CHAPTER 9: WHAT I CAN'T SAY OUT LOUD
582 Words
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Eun’s POV
Eun hadn’t intended to call her that night.
He’d stood at the edge of his apartment window for hours, phone in hand, staring at the city like it might somehow answer for him. Every time he thought about Hyeri’s face in the park — the hurt she tried to hide, the way she didn’t ask questions because she was scared of the answers — he felt something break inside him all over again.
It had been two years, but some wounds didn’t close.
Not when they were built on silence.
The truth?
He had practiced this conversation hundreds of times.
In the mirror. In his sleep. In his journal.
But when she picked up, all he could say was:
> “Are you alone?”
Because some things were still too dangerous to speak freely.
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After the call, Eun pulled open the drawer beside his bed.
Inside was an old flip phone. Black. Cheap. No fingerprints. No apps. Just messages.
One of them had arrived a few days ago.
> [Blocked Number]
She went to the house. You better handle this before someone else does.
He read it again. And again.
Then closed the drawer, slowly.
The house. Gwangjin-dong.
Of course Hyeri had gone.
She was never the kind of girl to sit still with a half-truth.
That’s what he had loved most about her — and feared, too.
Because the house wasn’t just a house.
It was the place he used to visit twice a month.
The place where his mother lived, locked inside her own world — broken after the night his father vanished and the debt collectors came.
Nobody knew about her.
Not even Hyeri.
She had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when Eun was fifteen. The only reason he had survived school, part-time jobs, and that life was because his uncle, Mr. Kang, let them live quietly in that Gwangjin-dong home — under a different name.
Eun’s real surname had once been Kang, too.
But after everything that happened with his father, he had changed it.
Seo Eun. A borrowed name for a borrowed peace.
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He paced the room, running a hand through his hair.
He hadn’t told Hyeri because… what could he say? That he lied about his name? That his past was tied to criminal debts and hidden illnesses and secrets passed around like bad luck?
How do you ask someone to love you when you’re not sure you love yourself anymore?
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The next day, they met again — late afternoon, by the riverside where the cherry blossoms used to bloom in spring.
Now, the trees were bare. Winter stripped them clean.
Hyeri stood there before he arrived. Her back was straight, arms crossed tightly. When she saw him, she didn’t smile. She didn’t frown either. Just… waited.
Eun approached slowly.
“You said you needed to talk,” she said first.
He nodded. “I do.”
Silence fell between them, heavy and cold.
“I went to Gwangjin-dong,” she added. someone messaged me.”
“I know,” he replied. “I got a message too.”
Her eyes narrowed. “From who?”
He hesitated.
“I don’t know who’s watching. But I know why.”
She waited, breath shallow.
And then — finally — he spoke.
“My name isn’t really Seo Eun,” he said.
“My real name is Kang Joon-eun. And there’s something you need to know about my family…”
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- Writer
