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Soo Yuna was dying.
No, correction.
Soo Yuna should've died a long time ago.
To understand where her story began, one must travel all the way across the sea.
There lived a couple who didn't stand out too much. The husband was an accountant for a good company while the wife was more traditional, who made little lace handkerchiefs for a general store just below their apartment. Then one day, the couple discovered something amazing.
For years, they have tried and tried for a child. Now the heavens have blessed them with a little girl growing inside her mother's belly. The two went crazy trying to prepare for her arrival, the father now working overtime while the mother made clothes of all kinds for their little girl. Their precious treasure.
As the husband was busy working, the wife would secretly imbue the clothes with something special. For you see, the wife was no ordinary woman. She was a yagwanggwi, a spirit known to bring misfortune. What the public didn't know is that while their kind DID steal luck, a yagwanggwi could also pass on their accumulated luck onto their offspring.
The wife left behind her thieving ways in order to enjoy a life of ordinary bliss. However, she knew that yagwanggwi were born unfortunate no matter the circumstances. As the months passed by, she felt her luck slowly running out as she gave it all to their child, leaving just enough for her to deliver their daughter without any complications.
Except, that was a lie. There was a complication.
When the husband and wife were full of joy and pride, the doctors gave them the bad news. Their daughter had a hole in her heart, which required a lot of treatment. They cried that night as their baby was being saved, unable to do anything. That's when the wife decided to cast away all her luck so that their precious miracle could be saved.
Miraculous, the daughter recovered from her ailment. The husband was overjoyed, not knowing what his wife had sacrificed for little Yuna's existence. By the time little Yuna was a toddler, the wife confessed her powers to her husband. There was no way she could make her daughter hide such a big part of herself from her father. Instead of being angry or shunning her, he was only saddened by the fact it took her so long but also glad that she decided to trust him with such a secret.
And so Yuna grew up loved by her family, taught to be good and studious like most little girls her age. Although she played the occasional trick or two, her childhood friends would take it in stride and play tricks on her back. The older she became, the more subtle and harmless her jokes were. She studied and studied, eventually earning a scholarship that could send her across to the US. Everything was going well for Yuna and her family before calamity struck. Suddenly, there was chaos everywhere in the country.
Forces beyond the family’s control clashed day and night, bringing floods and lightning into their life. It didn’t matter who was hitting what because the citizens were caught in the crossfire. Yuna was very lucky to have her papers ready. What was once a celebrated achievement became a means of survival for her. As both her and her parents, the husband and wife decided to give all their luck to their precious treasure, now old enough to start a family of her own. That night, Yuna was sent all the way across the ocean. Knowing full well that her parents gave up their luck, and subsequently their lives, to keep her alive just like all those years ago.
Yuna could barely keep herself together at that point, only strung together by the strings of her parent’s sacrifice. She threw herself into all the work to distract from the grief. From majoring in communications and taking medical terminology classes for the sake of it, she found herself working for a private hospital in Torrence. People would always assume she’s doing great and that there’s nothing wrong, but all she could remember were her parents practically pushing her onto the boat. She remembered that stormy night, where two elementals clashed regardless of their surroundings. It was an absolute shitshow and to this day, she had nightmares about it.
But Yuna couldn’t break. No, she refused to bend to her self-loathing and pity. To do that would mean spitting on her parent’s graves. Inside her soul, she felt the warmth of their fortune swirl within her. It kept her heart pumping despite the medical impossibility. It was a wound she kept open again and again just to feel its love. Somedays, she couldn’t even eat until the gnawing of her stomach was too much. Yuna refused to use the cookbook her mother passed onto her because it would only dredge up memories of that damn night again and again. She can’t handle that. She didn’t want to break down just as her momentum was building because that would mean facing something dark inside her. That would mean facing survivor’s guilt and whatever self-deprecating thoughts her inner mind could conjure up.
So Yuna kept working. She kept joking, playing the trickster like she always does because it made life easier for her. Let her breathe for a few moments before going home to a shoebox apartment that had nothing but a bed and some shelves.
