Episode 5. I Found Out My Daughter’s Secret (4)
The three men spent nearly three hours drinking.
As soon as they left the bar they went to for the first round, Jung Eun-seo, seemingly in a good mood, raised his voice and suggested to his two friends.
“Shall we go for a second round? I’ll treat for the second round! Let me search if there’s a good bar nearby······.”
Oh Myung-woon exclaimed in admiration, watching Jung Eun-seo search for a bar first.
“Wow. A friend who earns good money is indeed different. When we talk about a second round, we look for an izakaya or a draft beer place, not a bar.”
“We should at least drink some whiskey at a bar. Don’t you think?”
Jung Eun-seo said bravely, reiterating his suggestion for a second round to the two.
Oh Myung-woon seemed inclined to go along, nodding his head immediately without hesitation.
“Let’s do that. It’s a waste of time to go home n-······.”
But at that moment.
Kang Dae-oh cut Oh Myung-woon off mid-sentence.
“Sorry, Eun-seo. Myung-woon and I have something to do.”
Oh Myung-woon tilted his head, saying he was hearing this for the first time.
“We do? We have something to do?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of work? We even closed the store and came out, what could there possibly be to worry about······.”
It would be one thing if they had just come out for a quick drink while their store was open.
But since they had completely closed for business, there was no way anything could be left that could be called ‘work’.
Nevertheless, Kang Dae-oh did not back down.
“Sorry, Eun-seo. I’ll contact you again later.”
“Really? If you have something to do, well······ there’s nothing we can do. Alright. Make sure to contact me. I have plenty of time.”
Oh Myung-woon chuckled at that and asked.
“Hey. A guy who’s busy with business says he has plenty of time?”
For a moment, Jung Eun-seo flinched slightly.
Kang Dae-oh didn’t miss his reaction.
His bewildered expression was only momentary.
Jung Eun-seo successfully returned his expression to normal as if nothing had happened.
“It’s true I’m busy. But for the sake of my precious classmates, I must always be free. That way, if anything happens, I can rush over and help. Don’t you think?”
“You rascal. Your loyalty is amazing. Thanks, man.”
“No, I should be thanking you.”
What exactly was he thankful for?
Kang Dae-oh felt endless suspicion internally, but he didn’t voice it.
He thought that now, with Jung Eun-seo in front of him, was not the time.
After parting ways with Jung Eun-seo first.
Kang Dae-oh pointed towards his store and said to Oh Myung-woon.
“Let’s buy some alcohol and snacks at the convenience store, then go to my shop for a simple second round drink.”
“Huh? Hey, you said you had something to do. You don’t mean that ‘something to do’ was ‘drinking’?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it would be good to drink with Eun-seo, wouldn’t it? He even brought up the investment topic with us in mind, even though it was difficult. He said it was a top-secret, didn’t he?”
Oh Myung-woon believed Jung Eun-seo’s words implicitly.
He couldn’t help but believe him because Jung Eun-seo was so persuasive with his words.
If Kang Dae-oh hadn’t heard about the future from his daughter.
‘Perhaps I would have been saying the same thing as Myung-woon now.’
As this thought reached him, Kang Dae-oh shivered from a momentary dizziness.
Oh Myung-woon reacted with even more incomprehension at his friend’s behavior.
“Do you need to pee?”
“No, it’s not that. Anyway, let’s go. I’ll explain the details later.”
Thus, Kang Dae-oh took Oh Myung-woon and walked away.
To tell him that he shouldn’t get close to Jung Eun-seo.
Just past 10:30 PM.
Ding-a-ling!
As soon as he opened the front door, an astonishing sight unfolded before Kang Dae-oh’s eyes.
“Yera, you were still awake?”
The living room, the baby’s room. All the lights were on.
Dark circles were deeply set under Min Seung-yeon’s eyes.
“She was struggling so much not to sleep today. I don’t know why she’s acting like this when she usually doesn’t.”
She even took her temperature, wondering if she was sick, but.
Kang Yera was excessively normal.
Her eyes were full of sleepiness, yet Kang Yera forced herself to stay awake, trying not to fall asleep.
As soon as she saw her dad, Kang Yera’s heavy eyelids felt light.
“Appa! Appaa―!”
Kang Yera eagerly sought Kang Dae-oh, as if she had something important to tell him.
Min Seung-yeon immediately realized that her daughter had been waiting for her dad to come home from work.
“That’s strange. Yera isn’t the type to fuss and tell you not to go when you leave for work. Why is she like this today?”
Unlike Min Seung-yeon, who was baffled, Kang Dae-oh seemed to understand.
“Honey. Are you done with everything?”
“No. I still have dishes left.”
“You couldn’t do them because you were taking care of Yera, right? I’ll watch Yera, so go do the dishes.”
“Alright. Yera, be good with Dad. Okay?”
Min Seung-yeon stroked Kang Yera’s small head several times.
Thanks to her husband returning earlier than expected despite having a drinking appointment, Min Seung-yeon was finally freed from the hell of childcare.
However, the next hellish zone, dishwashing, awaited her.
Kang Dae-oh subtly lifted himself and roughly estimated the amount of dishes with his eyes.
‘That much would take about······ 10 minutes.’
Kang Dae-oh gave a short nod, then secretly handed Kang Yera a ballpoint pen and a small notebook.
Then, as if she had been waiting, Kang Yera quickly began writing something down.
[Appa, that person Jung Eun-seo, he’s a swindler!!!]
