Handsome Trash - 28
There were days when she would open her arms to the villagers, and later, when Hyewon would approach them, they would avoid her like the plague. Sometimes she would get help from her best friend, Jinsook, but it was hard to talk to her because she felt sorry.
Eventually, Hyewon left her grandmother’s house as soon as she graduated from high school, using the excuse that she needed to earn money.
The villagers took turns looking after her, but after only three months, she was unfairly fired from the factory. Her grandmother died the day she returned. It was futile.
“I wish my heart was… my own.”
At that point, Hyewon was punishing herself.
She was punishing herself for abandoning her grandmother.
She planned to stay in the house where her grandmother had died, alone, not sleeping, not eating, and starving to death.
She was going to pay her dues and leave the place where her grandmother slept.
One day, when she had lost all hope of living when the sun was rising and the setting seemed too painful to watch, a man came to her.
She can’t even tell him how funny it was.
Grandma was living so lonely because of his grandpa, but he, his grandson, came looking for her grandma.
“Tell me straight.”
Eunhyuk demanded an answer, but Hyewon had nothing to say. She swallowed the flood of memories in her head.
She handed him a selection of her letters, starting with the suicide note her grandmother had written the day she slit her wrists, ending with the profanity-laced letters she’d written Woongyu over the years.
“I hope you’re sick, too.”
It was the only revenge Hyewon could give her dead grandmother.
It did have an interesting result, though.
The letter had isolated Eunhyuk, so it wouldn’t be wrong to say that it was Hyewon’s fault.
Feeling the warmth of another human, her body, which had gone days without eating or sleeping, grew tired.
She missed another person’s warmth.
Ever since her mother’s death, she had been isolated in her grandmother’s house. She felt a sense of security with Eunhyuk there that she hadn’t felt her entire life.
Her grandmother’s tantrums and warnings rang in her ears like endless tinnitus, but Hyewon ignored them all and clung to him.
“I wish I could catch my drifting mind, but nothing is in my control anymore.”
After he left, she saw visions of her grandmother in the house, alone.
Perhaps it was an illusion created by her own fears.
Endlessly berating herself, criticizing herself, and dreaming of a future with Eunhyuk would only lead to a repeat of Soonok’s bleak and lonely life.
“I hate it, but I love it. I love you, but I’m scared.”
So she ran away.
She left because she was scared.
“What did you just say? You, now?”
Hyewon shook her head, tears streaming down her face.
Sobbing like a child, she grabbed the hem of Eunhyuk’s shirt.
“Did you say you love me?”
“I’m so scared.”
“What are you scared of?”
“… That I’ll have to live as Cha Eunhyuk’s shadow.”
“What do you mean?”
“That I’ll… be an intruder in your life.”
Like her grandmother, Woongyu’s first love and object of obsession, she fears that she, too, will be seen by Eunhyuk as expendable, something to be used and discarded one day.
“You aren’t intruding.”
“I’m afraid that I’ll be a part of the past that you’re ashamed of and don’t want to show anywhere.”
That his love has an expiration date, and he can’t bring himself to say it.
“… I’m scared.”
“Are you saying you’re afraid that I’m going to hide you away somewhere and f*ck you day and night?”
Sensing that her tears weren’t simply from sadness or hardship, Eunhyuk grabbed Hyewon’s shoulders and pulled her close.
“I told you, I’d risk my future.”
Hyewon’s body trembled under the pressure, but she slowly calmed down.
“What are you so afraid of? Why are you so afraid?”
“… Because how Grandma Soonok lived.”
Hyewon’s voice still showed fear as it flowed into Eunhyuk’s ears.
Soon, Eunhyuk’s chest was soaked with her tears.
“Because Grandma Soonok lived as your grandfather’s s*x doll.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?”
One of Eunhyuk’s eyebrows raised.
“Your grandfather kept her locked up for a long time. He’d go and have s*x with her when he felt like it. If he didn’t need her, he’d turn away, and if he thought of her again, he’d look for her.”
“…”
“That’s why I wanted to give you a letter from my grandmother.”
The letter she handed to Eunhyuk with her dusty hands. The one he thought was a love letter.
“My grandmother wrote in the letter that she was unhappy with her life, waiting for him all her life.”
Slowly lifting her head in his embrace, Hyewon looked at Eunhyuk with tear-filled eyes and poured out the truth of that day.
“I’m the one who watched her life in bits and pieces from the sidelines, so I was afraid I’d end up lonely like her.”
“…”
“I was afraid that I would end up living as some accessory.”
“Listen, I didn’t know my grandfather did that sh*t, and…”
How scared she was.
“… Grandpa is grandpa. I am me.”
How scared Hyewon must be, flailing like a drowning woman.
It was finally the moment when Eunhyuk understood her feelings.
It was only two days.
It was difficult to fully trust a man after spending a few nights with him, so she broke up and walked away.
Two weeks. Two months.
She was understandably disappointed when he didn’t come back when he said he would.
“I wanted to wait, I really did.”
“I was sincere. I was serious about you.”
“I grew up watching my grandmother hurt herself, hurt and suffer…”
Hyewon didn’t stop trembling.
The tears at the corners of her eyes refused to dry.
“It’s okay.”
Giving up on pulling her out of his arms, Eunhyuk wrapped his arms around her head and hugged her tighter.
“It’s okay, now. I know why you did that.”
“… I’m sorry.”
At only 21, she had lost everything and was alone, her life fading away.
“You said your grandpa was the only family you had, just like my grandma was to me.”
She didn’t know what was right and what was wrong, just what was given to her.
“But you need to get this straight. I’m not going to let my girl dry up in an alley for the rest of her life.”
The same Bonjuri that was heaven for him was hell for Kang Hyewon.
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