Rinse and repeat
One day, while Yuna was working, she met a clumsy man with the biggest scowl on his face. Now, she has dealt with very difficult people before. It wouldn’t be the first time she had to talk a man down from yelling at her because she did her job. When she asked what the man was doing here, he simply said, “I broke my leg because there was a huge pothole and I missteped.”
Yuna couldn’t pinpoint what exactly triggered it for the first time. Maybe it was how badly he lied about the cause or perhaps it was from how serious he said it. But for the first time in two years, she genuinely laughed.
Of course, she scolded him afterwards for not immediately seeking medical attention, but the confusion on his face made it all the better. As if a broken leg wasn’t something that should have people rushing to the ER. She decided to keep this serious man in mind. Yuna would find herself meeting the man again and again, always giving the most ridiculous answers for being admitted. His visits were a highlight in her life. Not because of the frequencies of his injuries, no. But because of the shy smile he would give whenever he lied to her.
At some point, his visits became less frequent and so did the lies. They were swapped with date nights after her shifts and gossip about his friends. Dates turned into sleepovers and sleepovers turned into living together. Before she knew it, Soo Yuna became Yuna Robertson nee Soo.
Being with Robbie was like turning her brain off after an especially hard exam. She could be falling apart around him and he would just be there waiting, silent and listening. He wouldn’t offer her the paltry condolences that plagued her life whenever somebody asked how she got here. No, he would just hold her tight as she cried and grieved for the first time in years. He would promise her that she would always be safe in his arms. That he would never let her drown alone again.
Marrying Robbie was like marrying her anchor.
Solid and strong until it started to sink.
Just like her parents before her, Yuna and Robbie tried and tried for a child until they were blessed with a little boy named Gilyoung Robert Robertson the Third. Yuna thought she felt love when she met Robbie or when Priscilla became her best friend. She thought having stable people in her life would just be the end of the love she could give and receive. But no, she truly felt love when a little boy was pushed out of her body and screamed for her with his tiny lungs.
It was the same adoration and rapture her parents had when she was born, so scared yet so hopeful. It was like holding the future of the world in the palm of her hands, asking to be loved.
Gilyoung Robert Robertson the Third was the luckiest thing she has ever experienced.
Meeting Priscilla through Robbie was like meeting somebody who could truly understand her. Her parents sacrificed by their own hands just so that she could survive a cruel, harsh world. Rather than being satisfied with just survival, Priscilla wanted to make the world even better than it already was. Don’t her wrong, Robbie thought the same. But his sense of justice comes from indoctrination and learning from his father. Pricilla’s came from personal experience, her mother and father staying behind in Italy when the violence became too much. Fearing her powers were to be misused, she was sent far away and was forced to cut all contact with them.
A perfect mirror.
If only Robbie introduced them sooner. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone all those years thinking that her guilt and shame was hers alone. No, somebody else bore those scars loud and proud. She didn’t let her past define her like Yuna did. Priscilla rose above it like Yuna wanted to.
As Robbie became more busy with hero work, she spent more time with her new ‘gal pal’ as Priscilla once called herself. Priscilla never had to lie in order to make Yuna laugh, no. She just had to be her smart, awkward self. They would talk about everything and anything under the moon. From talking shop about medicine to just daily life. Where Robbie would hold her silent and give her promises of protection, Priscilla would pick the scabs of what she’s avoiding and slowly tend to them like a gentle wave of water. In turn, Yuna would do the same with her. It was mutual healing at its finest, fixing and filling the cracks that hid beneath their respective masks.
A joker who always cried and a poster hero who wanted to be a nurse.
Robbie never shared much about himself, which was odd considering she married him. He could talk days about his father’s legacy but nothing about himself. She thought that was normal until Priscilla came into her life. Suddenly, the clumsy man she fell in love with became this bastion she could never reach. Always busy, always away.
But apparently, not away enough to not get her pregnant.
