SONG HANBYEOL
1995.30.12 PRIVATE BANKER SLND_02
tw: abuse
Hanbyeol is raised with a silver spoon, a stiff upper lip, and a straight back.
The younger of two boys, it’s understood from birth that he’s not the heir. It makes for a bit of a strange upbringing, really - he’s not quite important enough to receive the attention a child needs, but he’s just important enough that he still needs to be raised the right way, the Song way.
He’s a quiet baby. Perhaps he knows from the very beginning that children are to be seen and not heard. He doesn’t cry, and he doesn’t fuss. His brother is endeared by him, but his parents aren’t as much so, and ultimately this is the way things remain throughout his entire life.
Hanbyeol sees happiness in glimpses and pieces - his brother plays with him sometimes, when the both of them are free from tutors and schoolwork and extracurricular activities. He sees loneliness more often, and he sees it particularly when the whole family is together at the dinner table, the dining room silent except for the clinking of cutlery.
He sees it most when his brother leaves for university.
His father is a quiet man, a strict man. His mother is the same. Sometimes, when Hanbyeol is very young, he wonders whether they talk to each other at all. They certainly don’t talk all that much to him. They don’t really start talking to him for a long time, not until he’s their only child left at home. Hanbyeol realises then that their earlier silence had probably been for the best, and he regrets ever wishing for their attention.
His world remains small for a long, long time. He has minimal friends as a child, and that doesn’t change until he nears secondary school where, with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of chance, he makes his first friend that hasn’t been introduced to him by his parents. And then, like the tiniest domino setup, he suddenly has a group of friends.
Things are suddenly different.
It’s strange at first, to have people apart from his brother ask about him. It’s strange to spend time with people for the sole purpose of enjoyment. Hanbyeol is awkward and then he’s not, and then he’s happier than he’s been in his whole life, and when he’s young and sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, he expects it to last forever. Of course, as things tend to, it doesn’t.
His world contracts again sharply as he’s sent to university. Video calls multiple times a week start to dwindle first, and then the phone calls do, and then the texts. Soon enough, he’s getting a single text a month, and then a few months, and then a year. Hanbyeol is smart - it doesn’t take him long to realise what’s going on.
He closes up entirely. Friends aren’t really worth it, he decides, his mother’s words echoing uncomfortably through his mind. They’re distractions, his father’s voice adds. Maybe they’re right. He fast-tracks through his parents’ decided majors for him and he ends up right where they want him - working in their company, high up enough to be of use, not so high up enough to be too powerful.
It’s not his ideal life, not really, but… It’s fine, Hanbyeol thinks, downing his third cup of coffee.
Everything’s fine.















