She Came Back on Her Own

"Why does this hyung keep telling me to eat?"

Ethan muttered it sullenly, and still he took the apple and ate it without a fuss.

"She burst into the room out of nowhere, looking like something you could barely call a person. She shoveled food down like a kid who hadn't eaten in three days, then just fell asleep where she sat. What do you make of it? I can't explain a bit of it."

Seol-woo turned his glass slowly between his fingers, working back over what had just happened.

The woman who insisted her name was Kwon Da-mi was, without question, Yeon.

Sunwoo Jun and Sun Woo-yeon. Children raised in a house full of love, uncreased by the world and shining. Jewel-bright children who had given his lonely, shadowed self three years he could never forget. Jun, not so much younger, had become the only friend he had; little Yeon, a beloved younger sister. Those three years with them were the first freedom Honorary Chairman Cha Seong-tae—his grandfather—had ever granted him, and the last, before the suffocating lessons in how to run an empire began. They were the only time he had ever laughed with his whole heart.

None of that innocence was left in him now.

A scoff slipped through Seol-woo's teeth. He found himself ridiculous, dredging up the boy he had been at sixteen.

"So there really was something wrong with her head."

"What?"

Chen, calling up what the neighborhood shopkeeper had told him that afternoon, tapped his temple with a stiff face.

"He said the last time he saw her was nearly ten years ago. She'd dyed her hair, apparently. Not blonde—black. Scars all over her, so there was abuse in it too. She kept so much to herself he doesn't know how long she lived in the neighborhood, or who her parents were."

"Blonde hair and gold eyes stand out anywhere in Korea. They couldn't force contacts on her, but they could make her dye it."

Ethan swallowed a crisp bite of apple and backed him up.

"Said he'd seen her wandering day and night, completely out of it, more than once. He found Yeon collapsed in the middle of an ordinary walk and sent her off in an ambulance, so even after all this time he still remembered her face."

"Either way, it's a good thing we met her. All we got out of that neighborhood was confirmation she'd lived there."

"We tore the place apart and couldn't find so much as a hair. And in the end she walks in on her own two feet."

Chen gave a hollow smile and emptied his glass. Once half a year had passed since the search for Yeon began, a stubbornness had set in. The harder they looked, the deeper she hid, until it felt like hide-and-seek, and he had wanted to be the one to find her with his own hands. Moments like this almost made him believe God existed.

"Worked out, didn't it! I was starting to wonder what we'd do if we never found her. Congratulations, hyung."

"She doesn't remember me at all. Said her name was Kwon Da-mi."

"She hurt her head in the accident. Some kind of aftereffect?"

The last record left under the name Sun Woo-yeon was a hospital file. Suspected brain damage from a traffic accident; discharged at the guardian's insistent demand. A single line. She had never even been properly examined. No trace of her in the records of ordinary life, and none in the departure logs either—and that woman had come back to him wearing a stranger's face.

"We'll have to look into it. Book a full exam, the soonest slot there is. Clear my schedule to match. If she used the name Kwon Da-mi, something will turn up. Find whoever's listed as her parents on paper, and find the hospital where Yeon was."

He had thought the drink was climbing. Talking about Yeon had cleared his head completely.

"Why do I feel like we just got more work?"

"Because we did."

Seol-woo let out a short laugh at Chen and Ethan, clinking glasses and grumbling, and was the first to rise.

"What, you're done?"

"I should see if she's sleeping all right."

The door shut with a clean click, and Seol-woo was gone. Ethan turned to Chen, puzzled.

"She's not even his real sister. Why look after her like that?"

"Because she isn't his real sister. That's why."

"Ah. Is that it."

"Idiot."

Chen muttered it loud enough for Ethan to hear and filled his empty glass.

Seated on the edge of the bed, Seol-woo looked down at Yeon sleeping deeply and toyed with the ends of her platinum hair, spilled in a soft disarray across the pillow.

"Sun Woo-yeon."

Perhaps the blanket was too thick. A flush had risen in the cheeks of the girl breathing in small, even sighs. He had searched for her for so long, and now that she was asleep in front of him it didn't feel real. Something of the child remained, and yet she was strangely different: longer lashes, a higher bridge to the nose, lips touched with red, the baby fat gone from a slender jaw. There wasn't a single unlovely thing in her face.

