Gave Too Much Room

Gave Too Much Room
My grandfather watched me with the particular patience of a man who had outlived most of his problems and expected to outlive the rest. He was seventy-three and looked sixty. Sharp eyes, silver hair, the kind of stillness that came not from calm but from decades of knowing exactly how much energy a situation deserved.

He had come back from Japan two weeks ago. Before that, a state function in Seoul. Before that, somewhere in Switzerland that he'd described in three words when I asked. We did not have the kind of relationship that required more than three words only on specific days. He had taken me in after my parents died, handed me to my uncle to be shaped into something useful, watched from a careful distance as that shaping happened, and stepped forward only when he felt it necessary.

It was necessary now, apparently.

"How was Japan?" I said.

"Productive." He picked up his tea. "The Matsuda group sends their regards. Their youngest son asked about you. He wanted to have a golf weekend with you."

The thought on sitting on a flight sent shivers down my spine.

"Tell him I'm busy."

"I did." A pause. "I told him you were occupied with personal matters."

I looked at him.

He looked back, unhurried, and set his cup down. "Which brings me to why I'm sitting in your chair, Nathan."

The door opened. Jessica entered with my coffee, set it on the desk with both hands, and bowed slightly before withdrawing. My grandfather's eyes followed her to the door.

"Even your assistant is appropriate as a partner," he said, once the door had closed. "Capable. Presentable. And can bring the idea of an office romance or whatever the kids are into these days."

"She works for me."

"Many things start that way." He waved a hand, dismissing his own point before I could. "That's not what I'm here about. I'm here about the woman in the photograph."

I lifted my coffee.

"Dr. Park Soo-jin," he continued, "called her mother, who called your grandmother, who called me before I had finished breakfast. Apparently the sit-down did not go as intended."

"It went exactly as intended."

"For you, perhaps." His eyes were steady. "Soo-jin is a good woman, Nathan. Accomplished. Her family is clean, her reputation is clean, she understands discretion. She was a reasonable option and you disposed of her with — from what I understand — considerable theatre."

I said nothing.

"Before her there was the Lee girl. Before that, Chairman Yoon's niece. Before that—" he paused, "—I stopped counting." He folded his hands on the desk. "I am not unreasonable. I do not expect you to marry someone you find intolerable. But you have rejected every option placed in front of you for three years, and now I am told there is a photograph."

"It was paparazzi."

"I have eyes, Nathan. I've seen the photograph." Something shifted in his expression — not quite displeasure, not quite curiosity. Something between them. "She is not known. Not to our circles, not to any family of standing, not to anyone in this world whose name carries power." He paused. "And yet there you are, in broad daylight, giving the press exactly what they've been waiting for."

I took a sip of my coffee.

"Her name is Lilly Quinn," I said. "She was raised abroad. Private background. Family is deceased. She keeps to herself."

"A nobody," my grandfather said. Not cruelly. Just plainly, the way men of his generation stated facts they found inconvenient. "You have turned away doctors, diplomats' daughters, the heir to the Shin group– a woman with three languages and a medical license– and you are standing in a street with a nobody whose background cannot be verified by anyone I have spoken to in the last two hours."

"You had her looked into already?"

"Of course I did." He picked up his tea again. "Nothing came back. Which is either very innocent or very deliberate." His eyes didn't move from mine. "Nathan. The people who killed your parents have not been found. Your uncle has been managing threats for years that you are only now beginning to understand the full shape of. And you are letting a woman with no traceable history into your proximity." He set the cup down. "What if she was sent? What if the same people who took your father and mother from you — what if they sent her?"

The office was quiet.

Outside, forty-seven floors down, the city moved without caring about any of this.

I thought about grey eyes. About a woman who had unbuckled her seatbelt rather than stay in a space I controlled. About the way she'd walked away from my car without looking back, spine straight, hands shaking, and still somehow the most self-possessed person I'd encountered in years.

I thought about how she'd tasted like cinnamon and warm coffee — sweet but not soft, the kind of warmth that settles somewhere in your chest before you realize you've let it in.

I set my cup down.

"It was love at first sight," I said.

My grandfather stared at me.

I held his gaze, expression completely even.

My grandfather continued to stare at me without any emotions written on his face.

The silence ran long enough that I heard the faint sound of traffic forty-seven floors below.

Then he spoke, sharp and disbelieving, the language he only reached for when English felt insufficient for his feelings:

"First sight? Niga jigeum mwo rago haneun geoya?"

(First sight? What are you saying right now?)

I said nothing.

He looked at me the way he had looked at me when I was eleven years old and told him I didn't need tutoring anymore because I'd already finished the curriculum.

Like I was something he had built himself and occasionally deeply regretted.

He was seventy-three, but he carried himself like age was something he refused to give in to. His steps were slow but firm, his hand resting on his walking stick as he walked around the desk. He stopped in front of me, looking down, and for a second, the room shifted.

He wasn’t Chairman Kang.

Just an old man. And I wasn’t who I’d become. Just the boy he’d taken in when there was no one else.

Then, slowly, he stood.

"Neo gateun saram-i eobseosseumyeon," he said quietly. "I geol-ro daelyeo ddaeryeosseul geoya."
(If you were not my grandson, I would have hit you with this.)

He lifted the walking stick slightly. Set it back down.

"But we spoiled you," he continued, switching back to English, his voice losing none of its weight. "Your grandmother and I. We wanted the best for you. After everything you lost—" he stopped. Just briefly. "We gave you too much room. I see that now."