Once a friend, now a stranger

Shin Hye did not take her gaze from her father. “Appa?”

A memory flashed. A laughing, dark-haired boy, clinging to a low branch of a massive willow tree, reaching down and urging Shin Hye to join him in his hiding place. The third of the trio.

Gyeonggi was Lee Min Ho Oppa’s.

Even if it hadn’t belonged to him in a decade, she’d always think of it that way. It did not feel right that it was somehow hers now. All that beautiful, lush land, the house and immediate grounds—the entail.

Min Ho’s birthright.

Now hers.

“How did you get Gyeonggi Mansion?”

“How is not relevant,” Mr Park, not looking up from his meal. “I can’t have you risking your sisters’ marriage proposals. You need to get yourself married. You won’t be unmarried for the rest of your days; Gyeonggi land will ensure it. Already has, it looks like. If you don’t like Jung Ha Neul, I’ve already a half dozen letters of interest from the eligible businessmen across South Korea.”

Men who wanted Gyeonggi. Not her. Ha Neul’s strange words from earlier made sense now. Let me protect you. He’d proposed to keep her from the mess of proposals that would come for her dowry. He’d proposed because he was her friend. And he’d proposed for Gyeonggi.

“Of course!” Yoo Bi interjected. “That explains it!”

How could he do this? He hadn’t told her. Shin Hye had known he wasn’t really interested in marrying her, but the proof of it wasn’t exactly a pleasant discovery. She remained focused on her Abeoji. “The dowry. It is public?”

“Of course it’s public. What good is it tripling the value of your daughter’s dowry if you don’t make it public?” Shin Hye ran a fork through her food, wishing she were anywhere but at that table, at that moment, when her father said, “Don’t look so miserable. Thank your stars you’ll finally have yourself a husband. With Gyeonggi in your dowry, you could win yourself a Chaebol. That land is worth a fortune.”

“I’m tired of waiting around for a Chaebol.”

“Shin Hye!!” her mother interjected.

 “You do need it. Especially now,” Abeoji said pragmatically before turning back to her. “You need to marry well”

She ignored the pang of sadness that flared at the silent acceptance of the words. Shin Hye saw the truth in her Abeoji’s gaze. The certainty. And she knew, without a doubt, that she would be married as he willed, as though it were the Middle Ages.

“How is it possible that Gyeonggi now belongs to you, Abeoji?”

“Don't worry about that.”

“Tell me,” Shin Hye pressed. “Where did you get it? Does Min Ho Oppa know?”

“Don’t know,” he said, lifting his wineglass. “Well, he will know soon enough.”

“Who knows what Min Ho knows,” her mother scoffed. “He is no Chaebol now, stripped of his inheritance, dallying in those underground games.”

Shin Hye shook her head. “Did you try to return it to him?”

“Shin Hye! Don’t be ungrateful!” Her Omma screeched. “The addition of Gyeonggi to your dowry is a shining example of your father’s generosity!”

An example of her parent’s desire to rid themselves of their troublesome daughter.

“I don’t want it.”

She knew the words were a lie even as she said them. Of course she wanted it. The lands attached to Gyeonggi  were lush and vibrant and filled with memories of her childhood. With memories of Min Ho Oppa.

It had been years since she’d seen him. Now, if she heard of him at all, it was in snippets of gossip column. He was in Seoul running a gaming hell, she’d once read in news, but she’d doesn’t know where, as it is hard to enter the place specially since the reporters are on her tail and they would have a feast if they found her lurking around underground gaming hell. And her family name is damaged as it is.

“You don’t have a choice. It’s mine. And soon it will be your husband’s. Chaebol from across South Korea will come for a chance to win it. Marry Ha Neul now or one of them later, if you like. But you’ll marry this year.” He leaned back in his chair. “One day, you’ll thank me.”

You’ll marry this year. It echoed through her mind.

“Why didn’t you return it to Min Ho Oppa?”

Her Abeoji sighed, throwing down his napkin and rising from the table, through with the conversation. “He was careless with it in the first place,” he said simply before quitting the room and his wife fast on his heels.

It might have been ten years since she’d seen him last, but a part of her still considered Lee Min Ho, a dear friend, and she did not like the way her father spoke of him, as though he were of little value and less import.

