Jae-geon had barely stepped through the gate when—

“Oh my! Well, look who it is! Young Master!”

Okcheon-daek came bustling over in a flurry of excitement.

It wasn’t surprising.

The last time Jae-geon had visited the family home in Buam-dong had been five years ago, back when he was searching for investors for Not.

“You changed your major whenever it suited you, and now you’ve got the nerve to come asking me for money?”

He hadn’t switched from business administration to culinary arts on a whim.

There had never been any real place for him in the Jinwoorim family succession to begin with.

Nor had he gone there intending to ask for investment.

He had simply wanted to see the people who, for better or worse, were still called family.

He hadn’t expected a warm welcome.

Sitting down to a quiet meal together would have been enough.

And if the subject of investment happened to come up naturally…

Perhaps he would have accepted.

Running a fine-dining restaurant cost an astonishing amount of money. Depending on the man he called Father felt less humiliating than begging strangers for help.

Apparently, he’d been mistaken.

At Gyeong-won’s thunderous rebuke, Jae-geon had turned around without a word and walked out.

He never returned.

Naturally, Gyeong-won never looked for him either.

He no longer knew where things between father and son had first gone wrong.

When he’d learned his mother had terminal cancer?

When he’d discovered that the father he believed had devoted himself to caring for her actually had a mistress?

When his father remarried as soon as her forty-ninth-day memorial rites were over?

Or when he entered elementary school holding his stepmother’s hand instead of his mother’s?

He didn’t know.

His feelings had become so tangled, so worn away by time, that they had simply rotted beyond recognition.

Watching Gyeong-won’s profile as he casually read the newspaper in the dining room, Jae-geon realized he no longer felt even resentment.

In some ways…

That was the real problem.

Declining Okcheon-daek’s attentive service with polite thanks, he quietly made his way into the dining room.

With the lively twins—who took after their mother—away studying abroad, the house felt as silent as a temple.

“Happy birthday, Jae-geon.”

“Me too.”

Yoon-hee and Jong-myeong managed to lighten the mood for all of a moment.

Then the rustle of a turning newspaper page smothered it again.

There wasn’t a thing happy about this birthday.

The one person most directly connected to the occasion—Gyeong-won—pretended not to notice until the very end.

Only after the birthday meal had been set on the table did he finally fold his newspaper.

Birthdays had long since lost their meaning.

Even so, looking at the table laden with dishes prepared with such care, Jae-geon couldn’t help feeling moved.

He remembered Yoon-hee’s threat the previous night—that if he didn’t show up, she’d march straight into Not and drag him back herself.

A quiet laugh escaped him.

She wasn’t even his real mother.

Why did she care so much?

“There’s nothing harder than having a son who’s a chef.”

The gaze fixed on the tip of his chopsticks was impossible to ignore.

Finally giving in, Jae-geon picked up a piece of braised short ribs.

The clean, savory flavor unique to Okcheon-daek’s cooking spread through his mouth.

Hae-som would love this.

Naturally, his thoughts drifted back to the conversation they’d had at the farm.

Her innocent question tangled together with strands of seaweed, making his spoon falter.

“What made you decide to become a chef?”

Why had he become a chef?

It was a deeply personal reason.

And, at the same time, an ordinary one.

He missed the seaweed soup his mother had made for him every birthday.

No one else had ever been able to recreate that taste.

So…

Jae-geon had decided to become a chef himself.

Even now, after establishing himself as a Michelin three-star chef, he still hadn’t managed to reproduce it.

Perhaps what he truly missed wasn’t his mother’s cooking…

…but the memories of the days when life had still felt safe.

A bitter smile crossed Jae-geon’s face as he set down his spoon.

Yoon-hee looked at him expectantly.

But…

He had no idea how to respond.

---

The meal had been more picking at food than actually eating, and Jae-geon left early.

Unlike his mood, the sky after the monsoon was brilliantly clear.

Jong-myeong walked beside him, chewing on a pine needle as though it were a toothpick.

“The family looked happy enough together. Why’d you leave?”

“Since I’m already in Seoul, I thought I’d go see Hae-som. Eun-seong’s off today, isn’t he?”

Not only Hae-som.

He even knew Yoo Eun-seong’s work schedule.

Then again, he’d practically raised those kids since they were little.

His devotion went far beyond ordinary affection.

Meanwhile, Jae-geon—the only blood relative he had—always seemed to come second.

Being treated like Pluto after it had been kicked out of the solar system wasn’t exactly new.

Jae-geon brushed the thought aside.

The lingering smell of seaweed in his mouth bothered him.