She emphasized and re-emphasized that he shouldn’t be trusted, using no less than three exclamation marks.
She should have told him this earlier. But being a baby, it wasn’t easy to convey words to her dad.
Her young daughter’s eyes, full of immense worry as she looked at her dad, seemed both cute and admirable.
Kang Dae-oh grinned and reassured Kang Yera in a tone that told her not to worry.
“Appa already knew everything.”
“······?”
“That Eun-seo is a coin swindler.”
He also fully understood how he had intended to deceive Kang Dae-oh and Oh Myung-woon.
Kang Yera wondered how Kang Dae-oh had seen through Jung Eun-seo’s intentions.
Because in her previous life, Kang Dae-oh had been swindled by Jung Eun-seo.
If Kang Yera hadn’t stopped him, the same future would surely have repeated itself.
She wondered what had awakened Kang Dae-oh.
Kang Dae-oh said it was a simple matter and revealed his secret.
“Yera, you told me, didn’t you? That you and your mom separated because of financial problems. Remember?”
Kang Yera nodded her head repeatedly.
It wasn’t long ago. It was what she had told Kang Dae-oh just yesterday.
“So I thought. If I had really seized such an opportunity, as Eun-seo said, with principal guaranteed and an expected return rate of 500 percent, I wouldn’t have been caught up in money problems. Then there would have been no way I would have divorced your mom, right? Don’t you think?”
After such contemplation, Kang Dae-oh came to the conclusion that what Jung Eun-seo said was a lie.
It was all thanks to the information about the future that Kang Yera had told him.
“Thank you, my daughter. The TwoSet franchise contract last time, and now this. My daughter has saved her dad multiple times.”
Kang Yera picked up the ballpoint pen again and quickly wrote down her thoughts in the notebook.
[It’s just that various bad timings and circumstances overlapped for Appa, but I don’t think Appa is an incompetent person.]
[It’s the same now, isn’t it? You realized it was a scam on your own, even without me telling you.]
Was it because of his daughter’s words, trusting her dad?
Kang Dae-oh felt a pang in his heart.
For this story to have a heartwarming conclusion, it shouldn’t end here.
“Yera. Do you know anything about Eun-seo? For example······ if he has a prior record of fraud, not just this time?”
[Why is that?]
“Thanks to you telling me, I knew in advance that Eun-seo was going to contact our classmates and try to swindle them. But those friends don’t know this. So I want to present concrete evidence and tell them in advance not to get close to that Eun-seo guy.”
Kang Dae-oh had no intention of being complacent just because he himself was safe.
Because he was worried about Oh Myung-woon and his other friends, he decided to ask Yera for additional help.
Kang Yera wrote again.
[I vaguely remember hearing that he had several prior fraud convictions.]
“Really? Alright. That’s enough to tell me. I’ll investigate the rest on my own, collect evidence, and show it to our friends.”
It took Kang Dae-oh quite some time to tell Oh Myung-woon that Jung Eun-seo was a swindler and persuade him not to get close to him.
Because there was no evidence.
So Kang Dae-oh decided to secure concrete evidence that would prove Jung Eun-seo was a swindler.
‘With this, Myung-woon won’t be able to say no, right?’
While he was organizing his thoughts.
Min Seung-yeon, who had finished the dishes and returned, asked Kang Dae-oh.
“What were you talking about with Yera?”
Kang Dae-oh and Kang Yera exchanged glances.
Then, Kang Dae-oh replied.
“We were just talking about how the world works.”
A few days later.
Inside Kang Dae-oh’s store, Oh Myung-woon, with an extremely agitated expression, held his smartphone and hurled harsh curses at Jung Eun-seo, who was on the other end of the call.
“Hey, you damn bastard! We met after a long time, calling ourselves friends. What? You tried to swindle us? Are you a crazy son of a b*tch? Huh? That’s not how you live life. Damn, Dae-oh checked, and you have a record of······ how many convictions did he say?”
Kang Dae-oh spread his fingers with a bitter smile.
As soon as he saw the number 7, Oh Myung-woon shouted at Jung Eun-seo again.
“A seven-time convicted bastard is just living lavishly off other people’s money and acting like a damn maniac! Huh? You said all that money belongs to the victims! Damn it, I’ll put you in jail no matter what. Just you wait!”
Click.
Oh Myung-woon, who hung up the phone without even listening to Jung Eun-seo’s words, seemed unable to calm down his excitement and kept huffing and puffing.
Kang Dae-oh handed him the cold water he had prepared in advance.
“Calm down a bit.”
“······Thanks, Dae-oh. For the water, and also for telling me in advance that there were signs that that bastard Jung Eun-seo was trying to swindle me. Thank you for everything.”
“We’re friends. You contacted the other guys too, right?”
“Yeah. After seeing what you investigated, the guys said they’re cutting off contact with Jung Eun-seo. We also decided to find out together if any of our classmates were defrauded by him. If there are, we’ll go to court.”
Oh Myung-woon, who had finally calmed down thanks to the cold water Kang Dae-oh gave him, looked at him with a curious expression.
“But Dae-oh. How did you figure out so quickly that that bastard was trying to swindle us?”
“Someone tipped me off.”
“Huh? Who?”
He couldn’t say that it was his reincarnated daughter······.
Instead, he made up another excuse.
“Should I call her our family’s guardian angel from the future?”
“······???”
Oh Myung-woon couldn’t understand what Kang Dae-oh was talking about at all.
