Chapter Text
We live in an unfair world. People who are simply longing for peace and happiness are often the ones who have the opposite, and people who are financially stable are usually emotionally disabled. The painful reality struck me early on. I’m one of the few people who have everything, but deep inside, have nothing. I’m the one who is surviving, looking for that one thing that can fill up my lifetime of emptiness.
When I was a kid, I’m one of the few who appeared to be bright and contented on the outside, but when the walls close, when the doors are locked, it’s just me, a girl lost in a multitude of faceless people roaming about our place. Porcelain masks with plastered smiles without eyes or ears or nose flood our house every single day, in all shapes and sizes, all colors even. I used to be attached to the hip of my Grandpa at all times, especially when he went out and visited the family businesses.
We are stockbrokers. We create computer electronic parts that are exported throughout the world. But that’s the clean side. The underbelly of the family business? We make and sell high caliber guns, armory, and weaponry, ammunitions and heavy equipment to the black market. We still do; my Grandpa retired and made me run the business. But growing up, I never exactly lived a normal life of what people stereotype as an heiress, despite being born with the proverbial golden spoon in my mouth.
I witnessed violence at its most revolting sight. When I was young, I saw my dad slowly die at the hands of the dealers who refused his offer. They didn’t agree on the price and quality, even though we are the finest in our side of the country, and dad and his entourage were backing out of the deal. I was the silent witness to my dad’s death, yet I cannot testify because I would jeopardize the whole family. His entourage of twenty people excluding me was shot to death with our own weaponry and he was hung upside- down from a crane, used as target for the dealers’ shooting game. I called Grandpa and told him exactly what I was seeing. I went out of the car and told them to please let my daddy down. I was 10, had no idea of what they had done; I thought it was just part of the deal- making and stuff. Then Grandpa arrived and took me back to his limousine, all I heard were more gunshots. I never saw the men who killed daddy come out of the abandoned building. The last memory of my dad was his casket that was lowered down in a deep hole. Grandpa said he wouldn’t be working anymore and he will have his much-deserved rest. I agreed.
From then on, I lived with my Grandpa, and saw more violence. More action, more drama, more disparity between people, mostly between me and other kids.
Grandpa home-schooled me until I was ready for high school. I rarely saw the outside of the Moon property, because I had everything in my room, next was the house almost always filled with people doing their work for Grandpa. I have come to hate those people and once when I was twelve, someone tried to open the lock of my doors in the middle of the night. He was holding one knife and was threatening me that if I made any noise, he’d stab me to death. I was just staring at him, while slowly I fumbled for the 45- caliber gun underneath my bed, the one my dad gave me before he went to his last business deal, until one of my bodyguards tackled him and Grandpa shot him personally in the head.
I want to think that I was just any ordinary kid. I wandered along the Moon property, I learned how to ride a bike and Grandpa taught me how to ride a horse. My uncle taught me archery and Grandpa gave me my first lesson in target shooting. I studied in an exclusive all- girls high school and finished with the highest honors. I went to the states for college and finished as an accountant. Eventually went on to law school to become a lawyer. Accountancy and Law. Exactly what my family business needed of me.
I thought I was an ordinary kid, except for the fact that I had ten bodyguards that surrounded me ever since I could remember. I was never given too much of what I needed, too little of what I should be having. But I knew the striking difference when I asked my classmate in senior- high where she went after classes, because she always disappeared without a word after our last subject. It turned out she was under a scholarship and had to work after school for her allowance.
There were people who don’t have jobs and just roam the city. There was definitely more to life than being cooped up inside the Moon property (being in it wasn’t really a big deal for me anyway). I didn’t know, not because I ignored it, but just because I didn’t know. No one told me. I didn’t notice.
I thoroughly understood what the gut-wrenching part of our business was when Grandpa took me to a high-fenced property just outside of the capital, a few weeks after he shot the stranger who evaded my room. In it were three big houses. All of them were dark blue and there were security wires all over the place.
I can still remember that day.
We went in the first house; I heard a lot of babies crying and toddlers were crawling on the playpen. When I looked up, a baby - dirty and looked like it came from the city streets - was being brought up to the second floor. My Grandpa was talking to one of the attendants and after a short while, they went to the third house, I was left with three bodyguards, Grandpa instructed them to let me roam around.
