The Heirs

Chapter 10

He says they’re dating now, fully intending to date for real so that the lie isn’t a lie. She wonders if he’s just plain stupid not to have heard all the things she’s said up until now, but he doesn’t disagree that he’s dumb: “I like it when you’re angry and I like it when you’re smiling. I’d say that’s dumb.” Well I guess we agree on something.

She stops mincing her words and outright calls him a sheltered spoiled brat. She decides fine, they’ll date, and he’ll break his engagement and get kicked out of his house, and then they’ll see if he still says he likes her. She knows she’ll be the one who’s hurt and alone at the end of that story, but fine, they’ll date.

He only fixates on the dating part, but she douses him with a cold splash of reality: “Did you not know? If your mother finds out that we’re dating, my mom and I are on the street. So will you stop mouthing off about your first-world problems, young master?”

He asks if his sincerity means nothing to her, and decides that she’s right about them not being suited for one another then. He knows all the reasons she’s rejecting him and wounding his pride, “But I showed courage for you, and you won’t do a single thing for me.”

His words finally start to sink in, but he tells her that he’ll stop pestering then if that’s what she wants: “I thought you were a beautiful dream, but you’re a bad dream, Cha Eun-sang.” As soon as he walks away, she starts to cry.

The next morning Tan’s car passes Eun-sang on the way to school, and his driver asks if they should pick her up. Tan answers with his usual rhetorical questions, asking if it’s okay for them to ride together, and this time he’s the one to pass her by.

Eun-sang gets greeted at school by some girls who apologize and invite her over for study dates, now that they know her mom is loaded. She chooses to reject their offer and keep her head down.

Young-do saunters into class and asks Rachel if she’s ever been invited over to Tan’s house. It’s clear that she hasn’t, and Young-do starts to recount the amazing bit of news he encountered yesterday, when Tan interrupts him.

They get hauled off to finish their extra detention cleaning duties that they shirked the last time, and Eun-sang watches them from her class. Chan-young asks about her mom and the PTA meeting, and Eun-sang just says vaguely that someone else went in her place. Chan-young notes that she’s keeping an awful lot of secrets from him lately.

He asks if she had a fight with Tan, and she says she’s in the middle of running away from him. She heads up to the roof for a break, and shuts her eyes as she thinks of the kiss. When she opens them, Tan is staring right back at her.

He’s standing on the roof of the building opposite hers, which is a nice beat—they’re in the same place but so very far apart. She’s the first to break the gaze and run off.

Young-do finds her in the library and asks about her faux mom, knowing that mom in designer duds and multiple minimum-wage jobs doesn’t add up. She doesn’t give him a straight answer and snaps back at him to leave her alone so she can study, and he smiles at her sass. So today we’re sassy, apparently.

It’s time for midterms, and everyone puts in their best effort except for Bo-na who mostly doodles Chan-young’s name, and Young-do, who just marks all As down his test sheet.

Results go up, and Chan-young is first in his class as always, while Rachel takes second. Tan is in the middle of giving Chan-young a hard time, when the entire group chortles to see his name… at the very bottom. Ha. You tried, and somehow got a lower score than Young-do?

Eun-sang walks up to check her score, but Tan jumps to block her path. He spits out her score and succeeds in keeping her from seeing his embarrassing last-place finish, though I don’t see how you’re going to keep her from seeing the public announcement every time she walks by.