#frfest

[red-cosmicc]

orphange pt.1 | broken and bleeding

[ceceredux]

"I also have a guardian"

ok before Home Week of FR-Fest ends i think this is as good a time as any to post my Way Too Many Thoughts about Seul-gi and her stepmom and parenthood in Friendly Rivalry that i've had marinating in the drafts for like six months. Kids can't have homes of their own, after all, only the ones created for them, and thus Seul-gi's physical precarity all her life and her abandonment as a child are one and the same — she has to fight and claw to survive on her own, because there's no roof over her head she can ever trust. Until there is. If you have no idea what I'm talking about please watch Friendly Rivalry if it seems like your speed, and if you're here for @fr-fest thank you for helping build the fandom that's been such a big part of my experience with the show. And now, onward! It's fascinating that a show like Friendly Rivalry, with its dark and gritty genre and tone that's perfectly suited to depicting the unsparingly bleak side of life, could very well have made every adult some form of antagonist and every parent-child relationship some form of toxic. And it very nearly does! It comes so close; as far as Seul-gi is concerned at first there's no reason to think it would be otherwise! And the ways in which Kwon Hui-yun is the sole exception have burrowed into my brain and refuse to leave.

Because on the one hand, the thematic contrasts are not subtle, and they're quite daring! Parenthood looms large over the whole premise, by way of the elite academy setting — it's the exact point where literal reproduction meets elite reproduction, the place where all the baggage of legacy, class status, and children as investments is at its most amplified. We see this most starkly in the prologue to Episode 3: Jae-yi's birth is precision engineered in a grimly comedic parody of both patriarchy and religion, her father seeking an extension of himself via scientific and superstitious control of a process where her mother is depicted merely as instrumental.

danny devito I Get It Now.jpeg

The cross above the bed ain't subtle: this is one man, one woman, and a child made to obey the will of the Father, maybe with a few modern bells and whistles but ultimately just like it's supposed to be now and forever, amen. All part of the Plan, made by men who pass it off on God. Chaehwa merely integrates that control into the broader engine of the economy: the Father's investment will pay off, society will keep its elite pipeline chugging along, and Jae-yi will be rewarded handsomely as long as she keeps the whole cycle going undisturbed over any fussy feminine quibbles like "autonomy" or "justice" or "falling in love with a girl the system was designed to quietly dispose of."

Love the way Friendly Rivalry depicts institutions that don't even bother to fake a pretense of kindness when they think they don't have to, so many anonymously loathsome motherfuckers to hate

Seul-gi in turn lives such a hard life precisely because she's been accidentally cut off from this cycle. If she'd grown up with her father she'd be indistinguishable from the rest of Chaehwa, maybe even with a massive leg up, but as an orphan from nowhere trying to better herself without the built in cheat codes of elite access she's at best a regrettable glitch, and at worst a threat to be eliminated. She's not part of the Plan, not anymore. And consequently her stepmother doesn't "count" in the way everyone else's parents count; she provides no status and no inside track with her husband dead, her financial resources are tied up in wrongful death litigation, and the way she's come to be Seul-gi's guardian is viewed not with reverence by society but confusion and pity. The one thing she can give, whether Seul-gi thinks she deserves it or not, is love — a kind of love that's frighteningly rare.

Because although Tae-jun is orders of magnitude crueler to his daughters than every other parent we see [ok maybe not Ye-ri's mom, who incidentally shares with him the specific evil of abandoning a disfavored child to predators], it's clear from everything we see that the culture that produced him is everywhere. It's in Gyeong's strained relationship with her mom [and that's mostly as good as it gets]. It's in Beom-su's parents closing ranks with the school administration to ensure she has impunity for her violence after they clearly couldn't prevent her from spiraling to that point in the first place. It's in the angry mob chasing after Byeong-jin after he fails to help their kids cheat the system with the system's tacit permission, those kids' actual skills and growth a secondary concern at best. And the only exception, the only parent we see who both loves her daughter unconditionally and manages to cultivate a genuine relationship of mutual care and respect, is the one who isn't a biological parent at all.

This is almost certainly the first time in her life Seul-gi has ever heard anything like this!! i'm not ok!!!

That combination, of uncynically asserting a model of single adoptive parenthood that's wholly positive, and then pointedly contrasting it with "natural" models of respectable nuclear families that are repeatedly shown to ruin lives, is one of the most satisfying rejections of an entrenched status quo I've ever seen in fiction. And it's not an accident that it's done by the same show with an A-Plot about lesbian love and its capacity to break these specific cycles of abuse; the two narratives aren't just deeply radical, each is fundamentally an extension of the other.

After all, Seul-gi's biological mother is never seen once. And her quest to first find her father and then get any kind of closure for his death, initially presented as the core of the story, is rendered anticlimactic in the most horrific way imaginable — he wasn't killed by the man tormenting Seul-gi and the girl she loves, but by a girl just like them that he victimized himself. By the end her quest to ruin Tae-jun is no longer about revenge for her father but about rescuing the life she's built now. That means her love for Jae-yi, and that means the home she's built with her stepmother, who she has gradually come to realize cherishes her as her own. Both of those sources of love are made up of dozens of hard individual choices, but they're also both deemed mistakes by society, aberrations from the Plan that are either regrettable or outright verboten. And that lack of built in acceptance, that deviation from the Plan, provides a blank slate for these women to build love on their own terms, and a grim clarity about what they're fighting to protect and who they're up against.

Which way, parent of dark academia toxic yuri daughter?

But on the other hand!! This subversion of expectations lands with the same grounded, layered thoughtfulness that runs through the whole show. Hui-yun's parental virtues are so powerful precisely because they're not reified. Seul-gi and her stepmom aren't found family, there's not a whiff of sentimental trope-iness about them even when it totally would have landed. They simply are family, in every traditional sense but with their unique contingent challenges. And while Hui-yun's status as a stepmother matters immensely to both the story and themes, she's not embodying some overdetermined symbolic contrast to the dominant culture; in fact she was enmeshed in it, married to one of the most powerful and reprehensible men we meet! The flashback where it's revealed that she was helping search for Seul-gi as a futile stepping stone to biological kids of her own is heartbreaking, and raises the question of how different things would have been if they had found her earlier. Would she have loved Seul-gi the same as her hypothetical half-siblings? Would any family involving Woo Do-hyeok have been a good place to grow up?

The ambiguity in her motivations! We'll never know what combination of regret, hope, and responsibility drove her to this and that's awesome!!

