The Heiress in the Rain
It was a day when the rain poured down as if a hole had been punched straight through the sky.
The final period at the Academy had just ended.
Normally at this hour the main gate would be thronged with luxury foreign sedans of every make and model, along with the personal secretaries waiting to receive their students. But I was an existence cut off from that scenery entirely.
Pitter-patter on the umbrella overhead. The raindrops falling in a steady rhythm became my only company.
My destination was not the Academy dorms. Even the monthly dormitory fee felt like an extravagance I could not afford, so I had deliberately sought out a place of my own—a semi-basement room a full hour’s walk from the school.
I left the main road and cut into a shortcut alley.
The deserted lane was darker and lonelier than usual. I hurried my steps as I watched rainwater reverse its flow and pool across the ground—then, roughly midway down the alley, something caught my eye.
A figure leaned against a crumbling red-brick wall that looked ready to collapse at any moment.
At first I mistook it for a pile of trash abandoned to the rain. But the closer I drew, the clearer it became that the shape belonged to a person.
No umbrella. In the very heart of the torrential downpour, a girl stood with her head bowed, body braced against the wall. She did not move. She simply let the rain take her.
I stopped walking.
Just pass her by. That was the correct answer. As a covert outcast inside the Academy—someone who never exchanged so much as a word with anyone—I had no luxury to spare for other people’s misfortunes.
I started to move again. Yet a strange, sticky unease clung to me.
The color of that thoroughly soaked uniform and skirt… I knew it. It was the Academy uniform I saw every morning in the mirror. A student from the same school was standing there like that. My last shred of conscience would not let me walk past as if I had seen nothing.
In the end I exhaled a long breath and changed direction. My shoes squelched through the muck as I approached her. I stretched out my arm and tilted the wide umbrella so its center covered her head.
“Hey.”
The girl gave no answer. She only trembled a little, showing no intention of lifting her face.
“Hello? What are you doing there? You’re completely soaked. Are you all right?”
I raised my voice a step and tried again. Only then did she seem to register my presence. Her head rose.
Sodden jet-black hair, straight and heavy with water, parted to either side and revealed the face beneath. My grip on the umbrella handle tightened without my meaning to. A deep shock rolled through me.
Min Jiyeon?
I could not believe the reality standing in front of me. Min Jiyeon. There was not a soul at the Academy who did not know her name. The legitimate daughter of the Min Ga Group—one of the country’s foremost conglomerates. The chaebol heiress who stood forever at the center of everything, blessed with a beauty no one dared approach. The same Min Jiyeon who always moved with dozens of bodyguards and looked down on the world with arrogant eyes.
Why was she taking the rain alone in a forgotten alley like this? The sight brought my thoughts to a complete halt. Of the proud, haughty figure I knew, not a trace remained. Her pupils were unfocused, hollowed out by a profound sense of loss.
“You’re Min Jiyeon, right? Why are you out here alone like this?”
Casual speech slipped out before I could stop it. Min Jiyeon stared at me with a vacant gaze that might have been recognition—or might simply have been the empty look one gives an object in the way. Liquid tracked down her face. Whether it was pure rainwater or tears, I had no way of knowing.
Without further debate I dug into my pocket and pulled out my smartphone.
“This situation isn’t normal. I’ll call the police, or get a driver from your family here. Leave you like this in this rain and you’ll collapse.”
I lit the screen and was about to tap emergency services when Min Jiyeon’s ice-cold hand brushed my wrist. The chill of rain-soaked skin transferred through the contact. There was no strength in her grip, yet I felt the clear will to stop me.
“Don’t.”
Gone was the clear, confident voice that used to fill the lecture halls during presentations.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Don’t contact anyone. Please. Don’t call anyone.”
With a face steeped in gloom she shook her head with visible effort. Family, police—anything that might expose her location seemed to fill her with revulsion.
I looked from the phone screen to her face and back again. Leaving a girl in this state alone in the rain was not something a human being could do. At the same time I could not simply stand forever in the middle of an alley. The downpour only grew heavier.
