jieun wasn’t somebody who was overly religious, but she would be lying if she said in her darkest or most troubling moments she didn’t turn to the harvest goddess to help her out of situations. while her issues were never anything big, just questions on how to deal with her family,life, etc, this one was morally tugging at her soul and she had spent weeks trying to figure out how to handle it.
it wasn’t her fault in the first place. it was the post office’s.
how a letter addressed to yongdam had ended up her mailbox in marigold she didn’t know, but it did, and in her morning haze to open her mail before running off to see her mother to take her to the doctor, she had read things that weren’t for her eyes to read, and had become privy to secrets that were none of her business. it would have been easier to brush off if she didn’t know who the person was, but in towns as small as marigold and yongdam, it was impossible. she’d run into haley a couple times here and there, mostly in the markets when she stopped by the seo farms stall for some things. it was weird going there now, knowing what she knew about her family-or more so, her father. she could no longer engage in small talk and chatter like usual, staying unusually silent and spending more time looking at haley than buying her things and leaving.
it was only after going to confessional after some time that jieun decided that the best thing to do was confront haley-gently. to befriend her, after all, from what she had prodded out of her elders, nobody knew all that much about her, though they had plenty to say about the seo family in general. during her down time, she had written a letter of her own, a letter of encouragement to the other, full of her favorite quotes and that she would always be there if she needed to talk. and then after more time of contemplating how to deliver the letter, she decided it would be best done in person.
the moment came at an odd time, when the two had unexpectedly ended up in the same bar together. wasting no time, she took a seat next to haley, not caring whether she wanted jieun there or not. “i’ve never seen you here before,” she smiled, “and i don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. sometimes people come here just to relax or because they had an awful or stressful day. i know i came because i’ve been kind of stressed out lately. what about you?”