“Dad.”

“Please, just keep quiet. Don’t stir up trouble for no reason. The election is in April.”

Are you ashamed of me? Am I that embarrassing? Are you worried that your secrets will be revealed? Is that why you’re doing this?

Sewon could barely swallow the bitter questions rising in her throat. Instead, she began to act out, as though in protest.

Inseong found fault with her almost every day. Sewon pretended not to hear a word he said.

Before long, Inseong stopped paying her any attention. Over the next few months, she grew gaunt, and the distance between her and her father widened.

Inseong placed great trust in his stepson, Kim Jaewoo. Jaewoo was twenty-five when he returned from years of studying abroad. Upon his return, he qualified as a lawyer and joined the central legal department of the Youngha Group.

At the same time, Inseong put him in charge of Sewon. Inseong had expected Jaewoo to be uncomfortable with the arrangement, so his ready acceptance came as a surprise.

So Sewon moved into Jaewoo’s house, feeling as though she were taking advantage of his hospitality. She had only just turned nineteen.

Consequently, she had to endure the m*ans and cries of the women he brought home roughly every other day.

It hadn’t always been like that. She had been living in his house for about two years. The sounds had started around eight months ago.

He took women to bed as though it were a hobby. Sometimes, she could even hear his ragged breaths heating the air all the way to her room.

“Ha…”

It was January, the winter she turned twenty-one.

She let out a soft sigh as she watched her breath dissolve into white wisps before her eyes.

Despite being dressed in a padded coat, gloves and a scarf, she couldn’t shake off the cold. She couldn’t tell whether the chill came from her body or her heart.

“It’s cold.”

With her hands tucked into her coat pockets and her shoulders hunched against the cold, she walked down the street. She had no destination. Perhaps walking for a while and feeling the wind against her face would help. More than anything, she simply wanted to be somewhere else.

Anywhere seemed better than home.

Home. Right. A place that wasn’t hers. A place she could barely bring herself to call home.

Being there was unbearable. Every day, she had to face her stepbrother wearing next to nothing.

He had been so good to her at first. He still was, but… His house had once felt much more comfortable than the mansion.

Dwelling on how things used to be wouldn’t change anything. Shaking her head, Sewon wandered along the main road, letting her feet carry her wherever they pleased.

But with her mind elsewhere, she had walked much farther than usual.

Glancing at the unfamiliar street around her, she suddenly heard raised voices coming from a shop she was passing.

Startled, Sewon stopped. About a dozen paces from the building, she held her breath and listened. Then a man emerged from the shop looking irritated and carrying a delivery box.

Sewon’s breath caught again, this time for an entirely different reason.

“…”

She knew that face.

The man loaded the box onto the back of his motorcycle and rode away. Even then, Sewon hadn’t been able to bring herself to say a word.

Yu Minjae.

He was the reason she had stubbornly kept going to school despite her father’s objections.

***

From that day on, Sewon kept going back to see Minjae.

She never managed to say anything to him, but she kept going back. Usually at around nine in the evening.

Minjae worked part-time delivering orders for a small neighborhood pizza shop. Sewon would wait endlessly for him to appear. Only after watching him ride away on his motorcycle could she bring herself to go home.

Several more days passed like that.

It snowed. Sewon checked the text that Jaewoo had sent her.

[I won’t be home tonight, so make sure you have dinner.]

At that moment, she was seized by an impulse.

She wanted to see Minjae.

She wished she could talk to him face-to-face instead of merely watching him from behind.

Sewon tightened her grip on her phone. As she stared blankly at the screen, she received another text from Jaewoo.

[Don’t order delivery.]

For a moment, she felt as though her conscience were being jabbed with iron bars. Then she dialed the familiar number of the pizza shop.

Minjae would probably be the one to deliver it.

The thought alone sent her heart racing. Her hands were trembling so badly that she could barely press the numbers.

After hesitating for a moment, she pressed the call button. The phone rang briefly before a middle-aged man answered. She stumbled over her words as she placed her order.

Ding-dong.

She had been pacing in circles for some time when the doorbell finally rang. Sewon rushed to the front door and took a deep breath. She knew she should open it right away, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

Would he recognize her? What if he didn’t? What if he did, but pretended not to?

All the same worries that had plagued her countless times before came flooding back. The doorbell rang again. She had kept him waiting for too long.

At last, Sewon opened the door. As it swung open, the man’s hand reached through the gap.

“Enjoy your pizza.”

He held out a slightly damp pizza box as he spoke. His pleasant, low voice reached her ears.

“…”

When Sewon simply stood there, hesitant and silent, he gave the box a little shake, urging her to take it. She could feel his puzzled gaze on the top of her head.

Damp air filled the hallway. The backs of his hands were red and swollen from prolonged exposure to the cold.

Sewon carefully took the box from him and looked up.

“…”

Ah, it was Minjae!

It really was him.

Their eyes met. For a moment, his amber eyes widened.

His tousled brown hair fell across his forehead. A yellow plaster covered his cheekbone, though she had no idea how he had hurt himself.

Sewon slowly took in his appearance, her lips parting. She wanted to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come.

Thankfully, Minjae spoke first.

“…Sewon?”

He stood a full head taller than her, looking down at her. For some reason, Sewon felt embarrassed. She lowered her eyes and nodded.

She was worrying that her cheeks might look terribly flushed when Minjae spoke in an even voice.

“It’s been a while.”

Sewon swallowed hard. Then she hesitantly opened her mouth.

“It… has. Have you been well?”

“Yeah, more or less.”

He gave his head a small shake to dislodge the moisture from his bangs, then continued.

“You’ve been well too, right?”

“H-huh? Oh. I…”

Sewon was still searching for an answer when Minjae suddenly looked anxiously over his shoulder. He seemed to be in a hurry.

Of course. She couldn’t expect someone who was working to stand there all day. Sewon felt her excitement drain away.

“Sorry. I have to get going. Order again sometime.”

With that, Minjae turned his back and walked away.

Sewon turned his parting words over in her mind.

“Order again sometime.”

Did that mean the only way she could talk to him was to order a delivery?

She tried to accept that this was simply how things were, but a chill spread through her body as if someone had poured ice water over her in winter.

The hallway felt cold. Sewon closed the door, slid down to the floor, and rested her back against it.

She was glad to have seen him. Yet her heart ached.

Was there really nothing she could do about it?

Yu Minjae. To him, Kim Sewon had never meant anything at all.

If he was the wind, she was a dandelion. Whenever he blew her way, she drifted helplessly like a dandelion seed on the wind.

Alone. Lonely. With nowhere to land.

Sewon lightly bit her lower lip.

It felt as though the wind were blowing through the empty space inside her.

***

She threw the whole pizza away without eating any of it. To get rid of the smell, she opened all the doors in the house. Although Jaewoo had said he wouldn’t be home that night, there was always a chance he might come back.

Sewon never felt at ease in his house. She constantly wanted to leave. Being there made her feel as though she couldn’t breathe.

Unlike the stepbrothers she had seen in TV dramas, he didn’t torment or belittle her, either overtly or subtly. In fact, he treated her so well that she found it overwhelming.

He remembered her birthday and gave her presents. Sometimes, he even cooked for her himself. He often sent her messages, even when there was nothing important to say or any particular reason to get in touch.

Apart from the sounds of s*x that she could hear at all hours, everything was fine.

And somehow, the fact that everything else was fine made it all the harder to bear.

As she lay in bed, staring into space, sleep began to overtake her. She closed her eyes, her thoughts still tangled and unsettled.