It was an old, two-story house, but not old enough to look haunted, (besides I wasn’t even taught exactly what was scary or terrifying, I did witness my dad’s murder and I only went to therapy around a couple of times) and there were a lot of…babies. After a few minutes, the attendant returned from upstairs with the baby in hand, all cleaned up and asleep. She saw me staring at her and politely asked me where my Grandpa was. I told her they went to the third house. She smiled ruefully and placed the sleeping baby in an empty crib near the playpen. She then asked me if I wanted to go to the playground because Grandpa was going to take a while in the other house. I shrugged but she led me the way to the outdoor playground. No one in particular was there, except for a little girl with long black wavy hair and a worn out white sundress, sitting on a swing while staring at her feet.
I remember telling the one of my bodyguards to stay away from the playground or within my eyesight for a couple of minutes, like what I always tell them, when I approached people who actually didn’t know me. I was drawn to the little girl, she was a little chubby, and unlike the other toddlers I saw inside the building; they were pale and frail- looking. I walked towards the swing and sat on the unoccupied one. The loud creak of the swing startled her and her eyes widened at the sight of me.
She had those eyes that looked like my favorite chocolate drink Grandpa always makes me before I go to sleep.
She stared back at me, her eyes filled with incredulity and terror; her personal space had been invaded by some girl in a frilly blue dress coat. I tilted my head at my right and she gasped. She might have thought I was just her imagination. I chuckled, delighted at what I saw in her - she was like me, she never saw anyone alive that was in her age, or at least in the same space as she was. I think she might have been just a few years younger than me. And all at the same time, she was unlike me, because her eyes were filled with innocence and fear, when mine was already stripped bare of innocence. She was unlike me, because she was living in who knows where, while I lived in my Grandpa’s house.
She still wordlessly stared at me, and I offered her a smile. I am not the friendly type, but the girl was intriguing me, as her “home” already had. I slowly approached her, but she backed away a little from my gesture. I tilted my head and broke our wordless encounter,
“Your eyes look like chocolate.” Her eyes widened and she blushed. She turned her head away from me and her eyes darted all across the outdoor playground. I was beginning to think she was mute when she muttered,
“Ch-choco—?”
“Your eyes…they look like chocolate.” I pointed at my own, then at her, demonstrating what I was trying to convey. The girl shook her head.
“What’s choco…choco?”
It was my turn to get stunned. Right, there was no chocolate here. I scratched my head and chuckled a little. The girl avoided my gaze once again. I took a deep breath and introduced myself.
“Byulyi. My name is Byulyi.”
The girl looked back at me and like an automated machine, she bowed low and greeted me with a straight-faced “Annyeonghaseyo.”
I nodded at her, trying to encourage her to speak, or do anything really. Looking at her, she looked like she’d run away the moment I move any closer to her. Like a wild animal ready to sprint and hide. I felt worried.
“Do…do you have a name?”
A pause. She didn’t look up from where she was looking at and just answered me flatly.
“Yes, my name is Hyejin. Nice to meet you.”
It didn’t feel right but I wasn’t about to give up on her. So I made a snow ball and threw it to the spot next to her. That seemed to snap her out of it.
Her eyes widened and proceeded to make a snowball too. She threw it at my direction and I narrowly missed it. Then before I knew it, I got hit squarely on my head with the snowball.
I laughed. A really loud belly laugh. Something that I haven’t done in a long while. Back then I forgot the meaning of suddenness, and surprise and play. I’ve become so stoic in a such a young age, everything felt like it was automated. But then this girl just suddenly threw a snowball at my face.
It was a big reset to my young mind back then. And when I look back, I think it was also a sudden change of pace for Hyejin.
I played with Hyejin for a very long a time; the sun had almost hidden itself behind the clouds when my Grandpa asked me to leave my new friend behind. I can remember the sadness that returned to her chocolate eyes when she saw me wave goodbye. But when I was nearing my Grandpa, she ran into me, almost knocking me down.
She clung to me hard - she was hugging me. After a few moments, she stood up and pulled something from the pocket of her worn-out sundress. She placed it inside my hand and closed my hand tightly before she turned and ran upstairs. I followed her ascending figure until my Grandpa broke my stare; he offered his crinkled hand and told me it was time to go.
That was the first time I saw the little girl with black wavy hair. And up until now, I still stare at the thing that she gave me before I left. It was a gold locket, but only half of it. I knew it was a locket because my half had the hinge that connects to the other half. There was a quote inscribed inside the locket,
It was not long before I knew what the property was actually for, because we went there again, a decade after.