“I came to settle things,” I say, my voice calm, almost detached. “The hospital bill is paid. Not by me. Not by you.”
Yeong-gi scoffs. “So, what—here to brag about your rich boyfriend?”
“No,” I say evenly. “I’m here because I know what you did. You took the deposit I sent—and gambled it. Then you sold stories about me to the tabloids.”
He opens his mouth, but I cut him off. “Don’t bother lying. I know the truth. You didn’t just takemy money—you took my name and fed it to the tabloids. Congratulations. Was it worth it?”
My father looks between us, confusion curdling into shame.
“I’ve spent years trying to save this family,” I say quietly. “Covering debts. Being the responsible one. But I’m done. The money stops here.”
“Min-hee—” my father starts, his voice frail, almost pleading.
“I can’t be your crutch anymore,” I say. “I can’t keep saving you when you won’t even try to save yourself.” My voice doesn’t rise. It’s quiet, but clear—the kind of goodbye that doesn’t need to be loud to be final.
I walk away without looking back. My heels echo against the tile, steady and sharp. It hurts—but it’s a clean pain, like a surgeon’s cut. Not the slow rot I’ve been carrying for years.
The final fragment comes a week later, on Suho’s rooftop. The city stretches below us, silver and soft under falling snow.
“You’re restless,” he says, watching me pace.
“I don’t know who I am without all this,” I admit. “Without the work. The scandal. The noise. I feel… erased.”
“You’re noterased,” he says quietly. “You’re between scenes. Waiting for the next script.”
I let out a dry laugh. “That what we’re calling a breakdown now? A dramatic pause?”
He doesn’t smile. He just looks at me—really looks. “What if the next act isn’t Seoul?”
There’s something in the way he says it—sincere, open—that makes me pause. It’s an escape plan, but somehow it feels like he’s asking me to choose him, too.
“So,” I say, forcing a small smile. “That offer. LA. Does it come with an expiration date?”
***
Dismantling a life, it turns out, is less a dramatic montage and more an obscene amount of paperwork. The next few weeks are a blur of boxes, hours spent in the waiting rooms at the US Embassy, and signing so many forms my signature starts to look like a cheap forgery.
We move through it as quietly as possible, slipping through back doors and side corridors.
I feel the familiar anxiety creep back at the hum of the airport on our departure day, but this feelsdifferent. This is just movement, the thrum of life without the expectation of performance.
I clutch my backpack a little tighter, grateful for its bulk. It’s stuffed with the spoils of my final Korean grocery run—tins ofkimchi, dried seaweed, a few tubes ofgochujang, and one absurdly large bag ofgochugaru.
Suho stares at the backpack and just shakes his head. But he’ll thank me one day in Los Angeles. Something tells me the takeout there won’t live up to his Seoul standards.
Some habits from when I was younger and basically the only responsible one in the house (lol) stick, no matter how much the world tries to turn you into a delicate celebrity.
The plane lifts off, engines thrumming beneath us. Suho’s hand finds mine without ceremony, fingers curling through like a secret we share. I press my forehead to the window, watching Seoul shrink beneath us.
I don’t feel sorrow for the life I’m leaving—just a strange clarity, a sense that, for the first time in years, my life is mine to reclaim.
***
Los Angeles sunlight is bright, relentless, and completely unapologetic—the embodiment of the American mindset: you fail, you fall, you get up and try again, and nobody judges the attempt. A world away from the constant, unforgiving perfection expected back home.
Months pass, and the rhythm of our new life forms itself out of chaos. It’s not quiet. It’s loud, but with a different kind of noise.
The arguments aren’t about trust or scandal; they’re about whose turn it is to take out the trash.
