p a r t : o n e
PROLOGUE

Black hanbok and mourning ribbon, Bae Joohyun wished she didn’t wear them at the moment in the funeral home.  Her face was all red and swollen from too much wailing. She was standing beside her mother, Mrs. Bae Nayoung, welcoming guests with their gloomy face, trying as they could to bear the unimaginable mourning.

“Appa…”  she whispered under her breath, in between her silent sobbing while looking at his deceased father’s picture. Her head was dizzy and her heart was broken into pieces as the memory kept replying in her head, when her father revealed the secret that she was not their biological daughter. 

Of course she didn’t expect that his last words could be something that’s unbelievably shocking. I

However, the fact didn’t change anything for her. He was not her father by blood but definitely was her father by heart. That’s the main reason why she didn’t bother or even triggered to find her real family because they were her parents and that’s all she wanted to know.

Now that there’s only her and her mother left, they had one task to do, settling the debt, the money they used for Mr. Bae’s hospital charge and medication for almost two months. 

With her mother worked as a homemade kimchi maker and her as a bakery shop cashier, they realized it would take a long years to pay for the debt and the bank wouldn’t want for that long. 

After some time of consideration, about two months later, Joohyun decided to move to Seoul, for better luck,  better job, better amount of money and a better life. 

In a train on her way to Soul, Joohyun could only lamely lean her head in the window frame while listening to songs that hopefully could brighten up her day. She remembered the last time she took the same train was about a year ago when she visited her dear friend —  Park Sooyoung — who was making a living in Seoul. She remembered how excited she was. But now, all she remembered was her black and blue feeling.

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