Around noon the following day.
Da-mi stopped by ICG Company, owned by her father Lim Chun-gyu, for a product endorsement.
Her father’s secretary greeted her warmly.
Having just come from a five-hundred-thousand-won skincare treatment, Da-mi found the secretary’s greeting faintly mocking and answered flatly. Gauging Da-mi’s mood, the secretary gave an awkward smile.
The secretary blinked at the unfinished sentence before nodding belatedly.
With that, Da-mi tossed her car keys onto the secretary’s desk.
The secretary, who had lunch plans, had asked timidly, but Da-mi only snapped.
Overwhelmed by Lim Da-mi’s overbearing demeanor, the secretary bowed her head.
Once the secretary hurried off, Da-mi opened the door to Lim Chun-gyu’s office and stepped inside.
Looking deeply annoyed, Da-mi prowled around the office, looking it over.
A long time ago, Da-mi had bought social media followers in bulk. Once she amassed about a hundred thousand of them, a strange phenomenon occurred where popularity bred more popularity. Those hundred thousand followers served as the primer that drew in a massive influx of real accounts.
She had resorted to a cheap trick in the beginning, but everything after that was purely due to her own hard work. Keeping those numbers from dropping and sustaining her popularity required ceaseless upkeep. From snapping photos of sponsored goods at the perfect angle to planning, shooting, and editing the next round of content, every step was far more grueling than anyone on the outside could ever imagine.
She had pulled off that daunting feat to reach where she stood today.
‘All of this is my creation. Solid and built with my own hands.’
Da-mi took great pride in herself for that.
Having established herself as an influencer, Da-mi used that standing to provide immense help to her father’s business as well.
After taking over Hong Deok-su’s company, Lim Chun-gyu had jumped into the cosmetics industry. In the beginning, he had struggled when the products failed to sell, but once he followed Da-mi’s advice and launched ad campaigns with the help of an agency, sales gradually began to climb.
By now, Lim Chun-gyu had turned into the kind of businessman who understood all too well that pouring money into advertising paid off far better than product research. Having realized that, he poached employees from an online ad agency specializing in hyperbole, luring customers and driving up sales through exaggerated reviews and doctored before-and-after photos.
On top of that, Da-mi—whose flawless complexion was actually the product of practically living at the dermatologist’s—promoted the cosmetics on social media as though her glowing skin came solely from her father’s brand. His company rode an unstoppable wave of success, and Lim Chun-gyu was now harboring grand ambitions of taking the company public on the stock market.
While her older brother, Lim Da-hyeok, did nothing but gamble day in and day out yet held a cushy executive title, all Da-mi received was a single corporate card and a meager monthly allowance.
Grumbling under her breath, Lim Da-mi sat down at her father’s desk and placed her hand on the mouse. The computer monitor lit up instantly. Intending to check her social media accounts, she opened an internet browser. Just then, a pop-up window surfaced in the bottom right corner of the screen.
—The patient was awake. As soon as I opened the door and stepped inside, she asked who was there, so I couldn't do anything.
It was a message addressed to her father.
As she stared at the message blankly, the door swung open.
Seeing his daughter seated behind the desk, Lim Chun-gyu strode toward her with a menacing look in his eyes.
Lim Chun-gyu yanked the chair his daughter was sitting on. Flustered, Da-mi scrambled to her feet.
The chilling look on her father’s face was so terrifying that she couldn’t bring herself to admit she had read the strange message.
Before long, five days had passed since Yu-yeon woke from her coma.
She had regained enough strength to maneuver her wheelchair on her own for a few meters. Moving from the bed to the wheelchair still required not only the caregiver's assistance, but every ounce of effort Yu-yeon could muster.
Today, she even had her weight checked by rolling onto a large scale while seated in the wheelchair.
Yu-yeon weighed thirty-nine kilograms. And that was after putting on a little weight since she first woke up.
She had lost nearly ten kilograms compared to the roughly fifty she weighed right before the accident two years and four months ago, but the doctor looked thrilled, calling it a remarkably good prognosis.