We can only guess, and in another instance of incredibly thoughtful restraint we never get any other hints of what her marriage was like, including when/if she ever would have found out who Do-hyeok truly was had he survived [her half-truth explanation to Seul-gi for why she settles the lawsuit, "I don't want to be disappointed by your dad anymore," is soul-crushing for how understated it is. And her one briefly narrated interlude where she attributes her understanding of Je-na's situation to "women's intuition?" That's simply the void screaming at you, forever]. In any case, whatever plans of parenthood she once had are replaced by a very different reality, a classic "one door closes/another door opens" story but with none of the triteness of a cliche — and one where Hui-yun forces the door open herself, initiating the search for Seul-gi after her father had given up and sustaining it past the point where any pretenses of self-interest, of restoring or creating a "real" biological family, were still in play. EDIT: ok i knew i was gonna miss something and i know the FR timeline is hard to keep straight but this is pretty embarrassing: of course Do-hyeok IS [briefly] alive at the moment they find Seul-gi, *because Tae-jun is the one who makes that possible,* manipulating this man's love for his daughter [possibly the last thing he doesn't hate about himself] to facilitate that same man's abuse of his own, and extract advantage for himself at every step. It's a horrifying final twist of the knife that every circumstance of Seul-gi's life and presence at Chaehwa has been an object of exploitation from the very beginning, with Jae-yi's manipulations only the unwitting aftershocks of her father's, but it's also grimly poetic. In assuming Seul-gi was a disposable bargaining chip and accidentally bringing her into the lives of both her father's widow and his own daughter, Tae-jun has brought her to the two woman who will love her in ways he could never fathom, and in underestimating all three of them he ensures his own downfall. END EDIT

And it's in that context where all we have left to assess is what Hui-yun does upon that search's miraculous success: she takes in a traumatized high school senior, having missed all the formative parenting years she presumably once desperately wanted, and immediately tells her that she'll never have to apologize for her presence in their home. She's not a good parent by way of her Woman Settings being set to Motherly Virtue; if anything she clearly has no idea what she's doing at first. But she immediately gets started on becoming a good parent, and she quickly laps her competition simply by stepping up for a child who has never been able to rely on anyone before.

almost murdered? car totaled? not important, got a hungry teenager to make happy Of course Seul-gi doesn't trust it at first, and though that skepticism is misplaced she's never framed as stupid or shortsighted for it. In fact both parties are allowed to be flawed without judgement; her stepmom doesn't deal with burdens with superhuman grace. She leaves the apartment a mess sometimes, she gets frustrated when Seul-gi's desperation to beat Tae-jun clashes with her own grief and responsibility to protect her, she clearly dislikes Jae-yi [an understandable parental instinct lmfao] and only belatedly realizes how much she means to her daughter. Her love for Seul-gi is unshakeable, but not frictionless. That's why the scene outside the courthouse, where Jae-yi races down the steps to walk together with Seul-gi and Hui-yun quietly lets it happen, and THEN visibly realizes what it means that they're holding hands and that Tae-jun is Not Happy about it, is my favorite in the entire series.

Look at her eyes! She's barely in the frame but you can still see her realize exactly what talk she's gonna have to have in the car lmaooo

But the show also provides clear benchmarks for the evolution of Seul-gi's feelings. At the beginning she just barely restrains herself from venting her frustrations over a quiet, awkward dinner, because she thinks she doesn't have the standing to speak her mind. She treats herself as a temporary guest in her own home, not wanting to burden Hui-yun and convinced that the only reason she's been taken in to begin with must be rooted in some kind of self interest, the only kind of human behavior she's ever witnessed. If it doesn't quite add up, it doesn't need to — Seul-gi's simply operating from the assumptions that best allow her to protect herself. And she might have continued to, were it not for her injury and the subsequent smear campaign that threatens her last chance at a real future. With the walls closing in and her own resourcefulness not enough to save her, she has only one card left to play. But still she holds off as long as she can, and her fateful decision to call Hui-yun to her expulsion hearing is ultimately a split second choice — a choice to reject the school's vicious framing of her as a loveless orphan who can be easily railroaded, a choice to call their bluff, and a choice, no matter how desperate, to believe in someone.

when your back is against the wall but the opportunity to be petty is so tempting that you accidentally confirm that your stepmom would die for you

We never know for sure exactly how much Seul-gi thinks this is actually going to work. And when her stepmom gets the call, she has all the excuses in the world not to respond, if she truly didn't care. The hard u-turn she takes, and her subsequent furious challenge to the entire power structure of Chaehwa [who in their bottomless apathy don't even understand why she's there at first] can only be attributed to love, and even Seul-gi knows it. So it's after this that she starts smiling freely around her stepmom in a way we otherwise only ever see with Jae-yi; she opens up to the love of her life and her newfound parent in parallel as they both keep showing up for her in the same places, and proving her assumptions that she's unloveable wrong in different ways. EDIT: my other miss was right here, though the thrust of it all still stands – it's just that the trust was already planted in the car ride over from the hospital, when Hui-yun tells her not to back down and belatedly fills her in about the lawsuit negotiations Seul-gi had left the apartment earlier to avoid; that gesture of goodwill, so far removed from her prior hesitancy to even ask for Seul-gi to communicate when she'll be home "if we're going to live together," is an unambiguous signal that she's ready to stop doubting herself and take this parenting shit seriously. So when Seul-gi makes the call, there's still uncertainty, but she does have reason to be confident it'll work. END EDIT And then there's the most explicit moment of all — the one exchange where the unspoken becomes spoken, when Hui-yun prevents a desperate and rage-stricken Seul-gi from throwing her future away permanently by murdering Tae-jun. In the aftermath, both of them shaken, she admits her refusal to settle the lawsuit in the face of Seul-gi's fear that she'd do the opposite, but reframes it from the perspective of the parent — Tae-jun's lawyers are trying to guilt her. What kind of parent would put their child through this? What kind of parent would pass up the financial windfall of a settlement to protect her child's future? If she's failing to prioritize Seul-gi, maybe it's because she's a stepmother? But what makes Hui-yun so unique as a parent is that she doesn't TELL Seul-gi what to think about this, she asks her what she DOES think.

this moment makes me want to run through a goddamn brick wall. confidence in herself but without ego, trust in her kid but without delusion — a parenting clinic. the best to ever do it

And with the last of her distrust evaporating, Seul-gi immediately responds: "No. You did the right thing." And when Byeong-jin does Byeong-jin things and ruins the moment, she shoves her bag into her stepmom's arms before recklessly running off, the trust they've been steadily building since that school hearing sealed in a moment of classic teenage childishness — here mom, hold this, i gotta go.

Of course because this is Friendly Rivalry, breakthroughs without true escape are only prelude to more heartbreak, and as long as Tae-jun is on the board he'll try to turn love into weakness, oblivious to its resilience but very effective at inflicting pain all the same. Jae-yi and Hui-yun will both do anything to keep Seul-gi safe, even if it means Seul-gi hates them for it. And so at the same time that Jae-yi appears to be slipping away for good Seul-gi finds out that the lawsuit WAS settled after all, the nightmarish betrayal she was always afraid of, and immediately after she was promised it would never happen. And that's when she DOES blow up, her anger paradoxically a sign that she's comfortable enough to let her vulnerabilities show [again in parallel to her lesbian situationship, where she can only express vulnerability after finally defeating Jae-yi in the battle of galaxy brain 12D cat and mouse by trying to drown herself. Yuri!!] But she still responds to her stepmother's wounded but calculated rebuttal with a chastened "I have no right to argue." She can't entirely shake the internalization of herself as a burden, the scared child behind the mask of fierce independence — but in this home her outburst won't cost her anything, and by the end she'll realize that even the most painful conflict will never make her unloved.

