I snatch my hand back. “Ashamed? Why would I be ashamed? I’m not the one who abandoned their kid. I’m the one who grew up—”

“In a nice home that Choi Wansu paid for,” Bomi interrupts. “She did not abandon you all your life. She has provided for you. She paid for your home, your schooling. You have had everything because of her. Choi Wansu is a good woman. Very good.” She leans across the table to Yujun. “Tell Hara how good a woman your eomeonim is.”

“Don’t fucking say a word.” I glare at him.

Yujun appears too stunned to speak anyway. How could Wansu have sat in front of me this morning and divulged none of this? She is michinyeon, a crazy bitch. I want to go up to the mountains, invade that sanctuary of hers, and throw paint on her white marble, slap her face, scream at her, shake her until she breaks down and admits that she’s a horrible, horrible liar. And Ellen. How could she? How could she let me come all the way here, run around this city, and tell me nothing? How could she text me and ask me if I was getting along okay? Of course I wasn’t getting along okay! I shove a fist in my mouth and bite down with shaking teeth to keep the anger inside.

“I need to leave. I can’t breathe in here.” I feel so small right now. If I could, I would pull my shirt over my head and hide. I don’t know how my life came to this—how the people I loved and trusted have all betrayed me in big and small ways.

“Okay.” Yujun’s chair scrapes against the tile as he stands. He fishes his wallet out and lays some bills on the table. “Take care of this, will you?”

“Yes,” Ahn Sangki answers. “Go. I will see her home, too.”

“Wait.” Bomi grabs the bottom of my shirt. “Promise that you won’t say anything to anyone. If you tell someone, your roommates, anyone, it could get to the internet and it would ruin IF Group.”

“No, it won’t,” Yujun cuts in tersely.

“Yes, it will,” Bomi insists. “Sajangnim has been a recognizable champion of adoption rights and single motherhood. She has made a practice, a loud one, of hiring women who don’t have education or experience, who a major corporation would turn away. That she abandoned her own child, married a rich man, became famously wealthy herself, and did not seek out her own child? She would be ruined. The company would be ruined. The board will take the company away from her. They’ve hated her ever since—”

“Enough.” Yujun slaps his hand on the table. Heads turn and hands fly up to cover whispered observations.

Ahn Sangki tries to melt into his seat.

“Enough,” Yujun repeats, this time in a more moderate tone. He tries to smile at me, but it’s a grim stretch of his lips. “The only people who are responsible for the success of the IF Group are the people who work there, and at this table it is Choi Yujun and Kim Bomi. No one else.”