Bound by a Dying Wish
Despite her desperate struggle not to cry, tears flooded her eyes until her vision swam.
“I’m not a stranger. I’m your granddaughter. At the very least, you could listen to me.”
“I’m not curious, so there’s nothing to hear.”
The wall-like indifference made Yeo-won bite down hard on her lip. Every glance, every syllable was a wound, yet she could not back down.
She knew this was her first and last chance.
“I know you hate me. But even so, at a time like this—at least today—can’t you treat me like family? Even if you can’t congratulate me, can’t you at least say something like ‘live well’?”
It was not a loud cry, but it was raw enough to be heartbreaking. Her desperate plea to be seen was so earnest it looked pitiful.
Yeo-won drew a ragged breath and squeezed her eyes shut.
It was fine if she hated her. It was fine if she resented her. But Yeo-won had always wanted that hatred to rest on the premise that they were family.
Just as people called unbreakable bonds heavenly duty, she had hoped her grandmother would see it the same way.
Shin-wol, who had been watching the entire scene, curved his lips into a bitter smile.
The moment Yeo-won finished speaking, the light in the old woman’s cloudy pupils died—only for something hot and ugly to surge up in its place.
Shin-wol recognized it instantly as the true heart the old woman wanted to keep hidden.
The grandmother clenched her teeth, fighting with everything she had to restrain the emotion so it would not leak out.
Whether that was her final consideration for Yeo-won or the last scrap of her conscience, he could not have cared less.
No. It could not end so tamely.
Only if she bared a little more of her true feelings would Yeo-won be able to completely sever her lingering attachment to the idea of blood family.
The shadows at his feet gathered at once. One of them writhed, slithering toward the old woman. Like a snake, it hid its form completely as it slipped into her ear.
Manipulating human emotion required no great effort on his part; it was child’s play.
Human feelings were like delicate porcelain—one small shock was enough to shatter them.
And in a situation already stretched as tight as a wire, the effect was immediate.
“……You really have no conscience at all.”
The grandmother’s face turned deathly pale. She slapped Yeo-won’s arm away with vicious force and continued in a voice sunk so low it raised gooseflesh.
“Don’t you feel sorry for your parents? For your grandfather? Is it enough that you get to be happy?”
“……”
“What about that man? Do you even understand what happened to everyone in our family because of you?”
“Grandmother……”
The atmosphere had flipped in an instant. Yeo-won faltered. The old woman glared at her with eyes that had lost all focus, black and sunken.
“If you felt even the slightest bit of guilt, you wouldn’t be doing this. Look at what you’ve done to this household!”
The grandmother’s body, which had been swaying unsteadily, suddenly went rigid. The face twisted in agony was swallowed by shadow and darkened.
Just like the vision the Eodukseoni had shown her that day.
Her breathing grew harsh. Her heart hammered wildly; nausea rose in her throat as if she might vomit at any moment.
“One person’s misery should be enough! Why do you have to ruin someone else’s life too!”
The venomous shriek drove straight into Yeo-won’s ears.
A single tear that had pooled in her eyes slid down her cheek, passed her chin, and fell to the ground with a soft plop.
“So right now……”
Once the tears broke free, they would not stop.
“You’re saying Grandfather, Mother, and Father all died because of me?”
Her whole body trembled violently. Her mind went blank; she could barely tell what she was saying. The world spun. Her breath caught as if she were dying.
“So I’m not allowed to meet anyone, not allowed to be happy, and have to spend my whole life atoning?”
Even as her own words cut her, she could not keep from asking.
Yeo-won wanted her grandmother to deny it. To say it wasn’t true. That she had only spoken in anger. Just one word. If she would only say that one thing, Yeo-won was foolish enough to forgive her.
But what answered her was only the deranged laughter of her grandmother, as if mocking the very thought.
“Do you know what happened not long after you were born?”
Still wearing that smile, the old woman spoke slowly, dragging out the words. Her thin voice had grown so sinister it pressed down on Yeo-won’s shoulders like a weight. She had never heard anything so unpleasant.
The grandmother bit her lip mid-sentence, turned her head, and stared out over the wide field.
Like a field where nothing had yet sprouted, the old woman’s eyes filled with desolation.
