The Kindness She Never Noticed
At the far end of Mapo Bridge.
Seol-hee slipped off the hoodie draped over her shoulders and handed it back.
“Thank you—for carrying me all the way off the bridge, and for lending me money on top of the clothes. Really.”
She owed these kind students who had called her 'noona' without a second thought.
The student who had pedaled her here on the back of his bike wiped the sweat from his brow and puffed himself up with adorable bravado.
“It was nothing.”
Even with his legs so spent he could barely grip the handlebars, he hadn't lost his smile.
It was admirable. She was grateful.
There had been a time when she believed the world held no goodwill for her alone.
But coming back, she'd found that wasn't true either.
People capable of kindness had always existed. It was only that she'd never had the room in her heart to receive it.
“Honestly, we're just glad we helped save your life, noona.”
One of the students blurted it out with complete sincerity.
“My life?”
She'd been standing in the middle of a bridge, barefoot, in a wedding dress—so apparently they'd suspected she was there for some other reason.
Seol-hee let out a soft laugh.
Whatever else had happened, at least she could rest easy about their good intentions.
“I'll get the money into your account by tomorrow. I promise.”
Seol-hee climbed into the back of the taxi the students had flagged down for her.
She waved to the three of them seeing her off.
“Good luck, noona! Take care!”
“Buy us hamburgers next time we meet!”
“Tongkatsu too!”
Huddled together in their dark school uniforms, they looked like a flock of baby chicks.
Seol-hee unfolded the memo clutched in her hand.
She'd taken down their account numbers and cell numbers too.
Someday, I have to pay back every bit of this kindness.
Warmth seemed to radiate from a single thin sheet of paper.
Sitting in the back of the speeding car, she watched the city scenery slide past with wide, shining eyes.
Everything looked different now.
That moment.
It was only after the taxi had vanished completely from view that the students moved.
They wheeled the bicycle toward the black sedan parked at the edge of the road.
The engine was still running. The driver's window rolled down.
“We did as you asked.”
A short reply came from inside the car.
“Thank you.”
A long, thick hand extended out through the window.
The students accepted the money in a daze.
They'd met the man at the very start of Mapo Bridge.
At first they'd wondered if he was some kind of creep and kept their distance.
His request had been simple. Help the woman in the wedding dress at the center of the bridge.
It hadn't been free, of course.
But money aside, the state she'd been in—no one could have just walked past her.
Her hair, whipped wild by the wind, was bristling with bobby pins she'd failed to remove, which looked almost eerie. The carefully applied tips of her false lashes were flaking off in tiny specks, and her makeup had smeared with sweat.
Goosebumps prickling across her bare shoulders and arms only deepened the pity.
It was the kind of sight that made any human being unable to turn away.
“But, um.”
One of the students hesitated, then spoke up.
“You know her, don't you? You could've just helped her yourself.”
The man inside the car stayed silent for a moment without turning his head.
This life was different from the very beginning. And that was exactly why he couldn't act rashly.
Yi-hyuk regarded the student with a composed gaze.
“I didn't want to waste this second chance… so I'm trying not to make decisions carelessly.”
Before the window went up, the students handed back the hoodie he'd given them.
The car melted into the stream of traffic.
The students left behind looked at one another, then shouted all at once.
“Whoa, damn.”
“What was up with that guy?”
“He was so freaking cool.”
A gleaming foreign luxury car, a jaw-droppingly handsome older brother, and a suit fit that was absolutely lethal.
Their relationship seemed to carry some story too deep for words, and it left a stray flutter of longing in the hearts of pubescent boys.
They dragged their bikes along, chattering excitedly about the day's events.
“Thank you, driver.”
Throughout the ride, the driver kept glancing at the story-worn woman in his rearview mirror.
His eyes brimmed with curiosity, but he had the professionalism not to ask a single question.
She waved off the change and stepped out of the taxi. Today, she wanted to be the one giving.
Seol-hee stood in front of a four-story villa built of red brick.
A light was on in the third-floor window.
Her heart dropped with a thud.
Gripping the hem of her dress, she leaped up the stairs two at a time.
Her aching heels might as well not have existed.
The moment she punched in the door lock code and opened the door, a familiar voice rang out.
“Hey! Woo Seol-hee!”
Her father, Song-geun, had just come out of the kitchen, and she threw herself straight into his arms.
Burying her face in his chest, she burst into tears as if finally expelling every breath she'd been holding back.
Song-geun, who had been about to scold his daughter over what happened at the wedding, found himself struck speechless.
His daughter had never been one to show her feelings. Since she was old enough to know better, she'd quietly done what needed doing without once letting on that anything bothered her. A child who managed everything on her own, always ahead of her years.
But the less she reached out for help, the harder it was to know her heart, and that had always frustrated him. And now the daughter he'd been marrying off today was sobbing her eyes out in his arms.
Song-geun awkwardly patted her thin back.
