🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 13
Pathetic, Seo Yeon-woo.
The feeling of self-reproach gnawed at her insides. The problem with this situation wasn’t Park Jung-woon or Woo Jung-ha. The real problem was herself—stretching her legs out in the annex, trying to cling desperately to life in this miserable situation.
“Pathetic.”
“……”
“That’s all you can manage.”
Woo Jung-ha, who had been looking at her with concern, now wore a hardened expression. From the very first time Yeon-woo had seen him, those black eyes had never once lost their gentleness. But now, the light in them had disappeared.
“I didn’t say anything wr—”
“Shut up.”
The cold, decisive reply nearly made her tears spill over. Even though she was the one who had angered him, her body shook uncontrollably. Gritting her teeth to hold back the tears, Yeon-woo steadied her ragged throat.
“I’ll go.”
She deliberately repeated the same answer to Jung-ha that she had given to Madam. Taking in a breath she had never been able to breathe properly until now, the icy air sank into her chest. A chilling silence swept between the two of them.
“If you need anything, call my aunt.”
Not me.
Muttering in a subdued voice, the words didn’t match her lowered posture—like sharp arrows of pride, they shot toward Jung-ha. After that, Yeon-woo gave a short bow of her head and strode out of the main house.
Jung-ha watched her retreat, watched her draw a line and then run away behind it, his eyes tangled with conflicting emotions. Then he turned to glare at the closed door of his mother’s room with raw ferocity.
“…Fuck.”
The fist he had clenched slashed the air before slamming against the wall with a thud. Thorns dug into his skin, but his eyes remained fixed on Yeon-woo’s back as she stomped heavily across the dirt ground.
Winter was ending.
The TV weathercaster’s cheerful voice predicted that today would bring the last snowfall of the season. Yeon-woo turned her head away from the sound.
Since the new semester would begin soon, she thought she should at least try reading something—even if she couldn’t really understand—so she had borrowed a secondhand study guide for third-year students.
“……”
But lately, her concentration stayed outside the annex door.
Over the past week, Woo Jung-ha’s gaze had persistently clung to her. When she came out to cook breakfast, when she swept snow on snowy days, when she tied the laces of her worn sneakers to head to the bookstore while sitting on the porch—Jung-ha’s eyes had always been fixed on her.
“……”
“……”
Each time, she ignored the gaze. Pretended not to see. And each time she did, his face grew more twisted with frustration.
As this repeated, everyone inside the blue gate began to sense the awkward current between the two of them. Only Uncle Yang-gyu, oblivious as ever, had asked if they’d fought. Her aunt said nothing about it at all.
It was in the midst of this strange tension, pressing down between the annex and the main house, that misfortune once again came crashing toward Yeon-woo, trailing along the roads of Gojung-eup.
“…Thugs are… here…”
“Then we have to hide Yeon-woo here…”
It was unusual for things outside the annex to be noisy without Park Jung-woon’s presence. Peering through the patched paper door, Yeon-woo sensed that something had happened in town.
A strange chill crept over her body.
Forcing her stiff muscles to move, her face pale as paper, she stepped outside. There in the freezing air, Uncle Yang-gyu was sweating heavily as he pressured her aunt.
“Yeon-woo!”
“…What happened?”
She asked, even though she already knew. She wasn’t ignorant. The loan sharks who had been demanding repayment had finally tracked her down to Gojung-eup.
“The hardware store… it’s been trashed, completely wrecked. What do we…”
“She has to hide!”
“Do you think hiding will solve this? They’ve already come this far—if they get to the orchard, it’s only a matter of time…”
“So you’d rather send the girl out to them? Mr. Kang, I didn’t think you were like that. No matter what, they’re not going to touch the orchard! The first thing is keeping her safe. What if they drag her off somewhere?”
Her aunt, who usually spoke gently to Uncle Yang-gyu, now had her face flushed red, her voice strained and spitting with fury. They had wrecked the hardware store. Yeon-woo felt her insides instantly turn to char.
“T-then…”
Uncle Yang-gyu seemed afraid the gangsters would come as far as the orchard, but at her aunt’s fierce retort, he pressed his lips shut. Even he knew it would be a problem to put a nineteen-year-old girl in front of them.
But Yeon-woo had no intention of letting those thugs set foot inside the blue gate either. Even if she had to beg on her knees until they were raw. If they came here, not only she, but her aunt—who had taken her in—would be thrown out of this annex for good.
“Seo Yeon-woo! Where the hell are you—”
Slipping her feet hastily into her shoes, Yeon-woo darted past her aunt and Uncle Yang-gyu and ran off. Her aunt’s shout echoed behind her.
“Hhh… hh…”
At the slope leading down to town, Yeon-woo quickened her pace. Her heart, filled with indescribable tension, pounded as if it would explode. Thump, thump, thump.
Not noticing a stone in her path, her foot caught, and she went sprawling forward. Thud. Pain spread sharply through one knee.
“Ah, ahhh…”
A groan slipped out, and her vision blurred. Sitting down heavily, tears streamed from her eyes like a child’s.
She should have died. That day, even if she had run into Woo Jung-ha, she should have thrown away her life and escaped this gutter of an existence.
“Hhh, hhhng.”
Because she hadn’t, heaven was punishing her. Otherwise, why else would thugs be roaming even this tiny town?
If the hardware store knew, then Chae Eun-young knew. Which meant all the classmates who hated her would find out she was the daughter of a debtor.
The dread of what the thugs might do to her was less crushing than that. It made her want to disappear completely. She didn’t want to live, didn’t want to keep breathing these heavy, bitter breaths.
“Hhh… hhh.”
Even so, Yeon-woo had to go to the hardware store. At the very least, to make sure those gangsters never crossed into the orchard’s blue gate.
Even if her own parents had abandoned her, her aunt hadn’t—her aunt who gave her a corner of the tiny room and laid out a blanket for her.
Dragging her bleeding leg, Yeon-woo hobbled down the slope.
WEE-OO WEE-OO. The loud wail of police sirens echoed. As she neared the end of the road leading into town, the sirens grew louder, mingling with the chaos of people screaming.
CRASH.
“Kyaaah!”
“Hey, stop this!”
“I said bring us Kim Sook-ja’s daughter! Bring her out, and it all ends!”
Kim Sook-ja’s daughter.
The only ones who knew that meant Seo Yeon-woo were the people inside the blue gate. To the townsfolk of Gojung-eup, she was only known as the orchard woman’s niece.
“Who’s Kim Sook-ja?”
“…Could it be… that girl, they mean her?”
But in this chaos, people were slowly piecing it together. Hearing those words, Yeon-woo’s face drained of all color.
A tattooed dragon across a thick forearm caught her eye—familiar. It had to be the same man who had even shown up at her mother’s funeral.
Cold sweat beaded on her forehead. Without realizing, she stepped back. One step, two steps—until she stumbled and fell hard again.
“…Hhh.”
Her whole body shook. Seeing police officers in blue uniforms frown in the distance made her lips turn pale.
She couldn’t breathe. Her vision flashed black, then green, then blue in frantic bursts. Her body felt heavy like soaked cotton. She gasped and wheezed, breath caught in her throat like phlegm swirling, when—
“You—fuck, what the hell are you doing here?”
A voice yanked her straight out of hell.
It was Woo Jung-ha.