After studying her for a while, Seol-woo scratched at his brow, ill at ease. He thought he understood why she felt unfamiliar. Yeon, grown before he knew it, was no longer the little girl left in his memory.

Ah. So it really is too warm.

He rubbed the heat climbing the back of his neck, stripped off the uncomfortable dress shirt, hung it on a hanger, and sat on the bed again. He had gotten up to wash and taken the shirt off, only to come back to the same spot as if something had hold of him, and look at her.

Sensing someone near, Yeon stirred, then rolled hard enough to kick the blanket away. The hospital gown slipped back off her shoulders, and the shabby undershirt finally slid down below her chest.

Seol-woo pressed a hand to the burn at the corners of his eyes and let out a hot breath. The peaks of her breasts, pale as the rest of her skin, twitched with each deep breath. He swallowed dry.

"You've got no conscience, Cha Seol-woo."

He had looked for her as a younger sister he had once been close to, to protect the girl who had lost her family and survived alone. There had been no other reason. If a rotten impulse rose in him anyway, it was because he himself was worn down past anything decent. When the blood gathering low swelled against the front of his pants, a dry laugh escaped him. A man getting hard at the sight of a naked woman's body was simply the way of the world. The trouble was that the desire was pointed at Yeon.

He drew the sheet up to her neck and got to his feet.

"Ah, that's not it, I'm— I'm sleepy right now, if I fall asleep, please tie me—"

"Don't tell me she was asking me to tie her up."

Rounding the bed frame toward the bathroom, Seol-woo stopped. Her small feet, blackened from running on asphalt, caught his eye. They were filthy past anything a fastidious man like him could tolerate, but the scabs crusted over them, ugly and hard, bothered him more.

How on earth has she been living?

He stared at those feet for a long moment, face tight, then moved again, turning over the thought that he would bring a damp cloth when he came back out. He stepped slowly into the bathroom.

Yeon, who had been sleeping without so much as a twitch, opened her eyes and moved about ten minutes after he was gone. She rose from the bed with a soft rustle and walked, her eyes unfocused. Half-lidded, she went to the cabinet where expensive whiskey stood in rows.

"How strange. It looks delicious."

Yeon murmured the very words that had passed through Seol-woo's mind while he was drinking, and flung the glass door open. She twisted the cap off the bottle that came to hand and, without a moment's hesitation, drank straight from it. Gulp after gulp, the amber liquor—nearly eighty proof—went down her throat like water.

Before long the strength left her. She swayed, and with a crash she collapsed, limp, beside the whiskey bottle shattered to pieces.

"Yeon!"

Startled by the noise, Seol-woo burst out of the bathroom. He caught the sound of the door opening and pulled Yeon into his arms, covering her upper body. A moment later Chen and Ethan came in, blinking.

"What—what happened?"

"What was she doing? Did she drink?"

Seol-woo found the label of the strong whiskey among the shards and held a finger beneath Yeon's nose. She was breathing. More than half the bottle had still been in it. On the floor where the glass had broken, not a drop had spilled.

She drank all of that at once? Why?

Bewilderment was plain on his face.

"Ethan. First-aid kit."

He laid Yeon back on the bed and checked her for injuries. A little blood had seeped through the hospital gown near her forearm, but she didn't seem badly hurt.

"Did she suddenly want a drink? Don't tell me she was in the hospital for alcoholism? Gah!"

Ethan came back with the kit and said something that barely qualified as a thought, and Chen's hand flew without mercy into the back of his head.

"Ointment and a bandage."

Seol-woo rolled her sleeve up with steady hands, tore open an alcohol swab, wiped the cut, spread the medicine, and pressed a bandage over it.

"She doesn't look well at all. What the hell is wrong with her?"

"Something like sleepwalking."

"What?"

"I think she was trying to ask me to tie her up."

"So this is what sleepwalking actually looks like. Wow—but she's really pretty."

"Out."

He smoothed the hair he hadn't managed to catch in time, the strands stuck out however they pleased, and waved a hand through the air.

"Wouldn't it be better to take her to Felice?"

"Once she wakes. Have Director Jeong set a meeting with a decent interior designer."

"Got it. Get some rest."

"Hyung, let's have another!"

