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Eunseo kept her head down as she strode toward home. She felt sick, her body overloaded with adrenaline from a fight-or-flight response that was two years too late.

He wanted the sugar. That's all.

She knew it was true, just as she also knew that it wasn't the only thing the man in the coffee shop had wanted. She'd dressed down—she always had, even at the peak of her career—but men always seemed to know that underneath her baggy clothes she had a body people paid good money to see.

I have nothing you'd want. Nothing.

That's what she should have said to the man. Then she should have turned fully so he could see her entire face. She knew for a fact that he'd never bother her again then.

Her parents' red letterbox was visible at the end of the street. She broke into a run. Only when she was clenching the warm metal of the front door handle and twisting it beneath her hand did she let herself breathe again.

The door banged shut behind her.

"Is that you, Eunseo? You're back early," her mother called from the kitchen.

She appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on a tea towel, a worried crease between her eyebrows.

"I forgot my phone. I'm expecting a call from Yura," Eunseo lied.

A month ago, she would have thrown herself into the comfort and security of her mother's arms and let all her misery and fear pour out. But that was before she'd overheard her parents discussing the holiday they'd planned on taking to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary. A two-week trip to Barcelona, her mother's much longed-for dream—a dream she'd decided to postpone because, in her own words, "We couldn't possibly leave Eunseo. She needs us too much. There's no way she could survive two weeks on her own."

It had stung, hearing her mother's assessment. But honesty had forced Eunseo to acknowledge the truth in her mother's words. It was one thing to have given up her own place and moved back into her old bedroom in her parents' house after the attack, but it was another thing entirely to take over her parents' lives.

Which was why she'd started going to the coffee shop. It was nondescript and close to home and she'd forced herself to walk there every day for a week now. She'd sit for twenty minutes and read Dear Ahjumma, her scarred side nearest the wall. Then she'd come home again.

And even though she was terrified and self-conscious and anxious for every second of those twenty minutes, she