Chapter 3

9 years ago

“Hey, Yiseo! I heard you’re a bastard.”

At the malicious tone, the whole classroom froze.

The students who had been chattering all turned to look at Yiseo, sitting in the front of the classroom.

“Bastard? Really?” they whispered.

“Wow!”

“I knew something was off about her. It was weird how all the boys fawn over her.”

“Why? Because she looks like she’ll give it up easily?”

“You can’t just say that!”

The spiteful giggles rang around the room.

Yiseo did not react. She was used to the jealousy from a young age. It had become worse since she started at this prestigious high school.

Trouble started when she was given a full year’s scholarship for her top grades. Her classmates could not stand someone who was obviously below their level being number 1.

Those who expressed their displeasure picked on the fact that she was poor and that she lived with just her mother. At first, she was angry and upset but now, she found it funny how the insults never varied.

“Says who?” Yiseo calmly walked up to the girl. Yiseo recognized her as the one who had expressed her crush to the boy that had been following Yiseo around and had gotten rejected.

“Hmmm… where did I hear it from? I think I just heard it on the streets.”

It was a blatant lie. Pathetic.

“Really?” Then you must know this as well…” Yiseo started.

She took a step closer to the girl.

“I heard that your mother is cheating on your father with the real estate broker.”

“Have you lost your mind?! Who said that!”

The girl’s cheeks flushed in an instant. Seeing the fury replace the smirking attitude on her face, Yiseo grinned and forced herself to hold it in.

“I heard it too…on the streets, like you.”

“You…!” The girl struggled to find the words as she glared.

Unfortunately, it was true that the girl’s mother was having an affair with the real estate broker. Yiseo overheard the gossip at the dry cleaners from the big-mouthed owner.

“I heard some other stuff too. If you don’t know, I can tell you.”

The tables had turned a while ago. Seeing everyone’s attention and whisperings about her, the girl’s eyes twitched in anger.

“I’m curious, though. Are you going to choose to live with your mother or your father?” Yiseo asked.

The girl’s eyes teared up. Seeing her shaking in rage, Yiseo gave her final blow.

“Or not. You might have a new father soon.”

“You crazy bitch!” The girl grabbed Yiseo’s hair, and they both fell to the floor of the classroom. The other students ran forward to pull them apart.

But the girl had already flipped out. With tears streaming down her face, she ruthlessly shook Yiseo’s head.

“How dare you! What do you know?! Who do you think you are!”

That’s exactly what Yiseo wanted to say. What did they know, who did they think they were to judge her and her mother?

She had always wanted to ask them. Why were they so jealous, feel so inferior, when they had so much more than her. What did she or her mother do so wrong that they had to endure such prejudice?

The more they attacked her, Yiseo held her head higher. The more they tried to keep her down, the more she put all her effort into her studies and her looks.

“My mother told me. Your mother had an affair with a married man and had you. Doesn’t that explain everything? Your mother was a whor… Ah!”

Yiseo, who had been taking the blows without much resistance, suddenly grabbed the girl’s hair fiercely. The two girls, clasped together, went in circles, sweeping around the classroom floor.

Yiseo finally climbed on top of the girl and swept up her messed-up hair as she looked down.

“Say that again,” Yiseo growled.

The girl froze. Yiseo’s eyes were wet with tears.

***

“Look at your face!”

Yiseo felt a stinging sensation. Joung Wha was applying disinfectant, looking upset.

Seeing her mother’s expression, she pouted lightly and said, “At least I hit her harder.”

“You should be so proud! And you have such sensitive skin. You are unbelievable!”

When Joung Wha came home late from work and saw her daughter’s messed-up face, she fell to the floor, her face ashen. Yiseo had no choice but to tell her mother what had happened in school today.

“Mom.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry for disappointing you.” Yiseo hugged her mother’s waist, crestfallen. She hated letting her mother down.

“Look at me.”

Her soft hands wrapped around Yiseo’s face. Her mother’s brown eyes were so deep and clear. Sometimes, when she looked into her mother’s eyes, she felt like she would cry.

Her mother had led a life full of ups and downs. It would’ve been so easy for her to resent the world, but those eyes were so excessively innocent that it made Yiseo’s heart ache.

“I’m fine,” Joung Wha said with a smile and put her forehead to Yiseo’s. She felt her mother’s warm breath on her face.

“So, I don’t want you to be hurt because of me. What did I say? Even if others insult you, if you just dust it off…”

“Then, it becomes nothing.”

“Right, it’s nothing,” her mother finished her sentence.

Liar.

Yiseo knew that her mother wasn’t fine.

