Chapter 2.1

The next day, Seo Young-hoon must have said something because Seo-hwa’s father summoned her in the morning. 

As soon as she stepped into his office, a golf club came flying toward her. The club head grazed her face before falling to the ground. Seo-hwa slowly raised her hand to cover her stinging cheek. It had all happened so quickly that she couldn’t even let out a short scream in surprise. 

“I heard you went to a club yesterday.”

‘How did he know…?’

Seo-hwa blinked in confusion. 

Her father’s forehead was marked with a prominent vein. His sharp, raised eyes were fierce. His gaze clearly showed that he was struggling to contain his anger. 

Setting aside how he found out about last night, Seo-hwa couldn’t even begin to guess why it had made him so furious. 

“Is it true?” 

Watching her father’s movements carefully, Seo-hwa gave a small nod. This time, it wasn’t the golf club but a flower vase that came flying toward her. The glass vase collided with the wall behind her and shattered into countless pieces with a loud crash. 

It had been a long time since Seo-hwa stopped trying to find reasons for her father’s beatings. But she still couldn’t get used to the assaults that began without any explanation. 

Moments like these, where she didn’t even know what she had done wrong and had to beg for forgiveness while enduring the pain, always brought a fresh wave of terror. 

“A girl with a fiancé goes to a club? A club?” 

“Seo Young-hoon called me to go. I didn’t go there to have fun; he…” 

“What, now you’re lying too?” 

As always, Seo-hwa had admitted without hesitation that she went to the club because Seo Young-hoon had called her. But her father seemed to have misunderstood something completely. Seo-hwa hurriedly pulled her phone out of her pocket. 

“It’s true. I have the texts here. If you look here…” 

“Seo Young-hoon told me. He said he ran into you at the club. And he said he was very disappointed.” 

The hand trying to prove her innocence froze in place. A bad feeling swept over her. 

“He… said that? That I went to the club to play?” 

“That’s right. D*mn it, is it so hard for you to keep one boy happy?” 

“…You believe him?” 

“It doesn’t matter what’s true. What matters is that you upset him.” 

The hand gripping her phone dropped to her side. It was clear that showing the text messages wouldn’t change anything. 

Her father didn’t care about the truth. Whatever the truth was, the fact that Seo Young-hoon had expressed displeasure was all that mattered. 

Her father’s intentions were obvious—he was desperate to cling to his grand plans of benefiting from the Daeam Group. But Seo Young-hoon’s motives were opaque, his dark thoughts unreadable. 

It felt as though invisible strings were wrapping tightly around her neck. 

“You useless thing. If I took you in, you should at least earn your keep, shouldn’t you?” 

As she stood there blankly, the pain came again. This time, the head of the golf club struck her calf. The heavy blow made her leg buckle. The curses that followed tormented her ears like tinnitus. 

“…I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” 

Seo-hwa instinctively crouched down, repeating apologies with her head bowed. 

Only after about thirty minutes did she manage to leave the room. 

Her whole body ached. She staggered back to her bedroom and collapsed onto the bed. 

Just as she did, her phone on the nightstand began to ring. 

Her body was sore and numb, and even reaching out her arm felt like an impossible task. But the caller was Seo Young-hoon, so she summoned all her strength to grab the phone. 

[The Director just called me. Said he scolded you thoroughly.] 

“…”

[Did you get scolded a lot?] 

The casual voice made tears well up in her throat. Seo-hwa gripped the blanket tightly and asked.

“Why did you say that?” 

[Why did I say what?] 

“You said you saw me at the club. You called me there. I was waiting for you.” 

Why was he lying just to torment her? Seo-hwa wanted to demand an answer from Seo Young-hoon. 

In her heart, she wanted to hit him as much as she had been hit herself. 

But the only courage Seo-hwa could muster was to ask this question. 

[Oh, was I the one who called you? I drank too much, so I don’t really remember.] 

“…What?” 

[You should’ve taken me home if I seemed drunk. All I remember is coming home alone and running into you at the club. That’s why I misunderstood.] 

“…” 

[Were you scolded a lot? Should I call the Director again?] 

