I Got the Almighty Tongue - Chapter 52



Only Noblemtl

Abandoned

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

“You must be flustered if I suddenly show up and call you mom.”

“I don’t have a mother.”

“Every child in the world has a mother.”

“My family register says my mother’s name is unknown.”

After the ice rink, I took out all the documents I could and looked into Shin Je-hee. In the family register, the ‘father’ column said ‘name unknown’ and the ‘mother’ column said ‘name unknown’. In other words, she was abandoned without even registering her birth.

“I know that no matter what I say, it won’t be an excuse. But won’t you meet me at least once?”

Saying that you won’t meet here won’t help. The problem won’t go away if you postpone it. It will fester and explode fatally at an even worse moment.

“Where do you live?”

“I’m in Seoul now. Are you too?”

“Okay. Let’s meet in two days.”

“Okay, I got it. I’ll text you the address.”

I have never been to a daycare center myself. I don’t remember it anyway, and it was annoying to go there and hear the people there say things were different. But now I have no choice but to go.

I arrived at the orphanage early the next day. The nun who had been sending me letters regularly welcomed me.

The person who knows the most about what happened at that time is the director at the time, but unfortunately, he passed away five years ago. There is only one nun who has been working for 30 years.

“I would like to know more about the situation when I came to the orphanage.”

“Yeah. I thought it might be that since it’s been a while since we last talked.”

The nun looks at me with an expression as if she knew what was coming.

“What do you mean?”

“When children go out and live, there are times when they hear about their parents who abandoned them. In such cases, the only clue they have is the circumstances of their abandonment, so they come to find out about their parents.”

“How was I?”

“I found the information here.”

It is said that when an orphanage finds an abandoned child, the first thing they do is take a picture of the child as it is. This is the only clue they have to find the child’s biological parents later. They also say that they keep all of the child’s belongings from that time.

“You came wrapped in a white blanket. There was a note inside.”

The nun opened the small box containing my belongings and handed me a sling and a note. It was an ordinary sling, nothing special. Then, in neat handwriting, there was a note written on the note, as if it had been torn from a notebook.

[Born at 3:00 AM on September 20, 1980, please call my name Seong Je-hee]

“Your last name changed?”

“As you know, when you go to school, you have to write down your guardian’s name. If the guardian’s last name and the child’s last name are different, it’s too easy to tell that they’re not from an ordinary family. That’s why the director of the daycare changed the last name to Shin.”

“Have you ever heard from anyone since you left me? Either a man or a woman.”

“Unfortunately, there wasn’t any.”

“Okay, thank you. I made some money. Please use it to take care of the kids. I’m sorry I haven’t visited you for a while.”

I put a check for 100 million won in an envelope, gave it to the nun, and left the orphanage.

I am very curious as to why my biological mother, who abandoned me without even reporting my birth and never came to look for me, came looking for me.

* * *

She gave me her home address, not a cafe or restaurant. Her house was a luxury house in Seongbuk-dong. The high walls and heavy large doors showed that the reason for abandoning the baby was definitely not financial problems.

Dingdong

Crash

When I pressed the chime, the door opened right away. I opened the door, went in, looked around, and climbed the stone steps to the mansion. The pine and persimmon trees planted in the garden looked old. Judging by the neatly maintained garden and the old brick house, it seemed that the owner of the house had been living here for a long time.

When I arrived at the front door, a middle-aged woman was waiting for me at the door.

She has a beautiful face that doesn’t fade despite her age, and a slender body line, and she perfectly pulls off a sophisticated light pink cashmere coat. She’s wearing gloves on her hands, but she doesn’t seem to feel uncomfortable. She probably always wears gloves. I can guess why.

She was someone I knew in a past life. More precisely, she was someone I knew. Now I understand her past actions.

“Are you the person calling? This is Shin Je-hee.”

I didn’t know what to call her, so I gave her a vague greeting.

“Yeah. You probably won’t be able to say the word ‘Mom’ very often. Just come in.”

She leads me into the living room. I am reluctant to sit on the sofa, so I sit at the tea table near the bookshelf. The chair is hard and the table is narrow, so it is a suitable place for our conversation.