When the much larger Ethan dropped a hand on his shoulder, Chen smacked the back of that hand with a sharp crack and opened the door. Bickering like that, they made a remarkably well-matched pair.

Yeon felt something trying to climb her throat, snapped her eyes open, and got off the bed.

"Urp…… ugh!"

A splitting head and a vision that wouldn't settle mattered less than bringing up what she had barely managed to force back down. Clamping a hand over her mouth with everything she had, she blinked hard and found the bathroom. Floor lamps were on in several places, so she found the way quickly.

"Ugh—urp! I must be out of my mind, how much did I even—ugh! Cough, cough!"

The reek of hard alcohol filled the room. The last thing she remembered was chewing her salad, which meant she had fallen asleep without warning. The afterimage of a dream circled in her head. She thought she had drunk out of curiosity—and she had clearly poured it down in the waking world as well. To make a spectacle of herself like this while living off someone else's place. If they threw her out right now, where would she go? What if Hyun-tae was waiting in front of the shop? Even as she retched without end, the stray thoughts wouldn't stop.

"Get it all out."

"Ugh!"

Seol-woo, who had come up without a sound, gathered her hair in one hand. At the light stroke of his palm down her back, what remained of the liquor and the food poured out as if her stomach were being wrung dry.

"You all right?"

"No. I think I'm going to die. Let me rinse my mouth. I'm really sorry."

He supported the swaying girl, every bit of color gone from her face, as far as the sink, then folded his arms and took a step back.

"The pink toothbrush in front of you is new. Use it."

"Yes, thank you. Ugh, it feels like my chest is on fire."

Leaving Yeon to mutter to herself and start brushing, Seol-woo turned on the lights and got dressed. The sun wasn't up, but he meant to go to Felice. This room off the bar's private suite was missing too many things.

"It'll be cold before dawn."

He chose a cardigan for Yeon as well and shut the wardrobe.

"Um, could I have a towel?"

Having brushed her teeth and, while she was at it, washed her face and her feet, Yeon stood dripping in the bathroom doorway.

"Dry off well. We're leaving right away."

So I really am being thrown out. Where do I go?

If I go to a police station and ask for help……

No. It won't do any good.

"Could I possibly borrow some shoes? I know it sounds shameless, but I really don't think I can walk around barefoot."

"Put this on. You'll be in the car right away, so the indoor slippers here will do."

"A car? I'm getting in a car? Are you sending me to the person who came to pick me up? No. I'll just leave on my own."

"No. My car. There are too many things wrong with staying here. We're going to my house."

"I—really? You're taking me with you?"

Seol-woo had no love for wasted time. Yeon stood frozen with the towel clutched in her hands, and he put the cardigan on her himself. It was an unsettled dawn. He hadn't decided yet where an explanation ought to begin, or how far it should go.

"Yes. I've got plenty to ask you, too, so the details can wait. For now, let's go. You need at least some porridge in you before the acid comes back up."

"Did I die? Or is this a dream? Am I actually still locked up in the hospital?"

"What?"

"I mean it. There's no way luck like this exists in my life."

A hand at her shoulder nudged her along until she stood at the shoe cabinet, and she pinched her own cheek. Looking down at her as she mumbled in a daze, he felt the difference in their heights—nearly a foot—for the first time.

"Why doesn't it occur to you that I might not be a good person? On a dark morning like this, I could sell you off somewhere."

"Don't pretend to be scary, Boss. Even I can tell that much. You're not a bad person."

No one had ever given her good food and warm clothes and said they would take her home. Yeon had lived among people who were always angry, always hitting, always shouting, and kindness offered with nothing asked in return startled her a little.

A click, then a thud.

Stepping out into the suite, Seol-woo frowned at the whiskey smell stabbing his nose. How much had these two drunk? Chen was gone, but Ethan was face-down on the sofa, dead asleep.

"Oh—he's the one who brought me the delicious food earlier. Why is he like this?"

"Don't mind him. He's not in his right mind."

What if I lose this small thing?

A strange anxiety rose in him. Gripping the long sleeve of her cardigan, Seol-woo took the elevator inside the place down to the underground garage. It was his private parking level—a place Hyun-tae, who had stayed awake nearly ten hours for the chance to take Yeon away, could not have imagined even in a dream.