SACCHARIN
CHAPTER 12

 

I silently took the blindfold Shin Chi-woo handed to me without complaint.

“I don’t like forcing things either, so do it yourself.”

As if he had ever asked for my permission before running me over with a car and slapping handcuffs on me. But for now, I followed his orders without resistance.

There wasn’t a single person in this car who was on my side. If I rebelled, who knew what would happen to me? There was no guarantee that I’d be safe until we reached this so-called factory.

But with the car already dimly lit and my hands restrained, putting on the blindfold was harder than I expected. The sound of metal clinking echoed as my fingers kept slipping. After several failed attempts and a few frustrated grunts, I managed to hook the strap over my left ear. Just as I was struggling to secure the other side—

“……”

A cold touch brushed against my right ear.

Shin Chi-woo, instead of waiting for me to finish, slipped the strap over my ear himself. My vision went completely dark.

But apparently, he wasn’t done yet. His fingers grazed over my ear in a slow, deliberate motion, eventually trailing down to my earlobe.

With my sight taken away, my other senses sharpened, making that brief touch feel unnervingly intense.

A chill ran down my spine—but strangely, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

What the hell is wrong with me? Have I finally lost my mind?

I swallowed hard and deliberately turned my head to the right. I couldn’t see anything, but it was an act of defiance—a warning.

A silent way of telling him to stop touching me. To back off.

Of course, with the blindfold on, I had no way of knowing if I was even facing him properly.

But whatever the case, my message seemed to get across. He didn’t touch me again. And thankfully, he didn’t try to provoke me with any more sharp words either.

Now blindfolded, I lost all sense of time.

One thing was certain, though—wherever this factory was, it was far from Seoul.

My body and mind, battered from everything that had happened, were completely drained.

No, I can’t…

Despite my best efforts to stay awake, my eyelids began to droop. I fought it, forcing myself to stay alert, but exhaustion had reached its limit.

At some point, I blacked out completely.

The only thing I remembered was seeing my mother in my dreams for the first time in a long while—and feeling happy about it.

* * *

“My beautiful daughter… You know that Mommy always loves you, right?”

Our family was quite ordinary. A typical middle-class household—with a father who was endlessly doting and soft-hearted when it came to his daughter, and a strict yet always considerate mother who put me first no matter what. The three of us were a happy family.

Growing up showered with love, never lacking anything, was probably a great stroke of luck. But when I look back on my childhood, it wasn’t always just happiness.

“It’s tough, but even celebrities need a good college name behind them these days. So, the only thing you can do is study hard, Wan-yi.”

Study, study, and more studying. That obsession with a prestigious university, a strong academic background. But to go through all that just to become a celebrity? No matter how I looked at it, something about that logic felt completely off.

I was what people call a hakgunji kid—someone raised in a neighborhood obsessed with elite schooling. Thinking back, I was probably five or six years old when I first started getting shuttled from one academy to another. Back then, I thought it was just normal. Everyone else did it, and that was just the way things were in our neighborhood.

“These days, kids start auditioning in elementary school. Wan-yi, you need to step up your game, too.”

“I can’t sing or dance—what kind of idol would I even be?”

“You start as an idol and then move into acting.”

“Then why don’t you start as an idol and become an actress, Mom? Huh?”

“Look at this girl, the way she talks to her mother.”

Unfortunately, I had absolutely zero talent in that field. How bad was it? Bad enough that my mom, when she got tipsy, would sometimes say things like this:

“What’s the point of having my face if the inside is a complete copy of your dad’s? No rhythm, no sense of pitch, completely tone-deaf… totally carefree… Wan-yi, how did you end up inheriting nothing from me?”

There were times when she’d pull me into a hug and sob, devastated that I didn’t take after her. But since I had no interest in becoming a celebrity, I always thought it was a relief that I inherited my dad’s personality rather than hers.

“Wan-yi, did you know? Back in the day, your mom made it all the way to the final round of the Miss Korea Seoul preliminaries!”

“I’ve heard that a thousand times already… And Mom, nobody cares about Miss Korea these days….”

“Look at this—who did you inherit that sharp tongue from?”

“Obviously from you, Mom.”

My mother, who once dreamed of becoming a celebrity, tried to fulfill her unfulfilled ambitions through me. But her misguided desires manifested as an overwhelming obsession.