His voice sounded incredibly cheerful. Seo Young-hoon was clearly enjoying the situation, reveling in the power he held to manipulate Seo-hwa with a single word. 

The more she tried to find a reason for his torment, the more miserable she felt. 

Only Seo-hwa suffered from trying to make sense of it all. 

Even knowing this, she kept searching for answers. 

“Forget it. I’m hanging up.” 

Her words were weak, resigned. 

Behind them, she heard a distinct laugh. 

[Okay, Seo-hwa. See you next time.] 

The eerily casual voice was the last thing she heard before the call ended. 

“…Ha.”  

Seo-hwa rubbed her right ear and bit down on her lip. 

Lately, her eyes often felt damp. When she was a minor, she had endured by believing that things would change once she became an adult. But now that she was an adult, she realized that nothing had changed from when she was a minor. If anything, she felt even more powerless. 

She was terrified to imagine where the end of her life might be. The single phrase, “See you next time,” from Seo Young-hoon’s lips felt like an enormous shackle. 

She despised herself for being too scared to even attempt escape. 

The punishment she received after her last failed attempt to run away had been so painful that for a while, she couldn’t even breathe freely in front of her father. 

Recalling the memory, she rubbed her goosebump-covered arms. 

After washing her face with cool water, she returned to her room and buried herself under the blankets. As always, dark thoughts clung to her. 

But there was one difference today—at the end of her thoughts, Yooheon appeared. 

Until I no longer want to endure it.

What will you do when you no longer want to endure it?

I’ll end it. This nonsense.

‘I want to end it too. This nonsense.’

The man trapped in a similar cycle but who somehow seemed solid. Thinking of him, Seo-hwa fell asleep. 

That night, she had an incredibly vivid dream. Not the usual nightmares she always had, but a dream filled with new scenes. 

In the dream, Seo-hwa threw off the thick shackles that had been binding her ankles and flew through the sky with wings. 

The sensation of slicing through the cool wind as she soared was so vivid that even after waking up, she remained dazed for a long time. 

‘What kind of ridiculous dream was that?’ She thought. 

Still, having had one pleasant dream, the misery of the previous night felt a little less heavy. Her body also felt remarkably light. 

The dream left a significant impact. Seo-hwa found herself wanting wings even in reality—wings that neither her father nor Seo Young-hoon could ever grasp. 

She wanted to fly freely like in the dream. 

She wanted to live her life by her own will, not someone else’s. 

She wanted to escape the suffocating world surrounding her. 

* * *

To escape the world that confined her, Seo-hwa needed money above all else—not money that came through her father, but money she earned herself. 

Her father allowed her to use her own card, but everything she ate, everything she did, was reported back to him through the card’s transaction records. 

The card she carried was essentially a surveillance tool. 

Seo-hwa calculated the value of the luxury bags in her room. They were items her father had bought, insisting she carry products that matched Seo Young-hoon’s status whenever she met him. 

She planned to secretly sell them to gather money. 

However, even if she sold all the expensive belongings she owned, it would still be far from enough to escape unnoticed by Seo Young-hoon or her father. 

Surely, if she disappeared, her father would go to great lengths to find her, just as he had the last time. 

Viewing her as his property, he would never willingly let her go after calculating the cost of raising her. 

To avoid his gaze, she wouldn’t be able to find a job for a while. 

She would need enough money to cover living expenses and secure a small room before running away. 

Seo-hwa secretly found a job. It was at a small franchise café located a bit farther from her school. 

She worked from morning until 2 p.m., using the time before her classes to work part-time. 

Fortunately, during the day, when she attended classes, neither Seo Young-hoon nor her father sought her out. 

「Escape Account」 

She opened a new bank account to save the money she earned from her part-time job. 

The word “Escape” scrawled on the account booklet made Seo-hwa’s heart race. 

A month into the job, a small amount of money appeared in the account. 

Even that made her happy. 

The fact that she could earn money on her own filled her with overwhelming emotion. 

If she kept saving bit by bit like this, maybe one day she could escape far, far away from her father and Seo Young-hoon’s line of sight. 

She held onto a faint hope.