Chapter 221.2

Chapter 221.2

When she said the word, her throat tightened oddly. Tears fell from Daria’s eyes without warning.

The old woman tried to rise too quickly and wavered. Seoryeong reached out and steadied her. The woman felt almost weightless, carved down by time. Seoryeong asked, almost certain and wanting confirmation.

‘Daria… is he really Solzhenitsyn?’

The woman’s lips trembled as if she had something like a lump in her throat. Even without a direct answer, Seoryeong could guess. The Prime Minister’s Asian wife, people had said. The great age gap, they had whispered.

Daria clutched Seoryeong and muttered, “Yuri… Yuri…” as if losing herself. Even though Seoryeong could not have been the face the old woman had waited for her whole life, Daria could not look away, as if searching out some guilt to lay on her. Seoryeong swallowed the sudden heat in her throat and wiped the wet cheek with her hand.

There were so many things the woman wanted and needed to hear, but Seoryeong spoke first.

“She’s alive. The instructor, no… Yuri Solzhenitsyn survived that day at Winter Castle.”

Daria covered her mouth with trembling hands.

Seoryeong swallowed the flood of memories pressing through her mind, blinked, and then said the thing all their wandering had come around to.

“He met me.”

Seoryeong’s eyes shone with steady light as she looked straight ahead.

“He has very beautiful eyes. He’s amazing. Under the sky, his irises looked blue, and at sunset, they seemed red. He is the kindest, most wonderful person.”

“Really, that child… safely…”

Daria closed her eyes tight and gasped for breath. Suddenly. her rough, brittle hand gripped Seoryeong hard. The sound of waves felt oddly out of place in that moment.

Daria inhaled through the oxygen tube at her nose and breathed out a low, uncertain murmur, as if tracing some day from the past.

“I already know what Maxim did.”

For an instant, something strange moved in her dead eyes.

“Even when there was a loud noise, he told me, never, never slow down, never look back.”

Seoryeong found herself staring straight at Daria’s lips. What Maxim did? Not Rigay, but Maxim? The Prime Minister?

“And when I heard the explosion at Winter Castle, I knew what he had done. That merciless man. Not only did he kill his own child, but this time he even killed his grandson, surely.”

“….”

“I shook all over. It was so terrible that I couldn’t move a step. Children were running toward me that I should have saved, and I couldn’t go forward. And then I regretted it.”

“….”

“I thought then that running away was wrong. I should have killed Maxim. When my son died, I should have been killed with him.”

Her cold hands trembled. Seoryeong could not follow all of the woman’s jumbled words, but she understood one thing clearly: when Winter Castle exploded, Daria had been the one who spirited the Sakhalin children away.

Now it seemed Rigay had been nothing but a tool, a pawn. With his right hand he took the blast on himself, and with his left he had cleared the escape route. He had been Solzhenitsyn’s accomplice. Even that single fact made the hairs on her arms stand up.

‘Instructor, your grandmother is alive.’

‘She is here. She is alive.’

“At that time, Rigay, our son’s friend, he cried and said Yuri would be alive. He said that was one move Maxim had left behind. Only if we left Yuri in the wreckage could we get away.”

“…!”

“Honestly, I wanted to stab Rigay there too, for trying to save only his own child.”

Daria’s dry eyes met Seoryeong’s as if asking for absolution.

“But we had to choose quickly. Go back to the grandson, or leave with the children.”

“….”

“When we first lost my son and his wife, I hated my husband with everything I had. But when I had to hand over the grandson too, I just hated everyone. Hearing that explosion snapped me awake like from a dream.”

Daria drew a shallow breath, her face gone pale. She turned to stare wordlessly at the view outside the house, the paradise she had spent years building. A faint smile lingered on her lips, but old tears fell from the corners of her eyes.

“What I pushed for suddenly felt like hypocrisy. It made me sick. I hated myself more than I hated Maxim. I was the worst. Maybe I didn’t do it for the children. Maybe I wanted revenge on Maxim. Maybe my real wish was to sabotage him, to ruin him.”

“…!”

“I felt sick to my stomach at how despicable I was….”

Daria wrapped her thin abdomen as if the memory still hurt.

“Really, I should have gone to Yuri, to my own grandchild….”

As pieces of her past fell into place, Seoryeong clenched her fist. Maybe, deep down, Daria hadn’t wanted to save all the Winter Castle children. Maybe she had wanted to save just one. That thorny thought lodged like a splinter in Seoryeong’s hand.

The woman who had raised those children in peace was rotting inside.

“I abandoned Yuri.”

At that clear confession, Seoryeong lowered her head.

“Even knowing everything, would Yuri truly want to see a grandmother who never returned?”