Hui-yun adhering to the principle of "if I'm mad at my kid, really I'm mad at myself"

Because what Hui-yun never does is treat Seul-gi as one of her burdens — her status as the One Good Parent is built not with any inherent qualities or cultural signifiers but by her nigh-revolutionary insistence that her child is not indebted to her. First she's just a roof over Seul-gi's head and a guarantee of food in her stomach without judgement, then she's falling asleep at her side in an operating room even if Seul-gi can't know she's there, and then, when Seul-gi takes the first leap of faith to ask her for help, she's dropping everything to turn the car around and defend her from expulsion. The other side of that turning point, the one that ensures they'll never truly go back, is that it doesn't just sink in for Seul-gi how her stepmom feels about her as a parent. She realizes in that moment how she feels as a daughter.

Top 10 Seul-gi faces to break your heart :(

The moment she refutes Beom-su's lie, she doesn't do it to the administrators, or to her attacker, but to Hui-yun. For the first time, she cares what a figure of authority in her life thinks of her. For the first time, she wants an adult to be proud of her — and in the back of her mind she's probably terrified that even if her stepmom has inexplicably stuck by her up to this point, now she has a reason to stop doing so. And when Hui-yun never doubts her for a second, and instead throws protective scorn over every other adult in the room, they truly become a family. It's why Seul-gi can say no when an indignant Hui-yun tells her they're leaving in protest, because now she knows she's talking to someone who will protect her at all costs but also respects her as a human being. The impact of this growing bond is significant, but never overplayed; never distracting from the main story, but always mattering when it appears. When Hui-yun is forced to go back on her promise to Seul-gi and settle the lawsuit [because Tae-jun nearly kills both of them via vehicular sabotage while making Jae-yi watch, naturally, jfc this show], it's not a moment of high melodrama, merely a grimly necessary choice and its consequences. Her chance for closure is gone, justice is impossible, but her daughter's safety comes before any of that. So she lets Seul-gi believe it was an accident, even knowing that the missing context will make Seul-gi resent her for settling for what she thinks are purely financial considerations — better her daughter be furious with her than live every moment of her life in incapacitating terror. She even takes a moment to ask Seul-gi if she wants to keep her father's wrecked old car — not because that's a reasonable course of action, but because she wants Seul-gi to know that she has a say, that her opinions matter. And yes, she's also guiltily covering for the choice about the lawsuit that she's not going to give Seul-gi for her own safety. Even the best things don't get be clean in Friendly Rivalry, but they do get to be Good, in the end.

At least Jae-yi has the courtesy to be cryptic and gay — this girl has no idea how to deal with people caring about her this directly, with words and shit

And in the end the painful sacrifices pay off, because all the work Hui-yun has done has made it undeniable to Seul-gi, no matter how high her emotions run — that everything her stepmom does, she does for Seul-gi first. You can see it even in her penultimate confrontation with Tae-jun, having hit rock bottom but still making unhinged evil genius chess moves to make Jae-yi proud [ok worried out of her mind, in reality, but still]. In her characteristic style of blunt confrontation, she lets Tae-jun know that she suspects exactly why her stepmom did what she had to do, and that she's willing to fight for her just as hard precisely because she would never ask her to. And it's not a coincidence that she's talking to the highest-status, most celebrated parent in the Chaehwa orbit, whose meticulously planned and perfected daughter was willing to die to destroy him, and is now willing to live for this girl from nowhere.

i swear this show would be 10/10 solely on the strength of its full gallery of Chung Su-bin facial expressions

Of course Friendly Rivalry's greatest balancing act is that while it's a furious rebuke of societal cynicism, it never loses its grounding sense of realistic pessimism. The power of love is great and wondrous, but it cannot in a head to head fight overcome the power of, well, power. The final tragedy is that there's only so much any of them can do against their incredibly entrenched tormentors and the systems they represent — Seul-gi goes through physical and mental hell to put Tae-jun away for a despair-inducing few months, Jae-yi goes over the ledge for only the possibility of saving her sister and seeing the love of her life again, and Hui-yun is powerless to spare Seul-gi from the grief that follows.

But everything she can do she keeps doing, down to the final scene, when she fends off invasive reporters while for the first time calling Seul-gi her daughter in dialogue, no qualifiers attached. Seul-gi's relaxed suggestion that they move elsewhere together to escape Tae-jun is met with her mother's stern but affectionate veto, and the implication is loud and clear: This is our home. Let me do my job to keep you safe, and you do yours by living your life. It's a stunningly beautiful resolution for how restrained it is. There's no grand climax because that's coming in the mail courtesy of Jae-yi — there's simply the quiet depiction of a family made whole, not triumphant but surviving. No bloodlines, no 20 year plans, no missions from God, just one woman and her daughter against the world.

Ok that's uh. everything that was building up in my brain on that. Masterful work from Chung Su-bin as my GOAT protagonist, Kang Jin-ah as Parent of the Year, and of course from Kim Tai-hee, Min Ye-ji, and the entire Friendly Rivalry team for creating something you never run out of things to say about. Happy FR-Fest, everyone — this goes out to all of you whose writing and art has built up an incredibly vibrant fandom for one of the best shows of the decade; I wouldn't have found it without you guys. Here's to one year of Seul-gi and Jae-yi, and many more to come <3

[chaehwa-archives]

home [friendly rivalry fanfic]

My second fic for @fr-fest! This was supposed to be much more focused on the prompt, but it kind of grew into...whatever it is now. Basically a post-canon one-shot of Kyung and Yeri and their eventful and yuriful evening together. It’s a lil bit rushed because I was trying to finish by the end of the month and the plot doesn’t really make any sense if you think about it too much but haha oh well. Thanks for reading <3