She brought two cups of coffee and placed one in front of me. I drank my coffee and waited for her to speak.

“My name is Seong Yeon-ju. Have you heard of me?”

“You’re a pianist. You’re famous.”

“Well, that’s good to know. Where should I start?”

“How about we start with how you got my number?”

“I saw you on TV a few years ago. My heart sank when I heard the name Je-hee. You even look like me. After doing some research, I found out that you were from an orphanage. And that’s the very place I took you.

“I got your phone number from the broadcasting station PD. We have some connections. Do you have any other questions?”

Seong Yeon-ju is looking at me with a face that says, “Ask me anything.” It’s strange. She’s so confident.

“Why did you give birth to me and then abandon me?”

Anyway, I have to hear the whole story. When I asked her, she took a sip of her coffee and began to tell the story.

“I started playing the piano when I was four. My father was a music professor. Fortunately, I had talent and I quickly became good at it. From a young age, I won almost all the grand prizes in junior competitions.”

She turns her eyes to the empty space on her right as if reminiscing about the past.

“Until high school, I had no friends and didn’t know what playing was. Most of my friends who played instruments were like that, but I think it was especially bad for me. The expectations were different.”

“I’m listening.”

“Then I ended up going to college. I wanted to study abroad, but my parents didn’t want me to leave them. So I met that person at the college I was forced to go to.”

“He is my biological father.”

“Yes. He and I were really passionately in love. It was like we were the only two people left in the world. My parents scolded me severely for neglecting my practice because I was so obsessed with him. They even threatened to kick me out, but I didn’t care. I thought I could quit music if I was with him.”

“It’s a beautiful story.”

“Don’t be so mean. We were both twenty at the time. Then you were born, and I asked him to marry me since we had a child.

But then he became serious and told me to erase you. He said he had a lot of school work to do and had to go to the military, so he couldn’t raise a child, let alone get married. I cried and begged him like that, and we ended up breaking up.”

“But why didn’t you erase it?”

“I was scared. I had to break up with him and do everything on my own. I couldn’t tell my parents. I ended up going to school at home and hiding from them the entire time I was pregnant with you.”

She seemed to expect me to say something, but I had nothing to say. I remained silent, and she continued talking.

“I had no choice but to give birth to you alone in a hotel room and leave you at an orphanage. But you are my child, so I wanted to give you a name, so I wrote it down on a note and left.”

“What happened after that?”

“What did I have left? I only had music. I practiced like a maniac and was able to win second place at the Tchaikovsky Competition. There was no first place winner that year. After that, I went to study abroad in Germany and never returned to Korea.”

The Tchaikovsky Competition is one of the world’s top three piano competitions. She must have gained international fame after that.

“So what brings you here?”

I remember her as a pianist who mostly stayed in Europe and did tours. I remember she rarely performed in Korea. Something changed because of me.

“My father passed away three years ago, and my mother passed away two months ago. Now I am left alone in the world. There are inheritance issues and other things to take care of, so I came here.”

“I understand.”

“Do you understand?”

“No. It means I found out why you abandoned me.”

“I told you. I had no choice.”

“You must have been married two, three, or more times. Of course, the results were disastrous. Is that right?”

“How did you know that when no one in Korea would know?”

She looks at me with sharp eyes as if I’ve stabbed her in the right spot.

“And maybe something bad happened to my biological father recently?”

“I heard you recently got divorced. But that has nothing to do with anything.”

“Ms. Seong Yeon-ju, you have narcissistic personality disorder. It must have been caused by parental abuse.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You may not realize it, but you were abused. Were you happy with your life, playing the piano and not making any friends until high school? The praise from your parents must have been sweet at the time.

Children who are abused by their parents try to please their abusers with high achievements. You may have desperately wanted their affection, but your needs were not met. It may have been difficult for you to identify with your true self while trying to please your abuser.

Then, I found someone who loved me, so I understand why I rebelled against my parents for the first time in my life and went astray. But there was no way that love could work out.