It had taken a lot of hard labor and time to even afford this single room. And the burden of it fell upon Joung Wha’s shoulders as if it was the obvious course of nature. Yiseo tried many times to convince her mother that they should share the burden, but Joung Wha flatly refused.

“How about we eat out this weekend?”

“Eat out?”

But the rent was due soon.

Joung Wha softly stroked the head of her hesitant daughter. “The owner of the dry cleaner store introduced me to a weekend gig. It pays 200,000 won ($200)! I saved up around 700,000 won ($700) so it will be enough for the rent.”

If Joung Wha had any joy in her life, it would be her daughter, Yiseo.

She endured the difficult times, watching her daughter grow up. Therefore, the only thing Yiseo could do for her mother was make her proud.

As she waited for the fun weekend to start, she was studying hard in the evening when there was a loud knock on her door.

Someone was banging as if to break down the metal door.

Surprised, Yiseo quickly turned the knob. The sweaty face of the dry cleaner owner appeared.

“Yiseo! There’s been an accident!”

“What is it?”

“Your mother…!”

A sense of foreboding overcame her. Shoving her feet into her sneakers, she rushed out with the man, and he led her to the emergency room.

“Mom…?”

She looked disbelievingly at the woman.

Her mother had left that morning, promising to return early but instead, she was lying there breathing through an oxygen mask.

“A crazy person set fire to the building and Joung Wha…“

The man couldn’t finish his sentence in despair and stood with tears streaming down his face.

They said it was an arsonist. He did it because he felt disrespected by the owner while he was drunk. It was an act of revenge out of anger.

But why did it have to be my mom? Why did she have to be the one that got harmed?

Yiseo felt an indescribable anger rise inside her, but when she saw her mother’s soot-covered face, she felt the tears well up. She refused to cry. As always, she stubbornly held it all in.

Like her mother said, if you thought it was nothing, then it became nothing.

From then on, Yiseo put her studies aside and started to take on any part-time jobs that she could. But there was a limit to the amount a nineteen-year-old could make to pay for the rent and hospital bills.

Day by day, Yiseo grew more gaunt. The one uniform she had for school grew creased and her white sneakers were stained from all the smoke she encountered at her BBQ restaurant job.

“Yiseo?”

One day, she was sitting in the lobby of the hospital in exhaustion when a tall man approached her with a smile.

“Jae Han?”

“It is you!”

Jae Han was someone she had grown up with at the orphanage.

He had taught her how to read and would sometimes even make her food.

But someone had come to sponsor him, and they had tearfully said their goodbyes.

“What’s wrong?” Jae Han asked with a worried expression.

Her head was bent low. Compared to his neat outfit, she was a mess. She found her dirty T-shirt unbearably embarrassing.

Jae Han didn’t rush her. Instead, he sat down to calmly listen to her situation.

A few days later, she was standing in front of a huge estate she had only seen on television.

“I told my sponsor, and they said you can stay with us until you get into college.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but I have to go away for training for a while, so I won’t be able to stay with you. Will you be all right without me?”

She thought that if there was a God, it was Jae Han.

He was Yiseo’s salvation and her only hope to endure this reality.

To repay his kindness, she helped out with the household chores whenever she could. Even though the head of the housekeepers, Mrs. Kang, told her that not doing anything was helping, Yiseo woke up early every morning and hovered over her. Mrs. Kang finally gave in and accepted Yiseo’s help.

“Will you go place this in the young master’s suite on the second floor?”

Mrs. Kang had been unusually busy since the morning and held out a candle to Yiseo, who had been cleaning the marble staircase.

“The young master’s suite?”

“Didn’t you know? The young master is coming home today. He’s very particular and very sensitive to scent. Hopefully, this will help him sleep at least three hours.”

There was a room that was cleaned every day even though no one used it. Thinking that was the room she was talking about, Yiseo headed upstairs. As soon as she opened the door, she saw the antique-patterned walls and the high ceilings.

Contemplating where she should place the candle, she walked over to the bedside table. Setting it down, she sat on the edge of the bed and looked around.

What would it feel like to sleep in a room like this?

Sometimes, when she looked out at this vast estate, she felt very empty. Like the sky she couldn’t touch, a deep sense of distance between her reality and theirs pressed down on her shoulders.

Perhaps because she had woken up extra early the past few days, the sunlight from the clear autumn sky made her feel drowsy. She felt the tension leave her and her eyes close. Her back slid down onto the bed.

Normally, she would’ve never done such a thing. But she couldn’t have imagined the catastrophe this moment of weakness was going to bring.

When she opened her eyes, it was dark. A man was looking down at her. Realizing his presence, Yiseo froze and moved back.

He was just in sweatpants. At his wet hair and his firm build, her eyes wavered.

Just then, he spoke.