cw: brief description of attempted SA

~~~~~~~~~~

The first time the phone rang, Kyung ignored it. The second time, she declined the call, tossed the phone into her desk drawer, and hunched over her notes, hoping to regain her focus by staring intently at them. But when it continued to buzz—the dull rattle inside the desk like the mumbling of her insufferable classmates, who didn’t dare speak up lest they be caught having an opinion—she gritted her teeth and answered it.

“Kyung-yaaah.” The way the voice drew out the last syllable made Kyung’s skin prickle. “Why wouldn’t you pick up?”

“Ju Ye-ri?” As soon as she recognized the voice, Kyung stood abruptly, her free hand catching the desk chair before it fell over. “Whose number is this?”

“Aggh fuuuck.” There was a tearful note in Ye-ri’s voice that put Kyung on alert. “I should have used a pay phone.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m so stuuupid, Kyung-yah.”

Nothing pissed off Kyung more than Ye-ri underestimating herself—she was smarter than ninety percent of the stuck-up chaebol-baby wannabes at university—but worry eclipsed Kyung’s annoyance for the moment.  “Stop that. Just tell me what’s going on. Did you lose your phone?”

On the other end, there was the clink of a hollow bottle striking something hard, like pavement. “It’s not…lost.”

“Ye-ri—are you drunk?”

“Shit. You can tell? I only had one soju…”

Ye-ri never drank. Something was definitely up.

“Where are you? What happened?” Around the hard knot of concern in her stomach, Kyung felt the swelling of something lighter and fiercer, and a bit dizzying. “Why call me?”

“I’m outside my building now. Can you come? I’m sorry—I know it’s late.”

“Give me thirty-five minutes. Under thirty if I catch the next train.” Kyung was already reaching for the shoe cabinet. “And don’t apologize, damn it.”

Kyung found Ye-ri sitting on the curb, shivering in the cold, alongside one soju bottle, cradling another in her hands.

“I got one more at 7-Eleven while I was waiting.” Ye-ri looked down into her lap as she spoke, rubbing her bare knees together. She raised the bottle without raising her head. “Saved half for you, cheers.”

“Where’s your coat? It’s freezing. Here, take mine.”

Ye-ri shook her head and did not budge. 

“Don’t be stubborn.”

“I already made you come all the way out here.” There was that tremor in her voice again. “Don’t you realize how embarrassing this is?” 

“Look.” Kyung unzipped her coat. “I’m wearing a sweater. I don’t need both. You’re taking one or the other. Which do you want?” 

Ye-ri looked up, and Kyung felt relief. She had not known what to expect, but on the subway ride from her campus in Seodaemun to Ye-ri’s place in Seongdong, her mind had boiled over with possibilities. A part of her had been dreading bruises, a black eye. Ye-ri’s face, though, was unmarked except by blotchy eyeliner. Of course that didn’t mean that she was unharmed.

“Sweater,” Ye-ri said, averting her eyes.

She would choose the harder option. 

“Hold this then.” Kyung shed her coat, handed it to Ye-ri, and pulled off her sweater. She was wearing an old unfashionable t-shirt underneath it—not that she would have spared her clothes a single thought had she been with anyone other than Ye-ri. Kyung took the coat back, tucked it under her arm, and held the sweater out in exchange. “Alright. Let’s put this on you.”

“I’m not that drunk.” Ye-ri set the bottle on the curb and rose to her feet, wobbling only slightly. “I think I can figure out which hole is which.”

She was able to find the big hole at the bottom, at least, and stick her head and arms into it. After that she required some assistance. Finally her head, wrapped in a cocoon of hair that gleamed like copper in the streetlights, wriggled through the hole at the top. A smile, half-visible through the frizz, split open her face, and they both laughed. Without thinking, Kyung brushed the hair away from her cheeks, nose, and lips.

Her lips. When Kyung realized she was touching them, she drew her hand back.

“Warmer?” 

Ye-ri nodded, but didn’t speak. 

“Now can you tell me what all of this is about?”

That was when Ye-ri started to cry. Kyung stood there wondering how to react for an eternity, and then Ye-ri’s arms were around her, Ye-ri’s face buried in her shoulder. 

Kyung could do nothing to resist or return the embrace with her arms pinned and the coat still wedged under one of them. But she was oddly grateful. Would she have had the guts to hold Ye-ri like this on her own? Never. She would have stuttered, faltered, overthought…She was grateful for how quickly Ye-ri had done it, too, before Kyung could even put the coat back on. There were fewer layers between them this way. And Ye-ri was warmer than any coat, her breath hot on Kyung’s shoulder.

“I should have known,” Ye-ri sobbed. Hearing the misery in her voice, feeling her hot tears fall and turn cold, Kyung felt a stab of guilt. She had let her excitement carry her away too soon. “I should have known he didn’t just want to run lines. I don’t know why I thought that actors would be different—”

“He came over?” 

Kyung knew who without having to ask. Ye-ri had been so excited. It was rare for a rookie like her to have an actor like him as a scene partner. Only for a scene or two, but still. Even Kyung knew who he was—and Kyung, as Ye-ri often reminded her, was as far out of the loop as a member of their generation could humanly be.

“He said we should practice together before we shoot, that it would help take the pressure off. I thought—I guess I thought he must know what he’s doing, everyone probably does it. I didn’t want to look like an amateur. Or to say no and then do a bad job and embarrass myself. I can’t believe I was so gullible. Ahh, he was such a fucking creep.”

Kyung’s hands curled, and her voice shook. “What did he do to you?”

“I could tell right away—he was so obvious about it. I tried…I kept trying to change the subject, to focus on the scene, but he wouldn’t quit flirting. We were on the couch, and I sat as far away as I could, but it was like, every time I blinked, he was closer somehow.” Ye-ri shuddered. “And right in the middle of my line, he just leaned over, all of a sudden, and…and I kind of hit him in the head with a three-kilo dumbbell.”

“You what?”

“Well, I’d been working out in the living room. It was right there, so I just grabbed it. I wasn’t really thinking.”

“Is he…?”

“I don’t know.” Ye-ri squeezed Kyung tightly. “He collapsed on the couch, and stopped moving, and I panicked.”

While Ye-ri trembled, Kyung tried to stay calm. She wanted to be something solid and steady that Ye-ri could hold onto. It wasn’t easy. Each pound of her fluttering heart summoned a new emotion. Righteous fury: that prick had gotten what he deserved. And…pride? Why else would she feel so elated by the image of Ye-ri cracking his skull? Terror: this could be really, really bad. And guilt, throbbing like the pulse in her throat that quickened the closer Ye-ri’s lips were to it. How was Kyung any better than him? Hadn’t she felt a thrill touching those lips? 

Didn’t she want to do all the same things as that asshole?

Kyung shook her head, dislodging a thought that rose to the top. What Ye-ri needed now was a lawyer.

Little by little, like prying a cork out of a bottleneck, Kyung loosened Ye-ri’s grip until her arms were free enough to pat her on the back as gently and, she hoped, platonically as possible. Ye-ri lifted her face and Kyung locked eyes with her.

“Your phone. Where is it?”

“I didn’t want to be distracted.” Ye-ri sniffed. “I was trying to be professional…”

“Where did you leave it?”

“In my room. On the nightstand.”

“And you called me with his?”

Ye-ri nodded and withdrew the phone from her handbag. Classic Ye-ri. She might leave her phone behind, but her handbag? Never. “I shouldn’t have taken it. I just thought—in case they trace the call. Maybe I should call the police with his phone, instead of mine.”

“But he’s in your apartment, Ye-ri!” Kyung started to pace back and forth. “Did you ever think that might be a slightly bigger problem? And now my number’s in his phone, too…”

Ye-ri started crying again, and Kyung regretted the outburst.

“Hey. Sorry.” The words sounded frigid in the winter air. Was that really the best that she could do? “It’s not your fault,” she added, “it’s his.” As if that weren’t obvious. Kyung wanted to do something suave, to reach out and wipe the tears away, like some dumb pretty boy K-drama star. Preferably one who wasn’t a hateful pest. 

Instead, Kyung watched as Ye-ri wiped away her own tears, the phone still in her hand. She bumped something and the screen flashed.

“Wait.” Kyung eyed the phone. “How were you going to call the police? How did you call me?”

“Oh.” Was that a tiny smile? “Well, he was getting messages all night. Probably from other girls. I don’t know how many times I watched him put in the passcode. No way I was just going to ignore that.”

“Ye-ri.”

“I was hoping he would go to the bathroom or something and leave it behind so I could read them all.”

“Ye-ri—you genius!” Kyung struck her palm with a fist. She wanted to lift Ye-ri into the air and kiss her. Fuck. Stop. Now was not the time. Instead, she put on her coat, picked up the half-empty soju bottle, and took a long gulp. She needed the courage. “I’ll go up and check on him, okay? Don’t go anywhere. I’ll get you out of this, promise.”

“Wait.” Ye-ri took the bottle from Kyung and downed the rest. “Let me come with you.” 

Kyung would have preferred to work alone. She was acting almost on pure instinct, and there was a strong chance she had no idea what she was doing. “Are you sure?”

Ye-ri waved the bottle and made a face that either meant ew, gross or that she was nauseous. Or a little of both. “You think I want to be alone down here?”

They rode the elevator in silence. Kyung bit the insides of her cheeks whenever she felt the urge to look at Ye-ri, which was about every two seconds. Her hand, a voice in her head insisted. Just hold it, you coward.

Another voice protested: She almost got assaulted tonight, you sick freak!

Then ask her first.

But that’s—

That’s what? Scary? Coward.

Arrgghh shut up shut up shut up. 

Kyung opened her mouth, and just then the elevator doors opened. “Um—after you,” she said, with a gesture like something out of a black-and-white foreign film, some ridiculous parody of chivalry.

Naturally. You miss your chance, and still make a fool out of yourself.

Shut up.

Outside the door, they turned to each other. “I’ll go in first,” Kyung said. “Make sure it’s safe.”

“Take this.” Ye-ri handed Kyung the empty bottle. “As a weapon. Just in case.”

Kyung gripped the bottle by the bottom so their fingers wouldn’t touch. Ye-ri glanced down, her expression unreadable, then met Kyung’s eyes. “Be careful, okay?” 

Kyung had visited the apartment before and knew the layout; she could have found the man within seconds. Once inside, though, she felt compelled to move slowly, reverently, through the few modest rooms that were so precious to Ye-ri. 

