If anyone had every told Jang Yoo Mi that she would find herself sitting on the staircase attached to the side of the what was once her home, waiting for her father to open up the shop, she would have laughed in their faces.

She would have laughed harder had they told her she would be doing it, shivering and wet, protected only by an umbrella, in the pouring rain on a Friday morning. 

As it was, that's exactly where she found herself.

After spending the last week avoiding her childhood home like the plague, although staying within walking distance, she'd finally mustered up the courage to go back to the small shop. She knew that on Friday mornings, her father would be awake by 9 am, with the shop open by 10 am.

So she sat and waited, checking the watch on her wrist. Yoo Mi felt unsure, a shiver of fear running through her, causing her tummy to do strange things and making her anxious. She breathed through her nose and out through , trying to calm herself.

At the sound of a door opening, Yoo Mi turned around to see her father opening up the doors to the shop and flicking the lights on. She silently watched him for a good few minutes, watching him turn everything on and could hear music flow through the doors. Yoo Mi smiled to herself upon hearing the familiar classical music that her father adored and she'd grown to love as a child.

Standing on shaky legs, she made her way to the door, gnawing on her bottom lip as she did so.

Pulling it open, her father turned his head to look at who had come in, shocked for a second when he saw Yoo Mi at the entrance. They both stood in silence for a while, before his eyes narrowed and he sighed, turning back to what he was doing behind the counter.

"What do you want?" he asked gruffly, so unlike the loving father she'd left behind during an early afternoon three years ago.

Yoo Mi shifted from foot to foot, opening to speak before closing it again several times. Finally, she sighed and stepped up to the counter.

"I came to talk to you about something. I need your help," she said, finally feeling the tears she'd been holding back for weeks, surface. Her father turned to her, his expression softening for a split second before hardening again, an array of emotions flitting across his face before settling back to stone.

"With what. I don't think I can help you. I don't know you," he said curtly, walking from behind the counter to do something else before feeling a hand on his elbow.

Turning around, he sighed in fustration, ready to throw his daughter out before noticing the desperation in her face.

"Please? I really need to understand something," she asked quietly, looking at him with all her emotions free and across her face.

Her father stared at her for several quite moments before sighing and pulling back, "Fine," he waved her to go up the back stairs, "Go wait in the kitchen. I need to wait for Dae Hyun," he said, referring to his worker.

Yoo Mi nodded, biting her lip as she made her way past him and towards the stairs. Making her way up to the landing, she looked around the place she had once called home, her shoes sliding off and placed neatly next to the door the way she always had as a child. Looking down, she was surprised to find her old slippers still in their place, wondering, why on earth her father would have kept them at all if he'd thought she was gone for good.

She padded across the wood floor, some of the anxiety leaving her once she reached the kitchen table and sat down.

Now, Yoo Mi could only hope she could get answers to her questions.