Eunji lay awake in her expansive, sterile bedroom, staring at the ceiling. The cool, moonlit glow of the night reflected off the marble floors, and the silence of the mansion felt suffocating. It was the kind of silence that made her feel more alone than she had ever been before, even though she was surrounded by staff, tutors, and the echoes of distant footsteps.

The thought of going home—if she could even call it that—was impossible. The house in South Korea, where she had lived with Jihoon and Hyesoo, no longer felt like a sanctuary. It was a facade, a distant memory that no longer belonged to her. How could it, when it had never been her real home? How could she ever return to the people who had never been her true family, when she had learned that nothing about her life had been real? Her mind twisted in knots, a storm of conflicting thoughts crashing against each other, each one more painful than the last.

This isn’t my home.

It wasn’t even the mansion in Tokyo that was her home. She had no home.

Hiroto had taken everything from her without meaning to. The truth. Her family. Her freedom.

But how could she blame him? How could she hate the man who had given her everything? Hiroto had made her into something beautiful, something flawless, something the world could admire and envy. He had made her perfect. Yet, in his pursuit of perfection, he had forgotten that she was still a person. He had forgotten that she was still his daughter, the little girl he had once held in his arms.

And now, she was nothing more than a polished object—an accessory to his legacy, a trophy of his ambition.

She had been molded, shaped, forced into this shell of who she was supposed to be, and she hated herself for it.

She rolled out of bed, the cold floor a stark contrast to the warmth of the bed she had been trying to escape for hours. She needed to punish herself. She needed to erase the shame, to forget the truth.

Her reflection in the mirror stared back at her with the same flawless face, the same perfect body that she had worked so hard to achieve. There was nothing wrong with it. No, it was more than perfect—it was everything she had ever been told to be. Yet, she could no longer bear to look at it.

She was supposed to feel proud, supposed to feel grateful, but instead, she felt disgusted. Every time she looked at herself, all she saw was the girl who had been broken and remade by the cruel hands of fate. She wasn’t human anymore. She was an object. A thing. A pretty, silent thing.

She walked over to the vanity, her hands trembling as she opened the drawer. Inside, there were needles and sharp objects, remnants of her obsession with perfection. She had always pushed herself harder than anyone else. She had worked through the pain of every rigorous training session, through the emotional torment of feeling like a stranger in her own skin. The surgeries, the skin treatments, the countless hours spent at the modeling school—all of it had been to make herself perfect, to forget who she had been before. To forget that there was a truth buried deep inside her.

But it hadn’t worked. It never did.

She picked up a small needle, staring at it for a long time. Her pulse quickened as the thoughts swirled in her mind. She had always been taught that perfection was the key to escaping her misery. If she could just become flawless enough, if she could just mold herself into something beyond reach, then maybe, just maybe, she could bury the pain that was clawing at her insides.

But it never worked. And now, standing there in front of the mirror, all she felt was an overwhelming emptiness.

The next few weeks were a blur. Eunji continued to lose herself in the relentless pursuit of perfection, each day a series of practices, treatments, and rehearsals. She was so focused on becoming flawless that she forgot what it felt like to be a person, to have feelings that didn’t revolve around how she looked or how she performed.

At school, she had become the star pupil—the model student who spoke flawless Japanese, who could speak with eloquence and charm, who had the perfect grades and the perfect image. Her classmates admired her from a distance, her tutors praised her progress, and Hiroto watched from the sidelines, pleased with the success of his little project.

But every time she passed a mirror, her reflection reminded her of the truth.

She had become everything Hiroto wanted, everything her family had wanted—but nothing she had wanted. She had let them mold her into something unrecognizable, and in doing so, she had lost herself entirely.

She avoided them all now. Hiroto, Jihoon, Hyesoo—they were all strangers to her. Hiroto’s love had come with too many conditions, too many strings attached. His “care” had shaped her into a person she couldn’t recognize, someone who didn’t belong to herself anymore.

There were no more family dinners. No more visits to the park. No more memories of the life she once had. She would never go back. There was nothing to return to.

She had become the ideal daughter, the perfect model, the perfect student—but it had come at a cost. The truth of who she was—the girl who had been loved for her heart, for her spirit—was now buried beneath a veneer of perfection she could never escape.

And so, Eunji punished herself. She worked harder. She starved herself. She became colder. She buried her emotions, willed herself to feel nothing, and channeled all the hurt into becoming better, becoming flawless. Because that was the only way she could live with herself now.

If she could just become perfect enough, maybe she wouldn’t have to feel the emptiness inside. Maybe then, she wouldn’t have to face the painful truth she was too afraid to confront.

The truth that she had been forced to leave everything behind and become someone else—a perfect version of herself that had no room for love, for family, or for anything real.

And that truth would never leave her. Not as long as she had to live in this prison of perfection.