Ye-ri had been so proud of the place when she first moved in—a home of her own, in a neighborhood of her choosing, paid for with her own money. It was less posh and certainly less spacious than the penthouse she’d lived in during her high school years, but it was a palace compared to the public bathhouse, and a step up from the goshiwon where she’d stayed after finding a stable job. She’d been so delighted by the smallest things back then: the washing machine and kitchenware, the shops and cafes nearby, the lacy curtains she’d bought to replace the ugly ones, the view of Seoul Forest from the ninth floor. Kyung had been humbled. When in her life had she ever been sincerely grateful for such things?

Now she admired even the tackiest of Ye-ri’s personal touches: the gold fixtures she’d installed because they looked expensive, the decorative mirrors and luxurious rugs. The photos of the two of them, developed the old-fashioned way, she had hung on the wall.

It filled Kyung with unspeakable rage to think that some arrogant bastard had waltzed in here thinking he was owed something, running his grimy hands over everything Ye-ri had poured her heart and soul into, as if he had the right. Smashing her peace and safety like a porcelain plate.

He was still on the couch, presumably where Ye-ri had left him. Kyung raised the bottle with one hand, and with the other hand checked his pulse. 

Murmuring a mantra of gratitude, she went to Ye-ri’s bedroom to find her phone. 

“He’s unconscious but alive.” Kyung closed the door behind her and handed the phone over to Ye-ri. “We should call an ambulance. This will get a lot more complicated if he dies on us.”

“Do you think…I have a case?” Ye-ri was a bit tipsy for information so heavy with implications. Her brow furrowed in concentration. “I mean, it was self-defense, right? If he doesn’t—”

“The problem isn’t that you don’t have a case. The problem is he’s famous. If he survives and presses charges, he’ll have the best lawyers, and public opinion, and swimming pools of money on his side. He would do everything in his power to make your life a living hell. That’s not to say that he will, but—”

“He doesn’t even have to press charges.” Ye-ri threw an arm across her face—a dramatic gesture she must have picked up in acting class—and with her back pressed against the wall slid to the floor. “I’m on his blacklist now. He’ll talk shit about me to everyone in the industry. I’m finished.”

“Well, yes, that’s probably what he would do.” Kyung sat next to Ye-ri on the floor of the corridor. “If you weren’t Ju Ye-ri.”

Ye-ri peeked around her arm. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Aren’t you the queen of blackmail?”

Ye-ri’s eyes widened and she straightened up at once. “Shit. His phone. How did I not think of that?” She moaned and pounded her forehead with both wrists. “Ye-riii, baby, you’re losing your touch.”

“Check his phone for dirt. Whatever you find, send it to both of us. There’s bound to be something on there. No way that man is clean. I’ll call 119.”

“Wait. What’s our story?”

“Is there a stairwell in your building?” Ye-ri nodded. “Then he fell and hit his head on the stairs. After he left your place. You didn’t see it happen. I was coming over to visit you, and I saw him collapsed in the stairwell.”

“Why were you in the stairwell?”

“I’m...terrified of elevators,” Kyung improvised.

“But he’s not in the stairwell.”

“Not yet.” Kyung glanced around the corridor. “Good thing it’s late. Best to get him as far away from the blunt instrument as we can.”

“You mean…?” Ye-ri winced. “All the way to the stairs?”

“He can’t weigh that much.” Kyung smiled weakly. “Besides, haven’t you been working out?”

The next hour passed in a daze. They were both exhausted, a bit drunk, and doing things that even the well-rested and sober would have been crazy to be doing. Kyung felt as though she were floating outside her body, watching one of those amateur short films they screened on campus where all the cuts were jarring and the plot made no sense. The things Ye-ri found on his phone…they couldn’t be real. The message they sent him, Ye-ri feverishly typing in bold as Kyung offered suggestions over her shoulder—IF WE HEAR THAT YOU HAVE SO MUCH AS LOOKED AT ANOTHER WOMAN YOU WILL PRAY TO GOD AND THE BUDDHA TO SEND YOUR WRETCHED SOUL TO HELL BECAUSE IT WILL BE A FUCKING PARADISE COMPARED TO WHAT’S COMING FOR YOUR ASS—had they really written that? Had Kyung actually called the ambulance as they dragged his body down the corridor?

Had he really groaned, his eyes flickering open, as they pushed him down the stairs?

Afterwards they caught the last subway to Seodaemun District together. Kyung had offered to spend the night with Ye-ri at her place, but Ye-ri had wanted to get away, to be elsewhere. She had been chatty all throughout the night’s madness, but on the train she fell silent, and soon Kyung felt her head on her shoulder.

Good. She needed the rest. Kyung herself was so tired that even the butterflies in her stomach had finally settled down for the night.

“Why are you the only person in the world with any fucking integrity?”

Except Ye-ri wasn’t asleep. 

And now neither were the butterflies.

“You think I have integrity?” Kyung snorted. “After what we did tonight?”

“Oh, come on. It was for a good cause.” 

Was this happening? Was Ye-ri snuggling closer? Kyung closed her eyes and swallowed. She was still stuck in unreality. The amateur movie hadn’t ended. She was co-starring all night long, apparently.

“I’m not who you think I am,” Kyung said, and immediately wanted to find a tall building and jump off it.

“I knew you were the only person I could call,” Ye-ri murmured. “And you were. No one else would have stuck their neck out for me like that.”

Kyung felt her face flush. 

But Ye-ri thought she had done all that purely out of the goodness of her heart.

By the time they stumbled into the dorm room, they were crashing hard after the rush, more silly from lack of sleep than drunk.

“Where’s your roommate?” said Ye-ri, rubbing her eyes and kicking off her shoes.

“Boyfriend’s place.” Kyung had been a little jealous of her roommate at first, until she had met the guy. He was enough to put someone off the concept of boyfriends semi-permanently. And in fact over the past year, every time Kyung had met a classmate’s boyfriend, she’d found herself jealous in a way that was new to her. Him? Really? With a woman like that? What did these men have that Kyung didn’t? “She’s always over there. You can have her bed. She won’t even notice you were here.”

Ye-ri flopped onto Kyung’s bed and stretched out as if she were making a snow angel. “I’ll take this one.”

“That one’s mine.”

“I know.” Ye-ri grinned. She sat up, drew her arms in through the arm-holes of the sweater, and twisted in place. “Kyung-yahh,” she pouted. “I’m stuck. Help me.”

“You are not.”

Kyung knelt on the bed and tugged on the sweater until, with a crackle of electricity, it came off like an orange peel. Ye-ri fell over, laughing, and Kyung collapsed alongside her. They lay that way until their laughter subsided, studying each other’s faces, their smiles refusing to fade.

“My poor hair.” With one hand Ye-ri tried to flatten her halo of flyaways. “I must look like a wreck.”

“A gorgeous wreck.” 

The words slipped out of Kyung’s mouth before she knew what she was saying, and then the only sound was her tempestuous heartbeat.

“Do you think so?” Ye-ri didn’t ask it in a teasing way, batting her eyelashes, like she did with other friends of hers. She wasn’t smiling anymore. “Choi Kyung.”

“Well, I mean—” Kyung stammered, eyes darting, searching for an exit, a way to make it sound like it had meant nothing. “—I mean, come on, just look at you.”

“Then look at me.” Ye-ri took Kyung’s trembling hand in hers. “For real, okay? No playing.”

Kyung gulped and obeyed. How could she deny that voice anything? Ye-ri’s gaze held no scorn or judgement. Her eyes were kind. And yet Kyung felt pierced through by them, stripped naked. Her cheeks burned. 

“What would you do,” Ye-ri said slowly, “if I asked you to keep undressing me.”

The words were in another language. Kyung had to break them into digestible bits of grammar and piece the meaning back together, as if she were in English class. “Are you…asking me?”

“I’m asking what you would do. What you would think.” Ye-ri squeezed her hand. “Would you think I’m weird?”

“No. Never.” 

Was it possible that Ye-ri had been having the same thoughts, wanting the same things? It couldn’t be true. But what was one more impossible thing tonight?

Yes. What was one more impossible thing?

Kyung leaned closer until their noses were almost touching. “I would kiss you first,” she said, and brushed Ye-ri’s cheek with a hand. She added in a half-whisper, “Would you want me to?”

“I would want that,” Ye-ri said.

When their lips finally separated, Ye-ri was smiling again, pleased with herself. “Good to know,” she said, “for future reference,” and she rolled over onto her other side.

“What?”

“It’s after two-thirty. If we did anything else tonight, I’d fall asleep in the middle of it.”

“Ju Ye-ri.” Kyung rolled onto her back and addressed the ceiling. “You are a very bad girl.”

“And you’re a big dork. Shut up and spoon me already.”

As Ye-ri drew Kyung’s arm around her, and as Kyung molded herself into the shape that Ye-ri’s body made, Kyung hoped that her heartbeat did not betray how ecstatic she felt, how long she had dreamt of this. (But what if it did? Was it more exciting if Ye-ri knew?) She had imagined doing more, but nothing in her lurid imagination could compare to the way their bodies fit together, the wonder of feeling the air move in her lungs when she breathed.

“Hold me really tight, okay? I want to feel you around me.”

Kyung needed no further encouragement.

After giving up trying to close the last few stubborn gaps of space between them, they lay in silence for a while, fingers interlaced. Kyung said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“You were so happy about that role. I’m sorry he ruined all that for you. And I know that place meant so much to you. I’m sorry that he tainted your home.”

“Kyung-yahh.” It was halfway between a laugh and a long contented sigh. “You’re so stupid sometimes. That wasn’t my home.”

“What do you mean? You worked so hard for it.”

But no answer came. On Kyung’s cheap dormitory mattress, without a pillow under her head, Ye-ri had fallen asleep. 

[red-cosmicc]

home pt.1 | our home

[red-cosmicc]

orphanage pt.2 | orphaned again

[red-cosmicc]

home pt.2 | our scars

[chaehwa-archives]

orphanage, part 1 [friendly rivalry fanfic]

Finally! My very late response to the first prompt for @fr-fest. This is just the first half of a two-part story because I am a slow writer, and I want to try to respond to at least one other prompt before the month ends. Unfortunately that means this is pretty much all set-up and no pay-off, but hopefully you won’t have to wait too long for Part 2.

Thanks for reading <3