“We went to the fortune teller to receive your name. Everyone rushed there as if it were some joyous occasion. But do you know what the shaman said while looking at a baby who still smelled of milk? He told us to send you away, to cut all ties, saying he would pretend he never saw you.”
She laughed like someone who had let go of everything. The sound felt like the last frantic struggle to keep from going mad.
“He said you were bound by a terrible karma, and if we kept you, it would swallow us all. At first we didn’t believe him. We cursed him for being crazy and moved on.”
“……Stop.”
Yeo-won forced the words out in a thin, strained voice. But whether she hadn’t heard or simply chose to ignore her, the grandmother continued in a low, crawling tone until she drove the final nail in.
“If I had known it would turn out like this, I should have listened to that shaman.”
At those words, Yeo-won felt something inside her snap.
That single sentence contained countless emotions. Only then did she truly understand. None of the things her grandmother had said over the years had been spoken in mere anger. They were feelings long fermented and aged, finally spilling out.
Her body, which had been wound tight with tension, sagged. Yeo-won tilted her head back and looked at the sky.
The sky was high and clear, without a single cloud.
Why not rain? Why not pour down a sudden shower to drown out those words?
Tears flowed endlessly. She had no strength left to wipe them, so she simply let them fall.
When she lowered her head again, her grandmother was staring at her with lifeless, hollow eyes.
The quiet gaze drew a hollow laugh from Yeo-won.
Both of them—grandmother and granddaughter—had exposed their ugliest depths and were flailing grotesquely. The sight was so absurd she laughed.
“After Mom and Dad died, why didn’t you send me to an orphanage?”
“I told them not to bring you. You were bad luck. But your grandfather insisted on taking you in.”
The sharp words stabbed into her chest like a dagger. Even as they tore her open and made her bleed, Yeo-won kept her eyes fixed on her grandmother and spoke.
“……When I was in school, I was jealous of friends whose families came to pick them up on rainy days.”
Perhaps because she had nothing left to lose, the words poured out without passing through her brain.
“On weekends they would go on family trips, or at night they would gather in front of the TV to share fruit—those ordinary daily things made me so envious.”
If only she had never known the warmth of family, she would not have yearned for it so painfully.
She would not have had to endure this burning thirst.
Because she had known her grandfather’s kindness, because she had known her mother and father’s gentleness, she could not help but long for it even more.
Her vision blurred. She could not tell whether it was from tears or from her mind fracturing. Still, Yeo-won stubbornly continued.
“But no matter how envious I was, I never felt deprived. Because I had a family too.”
Yeo-won’s body shook so pitifully it was hard to watch.
“Am I not part of your family? In that family, is there no place for me?”
She felt her tongue growing stiff. She wanted to collapse where she stood, but she could not allow herself to.
Yeo-won dragged in a rough breath. Memories and trauma from the past surged forward all at once, tormenting her.
She buried her face in her trembling hands to hide the expressions that kept shifting as she lost control of her emotions.
“……Even after Grandfather died, you still raised me.”
Even now, she could not let go of hope. She kept offering more chances, hoping to hear the answer she wanted.
Pity, sympathy—anything. Please.
“The reason I didn’t cast you out was—”
At her grandmother’s voice, Yeo-won flinched and lifted her head. Even though they stood so close, she could no longer see the old woman’s face clearly.
“—because of the old man’s dying wish.”
Yet the voice itself was clearer than it had ever been.
“Calling you here this time was also because of his dying wish. He said that after he died, the two of us should come together at least once.”
The calm, unshaken voice was so ordinary it felt cruel.
“But that’s enough now. I’m exhausted. At this point, even the old man would understand.”
That calm acceptance shattered her more completely than anything else could have.
“……Was that really all?”
Just then, the wind carried the scent of apricot blossoms across the tip of her nose.
The grandmother slowly tilted her head back and gazed at the apricot tree that stretched beyond the courtyard. A faint trace of sorrow crossed her cold face before it was quickly tucked away.
“That was all.”
She looked at the ground, then the sky, then the apricot blossoms blooming in the yard.
Her gaze wandered without direction until it finally settled on the grandmother before her.
This woman was not family she had lived with for over twenty years. She was merely a stranger who had taken her in at someone else’s request.