Chapter 46
"Ugh... who are you..."
I examined the wound on her head.
Despite the amount of blood flowing, it looked like nothing more than a scrape.
I'd seen plenty of wounds like this when I was at the orphanage.
"My name is Kang Noa. I'm a streamer."
"...What?"
The gazes of everyone nearby landed on me and the woman.
She was completely drunk.
Her eyes were brimming with tears as she looked back and forth between her hand and mine.
"Are you... trying to laugh at me...? Because I'm someone who can't even walk properly... someone who falls down in a place like this..."
"Don't worry. I'm not the sort of person who would laugh at someone."
Maybe it was because of my sincere expression, gaze, and words.
After hesitating, she nodded blankly.
"I heard there's an injured person!"
An emergency responder came running over, apparently after someone called them.
While they examined the wound on the woman's head and administered first aid, I held out a card to her.
"Will you try turning this over first?"
"What's... this?"
"What do you think? It's a card."
"...A card?"
After hesitating, she turned over the card I was holding.
It was the reversed Chariot.
It wasn't a particularly good sign, but the meaning of the tarot card itself wasn't important.
"Listen, friend. I know all about the laughter and mockery you've heard from people."
"...What do you know, you..."
I know.
I could tell the moment I first saw you.
***
Ho Haneul came from a fairly well-off family.
Her father was the CEO of a midsize company.
Her mother was a successful university professor.
Perhaps that's why.
She grew up carrying the expectations of many people from a young age.
Because a tiger's cub was expected to become a tiger.
Even her older brother and sister excelled in their respective fields.
Whenever they entered a competition, they won an award, and their school grades were always in the top three.
That was why.
That was why everyone assumed she would be the same.
But she was different.
Contrary to everyone's expectations, Ho Haneul wasn't all that remarkable.
It wasn't that she didn't try.
She too worked desperately hard.
But she was merely average.
The people who had placed their hopes in her were disappointed.
First, her relatives.
Then, her brother and sister.
Finally.
Even her father and mother.
They stopped paying any attention to Ho Haneul, who couldn't rise above being average.
Even the fact that she stayed in Korea displeased them.
That was why they sent her abroad to study against her will.
She didn't fare particularly well abroad, either.
Perhaps because they didn't like Ho Haneul's ordinariness, the people who initially approached her soon drifted away.
Maybe that's why.
There was nowhere for her to belong, either in Korea or abroad.
When she finished studying abroad and returned to Korea,
what greeted Ho Haneul was a few photographs.
She received them without even meeting either her father or mother.
"Go on blind dates and get married for the sake of the family."
She didn't mind getting married.
But.
But she thought that, at the very least, her father and mother would tell her themselves.
Yet they merely sent someone to deliver an order that she was to get married.
Overcome by emptiness, she sought out a resort to escape.
She came to the resort alone.
Its bar.
She drank alone there.
As she drank and drank until she was drunk, she heard cheers from the table beside her.
Had they come with friends?
She saw a crowd showering a woman with birthday wishes.
They looked happy.
Ho Haneul slowly looked straight ahead.
A small piece of cake sat in front of her.
A tiny candle stood there alone.
"Happy birthday... Happy birthday... To my beloved Haneul... happy birthday."
She softly sang the song in a voice soaked with tears and alcohol, almost muttering it, then rose from her seat.
There was nowhere she belonged.
The emptiness and sadness were so overwhelming that she couldn't look ahead.
Her foot caught on a small uneven patch, and she fell, hitting her head on the floor.
Hot blood flowed from the gash in her head.
On this day, when sadness welled up more strongly than pain,
it was her ordinary twenty-third birthday.
***
"Ho Haneul."
"....!!"
"I know it's sad that you received an arranged-marriage proposal without even seeing your family after returning from studying abroad, and I know that your family doesn't love you, either."
"...You, what are you?"
The light gradually returned to her eyes, clouded by alcohol just moments ago.
Ho Haneul stared at me with trembling eyes, then backed away.
She looked as if she'd seen something she shouldn't have.
"D-did my father... send you?"
"What are you talking about? My name is Kang Noa."
"Kang No...a? Who's that?"
Hmm. I thought I'd become fairly famous by now, but I still had a long way to go.
"Look me up."
After hesitating, she picked up her phone.
Then she began tapping on it as though typing my name.
"...The greatest fortune-teller?"
"That's right."
"...You're really that amazing a fortune-teller?"
Apparently bothered by the gauze on her head, she cautiously reached toward it.