~~~~~~~~~~

Sister Sim-gi could classify most volunteers in seconds. There were the high school students who came to put Community Service on their applications. Such a waste when they went to university and spurned their true calling, as stage magicians; vanishing was the one thing they were good at. Then there were the daytrippers, who arrived in festive flocks on Christmas and Children’s Day, believing in their heart of hearts that a few hours’ harassment from an unbearably optimistic adult would leave some poor orphan’s life forever changed. Worst of all were the nonprofit groups with their creepy pamphlets and Protestant tenacity. At least the others had the decency to get lost when they weren’t wanted.

And then…there was this girl. After three days Sister Sim-gi still didn’t know what to make of her. That was rare.

When she first arrived on Sunday afternoon, Sim-gi had mistaken her for a high schooler. The start of the school year was not prime time for high school volunteers, true—they came most often in the summer and winter when school was out—but even so, there had been one other young helper that day, Park Ha-eun, a born-again goody two shoes, the only third-year in recorded history to ever do more than the bare minimum. Church friends, Sim-gi had assumed. 

She was surprised, then, when the girl had shown up again early Monday morning, alone this time. 

“Dongsaeng.” Sim-gi studied the girl’s outfit, the same as the previous day’s. Baseball cap, sweatshirt, track pants. Everything baggy, threads dangling, likely secondhand. “Don’t you have school?”

The girl seemed to smile. Above the black mask she wore, only her eyes were visible. 

“I graduated last year.” Her answers were like that. Not rude or evasive. But brief. “What can I do for you today?”

Her second day she had done a little of everything. Helped serve breakfast in the dining room. Read stories to the youngest children. Chaperoned a trip to the park. Tutored the older kids when they came back from school. She had even replaced a lightbulb that none of the sisters could reach. Anything she was asked to do, she would do without hesitation. 

That was not to say she was heaven-sent. About certain tasks she was more clueless than the children were. Had the girl never once stepped foot into a kitchen? But there were two things to her credit as a volunteer: she was a good tutor, especially to the older kids, and a quick learner.

The strangest thing about her was her lack of boundaries—as if she had confused the concept of volunteering with indentured servitude. She did not even ask to go home at the end of the day. It was Sister Sim-gi who had to tell her, more than once, that she was free to leave.

“See you tomorrow then,” she had said with a slight bob of the head, when at last she’d been convinced that there was nothing more to do.

“Wait.” The command sounded sharper than Sister Sim-gi had meant it to be. She should be thanking the girl, not scolding her. “Dongsaeng.”

Why did she still hesitate to use her name?

The girl seemed not to hear, and Sim-gi had the irrational thought that she might walk out the door and into the woods, evaporating into the night, never to be seen or heard from again. Then she stopped by the door and turned. “Yes, Sister?”

“How did you come here?”