The day Gilyoung…No, Robert was born, she immediately passed out. When Yuna came to, the carefully chosen name of Gilyoung was discarded in order to make way for the Robertson legacy. That’s when she realized just what kind of man she married.
But it was fine, because she didn’t have to see much of him nowadays. Not when there’s a little miracle waiting for her.
Robert was an easy child to love. Even when he woke her up in the middle of the night, she was content to sing him lullabies of her homeland. As he grew older, she found herself opening her mother’s cookbook more often than not. Yuna wanted to give him all the joys she had as a child. All the sweets and clothes her hands can make. Loving her son was as simple as breathing. Slowly, the nightmares became no more. While Priscilla soothed them with her understanding, Robert reminded her of those joyful days before the disaster. Of the good that once was before she used her pain as a crutch to get by in life. She found herself teaching him her trickster ways, playing jokes on each other and making up games in their big, empty house. The laughter and tenderness came easier than it ever was compared to when it was just her and Robbie. The yagwanggwi powers that she was taught were also passed onto him alongside all the things she thinks a self-respecting Korean boy should know like the language and alphabet.
The only thing that worried her…was the looming misfortune her son had.
Her mother warned her that if somebody’s misfortune is so great that it starts manifesting within their sight, it would take an extraordinary amount of luck to keep that person alive. She knew her kind were never born lucky, but this was an extreme she hadn't seen before. Not even with herself.
And so, she slowly poured all her luck into her miracle. Her treasure.
Priscilla tried to make her back down, to find something in exchange but fortune doesn't work like that.
One must be sacrificed for another.
“Yuna, are you sure this is the only way you can do this? What about Silverfin from the UK? She can probably find somebody who could provide a better solution,” Priscilla watched as Robert played with a little wind up toy mouse, chasing it at an alarming speed throughout the garden. Yuna gave her a gentle smile before shaking her head.
“That's not how it works, Celia. Our kind steals luck from people, not artifacts. If I were to take somebody's luck just so I can live, it wouldn't be fair,” Yuna brought her attention back to Robert, now closing in on his prey, “Besides, it would require a lot of luck to keep him safe. I'm the only one who has that right now.”
“Or we could just find a super with extremely good luck. Have them take on the burden. I'm not saying you can't, Yuna. But you need to think about who you're going to leave behind if you go through with this,” Priscilla took her hand and squeezed it, “Robert shouldn't be without his mother. And I…I don't want to lose anybody else, especially you.”
She could already imagine the life that Robert would have if she were to be gone from his life. Robbie would probably blame Robert if he knew that she gave him her luck, her life force. No, she won't subject her son to that man's ire. Not if she could help it. Robbie could only see in extremes, never understanding nuance the way her and Priscilla honed themselves over the years.
That's why she kept that part of her power set from him and swore Robert to secrecy.
They sat by the patio table in silence, watching Robert catch his mouse before winding it up and beginning the game anew. His laughter was loud and unafraid. Yuna wanted to keep it that way.
“Fine, if you can find somebody willing to give an immense amount of luck to me, then I'll do it,” She squeezed Priscilla's hand in return, “But I need to keep giving Robert my luck, otherwise something bad might happen to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don't know, but if I had the power to stop my boy from ever facing death…I will do it.”
The tension was cut when she felt a little force bump into her legs. Her son had a butterfly caught in his hands, still able to flutter even when its body was pinched in between Robert’s small fingers. It spoke multitudes of his control and gentleness. Something Yuna can’t take credit for considering she would always accidentally squash the beetles she caught as a kid.
“Eomma! Eomma! Look, I have a butterfly! Super pretty just like my eomma!”
Priscilla covered her mouth as she snorted, ignoring the brief glare sent her way.
“Mhm, it’s a very pretty butterfly, Gilyoung-a. If you let it go right now, we can catch fireflies later. It probably wants to go eat something now.”
Sue Yuna for using the name she chose as a nickname. It was a very nice one and she refuses to let it go.
