The corridor outside my grandfather's study was cold, but I had stopped noticing the cold weeks ago. I had been confined to my room for nearly three months. My legs had forgotten how to carry me farther than the window. So when Clara stepped out to fetch my breakfast, I did something I wasn't supposed to do.

I walked.

I told myself I was only stretching my legs. But my feet carried me down the hall, and when I heard the voices behind the study door, I stopped.

Varn's voice. Low. Careful.

"—no such publications exist in the south, my Lord. I wrote to Kester two months ago. There is no hospital, no medical bureau copy of these books, no such tutor. The information is real. But the story is not."

A pause. Then my grandmother, quiet and tight: "Then where did she get it?"

Another pause. Longer.

Then my grandfather, in a voice I had never heard him use before: "She has lied to us. From the beginning."

Silence.

I stood in the corridor with my hand pressed flat against the wall and my heart hammering so loud I was sure they could hear it through the door. They know. Of course they knew. I had been a fool to think I could keep it from them. And now they were sitting in that room deciding what to do with me. Whether to send me away. Whether to wash their hands of me the way everyone else always had.

She has lied to us.

I walked back to my room without making a sound.

Clara returned with my breakfast and set it on the desk. I didn't touch it. I sat by the window and watched the world I couldn't join.

In the courtyard below, Freya was laughing. She had a basket of clothes balanced on her hip and was saying something to one of the other maids that made her throw her head back. She looked light. Free. She had not spoken to me since the night I came back from the mines. Neither had Luca. Bram had gone home to his father and hadn't returned.

They're pulling away. The thought arrived calmly, the way the worst thoughts always do. Just like Ae-run. Just like Joon. I had saved them too, and they had been ashamed of me. Why would this family be any different?

My grandfather had not visited me once since the accident. I had told myself it was duty—that the barracks, the hospital, the mine kept him busy. But now I understood. He wasn't busy. He was avoiding me. He had learned what I was, and he had decided that whatever I had brought to Ismere was not worth the lie I had wrapped it in.

I tried to breathe, and my breath came in shallow and wrong.

"You would have been a great teacher," someone had said to me once, a lifetime ago.

"Yeah," I had answered. "I could have been."

And then, for the first time in months, I was fifteen again.

The rain was falling harder now, and I sat alone at the top of the jungle gym in the park near our apartment. It was my fifteenth birthday.

No one bothered me anymore. I had made it a point that anyone who spoke about my family would get beaten up. And besides, bullying was like a trend—there was always someone new to terrorize.

Birthday? I mouthed to myself as the rain soaked through my uniform. Maybe if I wasn't born…

I looked down at my watch. Two o'clock. I had two more hours until I could go home.

She'll still be asleep right now anyway. Might as well go home than stay out in this weather.

I stood in the doorway of our apartment, the light drizzle falling on my back. The door was slightly ajar. From the living room, I could hear voices.

"I'll have the money by next week," my mother's voice came, thin and desperate.

"Mrs. Jeong—or is it Miss Bok now? You said that a few months ago. I've lent you millions of won already. You keep saying you'll pay me back, but you haven't returned anything." A loud male voice boomed.

"My ex-husband is behind on the child support. Once he sends it, I'll clear everything immediately."

"Your ex-husband? Prosecutor Jeong?" The man paused. "His property is being fought over in court, you know. His legal wife and his mother are tearing each other apart over it. Is that the man you're waiting on?"

"What do you mean, fighting over his property? Why would anyone—"

"Because he died, Miss Bok. Is that the same man you're waiting on?"

"Died? When? How? No one told me anything—"

"Look, we just want our money back. We'll be lenient this time, on account of your confusion." His voice was thick with sarcasm. "But we'll be back in a month's time."

I heard the shuffling of feet and dashed into the bushes. Four men came out and walked down the street. When they were gone, I walked inside. My mother was hunched over on the sofa, her head in her hands.

"What was that about?" I asked, startling her.

"Seo? Why are you home so early?"

"I asked what that man meant."

"They were just people from the community centre. They wanted help with the upcoming—"

"Don't lie to me!" I barked, and her gaze snapped to mine, her eyes red and watery.

"He's dead," she whispered. She tried to say more, but the words failed her. After a long moment, she stood up and walked to her room, locking the door behind her.

I was inconsolable. How selfish, I thought, for my father to leave us so suddenly and without anything. The wake and burial—which my mother had to force herself through—passed in a blur. My siblings were too young to understand. My mother couldn't function at all.

The trial for my father's wealth didn't drag on long. All his money was awarded to his new wife. Not a penny to anyone else. To pay back the loan sharks, my mother sold our old house and moved us into a small three-bedroom apartment above a convenience store in a cheaper area.

She began working long night shifts at another convenience store—or so she said. I later discovered she was selling herself to pay our fees.