The girl looked down at her scuffed tennis shoes.

“You...walked?” Sunshine Nursery was on a country road, kilometers outside of town. “But that’s—but where do you live?”

The girl paused, weighing something in her mind. “The shelter.”

“You don’t mean—” Her clothes. No wonder. “—You mean that you have nowhere to stay?”

“I stay at the shelter,” she repeated. Not defensive, but not forthcoming, either.

“That’s no place for a girl your age.” Sister Sim-gi’s mind was flooded at once with visions of every mundane horror. The girl was trafficked, a prostitute, an abuse victim, an addict. The mask was to hide her teeth. “It’s late. You can’t walk back at this hour.”

Sim-gi took an involuntary step forward, reached out a hand, and regretted it. It would be all too easy to scare off a girl like this and lose her forever.

But the girl did not flee, thank God, only cocked her head. Her voice when she replied was measured, but there was a bite to it. Was that...impatience? A drop of disdain?

“Well, Sister? What do you want me to do?”

“Stay here. At least for the night. We’ll find you a place to sleep. I’ll ask Sister Hyo-im to look for a change of clothes…”

“That’s very kind of you.” Suddenly her voice was sweet, her eyes smiling again. “In that case, tomorrow morning, can I help them get ready?”

The third day proceeded more smoothly but in much the same way—the girl worked from dawn till evening, hardly stopping for meals—with one surprise. For someone so incompetent in other areas, the girl was very good, it turned out, at assisting the youngest children with their morning hygiene.

Who was she? The question would not leave Sister Sim-gi in peace. There was a screening procedure, of course. The director reviewed applications and conducted interviews. The director was a bleeding heart who would refuse to turn down the devil himself if he showed her puppy dog eyes, but Sister Sim-gi had double-checked the paperwork, and could find no reason to doubt the information there. 

It was simply that Son Yi-seul—that was the name on her form—did not make sense. She was better educated than you would expect of a girl off the street, with none of the coarse insolence or helpless acquiescence of a girl who had grown up there. Her eyes did not have the cornered animal look that Sim-gi knew too well. And yet she wore grungy Salvation Army clothes. And yet she had been sleeping at a welfare center.

A runaway, or a disowned daughter…But what could Sim-gi do about that? Legally the girl was an adult. Not a girl, in fact, but a young woman. A university student who had flunked out and couldn’t face her parents about it? 

But why, of all places, would a dropout come here?

“Good night, Sister.” 

Yi-seul paused after unrolling the sleeping bag across the foam mattress. This was the best Sim-gi had been able to do for her: a sleeping bag in the common room of the dormitory where the sisters slept. Even this was a hard-won compromise with the other nuns, who had wanted to call the police. This stranger was suspicious, she was too great a liability, it was too risky to leave her alone overnight with the children. And why wouldn’t she take off her mask?

She wore it even now. And yes, there was something unsettling in the gaze that hovered above it, something that fixed Sim-gi to the place where she stood. Yi-seul was waiting for her to go. She should go. Give the girl some privacy.

“Good night,” said Sister Sim-gi, and watched Yi-seul crawl into the sleeping bag and beat the crumpled pillow. Good night. How could she leave it at that? She wanted to seize the girl by the shoulders and shake her. Do you realize how far I’ve stuck my neck out for you? Do you know what they think of me now? That I’m a sap with no common sense who only wants to flaunt her virtue? And after all that you won’t even show me your face? How can you expect anyone to trust you?

“Will you pray for me, Sister?” 

The question startled Sim-gi, and washed away her anger with shame.

“Of—of course.” Watching the girl draw the cheap yellow polyester up to her chin and fall still, Sim-gi was reminded of a child awaiting a bedtime story. “Now? Shall we pray together? Have you...prayed before?”

The girl let out a broken breath that Sim-gi took moments to recognize as laughter.

“I used to pray,” she said. “But I think I’ve forgotten how.”

“You’ve—forgotten the words, you mean?”

“No.” Another laugh escaped her. “I mean, when I try talking to God now, it doesn’t work like it used to. I don’t really care if He hears me or not. There’s someone else who gets in the way. The one I really want to tell everything, the one I want to beg for mercy. The problem is I know she can’t hear me. So I’d be better off talking to God, wouldn’t I? At least He’ll always listen.”

It was the most Yi-seul had ever spoken at once.

“I’m…sorry.” Sim-gi felt real pity. The poor thing. Had she lost a friend? “We could pray for her together.”

“I don’t think she needs my prayers. Or yours. My soul is the one in trouble.”

So the girl had done something. That was why she had run away. Murder? God forbid.

“The Lord’s forgiveness is boundless. No matter what you’ve done, He knows your heart. You can be saved if you repent.”

The words sounded no more meaningful than the ticking of the clock in the silence that followed. What could Sim-gi say that would reach her? Words would not be enough. She should kneel by the girl’s side, stroke her brow. You are not lost, she should say. No scar or sin of yours could frighten me. Nothing you are hiding could make me hate you. 

“What about people? Is their forgiveness boundless?”

Sister Sim-gi cleared her throat. But something invisible still blocked the way. “I’ll keep you in my prayers tonight, Son Yi-seul,” she said, and left the room.

~~~~~~~~~~

End of Part 1.

[chaehwa-archives]

orphanage, part 2 [friendly rivalry fanfic]

This was originally going to be a two-part story, but I realized it needed to be longer than that to have the kind of build-up that I wanted. So it’s probably going to be three or four parts total. I just love torturing this poor nun I’m sorry.

Part 1

~~~~~~~~~~

When Sim-gi woke in her cell, the clock on her nightstand read ten past one. The least desirable hour of the night. Insomnia rarely allowed her to sleep more than a few hours, but if she woke at three or four in the morning, at least the wait till sunrise was bearable. Pleasant, even. She could build up a barricade of prayer between herself and the day. Hunker down in her soul and prepare to weather the worst. Mix an instant coffee in the kitchen and read a paperback if she were feeling restless.

But to wake now was misery. Four long hours with only the quiet and the shadows as company awaited her, followed by a longer day of crabbiness and exhaustion, if she couldn’t find some way to fall back asleep.

At first she resolved to pray the rosary with her eyes closed until sleep overtook her. But it was clear before she had finished the First Glorious Mystery that this was a lost cause. Her thoughts were not her own; she could not control their wandering. And they wandered—no, wandered was the wrong word, they marched in a straight line, without lollygagging—in the direction of Son Yi-seul.

She could pray for the girl again.

As if that would be enough to dispel the clouds of suspicion gathering in her mind.

Sister Sim-gi found herself climbing out of bed before she had formed any clear idea of what she intended to do. She could…check on the girl. And determine what? That she was asleep, as of course she was, and not currently in the act of murdering anyone?

Sim-gi had to stifle a laugh at her own paranoia. But if the girl did turn out to be trouble—if she stole something, or hurt someone—she, Sim-gi, had been the one who insisted that they take her in. The blame would fall on her head. And what would become of Yi-seul then? Cast out onto the street again, or tossed into prison…It was Sim-gi’s responsibility to make sure that did not happen.

In nightgown and slippered feet Sim-gi crept down the hall to the common room. Once there, she cursed under her breath, and crossed herself in repentance. It was too dark to see, and she had not brought the little flashlight she kept in the nightstand drawer. If she simply flicked the lightswitch, the girl would wake up, and then Sim-gi would have to offer some excuse for her being there.

