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The evening after being discharged from the hospital, worn out from the taxi ride home and not particularly hungry, Ok Kyeong Sun just wanted to lie down and rest. But her granddaughter had made soup, and Kyeong Sun managed to sit at the low table to eat, to reassure her granddaughter who was monitoring her every mouthful and smiling encouragement.
It wasn’t a very convincing smile, even for Ju Da.
Kyeong Sun shifted her weight, trying to get comfortable, hiding the way the movement pulled at her stitches. “I’m all right, darling. Doctor Lee wouldn’t have let me come home if I wasn’t well enough.”
It was true she felt better than she had in years. Her angina had troubled her for as long as she could remember—probably her whole existence, given the world they lived in. Now that heavy tightness was gone, but recovering from an operation still took time.
Ju Da visibly firmed up her smile. “It’s such a relief you’re all right, Grandma. I was so scared—”
Kyeong Sun had been scared too—mostly of leaving her granddaughter without even the small comforts and protection she could provide. But hearing that wouldn’t make her granddaughter feel better.
Ju Da determinedly ate another few spoonfuls of soup, then sniffed and shook her head, seeming impatient with herself.
Kyeong Sun watched, curious. Something was different about her granddaughter, and it wasn’t just the expensive new sneakers, decorated with a hand-drawn butterfly, neatly lined up in the entranceway. Perhaps it was time they had another talk. On the one hand, Ju Da wouldn’t remember whatever Kyeong Sun told her outside of a story scene; on the other hand, to reach out sincerely, even if it would hurt to be forgotten, might help Ju Da on a subconscious level take life less seriously. And she should know how deeply she was loved. She should know her grandmother.
Kyeong Sun’s life—every visit to the hospital, every time she called the school or went to the shops—had been so vague it was forgettable. She only ever interacted with her granddaughter, Doctor Lee, and a string of people who knew her as Ju Da’s sick grandmother. Who parroted the same greetings every time they met: “Oh, Yeo Ju Da’s grandmother! You must be so proud of her!” and “I heard that young Oh Nam Joo has taken an interest in your granddaughter—how lucky for you both!” and “What a shame you’re so sick! Poor Yeo Ju Da will be left all alone, if you don’t recover.”
Meddlesome idiots. But they couldn’t help it, and Kyeong Sun bore it because she had no choice, and because Ju Da needed someone on her side, someone who loved her unconditionally, and who she could love back.
Kyeong Sun lowered her spoon and cleared her throat. “I wasn’t supposed to get better. Did you know that, darling?”
Ju Da’s eyes widened in shock. “Grandma! Don’t say that!”
“I’m so glad I got to stay here with you, instead of being one more tragedy for you to deal with.” Kyeong Sun had known that was her predestined role for a while now, but it was still hard to say it matter-of-factly. That the writer had wanted to use her like that.
“To drive me further into Oh Nam Joo’s arms, never mind the cost.” Ju Da pressed her lips together, openly resentful. She was a sweet girl, but even she had her limits. Did the writer know that? Did he know she was resilient as steel and stubborn as a winter chill, beneath her timidity?
Kyeong Sun ached with pity for the daily trials Ju Da faced in a school full of stupendous unthinking privilege. Truly unthinking. She made her lips quirk and her tone wry. “I thought you liked that boy. Isn’t that the point of the story?”
“He treats me like Cinderella,” Ju Da muttered. “Like our poverty defines us, and I’m helpless without him. Like I don’t have a choice.”
“It’s the way he was brought up,” said Kyeong Sun. The way he was written. She’d never met the boy, but she knew his story: every scene of it was laid out in colour panels in the manhwa. It didn’t speak particularly well of him, but he could have been worse.
“His hang-ups aren’t my problem. Why can’t I decide my own future? Choose my own lover? Why can’t I have superpowers or mountains of money? After all, I’m the protagonist.” Ju Da’s hand curled into a tight, frustrated fist.
Kyeong Sun’s breath caught. She stared at her granddaughter. “Ju Da, what are you saying? Have you noticed something strange going on?”
“Oh, sorry. I know you won’t remember this.” Ju Da selected a fat piece of kimchi and put it in Kyeong Sun’s bowl, silently urging her to eat more. Then she sat back and squared her shoulders. “I’m okay, really. It’s getting better. I can stand up to the ugly step-sisters now, and Lee Do Hwa likes me too. He’s much kinder than Oh Nam Joo.”
“Darling.” Kyeong Sun caught her granddaughter’s eye. “I remember everything you tell me.”
Ju Da shook her head, discounting it as a platitude.
