Her Stutters And Mumbles // P.J.M (#23)

39

Jungwoo

I eyed my father as he eats his dinner smiling his way towards the person that he invited for our dinner, I seriously have no idea why he had to invite Jung HoSeok to our dinner when it is only supposed to be the two of us. I just knew that my father had an intention to only have dinner with me and not with his wife and legitimate daughter, he wouldn't have dinner with just me alone.

He may not have told me that he feels blessed to have two daughters around the same age, but I do think that he feels embarrassed and guilty having me as a daughter, the daughter that he didn't have with his wife but a different woman that he had an affair with. Because I am born from wedlock and my mother didn't intend to have me but because she didn't have a choice to, she wasn't rich and she didn't have the ability and the money to get rid of me when she first found out that she was pregnant with me.

But she really loved my father even though she clearly knew that she will never become his legally married wife and she will be forever known as the woman that broke up their marriage if my mother chooses to expose herself of the affair, and she didn't do that. She decided to resign from her position as soon as she found out that she was pregnant, she didn't allow anyone to know about it, not even my own father knew about it until my mother passed away a decade later because of an incurable disease.

That was when she made me appear in front of the world not as the daughter of Lee NaRae, the legendary servant that the Go family had at one time but as the other daughter of Go DongMan, the CEO of the matchmaking company franchise and the head of the Go family. She had no choice but to let my father know that I exist and she had left me for him to take care of me, it is sort of a last-minute decision and my mother didn't really have much time to think through it before she passed away and I lost my mother at the age of 10.

And that year, I was told to report to the Go family's mansion and appear in front of them as the other daughter that my father never knew about and everyone was shocked and embarrassed about this, they have never expected that the family guy, the friendly and caring father of Go Jiwoo would have another daughter outside of his marriage and wanting him to take her in as per her mother's request before she passed on.

Jiwoo's mother who is also my stepmother almost wanted to divorce my father when she found out about it, but she didn't do that when my father begged hard for her not to do that. And he knew that he had to hold onto Go Jiwoo's mother because she is the only daughter of a well-known restaurant chain and divorcing her would mean that everything that my father will be taken away and he will be a nobody with a lovechild that he had with his servant, he did that so that he would be saved but it would also mean that I will be kept hidden for the rest of my life and never to be revealed to the public as his other daughter, everyone in the industry only knows Go Jiwoo exists in the public and I exist in the shadows.

He is embarrassed that I had existed in his life and he tried hard to hide me away from anyone else and he did it, I managed to hide the secret that I am his daughter and even though Jisoo and Taehyung knew that I am Go Jiwoo's half-sister, they promised to keep mum about it in order to protect me and my family, most importantly my father's entire career.

If anyone were to know that I am his daughter, I would get kicked out of the household and I can't return back to the Go family for the rest of my life and I wouldn't be able to use the surname or to even mention it to anyone else. He is that embarrassed that he wouldn't even want to associate himself with me because he is afraid that people that admire him a lot might look down on him once they found out that he cheated on his wife when she was still pregnant.

But what I don't understand is that why is he trying to show me to the public when he tried so hard to hide me for the past 20 years of my life? I know that I might be a little smarter than his original daughter but I am not the daughter that he can show off to the others, I am the replacement daughter and I am not important to him at all. I don't understand why he is doing that right now when all he wanted is to hide me from everyone because he did an embarrassing thing in his youth and he wanted to hide it as much as possible.

And so I asked my father about it after we were done with dinner and I went into his study that only I have gotten access to get inside for some reason and the other two can't get in there. "You do know that dinner was 2 hours ago and it is almost dinner, if you have anything to ask me, you can let it till morning."

I licked my lips nervously. "Abeoji, I would like to know why I was chosen to help Jung HoSeok with his business. You tried to hide me so badly when I was younger and now you are wanting to show me to the public that I am the other daughter that no one knew about."

"Jungwoo, I did that for a reason. And I wasn't embarrassed that you are not Jiwoo's biological sister, you are very precious and you seem so much like your mother. You are too capable and I don't want anyone to overuse your talents and so I decided to hide you from the public and now I want you to be my successor when I retire, your sister doesn't have the ability to do that. Only you could make me proud, JungWoo." I cried the entire night because I was so touched and that I was being acknowledged by my father for the first time ever.