In order to truly save herself, Seong Yeon-ju would have been willing to sacrifice anything for that man. She could have even quit music, as she said. But such salvation cannot be achieved. The new lover would not be able to fulfill Seong Yeon-ju’s fantasy expectations.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Tell me, how horrible your marriage has been. You are the epitome of narcissism. You abandon your newborn child without any hesitation and devote yourself to the competition without any guilt.”

Seong Yeon-ju’s beautiful eyebrows twitched. It must not have been a good memory.

“You have lived your whole life with the trauma of being abandoned. You have sought love from your parents, from your biological father, but you have never gotten what you wanted.

Such trauma breeds powerful defense mechanisms: preemptive attacks to escape anxiety. Your ex-husbands must have been sick of you for that.”

I can be sure of that. Because while talking to her, I realized that the workaholism I had in my past life was also a kind of achievement addiction, a manifestation of excessive narcissism. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be so insensitive to my family.

“There were some problems with them, but it wasn’t like that.”

She tries to explain as if making excuses. She must have just been defending herself. That’s how she justifies her aggression. She must have convinced herself that she had no choice but to abandon the baby because he abandoned her first.

“The reason you came to me now is because I am someone who can raise your self-esteem. In the past, I was just a trigger that made you relive your wounds. You probably didn’t even see my face properly after giving birth to me. But since you still put a name tag on me, I can tell you are very attached to what is yours.”

“I named you after the kindest child I’ve ever known.”

“You must have hoped that kindness would be directed at you even though you were going to throw it away, so you are beyond help.

But what has changed now? When I think about it, it’s simple. He’s unhappy, right?”

Seong Yeon-ju glares at me without saying anything.

“No matter how much you try to bury it, sin torments people.

You also wanted to ignore the fact that you abandoned me, but you must have been heartbroken. That’s why you didn’t come to Korea and didn’t even try to find out about me. No. Wasn’t giving birth to me something to make the other person feel guilty?”

“Don’t talk like that. I’m still your mother.”

She has a confused look on her face. This conversation was probably out of her scope.

“The reason he became unhappy was because he abandoned you, Seong Yeon-ju. The reason I became successful was because you gave birth to me and gave me a name. It’s a very simple thought process.

So, after meeting him and receiving his forgiveness, you can relieve your old guilt and look down on the unhappy person, regaining your self-esteem.

Moreover, you have now chosen me as the target of your destructive desires, since both your parents and your ex-husband have left you and you have no one to accept you.

Seong Yeon-ju will only feel catharsis from the suffering of others. She will feel that she is loved as much as they endured the suffering.”

I stood up, leaving behind Seong Yeon-ju, who was sitting there in a daze.

“Actually, I was a bit worried when I came here. I couldn’t decide what to do if my biological mother abandoned the child due to unavoidable circumstances. Rather than that, if she had asked for money, I would have given her some.”

I didn’t want the mother of the owner of the body to be miserable forever. That’s why I came here with the intention of forgiving and helping her, even though her circumstances were too difficult.

But I feel intense anger right now.

When I thought about why I was angry, it was because I thought of him, who had a hard life as an orphan and eventually turned his back on life under the weight of the world.

The world did not show him even a single bit of mercy. He was thrown onto the street without even being registered as a child. Without even the most basic protection, he was swept away by the light waves that he should have passed through, and eventually closed his eyes.

But now, here comes a wealthy mother who wants forgiveness and reconciliation for very personal reasons.

“Don’t contact me again.”

“Wait a minute. Your dad. Don’t you want to know who your dad is?”

She looks at me with longing eyes, as if she’s holding on to the last thread. Was she thinking of trying to mend her relationship with him through me?

“What’s the big deal? The three of us can just keep living the way we always have.

“If Ms. Seong Yeon-ju has any feelings for that person, do it yourself. Don’t involve me.”

Maybe it’s because I’ve met a lot of good people lately, but my vigilance toward people has become weaker. There probably aren’t many people who know better than I do that there are plenty of evil people in the world.

I want to wash this feeling away quickly.

As soon as I got out the door, I called Joohee.

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