“Truly,” insisted Kyeong Sun. “You’re not the only one trapped inside this story, you know. But you’re right—you are the protagonist.”
The whole world was built to showcase Ju Da’s life. Perhaps she would have been happier if she’d stayed oblivious, safe inside the cotton wool of the story, where most of her problems were small and petty, and she didn’t know how little control she had. It was hard enough for an adult to feel that their life was being decided for them—that the twists and turns of a narrative would determine whether they lived or died. How much more frightening for a child to know there was nothing ahead of her but what the writer fancied? And Ju Da was so meek with strangers.
But now their gazes locked, Ju Da’s eyes startled and wide, making it obvious she knew.
It was as if a veil that had always hung between them was torn away. Kyeong Sun had known before that her granddaughter loved her, but it was impossible to interact with people who weren’t self-aware without feeling a little dull. You ended up going through the motions again and again, knowing they wouldn’t remember anything interesting you said. You couldn’t blame them for it, but you couldn’t really connect either. After a while you had to stop trying or go mad.
Suddenly, she and Ju Da were connecting, really seeing each other. Ju Da smiled, tremulous and amazed, as a tear rolled down her cheek and plopped onto the table next to her rice bowl, then another. Kyeong Sun tried to smile back, but her heart was breaking. She reached across and took her granddaughter’s hand, graced as it was with the callouses and roughness from her part-time job. “My darling. Does this mean you’ve seen the manhwa, then?”
“What manhwa?”
“Secret, the manhwa of your love story.” She hesitated, but if Ju Da knew she was the protagonist, she needed to know the rest. “It’s over there with my art things.”
Ju Da went to the stack of useless charcoal, paints and coloured pencils, the sketchbooks and second-hand art texts. She found Secret and stood up, holding it gingerly between her fingertips, seeming scared to open it. “Does it tell our future? Is that why it’s so hard to change anything?”
Kyeong Sun shook her head. “It’s what’s already happened. The pages for the future are blank. Actually, I have a theory about how we can influence what happens next, but I haven’t been able to try it out. I don’t have the skills.”
Ju Da wasn’t listening. She opened the manhwa to a random page, flicked forward, then back, scanning the pages. “I remember this. And this.” She looked up, frowning. “Whoever’s writing this—are they deciding our lives for us? Does he hate me? Did he only make me up so he could torture me?”
“It’s not hate, darling. It’s drama. No one has any reason to hate you except their own insecurity.” Kyeong Sun couldn’t look away from her granddaughter’s face, fresh with complex emotions as she tried to make sense of it all. She was so beautiful, so smart. “My precious girl, come here.”
Ju Da dropped the manhwa to the floor and scrambled forward to throw herself—gently—into Kyeong Sun’s arms, and Kyeong Sun cradled her and stroked her hair, marvelling at the miracle of their finally both knowing, and the difference it made. Life would be harder for Ju Da, this way, but infinitely more rewarding. Then an alarming possibility presented itself. “Was it you who changed my fate? Be careful, Ju Da. You don’t want to be any more indebted to that boy’s family. They won’t hesitate to cut you down to size.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Ju Da, “but I wish it had been. If I knew how to change things, I’d have done that and so much more. Grandma! How did you find out the truth?”
“Remember I visited the school when you won the scholarship? I found the book then. How about you?” It couldn’t have been long, could it? Wouldn’t she have noticed her own granddaughter’s awakening?
“I’m still figuring it out.” Ju Da sat back on her heels, fresh-faced and so innocent that Kyeong Sun wanted to keep her safe from the world for a few more years—as if that was an option. “There were moments when I had no control over what I did or said, and other times—and I felt different. Someone told me to remember, and I started to.”
“Such a clever girl.” Kyeong Sun patted her knee. “Are there others who know too?” Perhaps it was spreading, the world waking up and taking on a life of its own. Perhaps they could break free of this anodyne teen romance and really make something of the world—something extraordinary—together.
“One of the popular boys, Lee Do Hwa. And I think some of his friends, too.”
“Not the teachers?” Kyeong Sun couldn’t be the only grown-up, could she?
But Ju Da looked surprised. It had probably never occurred to her that her teachers might be whole, fully self-aware people. She shook her head. “Not as far as I know.”
“That boy, Oh Nam Joo?”
Ju Da actually grinned at that. “No, not him.”
Kyeong Sun was glad to see that grin, with its tinge of mockery. Glad to think they could be partners in this. She took Ju Da’s hands and squeezed them, feeling their strength. Wondering if she’d underestimated her granddaughter.
Ju Da squeezed back. “You said you have a theory for how to change things.”