“Aigoo, what's wrong? What happened?”
Seol-hee only shook her head, holding him tighter.
“Nothing's wrong… Nothing is going to happen anymore.”
Her voice trembled at the end.
But this time, it carried conviction.
“I promise, Dad.”
The two of them, who would normally have kept their distance from each other, sat facing one another tonight.
She held her father's hand tight, as if she'd never let it slip away again.
His hand—blisters burst and calloused over from years of backbreaking labor—was warmer and more solid than the one in her memory.
So much so that, unlike herself, she wanted to act spoiled.
Seol-hee told her father that she'd been unable to enter the wedding hall because of Dong-chan's woman problems.
She had never seen her father fly into a rage like that.
She had her hands full stopping him from dragging the bastard back to beat him to a pulp.
Having barely calmed him down, Song-geun exhaled a long, rough breath.
“Good. You did the right thing. How could I have sent you off to a man like that and lived with myself? Thank God you found out before the wedding. It must've been your mother helping you from up in heaven.”
He patted his chest over and over, muttering what a relief it was. It made her think that filial piety was really such a simple thing.
Just having your child dodge a single rainstorm, and look how relieved it made him.
Once the explanation was over, Seol-hee washed up clean and sat down to dinner with her father, just the two of them for the first time in ages.
Watching Song-geun curse Dong-chan between mouthfuls, spitting grains of rice, Seol-hee felt purely happy.
If this was a dream, she never wanted to wake from it.
It was late in the evening when she finally entered her room.
Alone, the day's events began to sweep past her one by one.
Seol-hee brushed her left wrist with the tip of her thumb.
“There's really… no scar.”
It was the wound she'd gotten in the year her father passed away.
A glass railing had suddenly given way, and she'd fallen from the second floor.
It had seemed like a mark of her unhappy life, and every time she saw it she'd wanted it gone, so she'd rubbed at it out of habit.
And now that scar had vanished without a trace.
But it remained vivid in her memory.
Seol-hee let out a breath.
A newly handed-down life.
A life as precious as a gift—she had to live it well.
Still, it wouldn't be easy. Jin Dong-chan and Yeo In-ok would never leave her in peace.
They were the kind of people who would stop at nothing to use her as their Curse Shield, just like before.
“I won't be an easy mark this time around.”
To protect the things she loved, and to become happy, she would give it everything she had.
She remembered, in exhaustive detail, everything they tried to bury—the corruption and the villainies they'd committed, down to the last one.
So if they stood in her way, she would strip it all from them, ruthlessly and completely.
But first, she had to deal with her father's hospital bills. And on that front, she already had a plan.
Only, there was something that came before even that.
“I have to pay the chicks back.”
Fortunately, her father had gathered her belongings from the wedding hall.
Though while he was at it, he'd also ranted about how furious he'd been, bowing and apologizing to the in-laws-to-be.
Seol-hee rummaged through her bag and found her phone.
An avalanche of missed calls and messages had piled up.
The person who had called the most, by far, was Dong-chan.
Seol-hee deleted the name saved as Jin Dong-chan and typed in a new one.
“This is exactly what you are. Now, the money….”
She transferred the money to the account written on the memo she'd been clutching the whole time.
Her balance was far from ample, and she flinched at the hit.
Still, for the chicks—her saviors who had appeared when she was in dire straits—she sent back double what they'd lent her.
She didn't forget to send a message either.
She typed out 'noona' and preened to herself, all alone.
Come back ten years and suddenly high schoolers were calling her noona—what a strange world.
Seol-hee flopped onto the bed.
The familiar scent, the well-worn little objects that had always filled the room, wrapped her in a coziness that let her sink, for the first time in what felt like forever, into a deep, deep sleep.
A hotel suite.
Bzzt—
The cell phone resting atop the neatly folded gray hoodie gave a short vibration.
Yi-hyuk had just stepped out of the shower, a towel around his waist, shaking the remaining water from his hair with one hand.
The sender's name on the phone read Seol-hee.
Thirteen years old.
The days when he hadn't yet been Do Yi-hyuk of a prestigious political dynasty flashed suddenly through his mind.
As he read down the message, the corners of his mouth curved softly.
Standing right where he was, he read it again. And again.
Water droplets falling from the ends of his wet hair soaked into his shoulders, but he couldn't take his eyes off the screen.
Yi-hyuk, his smile wiped away, dialed somewhere. The call connected, and the other party picked up immediately.
“Speaking, Director. I won't be returning to the US. I've gained plenty of experience at Sing Bank already, and more than anything, the position you mentioned… seems worth taking on. So please tell my father I'll accept it. Why the sudden change of heart?”
Yi-hyuk picked up the hoodie still carrying the lingering scent of Seol-hee.
“I thought I'd try making a different choice this time. Who knows—that choice might just produce some unexpected results.”
As the faint afterimage brushed the tip of his nose, the smile at the corner of his mouth deepened.