Yet her own arms, her own face, still felt so foreign to her.
It felt less like looking at Hong Yu-yeon and more like glimpsing one of her ancestors from a century ago.
Having never seen herself as those ten kilograms slipped away, Yu-yeon found looking into the mirror thoroughly awkward.
So this is how hollow a face looks at thirty-nine kilograms. This is how the eyes bug out. This is how skeletal the arms become…
As she took in each visible change, Yu-yeon’s gaze dropped downward.
‘To think even this shrank away.’
Yu-yeon pressed lightly beneath her breasts, checking their volume, and her eyes grew somber. She felt a mix of relief and regret.
Up until two years and four months ago, Yu-yeon had possessed a healthy figure. Curved gracefully in all the right places and slim at the waist, even ordinary clothes brought out her feminine silhouette.
During her school days, it had been quite a burden. Having a voluptuous figure as a mere student brought nothing good. She disliked the uncomfortable bounce she felt more intensely than others when running, and on gym days, she had to endure stares that treated her like a spectacle. She also hated how easily sweat gathered beneath her chest in the summer.
‘Come to think of it, Auntie once said something about that.’
Was it around her first year of high school? It had already been over a decade.
It was the day she had gone to Gwanghwamun with Lim Da-mi and unexpectedly received a business card from an executive at an entertainment agency on their way to the bookstore.
Even though it was from a major agency whose name she recognized, Yu-yeon paid it no mind and stuffed the card into her pants pocket.
Beside her, Da-mi asked, looking far more excited than Yu-yeon was.
People handing her entertainment agency cards was something that happened every so often even without Da-mi around, so Yu-yeon brushed it off nonchalantly.
That evening, Da-mi’s mother said she had made a lot of tteokbokki, so Yu-yeon went over to Da-mi’s house with her sister for dinner. The moment Shin Young-hwa saw Yu-yeon, she asked about what had happened that afternoon.
‘Agencies scout kids to train them in the first place.’
She should have offered that retort, but Shin Young-hwa’s next words left her completely speechless.
They were only words, but her head felt numb, as if she had taken a blow to the back of the skull. Perhaps noticing the dazed look on Yu-yeon’s face, Shin Young-hwa immediately tried to smooth it over.
She was still just a child.
A seventeen-year-old girl who didn’t know how to stand up to an adult, so she simply stayed quiet.
Afterward, Shin Young-hwa paid extra attention to serving Yu-yeon and Jeong-yeon as if making up for her slip of the tongue, but Yu-yeon couldn’t taste a single bite of the food that evening.
Even after returning home, she chewed over those words for a long time.
Then, out of nowhere, she missed her mother.
Wondering what Auntie would have said if her mother had been sitting right there brought a wave of sorrow over having no mom. Given the delicate topic, she couldn’t tell her father either, so she wept a little on her own. After crying, she felt better and managed to carry on bravely.
She was someone who made an effort to forget bad memories, so she had never brought that day back to mind. For as long as she stayed on good terms with Da-mi’s family, she had never recalled it, but burying it evidently hadn’t made it easy to erase.
‘It happens. We were so close that she must have spoken without a filter.’
Thinking back on that distant day, Yu-yeon tried to understand Shin Young-hwa and locked the memory away once more. She told herself that she would become a safe adult who never hurt those younger than her.
People truly were fickle. Aside from that instance, there had been plenty of unpleasant memories tied to her curves, and she had often found them cumbersome, yet now that they were so thoroughly depleted, she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of regret.
Still, gazing down at them quietly, they soon felt familiar, like her own again.
‘Let’s get along again, chest. Now that a new life has begun, grow back just moderately this time.’
Having given both body and mind a refreshing reset, Yu-yeon brought back a walker with the intention of practicing weight-bearing exercises in her room.
While she was busy studying how to operate the equipment, the hospital room door swung open and people walked in.
It was two unfamiliar, solidly built men.