But then, she really didn’t know Min Ho—not the man. When she allowed herself to think of him, more often than she’d like to admit, he was not a twenty-one-year-old who had lost everything in a silly game of chance.

Ani, in her thoughts, he remained her childhood friend—the first she’d ever made—twelve years old, leading her across the muddy landscape on one adventure or another, laughing at inopportune moments until she could not resist laughing with him, muddying his knees in the damp fields that stretched between their houses and throwing pebbles at her window on summer mornings before he headed off to fish in the lake that straddled Park and Lee family lands.

She supposed the lake was part of her dowry, now.

Min Ho oppa would have to ask permission to fish there.

He would have to ask her husband permission to fish there.

The idea would be laughable if it weren’t so . . . wrong.

And no one seemed to notice.

………………………………

That night, when all the house was asleep, Shin Hye silently walked out of the house and went to her car. She normally don’t risk going out at night but today is an exception. She needed to be alone.

She drove upsently out of her house drive. She thought back to her childhood friend. Min Ho Oppa. He was always there for her. His smiling eyes. Always a gentlemen, helping her. She missed him so much. Though she knows he is still in Seoul, she never came across him, its like he vanished. His photos never came up on the newspapers, though his name frequently appeared. She even surfed on net. There wasn't a single photo of him. How she wished she could see her old friend. How he is doing? Does he still remmeber her? Who has he never been in touch with her?

She came to a stop.

She looked ahead, she was parked right outside Gyeonggi mansion. The place had been empty for ten years now. No security was needed as if someone tried breaking in, the alarm would go off. She knows as she had heard throughout the years many burglars trying to break in. The house may be empty but it was well secured. Now it’s all hers. She got out of the car and walked towards the land near the Gyeonggi mansion. The land that is now also hers.

She took the familiar path, walked recalling everything that happened today. She’d gone too many years hoping for more. Believing—even as she told herself not to—that she might be that lucky, too. That she might find something more, someone more. She was heading straight for the kind of marriage she’d always hoped to avoid. Now, she had no doubt that her Abeoji was committed to marrying off his eldest child—to Ha Neul or someone else.

She braced herself against the cold, ducking her face into her scarf and pulling her coat hood low over her brow.

She marched up a snowy rise, pausing briefly on the crest of the ridge, looking down toward the blackness of the lake below, the lake that marked the edge of her Abeoji’s and Gyeonggi lands. And, as she stood, staring into the darkness, thinking on her future, she realized she wanted more than what her Abeoji is offering for her. His plans.

She wanted more.

The word whispered through her thoughts on a wave of sadness.

More.

More than she would have, it turned out.

More than she ever should have dreamed.

It wasn’t that she was unhappy with her existence. It was luxurious, really. She was well kept and well fed and wanted for very little. She had a family that was, for the most part, tolerable, and friends with whom she could spend an afternoon now and then. And, when it came right down to it, her days weren’t that much different now than they would be if she were married to Ha Neul. She would live luxuriously.

But why does it make me so sad to think of marrying Ha Neul, then?.

She took a deep breath, enjoying the sting of the frigid air, closed her eyes, and tried again . . . tried her very best to imagine being Ha Neul’s wife.

She will smile up at him. Lovingly. He will smile down at her. “Let’s make a go of it, shall we?”

She opened her eyes.

AISH!

She trudged down the rise toward the icy lake.

And that was when she saw the light in the distance, in the copse of trees at the far edge of the lake.

She stopped, squinting into the darkness, ignoring the biting wind on her cheeks. Perhaps she’d imagined it. Perhaps it had been the moon glinting off the snow.

A reasonable possibility, if not for the falling snow blocking the moon from view.

The light flickered again, and Shin Hyee gasped, taking one step back, eyes going wide as it moved quickly through the trees.

She squinted into the darkness leaning forward without moving her feet, fixated on the place where a faint yellow light flickered in the woods ahead, as though the inch or two would make it easier to see the source of the light.

“There’s someone . . .” she whispered, the words trailing off in the cold silence.

Someone was there. But that’s impossible. No one had been to the house in years.

She had to do something.

It could be anything. A trespasser. A ghost.

The light flickered again.

Someone was definitely there. Shin Hye knows one thing for sure, She should get out. Run. But she couldn’t move from the spot. It was the whisper of adventure that stopped her.

It would be more.

And that made the decision for her. She’d said she wanted more, and more had come. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and moved forward, excitement taki