Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Yang Hye-in hadn't always been Sara's maid, not from the girl's earliest years. A graduate of a prestigious university with honors, she had originally been slated to join a company under the Yujin Group. True to its reputation as a conglomerate that influenced the entire Republic of Korea's business world, the firm she was entering was a major corporation.
But on her very first day of work, someone from HR approached her, and Yang Hye-in's life was upended overnight.
A request that she serve as a personal maid to the chairwoman's adopted daughter.
The HR staff member added that there would be no repercussions if she refused.
If she accepted, building a career within the company would be impossible. Despite who the counterparty was, the position itself was "maid." Whenever she eventually left for another job, it could never count as career experience. She would have to attend an emotionally unstable young lady twenty-four hours a day, making it impossible to take holidays on schedule. She would also have to address a young lady far younger than herself with unwavering deference and formal speech at all times.
For a woman fresh out of a top university with honors, just stepping into a major corporation, her self-esteem at an all-time high, the offer was hardly appealing. No, it was so absurd she could scarcely guess why they would make such a proposal to her in the first place.
But those thoughts vanished the moment she read the contract HR handed her.
Written on it was a sum she could never earn in a year of work.
No, perhaps not even in five years. Or ten. That amount was presented, utterly casually, as an annual salary.
"This isn't an offer we extend to just anyone."
The HR staff member studied Yang Hye-in, whose hands were visibly trembling as she stared at the contract, before speaking.
"Naturally, as someone who will directly witness the young lady's private life, you will be required to sign a confidentiality agreement. There will also be appropriate etiquette training before you are assigned as her maid. Most importantly, we need someone with the ability to assist the young lady so that she can hold her own against anyone, wherever she goes."
And that is why we chose you.
That was what the HR staff member said.
Yang Hye-in accepted the offer.
*
When she first started the job, tense and full of nerves, she thought she was luckier than expected.
The young lady placed in her charge was far quieter and more obedient than she had anticipated. If there was a scheduled task, she never refused. If told to go somewhere, she went; if told to eat, she ate; if told to rest, she rested.
Given the astronomical pay, Yang Hye-in had initially pictured a child who had been abusing her power from a young age, someone who had never properly learned manners. Stories about chaebol kids who physically assaulted or cursed out much older chauffeurs and housekeepers occasionally made the news. But comparing the child named Sara to those kinds of kids was an insult from the start.
On top of that, because her personality was so docile, Sara's own cute appearance stood out all the more. For the first few weeks, Yang Hye-in was even grateful for her luck.
But as weeks and months passed, she began to notice something strange.
The child called Sara had no desires.
She made none of the requests typical for her age, wanting to go out and play somewhere, wanting to eat something, wanting to have something. If no one told her to do something, she didn't do it. Her only hobby was occasionally sitting and writing something in her notebook; she never left the mansion.
Was she simply an exceptionally unemotional child?
No. That wasn't it.
The longer Yang Hye-in spent with Sara, the more the child's circumstances became visible in painstaking detail.
She lived in this enormous mansion, but no one except the employees ever visited.
Never mind relatives. Even her own adoptive mother had never once come to see her.
The employees besides Yang Hye-in didn't hold conversations with Sara. And Sara, as if that were perfectly natural, didn't reach out to any of them either. The mansion was nearly always steeped in silence.
No matter how busy the Yujin Group chairwoman was, no matter what happened with Sara, she never came to see her face.
Not when there was a school observation day. Not when she was suddenly bedridden with a high fever. Not even on Sara's birthday did she make a single phone call. Aside from a few times a year, when she visited as if conducting a routine inspection, she almost never made deliberate contact.
Ah, speaking of phone calls; there was one she made sometimes.
Once, Sara was so ill that she missed school. That afternoon, a call came from the chairwoman.
[I'm disappointed.]
That was the entire content of the call.
"...I'm sorry, Mother."
Sara replied with nothing but that.
The call ended. After Yang Hye-in took back the smartphone and withdrew from the room, she heard the sound of Sara weeping bitterly beyond the door for a long time.
It was only then that Yang Hye-in realized Sara's obedience wasn't simply a matter of personality.
Sara was isolated from the world.
And her isolation was meticulously, delicately engineered, nearly every avenue that might connect her to the world had been severed.
In that vast mansion, there wasn't even a common television. There was a computer, but it was blocked from use unless absolutely necessary. By rule, Sara's smartphone was always in Yang Hye-in's possession.
Sara didn't choose not to go outside the mansion. She couldn't. Yang Hye-in was horrified when she saw the staff guidelines already in place for the off-chance Sara might want to go out.
