Page 106 of Scarbound

“You know that because you exploit it.”

“Yes.”

Something in his mother’s face changed. Disgust. Fear. Perhaps both.

“You would really use something so vile to keep him?”

Chung-Hee looked down at his hands. For a moment, he seemed almost ashamed. Then his expression closed again.

“You have no idea what I’m willing to do to make sure he stays.”

“He is not yours.”

Chung-Hee slowly looked up. “No,” he said with strange calm. “He isn’t.”

Ms. Lee seemed surprised.

“He told me that.” Chung-Hee swallowed. “He belongs to himself.” His jaw tightened. “But knowing that doesn’t mean I know how to let him go.”

Ms. Lee stared at him. “Then learn.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then you will destroy him.”

His eyes shifted toward the bedroom. “Perhaps.”

“And yourself.”

Another silence.

Chung-Hee’s gaze hardened again. “If you forgive him, you’ll give him wings.”

Ms. Lee frowned.

“And if he realizes he can live without us…” His voice weakened for only a second. “Without me…” He stopped. Then whatever vulnerability had surfaced disappeared.

“If he flies, Mother, I don’t know what I’ll become.”

Chung-Hee leaned back in his chair. “If you ever forgive him and he chooses to leave me because of it, I will follow him to the ends of the earth.”

His eyes were cold now, but his voice was not. There was fear beneath it.

“Or we will fall together.”

Chung-Hee had always thought of himself as moral. Kind. Controlled. A man who solved problems rather than becoming one. Now he was asking his own mother to preserve another person’s guilt so he could keep him close.

“This isn’t love,” she whispered.

Chung-Hee’s gaze shifted once more toward the hallway. He thought of the painting. The café. Their first kiss. The fear in Noeul’s eyes. His own hands around him.

He looked back at his mother.

“I know.”

SESSION 18

Dr. Kim waited until Noeul stopped turning the ring around his neck before speaking. “You’ve talked a lot about Gong hurting other people.”