TIN 133

I wondered why she asked about my age. I answered thinking it was just one of those common personal questions people ask.

“Then after that…”

I slowly began, steadying my trembling voice. Before the elderly woman could ask me anything, before she could pose any difficult questions, I tried to redirect her attention onto something else.

“Did they live here? Yoon Ji-soo and…that child?”

It wasn’t a forced question. Since Yoon Ji-soo wasn’t here now, she must have left the elderly woman’s side at some point in time. I wanted to know why Yoon Ji-soo, who had given birth to a child here, had lived on such an island.

“I wished they could have…”

Fortunately, the elderly woman answered my question willingly. She gave a faint smile and lowered her eyes gently.

“But things didn’t go as I hoped.”

She said it was before they even had a chance to name the child. That must be around the time when Yoon Ji-soo had to leave this place.

“A man came looking for her, and at first, I thought he was the baby’s father.”

She said the man appeared suddenly and turned the whole area upside down in a single day. News traveled fast in this closed-off beach community, so she had heard about him even before he reached her house.

“But he wasn’t. If you’d seen Ji-soo’s expression then, no one would have thought that.”

She said it was the first time she’d seen Yoon Ji-soo make such an expression. A distorted face consumed by fear that seemed both terrified and disgusted all at once.

I could guess who it might have been. The man with eyes that gleamed gold in the light, who had claimed to love Yoon Ji-soo.

“…Is there really no possibility that he was the father?”

I asked, hoping against hope. I asked while desperately wishing it wasn’t true.

Yoon Ji-soo, who had been cast out by her family for being unable to bear children, had arrived at this beach and given birth to a child alone. And Chairman Joo had followed her here.

If that was the case, there was only one possibility to consider: that Yoon Ji-soo had run away carrying Chairman Joo’s child.

“That’s impossible.”

“…”

“It wasn’t him.”

But the elderly woman firmly denied my suggestion. As if she had a definitive reason to be so certain. When I stared at her intently, she met my gaze steadily and said, “Ji-soo mentioned it in passing once. She said she hoped the child wouldn’t look like her.”

This just so happened to be an ambiguous reason. That didn’t necessarily mean she wanted the child to look like its father. While I was pondering this, the elderly woman added, “She said since the father was a beta, she hoped the child would be a beta too.”

“…”

‘She fell in love with an unnamed beta.’

This was one of the pieces of information Joo Do-hwa had shared with me. It was the first information I’d heard from him, and also the one I’d trusted least. Whether she had truly fallen in love or not, it seemed she had indeed met a beta.

“But that man was an alpha, so he couldn’t have been the baby’s father.”

The relief that flooded through me stemmed from several reasons I couldn’t tell anyone about. The fact that Yoon Ji-soo hadn’t loved Chairman Joo, that she hadn’t been intimate with him, and ultimately, that Joo Do-hwa was Chairman Joo’s only child.

“That’s all I know about the baby’s father. Ji-soo hardly talked about it.”

This was also something I was curious about, but not enough to probe deeply. It wasn’t something I could discover even if I did ask, and the only person I wanted to know about was Yoon Ji-soo herself.

“She said she had to leave.”

“…”

“She said they had come to catch her. That if she stayed, our lives would be in danger too.”

I wasn’t unfamiliar with that feeling, with why someone would come to such a conclusion.

“And in the midst of all that, she gave us a lot of money, saying she was thankful for our help. It was an amount far larger than what she used to give us for living expenses.”

She said she had always refused the money Yoon Ji-soo gave them before, but couldn’t refuse this time. Not because of the amount, but because Yoon Ji-soo looked so desperate when giving it.

“But then she said she would leave empty-handed herself.”

I found myself glancing at my bag sitting in the corner. A bag containing nothing but an ID and a return ticket, not even money. Ah, and now a useless lipstick too.

“How could I let her go like that…How could a woman alone, and with a child no less, survive in this harsh world?”

It would have been better if she had been alone. Having a child meant there were two mouths to feed, two bodies to clothe. It must have felt like carrying a precious item that couldn’t even fit in your pocket, living each day in anxiety while wandering around.

“So I lent her a boat.”

“A boat?”

Was she telling her to leave by sea? This guess was only half correct.

“There’s a small island not far from here, visible only when the weather is clear.”

An island where nothing could be seen when it was cloudy due to the thick sea fog. A place with many reefs in between, where you could get seriously hurt if you took the wrong path.

“It happened to be good weather, perfect for sailing. I told Ji-soo to hide there, saying I would bring supplies once a month.”

Fortunately, Yon Ji-soo seemed to have visited that island once while staying here. She had learned how to operate the boat from the elderly woman and had also learned how to navigate the sea route, so it was manageable.

“I barely convinced her to agree to meet halfway. We agreed that I would leave supplies with buoys at an agreed-upon spot, and she would retrieve them. That’s how many smugglers do it.”

The frequency was once a month. Between the full moon and new moon, on the day when the waves were calmest during the month.

“It wasn’t difficult for me since I took the boat out every day anyway. The problem was when it rained on that day…”

The sea changes day by day, and unexpected accidents happen dozens of times. Especially during seasons with unstable weather, even walking along the beach could end up being dangerous.

“But I couldn’t not go even then. If I didn’t go, Ji-soo…the baby would starve.”

It got me thinking that most people would’ve given up halfway. After Yoon Ji-soo left them money, they could have just pretended not to know and gone on with their lives.

But in my memory, we never went hungry on the island for even a single day. We never lacked clothes, never went thirsty. We even learned letters and addition from books sometimes—it was obvious who we owed this thanks to.

“Why…?”

I picked at the cushion beneath my hands. Slowly moving my lips, I swallowed hard before asking the elderly woman.

“…Why did you go to such lengths?”

I couldn’t understand it. Why she showed such selfless kindness, why she took on such difficult tasks voluntarily.

“It…couldn’t have been easy.”

It wasn’t just about providing basic necessities. I left the island when I was around 9, which means she repeated this labor for a full 8 years. For a child to grow from age one until then, they must have needed more items than I could even imagine.

“But why…?”

“Well, maybe because I was depressed.”

Her sudden answer was different from what I expected. Not because she pitied Yoon Ji-soo, or because she felt obligated—rather than such altruistic reasons, it was deeply personal.

“I was sad. Because Ji-soo left.”

“…”

My eyes widened. At some point, the elderly woman’s expression had become similar to when she talked about finding her daughter’s body earlier. A subtle expression with sorrow in her eyes and memories on her lips.

“My daughter died, and then Ji-soo, whom I thought of as a daughter, left too. If I didn’t do something, I felt like I couldn’t go on.”

“…”

“If I didn’t at least do that, I felt like I would die.”

What was an escape for Yoon Ji-soo must have been a farewell for the elderly woman. Even though she understood why Yoon Ji-soo left, she needed another way to cope.

“But then one day, the supplies stopped disappearing.”

She said at first she thought there was just a delay. That for some reason, they were being collected a few days late. She thought it would be fine since nothing would spoil, but the situation didn’t change after that.

“I went back to check for several days, but it stayed the same. So after about a week, I decided I had to go to the island.”

My palms felt clammy. ‘Live.’ That voice that had fallen at my bedside echoed again. That day when I had to cross the endless sea hidden in a box without a single ray of light. What had happened to Yoon Ji-soo who remained on the island after sending me away?

“There was no one there.”

No one. Those words pierced my ears.

“Neither Ji-soo nor the baby were there.”

All that remained was a single house turned to ruins. The elderly woman summed up the scene where only traces of human life remained but no actual people in just one sentence.

“As if they had fled in a hurry…”