An Inspector Koo fic.
First published January 2023.
Je-hui x Kyung-yi, 300 words.
Everyone imagines some sort of backstory when they find out Je-hui is a solo mum. The father died tragically, perhaps. Or he was a scumbag who ran off with another woman. Or Je-hui was the other woman, only he didn’t want to run off with her even if she did bear his child.
No-one looks at Je-hui and thinks whoopsie on a one-night stand. If she hadn’t been so embarrassed about it, perhaps she would have told Kyung-yi then. Perhaps she wouldn’t be listening to Kyung-yi’s accusations now.
Or maybe she’d still stand accused. Because Koo Kyung-yi had to suspect everything and everyone, never mind how it hurt the people who loved her.
Maybe if she had been able to admit she loved Kyung-yi then, Je-hui wouldn’t have to hear this accusation now. But Je-hui was never going to make that confession then, not to her senior, a married woman with a beloved husband.
And Je-hui was never going to make that confession now. Because it had hurt her too, seeing Kyung-yi fall apart. And she was older now, and tired of trying to hold it all together.
Tired of holding Kyung-yi together too, if all it amounted to was this. Was Kyung-yi not trusting her. Was Kyung-yi thinking Je-hui could have betrayed her like that; that Je-hui had done anything to deserve an accusation like she had made. Je-hui would never have betrayed Kyung-yi’s trust like that.
But it was hard to keep being trustworthy, when you weren’t trusted.
Hard to love too.
If Kyung-yi hadn’t fallen apart so badly, perhaps things could have been different. Perhaps Na Na’s life would be different now too.
But Kyung-yi had fallen apart, and Je-hui could only do so much to hold her together.
Not enough.
Not enough for either of them.