Ji Hyo woke up to the sight of her father sitting on a chair by her bed. She frowned, confused and slightly disoriented. “Appa?” she rasped, wincing at the coarseness of her own voice. Blinking several times to wipe away the cobweb in her head, Ji Hyo tried to sit up—and regretted it immediately. She cried out; now that the power of painkillers had worn off, every single muscle in her body screamed in agony. Tears welled up in her eyes.

The patriarch of the Cheon household kept silent, regarding her daughter solemnly. He’d been sitting on the chair watching Ji Hyo sleep for some time while thinking about what and where everything had gone so wrong with his precious daughter’s life that she kept on getting hurt—both emotionally and physically.

The silence unnerved Ji Hyo. “Appa?” she tried again, tentatively lifting up her hand to try to touch the person before her. Was he really there or was she hallucinating? “Appa, what are you doing?” She swept her eyes around, taking in her surroundings, then realized that she wasn’t in her apartment. “I’m home.” It sounded more like a question. Perhaps it really was, because she didn’t have the slightest idea on how she ended up there.

“Sun Mi-ssi dropped you off two days ago looking worse for wear,” he spoke in a low tone, filling in the blanks in Ji Hyo’s mind. Ji Hyo recognized the tone too well—her dad was displeased.

And something dawned in her. “Two days?”

“You’ve slept for more than 50 hours now. Your mom is on the verge of dragging you back to the hospital if you don’t wake up today.” He straightened his back. “I told her to leave you alone.”

Ji Hyo cracked a lopsided smile, grateful. The last thing she needed was another news about her going back to the hospital. “Thank you, Appa,” she said.

The man Ji Hyo’s hair. “Rest up, Seong Im-ah. God knows you need it. You can sleep as much as you want here—you’re home. You’re safe.”

She couldn’t hold her tears anymore. Droplets streamed down her cheeks, and Ji Hyo was heaving as she tried to keep them under control. After all the tears she’d cried in the past few months, she didn’t know that she would still have so much left. She’d give anything, anything to be able to tell her father about everything, to confide in the man that had always protected her since her first moment on earth. But all that she could whisper was, “Appa, I can’t take it anymore.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said sympathetically. Very gently as if knowing how much in pain Ji Hyo was, the older man climbed into the bed and took his daughter into his arms, cradling her just like he’d done countless times when Ji Hyo was still a little girl. “My Seong Im, the wolves have been out to get you lately, huh?”

It was an expression they always used to refer to the ‘baddies’ in Ji Hyo’s life—something that had come up somewhere in Ji Hyo’s childhood. “The biggest ones yet,” agreed Ji Hyo. She was too tired to keep things from his parents even though she knew that whatever she said now couldn’t be retracted later. “Appa, help me.” And just like that, the things that had been bottling up inside Ji Hyo were laid open—from her getting involved with Baek Chang Joo, to their breakup, to the threats and the ‘accidents’. She spared him nothing.

***

Ji Hyo woke up for the second time with a dull throb in her head (let’s not talk about the rest of her body—everything still hurt). She didn’t remember falling asleep; the last thing she remembered was telling her father about her suspicion that her car accident hadn’t really been an accident at all. Darkness was beginning to fill her room, and Ji Hyo knew that soon she needed to get up and switch on the light. She didn’t want to be in the dark. Not today.

Slowly as not to aggravate her shoulder, Ji Hyo shifted. She gritted her teeth as pain shot through her head because of the movement. Serves you right, Ji Hyo scolded herself, this is why you shouldn’t cry so much.

The room was suddenly bright and Ji Hyo squinted, her eyes not used to the brightness. Her mother was at the door with a tray of hot food which made Ji Hyo’s stomach rumble; after all, if she’d been sleeping this whole time, it meant that she hadn’t eaten anything since the light meal she’d had at Gye Baek set.

“You’re awake,” Park Gwi Ja said as she entered the room and placed the tray on the desk next to Ji Hyo’s bed. “Good—it’s about time. I’m this close to take you back to the hospital.” She fussed with Ji Hyo’s blanket and touched her forehead, feeling her temperature. After a second, she nodded—seemingly pleased that Ji Hyo didn’t have a fever. “Your father told me to just let you sleep. Typical men; what does he know about taking care of sick people, anyway?” Ji Hyo let her ramble on. “Your body needs more than just sleep. Seriously, that man. Can you get up? I made you some soup.”

Ji Hyo nodded and forced herself to sit up under her mother’s watchful eyes, careful not to show the older woman how much in pain she was. Her mother hated whiners; she was the truest member of the ‘mind over matters’ club. But just as she was about to get out of the bed, her mother touched her knee to halt her.