Her son’s eyes widened, as if having a big realization, “Oh no, the butterfly must be so hungry,” Robert let the poor thing flap away, “Be free, butterfly!”
The innocence and earnestness pushed Priscilla to the brink, laughing at the moment. Her son was just so cute and so kind that Yuna had to hide the big grin forming on her face. Maybe she will fight for her survival, but she will fight for Robert’s even more.
And so both women would look high and low for a solution. Those who had the luck to give were unwilling to give it. Not when the recipient was a complete stranger. No, they were content to live their lives as they pleased. Priscilla was upset, but Yuna wasn’t. Not when she was busy spending as much time as she could with Robert, never knowing when one day will be her last.
__
Especially considering the guilt she carried with her. She could barely stand remembering her mother and father’s sacrifice, what more a completely unrelated person who didn’t owe her anything?
No, she was content counting the days go by as her little boy grew taller and taller.
__
“-absorbs an artifact and THEN transfers it to you. Think it could work that way?”
Yuna folded her arms while leaning on a small table they had in the living room, “Maybe. It could be worth a shot. But finding such a thing that grants a huge, permanent boost in fortune could be tricky. Maybe we could go somewhere with Robert on a vacation if Robbie lets us.”
“Or you could let me deal with the consequences,” Priscilla sat up from her position on the couch, “I could just book us a flight. Maybe not out of the country considering…” She trailed off, letting the topic hang in the air.
“I wouldn’t mind showing Robert around Korea, let him see where he came from. Weren’t you the one who told me not to be shackled by the past? It could be good for the three of us.”
She smiled, already thinking about how her two favorite people could fare in her hometown. Maybe they rebuilt some of it after the flood, bringing in some new blood from the cities. Yuna could think about the foods and the sights…She could treat Priscilla to some authentic hangover soup or have Robert try on a real hanbok if they manage to travel during a festival. Maybe Robbie could tag along, but he was always testy when she showed signs of her roots. He always dismissed Robert learning Korean as a ‘useful skill’ and nothing more. Any other signs of indulgences into half of Robert’s heritage were met with this vague look in his eyes.
Nevermind that, she had a son and best friend to worry about.
“You’re serious? Alright, we can start planning now. What day should we- YUNA!!”
She could barely register her coughing fit as she tried to balance herself. The lamp came crashing to the floor as the fits grew more violent with each passing second. A gentle warmth was pushed inside her, but not the one from her parents’...Oh no, it ran out?
That gentle warmth must be-
Priscilla laid Yuna down gently on the floor, one hand cradling her head while the other was flush where her heart should be. Those lightning blue eyes were glowing, yet she could still see the tears streaming down her best friend’s face, “Yuna, stay with me. We were just about to fix this, don’t you dare leave before we can see it through.”
“Celia…” More coughing poured out of her lips, “Keep Robert in his room. He can’t see this.”
“Robert?! Robbie took him to see the mech, remember? Just hold on a bit longer. I can- I can…”
“Good. Then he won’t see me die.” Yuna could barely breathe now, even as the coughing was replaced with deep breathing, “Promise me you’ll look after him.”
“You are not dying today, you hear me?!! You promised we would go somewhere together, just the three of us. So don’t give up. You can’t give up.”
“Please look after my son…”
“LOOK AFTER HIM YOURSELF!! I CAN’T-” Yuna reached up to brush Priscilla’s hair. Such beautiful hair shouldn’t look that messy, “Don’t leave us, please. You can’t die on me. Robert needs you. I need you.”
The warmth curled around her heart, but it can’t heal what was never there.
“I…love you all.”
Soo Yuna died, not knowing her best friend was kept away from her son after her death. That her husband pushed their son further into a legacy of martyrdom and constant paranoia.
She died not knowing that the luck she gave Robert would save him time and time again despite her husband sealing away all memories of her and the power she and her son shared.
She died, only to have her son live in what would otherwise be a fatal explosion that could’ve killed any man.
This was her legacy