I still remember the day I found out.

I skipped my afternoon lessons and made my way home. The streets were oddly empty. I opened the door slowly, trying not to startle my mother, who now slept during the day.

"One more round," a gruff voice echoed before I could turn the doorknob.

"No—get out! How did you even find my house?"

"Come on now. You know the boss put me in charge of you girls…" He laughed to himself. "How old are you again?"

My mother was on the floor of our living room, covering herself with a blanket. The man stood over her, his pants down to his ankles.

"You owe me," he bellowed. "I gave you an advancement when you couldn't cover your children's fees. A whore sending her children to a private institution—what a joke." He sneered. "Or are your bastards too good for public schools?"

"Get out!" my mother shrieked.

He raised his hand and slapped her hard across the face. "Don't raise your filthy voice at me. The boss wants his money, and I'm willing to pay some of it as long as you do as I say." He grabbed at her legs. "Now open your damn legs."

Before I knew it, my legs had carried me forward. I grabbed the vase near the door—the one that still held dried flowers from my father's wake—and smashed it on his head.

My mother's eyes opened wide. Her face was swollen, her lip busted, her nose bleeding. "Seo, what are you doing here?" Her voice quaked. "Hurry—get out!"

But the man was already on his feet, blood dripping into his shirt. "You little shit!" he screamed, and hit me squarely in the ribs.

I felt the air leave my lungs. I couldn't breathe. Hot tears fell as the pain travelled through me. I could see my mother hunch over me, trying to protect me from a torrent of kicks, mouthing sorry, sorry, sorry.

When my voice finally came back, I screamed. My mother tried to cover my mouth, but the elderly store owner and his son Park Yoon were already coming up the stairs.

The rest was a blur. I remember my mother sat outside my door that night, asking me to come out so we could talk. I wouldn't budge. I was angry. My side ached, and I felt this overwhelming burden that wouldn't leave me.

Had I known what was to happen next, I would never have ignored her.

I dropped out of school the week after. I couldn't stomach the thought of my mother selling herself for my sake. She begged me to reconsider, but I refused. We fought from morning to noon and stopped just before my siblings came home. We never spoke about what happened that day.

I took odd jobs—cleaning at restaurants, peddling Yakult drinks in the neighbourhood—to ease some of her burden. I knew which brothel she worked in. I knew how much she made a night. I helped her budget. She began leaving her pay in the box that contained my things.

Then she would lock herself in her room and snort cocaine—a habit she claimed made the work easier. In truth, it just ate the money and forced her to take double the shifts.

A year later, her body was found in a motel two miles from our home. Cause of death: overdose.

I was seventeen. The old shop owner paid for the funeral out of the goodness of his heart.

What followed was more than a decade of work. I pulled my siblings out of private school and enrolled them in public school. I borrowed Yoon's old textbooks and tutored them myself. I worked three jobs. Twice—only twice—I sold my own body. Once when Joon fell ill. Once when the electricity was cut off before Ae-run's exams.

I did everything in my power to educate them. Ae-run entered medical school. Joon entered civil engineering. Both on full scholarships. In the holidays, I made notes for them, held revision classes, tested them so they wouldn't fall behind.

I befriended the prostitutes my mother had worked with. I moved into their neighbourhood. I tutored their children.

"You would have been a great teacher," one of them said to me once, picking up her son. "Look how well your siblings turned out."

"Yeah," I said, with a dry laugh. "I could have been."

But the dark thoughts came day and night. All the things I could have accomplished. All the opportunities I could have had. I helped so many people get ahead, and I had nothing to my name.

At thirty-five, I heard that my sister was getting married. I could not attend. Ae-run was, in Joon's words, afraid to make me uncomfortable in front of her in-laws. In short—she was embarrassed of my background. She made me out to be dead.

It was in the argument that followed, over the phone, that I discovered my oblivious siblings had known full well what business our mother and I had partaken in to support them.

I cut the call. I felt sick. It was then that my mother's eyes—the day I found her—morphed into mine.

I shut myself in my single-room flat and drank myself into oblivion. I did not see the sun again.

"Eve. Can you hear me?"

A voice, far away.

"What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

"Why won't she stop crying?" My grandmother's voice rang out.

My eyes opened. My grandmother's face was full of fear. A nurse from the hospital sat across from me, unpacking her medicine bag.

"Huh?"

"She's awake again," Clara mouthed. Her eyes were puffy—she had been crying.

That's right. I was Evelyn now. I had a second chance at life. I could make something of myself. I could be anything.

I hugged my grandmother for a long while before the nurse examined me. A sudden spike in my fever had left me unconscious for the better part of the afternoon, but my symptoms were improving after the remedy she had brought.

But when my grandmother pulled back to look at me, her eyes were searching. Careful. The way they had been in the study.

She has lied to us.

I looked away first.