She should turn back, climb back into bed, close her eyes. Stop this silliness now. 

Then it came to her: the curtain. She could pull aside the curtain and let in a crack of light through the window. 

She followed the edge of the room, running one hand along the wall, until she felt the curtain’s rough calico between her fingers. A moonbeam like the bell of the seventh trumpet fell across the tile.

The sleeping bag was empty.

For a dozen or more heartbeats, each as loud as knuckles on a heavy wooden door, Sim-gi was fixed in place by a terror she had not felt in years. Had she imagined everything? Had there ever been a girl in the first place? Yes, she had discussed what to do about Yi-seul with the other sisters. But had they only been humoring her, looking down on her with pity all the while? That’s Sim-gi for you, the poor thing. A bit of a loon but she means well. If we indulge her and keep her in our prayers, she’ll snap out of it, Lord willing.

No. Son Yi-seul had spoken to the others, and to the children. Hadn’t she? They’d spoken back, hadn’t they? She was real. And she was gone.

Sim-gi checked the dormitory bathroom and found it empty. The doors to the other cells were shut. None of the sisters kept anything of great value. If Son Yi-seul were a smart thief—and she did seem intelligent—she would hardly risk entering the sisters’ rooms while they were sleeping for the chance of making off with a pack of playing cards. Either Son Yi-seul had left for good, or she was somewhere in the nursery, where the children were.

Without stopping to put on anything over her nightgown, Sim-gi left the sisters’ dormitory and followed the pathway guarded by a lone light post where no insects mingled in the damp air, the bottoms of her slippers scraping the cement.

The sister on night shift Sim-gi found passed out mid-stitch, the knitting needles still clenched in her knobbled hands. Useless. Well—let the old bat doze. 

Please, Lord, Sim-gi prayed as she approached the sleeping quarters, let the children be safe. To her relief, she found the rooms in a more peaceful state than usual. Typically someone was talking in their sleep, or whining about someone else’s snoring in a voice louder than the snoring itself. Now silence prevailed.

It was so tranquil that Sim-gi might not have noticed the girl at all, if she hadn’t sat up, staring, the moment Sim-gi entered the room where the youngest orphans slept.

For a moment they only blinked at each other, neither saying a word. Then Sim-gi seized her by the wrist and pulled her into the hallway, not releasing her until they were out of earshot.

“What are you doing here?” Sim-gi demanded.

“I couldn’t sleep,” said Son Yi-seul, as if this were a complete explanation unto itself. 

“And? So? Did you think the floor would be more comfortable?”

Looking up into the girl’s unflinching stare, Sim-gi realized that Yi-seul was quite tall. If they were to spar with anything more than words, Sim-gi would have no choice but to cry for help.

“I thought that—being around other people…” Yi-seul shrugged and touched her wrist where Sim-gi had grabbed it roughly. The skin was inflamed. “It’s hard falling asleep when it’s just you and your thoughts.”

Sim-gi felt a pang of sympathy, followed by one of guilt. She filled her lungs and exhaled through her nostrils. Whether she believed the excuse or not, what did it matter? Whatever trust Son Yi-seul might have had in her authority and goodwill was slipping away. If she wanted the girl to respect her, she couldn’t behave like a child.

“If you need something,” Sim-gi said, “or if anything troubles you, from now on, come to me first. Please. Just don’t go wandering off. I was worried about you.”

“Of course.” Something in Yi-seul’s eyes changed then. Even with the mask still on, even in the half-lit hallway, it was unmistakable. It was knowing, mocking, that look. “Whatever you say, Sister.”

There was no going back to sleep after that. Sim-gi spent the rest of the early morning rolling to-and-fro on her unforgiving mattress, and, when that did not work, pacing the floor of her meager cell. She braced herself for the long day to come.

But all her anticipation proved useless. Her fatigue, and the fog of uncertainty like a blurred halo encircling her thoughts, were both vaporized along with the morning dew at dawn, when Sister Hyo-im knocked softly at her door.

“She’s…missing, Sister.” 

Sister Sim-gi threw open the door with such sudden violence that the other woman flinched and drew back.

“What do you mean, missing?”

“The common room…”

“Where else have you looked?”

“Where else would she be?”

“Search the place. Top to bottom. She might be anywhere.”

The next hour Sim-gi had spent in a feverish delirium, checking and double-checking every nook and cranny of the orphanage indoors and out, clinging to the foolish hope that Son Yi-seul might saunter around the corner at any moment with that unmistakable gait of hers, casual and yet proud, almost regal, as if she owned the place, even dressed in secondhand rags as she was. 

But the girl made no such miraculous appearance, and the fever cooled, and finally reality lodged like a block of ice in Sim-gi's chest. It was her fault. She had scared the girl away. Of course she wouldn’t stay after being confronted like that, dragged down the hallway like that, hurt like that, having done nothing wrong. Son Yi-seul had done nothing wrong. Sim-gi was the one at fault.

And so the weariness she had expected was replaced by a sharper spiritual torment. All day long she petitioned the Blessed Virgin and the saints, too ashamed to address God directly, asking for wisdom and forgiveness. What should she do? How could she right the wrong she had done? 

She could go to the welfare center, yes, tonight, and look for the girl there. Even if Yi-seul had not gone back, perhaps someone there knew something about her, could give Sim-gi some kind of lead…

But the other sisters couldn’t know. They already thought Sim-gi was a lunatic, the way she had tried to enlist them in her frantic efforts that morning, as if there weren’t a hundred more pressing things to do. To them, the presence of Son Yi-seul had been a disturbing aberration; her absence had set things right again. With a prayer for her safety, applied like lip balm, their consciences were satisfied. Sim-gi would have to invent some excuse to take the car, a false errand…

Or else she would have to take the car in secret. In the night.

“What are you doing here, Sister?”

The voice shook her awake. No—she had been awake. But she had been moving as if sleepwalking, in a trance, oblivious to the world. Now she saw that she was in the common room, that Sister Hyo-im was there, too, frozen and staring at her like a doe in headlights. Too pretty to be a nun, Sim-gi had always thought, with those dark doe eyes of hers. The younger woman’s features warped strangely—whether with pity or disgust Sim-gi couldn’t tell—before flattening into a look of mild surprise.

“Isn’t it awfully late?”

“I was—thirsty.” Sim-gi’s heart hammered in her ears. “I came for a glass of water.”

Sim-gi crossed the room to the kitchenette and took a glass from the cupboard. “And you, Sister?” she asked while the faucet ran.

“I’m sorry,” Hyo-im stuttered, as if jolted out of her own stupor, “I just thought that someone ought to—because no one is using it—”

“No need to apologize.” Sim-gi turned the faucet off. “I’ll help you put it away.”

They rolled up the sleeping bag together, and Hyo-im went to stow it and the pillow in the utility closet, and Sim-gi was left alone in the room. In her mind’s eye she saw the car key, the hook where it hung in the superior’s office, the chasm between here and there. She poured her glass of water down the sink and returned to her cell.

When she did sleep that night, it brought no relief. Hellish dreams pounced on her the moment she closed her eyes, and she remembered every one.

~~~~~~~~~~

End of Part 2.