From the age of ten until just before middle school, I briefly learned ballet. My mother wanted me to major in it, attend an arts-focused middle and high school, and eventually enter the entertainment industry.

“Madam… Even if Wan-yi goes to a regular middle school, she can continue taking lessons and participate in competitions… Let’s at least aim for an arts high school.”

The director of my ballet academy, naturally wanting to keep the tuition flowing, tried to persuade my mother to let me continue for another three years. But around that time, my body started changing, and more importantly, my failure to get into an arts middle school was a huge shock to her.

For kids like me, who started ballet as a hobby in elementary school but were pushed to pursue it professionally, the entrance exam to an arts middle school was the defining moment—where talent was either confirmed or crushed.

At the time, I was in sixth grade and hadn’t yet hit puberty, meaning my physique was still considered ideal. But there was one massive problem—my ballet technique was terrible, and I had absolutely no artistic expression.

“Wan-yi, ballet isn’t going to work out. Let’s give up. You’ve started your period, and if you take after me, your chest will… Even if I starve you for years to keep you as thin as possible, it won’t make up for your lack of technique. What’s the point?”

I was barely keeping up with my studies through intense pre-learning. Trying to juggle both academics and the arts would be difficult even for someone with talent. As someone who had no rhythm, no stage presence, and no natural ability, ballet was an impossible dream.

So when I finally quit, I couldn’t have been happier. Preparing for the entrance exam had been brutal—I had survived on just half a block of tofu a day while training. It was a miracle I didn’t lose my mind in the process.

Of course, that didn’t mean I was some kind of prodigy in academics either. Thanks to expensive private education, I managed to stay in the top ranks, but I never quite lived up to my parents’ expectations.

“Wan-yi, have you ever thought about applying to a medical school program?”

“No, Dad. Not at all. After retaking the college entrance exam three times, I’m exhausted….”

After three grueling attempts, I barely managed to get into Hanguk University. But I never made it to medical school.

My dad had secretly wanted me to become a doctor. It was because of his unusual condition.

“You have no idea how terrified I was—I thought I was going to be a single mother. My belly was this big, we hadn’t even registered our marriage yet… and then I was told that your dad might die. Even now, just thinking about it makes my heart drop.”

My father had a severe antibiotic allergy. If he took the wrong medication, it wasn’t just a matter of breaking out in hives—he would go into anaphylactic shock, lose consciousness, and collapse.

According to my mother, when he was rushed to the emergency room, his heart rate dropped so dangerously low that he almost went into cardiac arrest. She always added how terrifying it was to watch him drenched in sweat, vomiting, turning bright red, and rolling his eyes back as he lost control of his body.

After recovering, my father underwent extensive testing and identified the specific antibiotics that triggered his anaphylactic reaction. Since then, he had been cautious his entire life.

But no amount of caution could have prevented my mother’s unexpected death.

“Wan-yi, don’t joke around and listen carefully… Your mom was playing golf, and then….”

When I was a repeat test-taker, my mother died of a heart attack inside a sauna at the golf course.

I don’t know how much golf one has to play for it to put that much strain on the heart, but after that day, my father never touched a golf club again.

Unsurprisingly, the sudden, unprepared farewell completely derailed me, and I failed my second attempt at the college entrance exam.

Determined not to let it be for nothing, I pushed myself to try one last time—and after my third attempt, I barely made it into Hanguk University.

In the end, I fulfilled the academic ambitions that had haunted both my mother and father.

“Dad, how did you and Mom meet?”

“I saw her dancing in a performance group and fell for her at first sight. I chased after her nonstop.”

“What were you doing at the time?”

“Eh… nothing much. I was a college student on leave. Basically unemployed.”

My mother, who always dreamed of the entertainment industry, had majored in dance.

She used to say she was part of a performance troupe affiliated with a broadcasting station.

But the truth?

She danced in a nightclub—stripping and performing provocative routines.

All that talk about making it to the Miss Korea preliminaries… which version of the story was real?

And my father? He wasn’t just a college student on leave.

He had been a low-level enforcer in some gang that managed that very nightclub.

He had never even set foot near a university, yet he called himself a “student on leave.” Typical.

When I was young, I never understood what any of it meant.

But as I grew older, the pieces of the puzzle slowly started to fit together.

And with time, I naturally came to understand the secrets my parents had been hiding all along.

 

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