“Jae-geon.”

The unusually gentle tone Jong-myeong only used when asking for a favor sent a chill down his spine.

As he smoothed the sharp crease of Jae-geon’s suit jacket, he spoke quietly.

“How much longer are you going to keep living with your mother’s death? It’s not fair to everyone… to you, to your sister-in-law, and to your brother-in-law.”

Throughout her illness, they’d heard over and over that the prognosis wasn’t good.

In a way, he’d been prepared for her death.

Maybe that was why he’d accepted it so calmly.

He’d only been eight.

Too young to understand what death really meant.

His father, who had been married to his mother for ten years, remarried as soon as the forty-ninth-day memorial rites were over.

Everything pointed to one conclusion.

He’d had another woman while his wife was still alive.

It would have been easier to hate Yoon-hee if she’d been some uneducated woman from a lesser family who’d simply gotten lucky and married into wealth.

Instead…

Yoon-hee was the only daughter of the Jinwoorim family, one of the most prominent names in Korea’s restaurant industry.

Every word she spoke carried quiet grace.

Despite being only twenty-four years old, she had a warm, gentle nature and slipped into the role of mother without complaint.

Which meant…

She had been the same age Hae-som was now when she’d held his hand on his first day of elementary school.

What had she been thinking when she chose to shoulder that role?

Now that he knew how young and fragile women that age really were…

Even the resentment he’d clung to for years had begun to lose its footing.

And then there was the way she faithfully observed his late mother’s memorial day…

…and celebrated the birthday of someone else’s child.

Silence settled heavily around them.

A silence built over years—dense, oppressive, and impossible to break.

The air, washed clean by the passing monsoon, carried the ring of an old-fashioned ringtone.

Without taking his eyes off Jae-geon, Jong-myeong flipped open his phone.

“Oh, Hae-som.”

“Wh-What do I do?! There’s mold growing on the jang!”

---

Hae-som sat slumped beside the jangdok where the white bloom had appeared.

She remembered seeing the same kind of white mold on the fermentation jars at Hunam-sa once before.

She couldn’t remember how the monk had dealt with it.

She only vaguely remembered him looking disappointed as he said,

“Let’s just call this paying off bad luck.”

“What do I do?! There’s mold growing on the jang!”

Instead of telling her what to do, the monk had merely told her to wait a moment before hanging up.

There was no way he could come from Seoan to Seoul “in a moment.”

He was probably going to call Jae-geon instead.

I should’ve called Chef instead…

Only much later did she realize…

She didn’t even have Jae-geon’s phone number.

“Haa…”

The truth was, she was scared.

Scared that the Jae-geon who had finally started treating her more gently would start talking about common sense and intelligence again.

Scared that he’d revoke the extension of her training.

The preprocessing of the soybean paste had been Jae-min’s responsibility.

Part of her couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t fair.

But what could she do?

The monk she’d called for advice had ended up reporting everything to Chef instead.

Just imagining those sharp, blade-like eyes made her hug herself.

The jangdok behind her back was warm from the afternoon sun.

It wasn’t the kind of warmth that offered comfort.

How much time passed like that?

Hae-som finally lifted her drooping eyelids.

She’d stopped by a Buddhist shop in Insadong on her way to work to buy the monk a gift.

The exhaustion must have caught up with her, because she’d fallen asleep before she knew it.

Even a brief nap was still sleep.

She couldn’t believe how refreshed she felt after only a few minutes.

As her vision slowly came into focus beneath the dazzling sunlight…

Two familiar figures walked toward her.

One was Jong-myeong, dressed in a broad monk’s robe draped over his round shaved head.

The other was Jae-geon, impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, his pomaded hair perfectly styled.

“Why were you sitting out here? You should’ve gone inside and waited.”

“You’re going to ruin that pretty face staying out in the sun.”

It wasn’t the sunlight making her face burn.

The heat had risen the instant she saw Jae-geon.

“Ah…”

Her wide eyes darted back and forth.

Why was the monk in Seoul?

And why…

…was Jae-geon dressed like that?

“H-How…?”

Her breathing lost its rhythm.

Her heart hammered against her ribs it felt ready to burst through her chest.

Jong-myeong’s voice reached her as though through a haze.

“We were together for a family gathering, so I brought him with me. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

“I think you’ve got the wrong idea.”

“This is my restaurant.”

“So whether it’s all right or not isn’t really the question.”

Jae-geon’s shadow fell across Hae-som as he crouched in front of her.

Her heartbeat climbed higher and higher.

White flashed across her vision.

It felt as though the endless daylight from her dreams had returned once again.