“Just sit there. I’ll help you eat,” she said. She sat down on the bed and began to feed Ji Hyo spoonful by spoonful in silence, only speaking to remind her daughter to chew more slowly before swallowing. It wasn’t before Ji Hyo’s bowl was half empty did she speak again. “Seong Im-ah, do you trust us?”

“Huh?” Ji Hyo had an inclination on where this conversation was going, but perhaps she was wrong. “Of course, Eomma. You’re my mom. What do you mean?”

Park Gwi Ja looked straight into Ji Hyo’s eyes. “Why didn’t you come to us from the beginning?”

Ji Hyo sensed a ‘this wouldn’t have happened if you’d come clean since it’d started’ along with the question even without her mother saying it. She understood the disappointment and blame that’s left unsaid. “I didn’t know it’d get serious,” she answered truthfully. “It was only a relationship, Eomma. Who’d have thought it’d be like this?”

“What did he do to you in your apartment?” Her mother didn’t mince words. She was the only one who dared pose that question; even her father hadn’t said anything about it earlier. “Your father told me you said he’d hurt you. What did he do, Seong Im?”

“He didn’t me if that’s what you’re worried about.”

The older woman blinked at the bluntness of Ji Hyo’s answer, more so because her daughter had said it spitefully. “That’s not…” she halted, mainly because it was true that it had been one of her main concerns. “He still hurt you, though. And I need to know how.”

“Why?” Ji Hyo asked, refusing the next spoonful offered to her. Her appetite had died. “It’s in the past.”

“Because!” Gwi Ja slammed her hand to the side of the bed, tears were in her eyes. “Because you’re my daughter and I can’t stand it when someone hurts you—and you know what the worst part is? The fact that you decided to keep it to yourself. You’re hurting and I can’t help you because I don’t know that you’re hurting.”

“Eomma!” Ji Hyo surged forward and hugged her mother, forgetting about her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry—I’m really sorry.”

They sat there in each other’s arms crying for some time, the food was forgotten. A part of Ji Hyo wished that she could turn back time and undo what she’d told her dad, but a bigger part of her was relieved that she could stop pretending now, that she could stop faking every smile in front of her parents.

“You’ve been suffering so much, Seong Im-ah,” her mother said after she’d managed to stop sobbing. She cradled her daughter’s face and her cheeks. “And for what? Is fame worth this much hurt?”

This was a question that Ji Hyo herself had been asking herself for the past few months. Was this worth it? But if she quit now, what could she make of herself? It was far too late to change direction, wasn’t it? In Korea’s standard, Ji Hyo was way past her prime to start working on a career outside of the entertainment industry. And everyone knew her as Song Ji Hyo the actress. What would it take for her to return to be a mere Cheon Seong Im?

“I wish I could say I hadn’t warned you about this when you’d first started,” Park Gwi Ja continued. “That way I wouldn’t feel so guilty letting you get into this industry when I know precisely how demanding it could be, how cruel it would be. But I did tell you—and you didn’t listen, and I didn’t insist you listen.”

“You didn’t stop swimming because of hardship, Eomma.”

“No, I didn’t. I just decided that it wasn’t for me anymore, competitive swimming.” She leaned forward and kissed Ji Hyo’s cheek. “And now, Cheon Seong Im, I think it’s time for you to decide for yourself if this life is still for you.”

“I don’t know what else to do.”

“That isn’t an excuse. You always have something else to do if you set your mind to it.” She could see the turmoil in Ji Hyo’s eyes and thought that her daughter had had enough in her head now. She patted her arm kindly. “You don’t have to decide now. I don’t mean for you to decide at this very moment, you know that. Just… think about it.”

“I will,” Ji Hyo promised.

Gwi Ja nodded, quite satisfied with the answer. She knew that her daughter would think about it—Ji Hyo wasn’t stupid. She just hoped that the young actress would make a wise decision for her own sake, a decision that didn’t come only because it was convenient or easier. She stood up, deciding to let Ji Hyo rest. At the door, she stopped again and looked at her daughter in the eyes. “And Seong Im, whatever you decide later, we’re still proud of you—your father and I. And we will be a hundred percent behind your decision.”

A/n: I've been having a really sh*tty time at work lately, and the only destressing mechanism is to write something. So there's something.

Ps. Does anyone know the name of Ji Hyo's father? Drop me a hint because I'm getting tired of using epithets when referring to him. And yes, I Googled. Thanks.