“Hi Hawol.” a very familiar voice greeted the two, a voice that she would never even expect listening. Her well maintained composure, her smile, paled away. She could not breathe properly, a wrathful type of torment started burning her insides as she glared to the owner of the voice. It was Henry.

Tears rimmed her eyelids with betrayal and disappointment but most of all, resentment. She would have blamed the villagers, imagining them burning in flames as she stood by to watch but there was never enough punishment she could ever think of for her friend. Henry was one of the only people she had left and he betrayed her. He left her and Hwanuk to die.

“Leave, if you know what shame is…” she sighed, her words choked by sorrow and unjust. 

“If you think you’re a human then, you’d leave me alone!” she cried, throwing the bowls to the floor and thrashing around as if she was still on fire. Henry immediately took a step back, astounded by the damage he had caused. He had never seen her so broken. So angry. He was so sorry, he was but it was clear that being sorry were far from the retribution he naively expected. Hawol had to be tranquillised, she was going mad and there was no strength in her left to  be calm and rational. She was mentally exhausted and like a rupturing bands of rubber, she exploded with force. 

Henry walked out of the hospital terrified, the sound of his dear friend, a girl he once very much treasured, screaming frantically, had rang endlessly inside his head. That was when he realised, he was just the same as the villagers. Equal to those who had traumatised the innocent young lady by murdering the boy she had loved. 

“Hawol-ah…” Etha cried as she watched her daughter calming down into a cocktail of chemicals running through her veins. The anger inside of her was still burning brightly and it was a side that they all had never seen before. And so it was scary for Etha, she did not recognise her daughter at that moment. It was a new chapter, a new street in her daughter’s soul that she was afraid to learn. It was a side that had came from the fresh cuts on her body and the scars that would stay on Hawol’s flesh and mind forever. It would become hers, all those pain would envelope into a new, raw personality - coldness. 

“Why is he here?” Hawol asked, despite the fuzziness of the drugs. Etha sighed, taking a long time to structure her response. She would not want to upset Hawol again. She invited him, confessed the older woman. 

“What?!” Hawol tried to sit up,  disbelief shooting blood from her spine to her toes. She needed to stand up. To sit up, so she could demonstrate her deep incredulity to her mother. Etha immediately pulled away, sitting in a defensive pose as she rubbed circles on her aching, pulsing temples. How am I going to do this, she whined. Hawol barked back, demanding her to answer, to explain. 

“I know he turned his back on you. But not at the last minute. He saved me, he hid me in his bakery and ward off the villagers. Then…” Etha paused, searching for any type of empathy left in her daughter’s eyes. 

“He brought me to you. When they left you there to die, he took me to you and he carried you here. He walked for hours!” Etha cried, holding in her voice as she cupped her jaws with her hands. 

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