her go on the farm visit she had wanted so badly.

But the moment he looked over at the passenger seat, that neat little plan was pushed aside at once. Puh, puh. She was sleeping so soundly that he could not bring himself to wake her.

Jae-geon looked once at the map he had roughly set to Bundang District Office, then once at Hae-som’s defenseless sleeping face, and without a second thought, called Jun-won.

“Do you keep the staff personnel records?”

“What are you even talking about, calling out of nowhere?”

“Do you or not?”

“It’s on the drive. Why?”

“Check Seong Hae-som’s home address.”

“You still don’t know that?”

His voice made it clear he thought Jae-geon was hopeless. At times like this, though, Jun-won really had no sense at all.

“It’s not like that between us.”

“Then what is it?”

“I was told to be good to her.”

“By who?”

“By who.”

Faced with a riddle instead of an answer, Jun-won gave up asking more and clicked the call off. At the soft chime that sounded like a service bell, Hae-som twitched in her sleep and mumbled,

“Yes, Chef.”

A smile hopped across Jae-geon’s face as he watched her go right back to sleep.