Chapter 10.2
Despite her resolve, Yeon-ha was still a young student. She wanted to attend extracurricular classes like her friends, join them for dinner on the way to the academy, and stop by a café. She envied those who flaunted expensive phones or electronic gadgets their parents had bought them.
However, these were mere wishes, not unbearable desires or dissatisfaction with her situation. How could she feel discontent when she felt incredibly fortunate just to have her grandmother by her side?
Yeon-ha only wished for one thing: for her grandmother to stay healthy and be with her for a long time. If she could, she’d willingly give up some of her own life to ensure her grandmother’s well-being.
Yeon-ha always desperately wished her grandmother could stay by her side, despite knowing it was an impossible dream. However, life, relentless and unpredictable, had other plans.
A few days before her middle school graduation, her grandmother collapsed. This incident heightened Yeon-ha’s already ingrained anxiety to an extreme level. Fortunately, after a check-up at a nearby hospital, her grandmother was deemed fine.
However, for Yeon-ha, the time spent waiting to hear that everything was right felt like a nightmare.
After the turmoil subsided, Yeon-ha endured those days with the single-minded belief that achieving her goal of getting into her desired university was the only thing she could rely on.
Just before starting her second year of high school, during the late winter, they moved to a city an hour away from Seoul. Her grandmother, whose health had significantly declined and who could no longer afford the steeply increased rent of the restaurant, had to give up her small soup business.
Instead, they moved to a place where an acquaintance of her grandmother lived, and she started working as a kitchen assistant. The new place they hastily found was a two-room apartment near her new school. It was an old building with many inconveniences.
“I’m so sorry, my dear…” Her grandmother’s embrace felt frail, and it broke Yeon-ha’s heart. She had grown taller and more robust than her grandmother, and feeling this evident truth made her unbearably sad.
Her grandmother insisted that Yeon-ha never come to the new restaurant, emphasizing it was not allowed. With a heavy heart, Yeon-ha nodded in agreement. She had breezed through her adolescence, barely acknowledging its existence. However, the abrupt changes and the pressure of soon being a senior in high school made it difficult for her to adapt.
So, she decided to focus solely on her studies. Given the circumstances, Yeon-ha became more sensitive. Sometimes she felt a surge of frustration over not being able to buy a single workbook, but she always forced such thoughts out of her mind. She constantly reassured herself that this was nothing compared to what others might be going through.
“Really, it’s fine,” she would tell herself repeatedly.
“Surely, there are people in tougher situations than mine. This is nothing.”
She tried to comfort herself with such textbook-like thoughts. After all, her grandmother was the one enduring the most hardship.
She told herself that all she needed to do was succeed.
If she could get into a good company, work hard, and earn a lot, she could repay her grandmother by letting her rest comfortably. If she could get into a good university, she could start tutoring part-time and gradually start to pay back.
But sometimes, she couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of unfairness.
Though she believed she had erased such feelings, the undefined anger toward an unknown target continued to grow quietly within her. It spread a sense of helplessness and futility, subtly gnawing at the tenderest parts of her being. It was something she had tried hard to conceal, but it slowly ate away at her.
She endured another year, hanging on only for her grandmother. During this time, they had to move once more.
“The new place has a much bigger room, and the rent is even cheaper. I think we were really lucky to get it before someone else did,” her grandmother said, sounding somewhat abrupt. Though Yeon-ha was skeptical, she was also relieved.
The current place had brought them a lot of stress, and the idea of moving to a better place was welcome news. Unlike before, she would have to take the bus to school, but the new place was closer to her grandmother’s restaurant, which put her at ease.
It was then that they started living in the apartment three doors up from Kwon Min-gyu.
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