Pen and Paper Translations

Because the engineers had gone off to shower, only Hyunseung and Lee Hyoeun were left in the studio.

“We really are done recording, right?”

“How many times are you going to ask?”

“It just feels like you okayed it in one go…”

“If you really want, want to go back in?”

“No!”

After confirming yet again that they were indeed finished, Hyoeun flopped onto the sofa.

If she stepped outside now, it would probably be a blazing mid-morning, right?

“Mmm, so soft.”

While everyone else was starting their day with energy, she was withering.

The moment she lay down comfortably, she knew she’d sleep hard and wreck her voice, so she hadn’t even dared lie down and then burned through sixteen hours anyway.

“Sleep at home.”

“Just a little… just a little.”

Her stamina had long since run dry. Like a newborn foal, her legs were trembling. She thought she’d better steady them before heading home.

Even when she was working three jobs this hadn’t felt this tired.

Of course, the satisfaction was incomparable.

How much? Well… when Hyunseung said “Okay,” she’d almost burst into grateful tears, so that much?

Ahh. Now that the tension had drained away, a wave of limpness crashed in.

Just for a second… maybe close my eyes?

Burying her face in the sofa, Hyoeun drifted off.

---

She had a nightmare. The kind you felt you’d never escape.

She opened a door to a room without even a proper window, opened another, opened and opened, trying to get out—only to find herself in the same spot.

Shapeless shouting and the sound of shattering glass rang in her ears.

Like someone who’d been tormented, a child lay sprawled in the corner, groaning, barely breathing.

Who is that child? And where is this?

Giving up on leaving, Hyoeun slowly approached the child.

Tap, tap.

Hey… why are you here like this?

She clearly tried to ask, but no sound came.

Only the child’s sobs grew more violent.

I shouldn’t have touched this.

Thinking that, she started to take a step back when…

Ever so slowly,  the child lifted her head and looked at her.

The child was…herself as a little girl.

To be precise, it was herself right when her dad left home.

W-what…?

A red-swollen cheek, scratches along the nape, scabbed lips—thin, ragged breaths seeped out.

“Please… take me away…”

That was all the child could force out.

And with that, Hyoeun woke.

Strictly speaking, she was woken by voices.

“So in the end you didn’t tell her?”

“What good would it do to tell her?”

“No, still… you should tell her.”

Those voices were the division head and Hyunseung. Blinking, Hyoeun weighed when to sit up.

The conversation sounded serious enough that she couldn’t just pop up.

“If we’d told her, that busybody would’ve convinced herself she’d caused trouble and ruined the recording.”

Are they talking about me?

“But if something blows up after she formally debuts…”

“Then we’ll have to take some measures on our side before that.”

“It’s tricky for us to intervene. The two of them are family.”

The two of them… does he mean Mom and me?

Suddenly she remembered what the security guard said when she came to the building yesterday.

“I was wondering if things with your mother got resolved amicably…”

“Pardon…?”

“Ah, did you maybe not get a call from the company about it?”

Had Mom actually shown up at the company?

“What kind of family is that?”

“Maybe not by our standards, but legally those two are family. Immediate family, legal guardian at that.”

Hyunseung let out a small sigh.

“Then we should respond legally too.”

He added, almost like he was insisting,

“She won’t want to press charges, but termination of parental rights… can’t we do something like that?”

“To get there, you have to start with a criminal complaint, and that has to be her choice.”

“Then I’ll wake her now and try to talk her into it.”

She could feel someone striding toward her when—

“Hold it, hold on.”

The division head stopped him and continued,

“Don’t back her into a corner. Whatever else, to Hyoeun, she’s her mom, her only blood relative.”

Ah. They were talking about me.

Which meant… Mom had done something at the company.

I want to just fall back asleep.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but once sleep has flown, it doesn’t return so easily.

Right.

This blew up because she hadn’t brought things to a proper close.

To Hyunseung, who gave her this chance, this sense of belonging to the company, she’d only caused trouble.

And there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.

Mom… isn’t going to let me go easily.

The face she’d seen in her dream, her younger self, floated up.

That helplessly pitiful face…

But she realized she’d looked at that face and thought it was scary.

Trauma.

That was when her mother’s violence had been at its worst. And she, in contrast, had been so small and powerless and young.

That child was probably locked somewhere inside her, shivering alone in fear.

I should’ve held her…

A late regret surged.

Not someone else, but myself.

Once she reached that thought, she couldn’t lie there any longer.

When she slowly pushed herself up, the division head who’d been looking her way, jumped and blurted,

“H-Hyoeun, when did you wake up?”

But Hyoeun called out to Hyunseung’s back as he stood with his back to her.

“Hyunseung.”

At his name, he slowly turned. As expected, he didn’t look surprised at all.

And then, with a voice that carried a hardened resolve, she said:

“Can I… try one more take?”

Even at the sudden request, he didn’t ask why.

“Go ahead.”

He only smiled.

---

Hyoeun climbed a familiar alley. She’d gone up it for years, but for some reason it all felt uncanny.

As if she’d never lived here.

Her body reacted on its own, rejecting the place. Her steps grew slower and slower.

Step, step…

But she couldn’t stop now. For the sake of how she would live from now on, she had to close this out cleanly.