“Come with me. You can’t keep standing here getting rained on. My place is nearby.”
She did not refuse the offer. She gave a small nod. I adjusted the umbrella so it covered her as much as possible and started walking. Min Jiyeon followed behind me in silence.
I unlocked the iron door of the semi-basement room and stepped inside. Under ordinary circumstances the cramped space would have been infinitely embarrassing to show anyone. Right now, however, was not the time to fuss over petty dignity.
“Come in and shut the door.”
Min Jiyeon stopped in front of the shoe rack, listening to the old digital lock click into place. She hesitated. Water was still streaming from her. Every step she took left a scatter of droplets staining the linoleum floor. The Academy uniform shirt and skirt—cut from the finest fabric—were so thoroughly soaked that they clung to her body and revealed her figure. The cold had clearly sunk into her bones; her thin frame shivered.
I went straight to the bathroom, took the softest, cleanest towel from the rack, and held it out to her.
“Use this for now. At least dry your hair and face.”
Min Jiyeon accepted the towel.
“Thank you.”
She draped it over her head and began blotting away the moisture. Her movements were clumsy, but the soaked black hair gradually settled. Her lips, however, had turned a deep blue. I pushed the bathroom door wide open and pointed inside with my hand.
“You should go in there and wash up. I already turned the boiler on—twist the hot-water valve on the right all the way and you’ll get warm water. Stay like this and you’ll catch a cold and end up with body aches. Listen to me.”
When I finished speaking, Min Jiyeon turned her head and quietly studied the interior of the bathroom. A narrow, time-worn space whose tiles bore every mark of the years—something the young lady of Korea’s greatest chaebol family could never have seen even once in her life. She might easily have wrinkled her nose at the gaps between the tiles. Instead, without a single complaint, she simply nodded.
“All right. I will.”
“Wait. I’ll grab you something to change into.”
I walked over to the clothes rack in the corner and rummaged through the drawers. I needed the cleanest items I owned, and ones roomy enough that she could wear them comfortably. Compared with the designer pieces the Min Ga family provided, these might as well have been scavenged from a market stall. Still, I could not leave her in a soaked uniform.
In the end I settled on a plain white cotton T-shirt with no brand logo and a pair of gray training shorts with a generous elastic waist. I carried them back and held them out to the girl waiting by the bathroom door.
“They’re my clothes, so they’ll be huge, but this is all I’ve got right now. That wet uniform needs to go in the wash, so take it off and leave it in the basin.”
Min Jiyeon stared blankly at the oversized T-shirt and shorts in my hands. Then she reached out and gathered the clothes carefully against her chest, as if they were precious. The temperature of her fingers when they brushed mine was still freezing.
“Thank you… I’ll wear them carefully.”
With those words she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.
Beyond the plastic door the sound of water began to pour in a steady stream. The tension drained out of me; I let out a heavy sigh and the floorboards creaked as I left the sink and sat on the edge of my narrow bed.
Listening to a girl showering in my bathroom, my thoughts began to tangle into knots.
What the hell have you done, Park Yijun?
My temples throbbed. I pressed them hard with my fingers. No matter how I reviewed the sequence of events, none of it felt real. How on earth had someone like me—an invisible covert outcast with no real friends at the Academy—ended up dragging a giant of Min Jiyeon’s caliber into this shabby little hole?
If word got out at the Academy tomorrow, chaos would erupt. There was no guarantee her family would not brand me a stalker or a criminal and bury me completely.
Father… Mother… if you were still alive, you would have smacked me for this.
My gaze drifted to the small picture frame hanging alone on the wall. A warm photograph of my parents, who had both died on the same day years ago in a sudden, senseless traffic accident. After that tragedy I had been left alone. I had clung to this cramped, filthy semi-basement room, earning my tuition, scraping together a living, stubbornly surviving day after day. Nowhere in the dictionary of my life did the luxury of meddling in other people’s affairs exist.
So why had I been unable to look away from that girl?