I grabbed her hand.
It had only just been treated and barely stopped bleeding. What if she touched it wrong and reopened the wound?
"Answer me. Are you really an amazing fortune-teller?"
"I'm pretty great."
"...Then what does my future look like?"
"My fortune-telling fee is pretty steep. Can you pay it?"
"If it's money..."
"Good. Then I'll tell you. Four days from now, you'll take a whole bunch of sleeping pills and attempt suicide. And you'll succeed."
"......."
Ho Haneul's face went pale.
Apparently, she had known, at least vaguely.
At the very least, she must have realized that she had nowhere left to go and nothing left she could do.
It was then.
"Why don't we at least give her this to drink?"
"Oh. Thanks."
Somehow, Seo Yurim had bought a hangover remedy.
She gulped down the drink I took from Seo Yurim and handed to her.
But apparently that alone wasn't enough to sober her up, because she slapped her own face several times.
"Phewww... All right. I'm sober now."
Her eye makeup was soaked through with tears, making her look a little frightening.
I wondered if I should tell her to wash her face, but she had no intention of getting up from her seat.
She merely stared at me without a word.
Anyway, since she said she'd come to her senses, I decided to talk things through.
"I'm going to kill myself...? But I'm not suffering that much..."
"You say you haven't been suffering? You've merely managed to hold out until now."
Right.
She had held on.
Even though she'd been excluded from her family simply for being ordinary.
She'd endured remarkably well.
The trigger that would bring down the wall she'd built was something else.
"When you return from the resort, your brother and sister will tell you that they've never once thought of you as their younger sister."
"......."
"And your mother will tell you that she regrets giving birth to you."
That shock would leave her completely drunk, after which she would attempt suicide.
"...Why?"
Ho Haneul muttered blankly.
Why.
She couldn't understand why they hated her so much.
"When you return from the resort, if your parents tell you to hurry up and get married, the man they'll set you up with will be in his late forties, and this will be his third marriage."
"......."
"He's someone connected to the company your father runs."
They were telling her to marry a man in his forties for whom this would be a third marriage.
When she refused because she didn't want that, she heard those things from her family.
"...Why is this happening only to me...?"
"No, things like this don't happen only to you. There are so many terrible parents and families in the world."
Just among the people I know, there's a father who's a piece of trash addicted to gambling and women, and another guy who asks his child to lend him their identity, takes out all kinds of loans in that name, and then disappears.
Some mothers even use their daughters as outlets for stress.
And I don't have parents at all.
"...Th-there really are families like that?"
"The world is much bigger than you think."
Of course, that didn't mean she had to deny that she was unhappy.
"....Sigh. Then, then what should I do?"
"The best thing would be to move out and live on your own."
Being family didn't mean you had to be close.
If you adopted the mindset that you are you and I am me, you could go on living regardless of whether they ignored you or talked about you.
"Can I do that?"
She had spent her entire life craving her family's love.
Though she pretended otherwise, Ho Haneul wanted the warmth of a family more than anyone.
If I told her to abandon her family all at once, she wouldn't be able to do it easily.
"I think it would be good for you to find something else to fixate on."
"Something else to fixate on...?"
"Yeah. You've been fixated on your family until now, haven't you?"
"That's..."
She had craved her family's love.
She had worked hard to earn their recognition.
But she'd never achieved enough to win their approval.
That only made her cling to them even more.
"I'm not saying you should live like a complete slacker, but people don't necessarily have to accomplish something in life, you know."
"......."
She lowered her head.
I ordered a cocktail from the bartender.
It was a sweet cocktail.
One sip moistened my mouth, parched from talking.
"The world isn't made up of bitterness alone. There are plenty of sweet things, too. Try to enjoy life in moderation."
"...Sigh. Then... then what should I do?"
"I want to tell you that even an arranged marriage can be happy in its own way... but I don't know, since I haven't met the man. If you need to, I'll read your fortune later. Or why not get a job?"
If she refused the arranged marriage and moved out to live on her own, her family wouldn't support her, would they?
"That's certainly true..."
She agreed.
"As it happens, a senior told me about a place where I could intern and asked whether I wanted to go. They provide room and board, so... working there might not be so bad."
At that moment, her future changed.
The future in which she was dying in her sleep after taking sleeping pills gave way to a future in which she worked hard at a company.
The place where she got a job was...
Huh?
Why is Hong Siyeon beside her...?
Was she going to get a job at Boss Hong's company?
Is she going to get a job at Boss Hong's company?