Even If It’s Not Love

open when the wind was strong, so it could be locked from the outside.
You could tell by looking at the light coming out of the cracks in the door whether or not there were people inside anyway.

Inside the public restroom, the old lady shouted and knocked on the door, but Woo-hyun did not move.
Yoo-hwa looked at him with dumbfounded eyes.

“What?”

“What did you do just now?”

“Then are you going to leave that crazy woman with the grandma?”

“…”

“She won’t die in this weather.”

“Still…”

“Or are you going to keep listening to her?”

“…”

She never had the confidence to do that.

“I’ll let her go when she quiets down, so you go home and rest.”

With those words, Woo-hyun went inside his house.
Thud.
As soon as the sound of the door closing was heard, Yoo-hwa’s body collapsed.

“Aah.”

A sigh escaped from her trembling lips.
Yoo-hwa moved, practically crawling, and sat down on the stairs.
The old lady was still swearing angrily in the public restroom, but it was quieter than before.
Yoo-hwa clasped her trembling hands tightly.
But it was useless to hold her trembling hand with her other hand.
The tremors only aggravated.

A long time passed, but she did not dare to go home.
It was difficult to go inside because her legs were weak.

The tip of her nose was so cold that it tingled, and the inside of her mouth was so cold and dry that warm steam didn’t come from her breath anymore.
The hands that were holding each other were already frozen white since long ago.
Even if they were cold enough to be painful, Yoo-hwa did not move.

Yoo-hwa was wandering through the memories of the past.
The memories that she had buried and vowed that she would never revisit burst out like popcorn and cluttered her mind.

“Miss Yoo-hwa… Kim Beom-sik’s daughter…”

“What? Kim Beom-sik? You mean that serial killer?”

“Oh my…”

She was at the dentist’s reception, where she had barely gotten a job, when it was first revealed that she was the daughter of a murderer.
Whatever way it may have been found out, the rumor spread like wildfire.
Yoo-hwa still remembers clearly the people’s gaze at that time.

Fear, worry, anxiety, astonishment, shock.
And the sense of refusal that came at the end.
She learned once again that a person can be thrown away by another person without a single word.

It was from then.
No matter where Yoo-hwa worked or what she did, rumors spread that she was the daughter of the murderer Kim Beom-sik.
Those who heard the rumors sympathized with her but were afraid.

“Where will she go, when she shares his blood?”

She didn’t share his blood at all.

“Still, she’s the daughter of a murderer… I’m feeling uneasy.”

She herself was a victim.

“She’s really scary.”

Really… She didn’t do anything.