“I do.” Kyeong Sun shifted again to ease her aches, and without having to be asked, Ju Da pushed the table back, spread the blanket on the floor and laid out the pillows so they could lie down in comfort, side by side. Kyeong Sun lowered herself carefully until she was horizontal and could relax and catch her breath. She was panting slightly, but it was so much better to be lying down.
“Grandma?”
She marshalled her thoughts. She’d tried to tell Ju Da the truth more times than she could count, until she no longer had the heart to try again. To see incomprehension in Ju Da’s eyes. But things were different now; Ju Da was asking to hear her idea. “You know it’s often said that when a writer creates a character, it’s not long before the character takes on a life of their own?”
“Like us.”
“Exactly. The writer has a harder and harder time trying to control all the people in their story. That’s what we want!” Kyeong Sun smirked. “We just need to tell the writer what we want to do.”
“But how?” Ju Da twisted a strand of hair between her fingers, thinking, then sat up to look at the stack of art supplies in the corner, realisation plain on her face.
“Yes,” agreed Kyeong Sun, “I want to try speaking to the writer in his own language. We draw the story into the blank pages, the way we want it to go, and hope that our way wins out. But I’ve been trying and trying, and I just can’t imitate his style.” The pictures in the manhwa weren’t really to her taste—she preferred a more dramatic style—but even if she’d loved the cutesy depictions of Ju Da and her friends, she wouldn’t have been able to do them justice. Her attempts had been embarrassingly inelegant. Even after months of practice and study, she’d barely advanced beyond stick figures.
When, out of desperation at her illness, she’d summoned the nerve to draw in the blank pages anyway, her crooked figures had disappeared, overwritten by the professional manhwa panels of the writer. There’d been a few tiny similarities between her doodles and the final scenes, but those could have been pure coincidence. Or the fact that they’d been planned all along could have planted them in her head somehow.
Ju Da was frowning, considering this plan. “It makes sense, I think. It could work. We have to try!”
“How’s your artistic ability, darling?”
Ju Da shook her head, ruefully. “But there is someone in my art class who’s really good—Haru. He draws like a real artist.”
Kyeong Sun felt a flash of jealousy at this accolade, but pushed it away; she had other talents and much to be grateful for, the first item on that list being her beautiful, smart, overly-trusting granddaughter. She pursed her lips, thoughtfully. “What kind of person is he? Will he help, or would he take over the story himself?”
“I think he’s all right. Lee Do Hwa likes him.”
Kyeong Sun couldn’t put much store in a character reference from one of Ju Da’s admirers, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and this was Ju Da’s story, after all. Here in the liminal, in-between spaces, where they were free to make choices, she should get to decide who to involve. And maybe she and her friends, being more central to the main narrative, would be able to affect it more readily. Maybe it would actually work this time. One thing was sure—they needed a better artist than Kyeong Sun to really put it to the test. “Will you ask him?”
“Tomorrow.” Ju Da picked at a loose thread on the cuff of her shirt. There was a hopeful, wistful look in her eyes. “Do you really think we can change the story how we want?”
“It’s worth a try, isn’t it? What do we have to lose?” Kyeong Sun’s eyes were falling closed. She was still so tired from the operation, and sitting up to eat had exhausted her reserves. But she didn’t want this precious conversation to end. “What’s the first thing you’d do?”
“Money,” said Ju Da, immediately. “A bigger house for you to live in, comfortable, with everything we need.” She sat up to grab the duvet and arrange it over them, and when she lay down again, she was flushed.
Kyeong Sun rubbed her shoulder under the duvet. “Ah, darling, I already have everything I need right here. Besides, that wasn’t what I asked. I’ve thought about it long and hard, and I’m convinced that it’s not about what we want. That won’t be enough to change the story.”
“Why not?” Ju Da pulled back. “Why can’t it be a rags to riches tale without a stuck-up prince?”
“Because getting everything you want doesn’t make a very interesting story. As soon as you’ve done that, the tale’s over, and who knows what happens to us then? No, if you want to sway the writer, to convince him that your ideas are better than his, you have to focus on what you want to do, not what you want to have. At least, that’s what I think.”
Ju Da’s mouth opened into an oh of surprise, which slowly widened into a small, secret smile. “I want to make my own happy ending.”
Kyeong Sun sent her an inquiring look, but Ju Da shook her head. Not yet. And Kyeong Sun didn’t press her.
For herself, she had her own plans—things she wanted to do, if only the story would allow it—but this evening had been sweeter than any of them. Seeing her granddaughter rebel against the limitations of the narrative, the two of them planning an escape together. Now they could truly be themselves, it would keep getting better. Whatever happened with the rest of the world, they finally had each other.
END