Chapter 1: The Girl in the Backseat
1021 Words
The leather smelled expensive.
Yoo Mirae had never sat in a car like this before — not even once. The seats were too smooth, the windows too clean, and the silence inside was almost unbearable. Outside, the skyscrapers of Gangnam glinted like glass swords in the sunlight, cutting the sky in sharp lines. Every street they passed looked like a different world. It felt like the kind of place where someone like her didn’t belong.
She kept her eyes low, fingers curled tightly around the strap of her old canvas backpack. The hoodie she wore — black, baggy, soft from years of overwashing — felt like the only thing familiar left in the world.
Her mother sat beside her in a pale pink blouse and carefully applied makeup, looking more like a stranger than the tired woman Mirae remembered from the restaurant kitchen. She was talking, softly, nervously.
“You’ll like the house, Mirae-yah. It’s… very big. But don’t worry. The staff are polite. They won’t look down on you. They’ve all been told.”
Mirae nodded once, but didn’t speak.
Chairman Kang sat in the front passenger seat, speaking quietly into his phone in a voice like dry steel. He hadn't looked at Mirae once since she got in the car. She didn’t mind. She was used to not being looked at.
They passed luxury boutiques with names Mirae couldn’t pronounce, cafes where girls in perfect makeup laughed behind their iPhones, rows of polished black cars with tinted windows. She shrank deeper into her hoodie and stared at her own reflection in the car window — pale, plain, tired.
She didn’t know how to be someone else.
She didn’t know how to be… someone who belonged to this life.
The car turned through an iron gate, guarded on both sides. The driveway curved up a hill through carefully manicured hedges and stone walls that seemed too perfect to be real. Mirae’s breath caught as the mansion came into view — all modern glass and sharp architecture, stretching across a private cliff like something out of a drama.
Her throat tightened.
The driver opened the door for her, bowing slightly. Her mother was already getting out, smiling too brightly.
“Mirae, come on. Don’t just sit there.”
She stepped out slowly, her sneakers hitting the gravel like a sin. The wind carried the faintest scent of roses and pine from the estate’s inner gardens. She kept her head down as staff lined up to greet them — housekeepers, a butler, a tall woman in black who introduced herself as Mrs. Han, the head of household operations.
Mirae bowed too low. Her hands were cold. She could feel their eyes on her hoodie, her old jeans, the frayed edges of her backpack. She could feel herself being measured and quietly filed under unworthy.
The foyer was made of pale marble. Her socks were worn at the heel — she realized it too late, after taking off her shoes at the entrance. She tucked her foot back behind her leg, wishing she could disappear into the floor.
“This way, Miss Yoo,” said Mrs. Han, gesturing through wide glass doors.
Mirae followed without a word.
She passed tall mirrors and vaulted ceilings, chandeliers that looked like frozen fireworks, artwork framed in gold leaf. Everything gleamed, everything echoed. Her footsteps felt too loud. Her breath felt too small.
And then she saw him.
At the top of the stairs.
He wasn’t what she expected.
She’d seen a photo, once — her mother had shown it in secret, like passing contraband — but it didn’t prepare her for the way he looked in real life. He stood with one hand on the railing, his other hand at his side, dressed in black joggers and a simple T-shirt. His face was still, unreadable, eyes sharp beneath his dark hair, skin like porcelain with a cut of winter in his gaze.
Kang Joonseo.
Her new stepbrother.
He said nothing.
Didn’t move.
Just looked at her.
Their eyes met — and it felt like everything around her froze.
For a second, she forgot to breathe. Not because he was beautiful — though he was, in a way that made her stomach twist — but because he looked at her like he wasn’t supposed to. Like he hadn’t expected her. Like he was trying to decide if she was real.
She bowed quickly, lower than necessary. “Annyeonghaseyo…”
Her voice barely carried past the marble walls.
Joonseo didn’t respond.
He didn’t even nod.
He looked at her one last time — not harshly, not kindly — then turned and walked away without a word.
Mirae’s chest tightened, though she didn’t know why.
Mrs. Han acted like nothing happened.
“Your room is this way, Miss Yoo.”
They walked through another hallway, up a narrow set of stairs. The walls here were darker, quieter, the air cooler. When the housekeeper opened the door, Mirae stepped into a bedroom larger than her old apartment. The sheets were crisp white, the floors dark wood, and the windows stretched from floor to ceiling, overlooking a courtyard garden with sculpted stone lanterns.
“This room was redecorated for you,” Mrs. Han said. “There’s a call button if you need anything.”
Mirae only nodded.
When the door closed, she stood in the middle of the room for a long time, her backpack still slung over one shoulder.
She didn’t know what to do.
Or what to touch.
Or how to breathe in a room like this.
Eventually, she curled up on the edge of the bed, pulling her knees to her chest. She didn’t cry. That would have meant accepting that this was real.
Somewhere in the distance, through the thick silence of the house, she heard the soft rhythm of a tennis ball hitting the wall. Steady. Sharp. Like a metronome counting down to something.
She clutched the fabric of her hoodie tighter.
She hadn’t spoken more than three sentences since she arrived.
But still — someone had looked at her.
And she had looked back.
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- Writer