The food Sara ate was always made with the finest ingredients, but her own preferences were never taken into account. The reason Sara never said what she wanted to eat was because she knew no one would heed her request anyway and had simply given up. It was the same for things she wanted, clothes she wanted to wear, places she wanted to go.
Utterly incapable of doing anything, reduced to a state of extreme helplessness.
That was the true face of Ye Sa-ra as Yang Hye-in saw her.
Ironically, the sole tether connecting Sara to the outside world was her only family: the Yujin Group chairwoman, Choi Na-kyung.
Every quarter, she paid a brief visit to the mansion, as if checking whether her doll had been damaged. Each time, she displayed the bare minimum of affection to her adopted daughter.
"Sara, come here."
When she extended her hand palm-up and said that, Sara would dash out joyfully, like a puppy awaiting its owner, and press her cheek against that hand. All while calling her "Mother."
......It was a chilling sight.
Watching it, Yang Hye-in shuddered involuntarily.
It was only then that she felt she understood the reason behind the incomprehensible environment surrounding Sara.
*
Having witnessed such scenes, Yang Hye-in found Sara's recent behavior deeply unfamiliar.
One day, she had suddenly screamed and lost consciousness. At the hospital, bruises she had never seen before covered the girl's back. Yang Hye-in, who watched her every single day, couldn't fathom when those injuries had appeared.
Ejected from the emergency room by a doctor who suspected domestic violence and the hospital security team he had summoned, Yang Hye-in remained lost in a daze for some time.
It was true that Sara and Choi Na-kyung had met the previous day. But Choi Na-kyung had absolutely never laid a hand on Sara. She had merely played with her like a puppy for about fifteen minutes, acting as though she were the only person in the world who could love Sara. Yang Hye-in had witnessed the entire process from right beside them, so she knew full well that such injuries could never have resulted from it.
Then, could someone in the mansion have...?
No. Yang Hye-in shook her head again.
Within the mansion, Yang Hye-in alone had permission to enter Sara's room. The door locked automatically when closed, and while it could be locked from the inside, opening it from the outside required entering the digital lock's password or a registered fingerprint. In truth, the measure existed not to protect Sara's safety but to ensure no one could approach her carelessly. But either way, it was also true that it kept Sara safe from the mansion's personnel.
The door lock was engineered to be silent, no sound during password or fingerprint entry, but Yang Hye-in was the only one who knew the password. She had never told anyone. Naturally, no one could slip into the room to do something vile to Sara.
Most importantly, if someone had done such a thing, they could instantly identify the culprit by checking the CCTV records. The closed-circuit camera footage in this mansion was stored across multiple PCs so that no one could arbitrarily delete it. It could not be erased on a whim.
The cameras had been installed in the first place for the unsavory reason of monitoring the child, so if anyone deleted the data, that moment would be exactly when the police should conduct an investigation. If someone deleted the data before that, it would simply serve as proof that they had done something even more unsavory than monitoring the child.
And the chairwoman likely would not forgive such a person. Everyone working in this mansion knew that.
Fists were closer than the law, and money was even more urgent than fists. The chairwoman had plenty of that kind of money.
No one working in this mansion had been brought in from just anywhere. It was a place where individuals proud of their backgrounds, like Yang Hye-in, had been assembled with high pay. None of them would casually throw away the option of working here, let alone throw away their future lives entirely.
So, Yang Hye-in concluded that the wounds on Sara's body were from self-harm.
Once she reached that conclusion, her actions were swift. She immediately picked up her phone and called the security team.
*
......Due to these converging factors, her first worry was that Sara might have ultimately broken down completely.
Saying strange things like, "Status Window!" Or suddenly striking up conversation with Yang Hye-in.
In the past, it had always been Yang Hye-in who spoke first, and Sara who merely nodded or gave curt, one-word answers.
Given that she had somehow self-harmed badly enough to bruise her back black-and-blue, and had suddenly screamed and convulsed in the night, such a thought wasn't strange at all.
Yet for the past two months, Sara had been brimming with vitality.
"I've finished eating. May I go back now?"
The same girl who, during their previous meeting, had simply hung her head in silence no matter what Yoon Da-ho said now ate alone and made that sort of demand of Yang Hye-in.
"Yes, Chairwoman."
She addressed the chairwoman, whom she had always called "Mother" until now, with that word for the first time.
"I thought I wouldn't get a single photo today, but I got one thanks to you. Thank you."
She said that, and she smiled.
Yang Hye-in had been at Sara's side for roughly three years, yet she couldn't fathom what had caused such a transformation.
She couldn't fathom it at all—
But there was one thing she was certain of: that change could never be described as negative.