Only then would she stop being a burden to the company… and to Hyunseung.

I’m the one who has to cut this red thread.

Standing before the old gate of the place she’d lived, she clenched her fist tight.

Step, step.

Down the half-flight of stairs, a steel door plastered with unpaid notices came into view. The lights were off.

She didn’t know if her mother was inside.

She might have gone out somewhere to drink, but since she’d come resolved, she needed to face her.

BANG, BANG, BANG!

Thinking it was no longer her home, she pounded on the door. The steel rattled and boomed loudly.

BANG, BANG, BANG!

She knocked several more times, but there were no sounds of movement inside.

So… no one was home?

“Mom…”

Half-resigned, she called her.

Truthfully, part of her had hoped no one would be.

“Lee Hyoeun?”

But as if mocking her hope, her mother’s voice came from inside.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

At her answer, the door swung open without a moment’s hesitation.

“Damn it, I thought it was the landlord again. Why pound like that and scare people. Just come in.”

Though it was broad daylight, her mother looked as if she’d just woken up, hair a mess, face twisted.

Of course, the stale alcohol on her breath, not yet metabolized, trickled out.

It was a sickening stench.

“It’s not my place anymore. How would I just open it and come in.”

At that, her mother raked back her hair and spat a curse.

“Got yourself a little money coming in and look at you, talking back? Do you even know what I had to go through yesterday because of you?”

Then she grabbed Hyoeun by the collar and yanked her roughly.

“Get in here and talk before I beat you right out here.”

Lightly brushing off her mother’s hand, Hyoeun answered at once,

“No. I’m not going into that place anymore.”

“What?”

“I came to say this.”

“You’ve lost your mind, haven’t you?”

“I don’t want to live as your daughter anymore.”

“Oh, you! Just because you’ve got a mouth…!”

Her mother’s hand swept up high. With a hiss through the air, it struck her cheek.

SLAP!

The sting in her ear and the reddening skin, those were fine.

If anything, it jolted her fully awake, and any scraps of guilt or pity evaporated. Good.

“I’m sick of being hit by you. I don’t want to earn money for your booze anymore.”

“I didn’t abandon you and raised you and this is how you repay me? You ungrateful—!”

Eyes wide, Hyoeun met her mother dead on.

“I’m going to live my life now. I’m going to take care of me, not you. So don’t come looking for me anymore. If you come again, I won’t hold back either.”

“Y-you little b—! If you don’t hold back, what’ll you do, huh? What’ll you do!”

Right on cue, her mother lived down to expectations.

CRASH! THUD!

She started grabbing shoes and junk by the door and hurling them, screaming.

“Fine! Today you die and I die!”

Hearing the racket, the landlady came running down and blocked her.

“Good grief, what is this! Hyoeun’s mom! Are you crazy?”

But there was no reasoning with eyes already gone wild.

“Out of my way! Move! I’ll kill that wench today and then go straight to the police and turn myself in!”

Honestly, thank goodness.

That she happened to be home today.

Really… thank goodness.

That she never strayed from the person I expected her to be.

“Mom, you don’t have to trouble yourself.”

Even with her mother shaking her by the collar, Hyoeun smiled and added,

“I already called the police.”

Right on cue, red and blue lights spilled in past the gate to the wail of sirens.

---

With the recorder she’d turned on from the moment she stood at the gate, and the landlady’s testimony, she could have had her mother taken straight in if she’d wanted.

“I have to come all the way to a place like this because of you?”

But she didn’t.

“If you don’t want to end up in prison, remember what the officer said. Get treatment.”

Instead, they settled on compulsory alcohol treatment, and in a squad car, they arrived at the hospital.

This place is supposed to be famous for treating alcohol-addicted patients well, right?

Click.

After a brief interview, the doctor closed the chart with a small nod.

Behind his silver-rimmed glasses, his eyes raked sharply over her mother.

“Please take good care of her.”

Bowing to the doctor, Hyoeun asked.

“Yes, don’t worry. You should head home now.”

When she stood, her mother grumbled as she followed.

They opened the door.

Burly male nurses stood arrayed outside.

“We’ll proceed with admission.”

At the doctor’s words from behind, the nurses took hold of her mother firmly on both sides.

“W-what is this! Let me go!”

“Mom, you need to get treatment.”

“What? Isn’t this outpatient?”

“This’ll be better than prison.”

“You little b—! How dare you trick your mother!”

As she was dragged away by rough hands, Hyoeun walked a few steps after and spoke.

“Whenever you drank, you hit me because I looked like the dad who left. Do you know what thought got me through each time?”

“What?”

“That when Dad came back, it’d be okay. Everything would be okay. That you’d go back to being the mom you were.”

Then she stopped dead.

“When I realized Dad wasn’t coming back, I endured by telling myself it was because your heart was hurt… that my mom was a sick person.”

Turning her head with effort to glare at her like she could kill her, her mother looked back, and Hyoeun added,

“Why did it take me until now to understand that sick people need treatment?”

And then…

“Mom, like I did, try living trapped in a hell you can’t escape.”

Murmuring it to herself so no one could hear, she lifted her hand and waved vigorously to her mother.

Because this would be their last goodbye.