Han So-Hee POV:

She reaches the gates of her college to collect the receipt of her admission in a correspondence course. It's her third day in Seoul and she already doesn't like it. 

Going back home to a reserved, stammering, absent-minded father isn't really her idea of fun.  She wanted to become a model.

Being in Seoul and staying with her father was the last thing she ever wanted to do. But her grandmother forced her to shift out of her house in Daegu where she had lived for the last twelve years, to move in with her father.'He needs you,' she had insisted and she can seldom turn her grandmother down. So-Hee hadn't seen her father in a decade. She had grown up with her grandmother in Daegu after her mother died in an accident when she was really young. 

She spots a few guys looking in her direction and she shrugs it off. She turns up the volume on her iPod and Taehyung's voice blares into her ears. Kim Taehyung the reclusive young singer, has always been So-Hee's savior, right from the first song he uploaded. So-Hee had a troubled childhood. 

She was only three when her mother passed away, and all of five years when she was put into a girl's boarding school, a place her unsuspecting grandmother thought would be safe for her.

 Little did her grandmother know what would happen.

 The first few months were the worst. Little and lonely So-Hee would be woken up by Warden Aunty and taken to the back alley of the library, every night for weeks at an end. She would be stripped and touched all over, and she would cry, she would wail, and the warden would ask her to stay shut or she would be caned the next day. 

So-Hee, scared and crying, would bear everything. And then after a few months, it suddenly stopped. The warden preyed on someone else. For years, she stayed shut. The few girls she talked to about it would brush it away. The warden eventually left the school and disappeared. It's said that her deeds had come out in the open and she was thrown out, but there was no case against her because the school wanted to uphold its image as a safe, friendly school.

 Her friends asked her to move on from the incident. But it was hard for So-Hee It wasn't as if she hadn't tried. She tried the hardest she could. She was still the most talkative, ebullient kid in school who participated in everything, but when alone, she used to be a scared little girl fighting with those images of being naked with the warden, her rough fingers on her body, her voice telling her to shut up, telling her that what was being done to her was nothing unusual, and every new kid goes through the same. The more she talked, the less she was reminded of those long, torturous nights.

 So, So-Hee hasn't stopped talking since then . . .There were years when she wouldn't sleep in the night with the lights off. And if any roommate would switch them off, she would curl up in the corner of the room, and cry herself to sleep, scared. She had even tried to cut herself a few times over the years. 

She doesn't do that anymore, but the scars remain. It took eight years for her to sleep without fear. It wasn't until the time she was thirteen that she got a grip on the situation. It wasn't therapy or her grandmother's love, who knew nothing about what had happened, that gave her a fresh lease of life. 

It was the songs of a fifteen-year-old boy, Taehyung, singing that gave her strength. She had stumbled on those songs on a networking site and had downloaded them on her iPod. The boy had floppy hair, puppy-like eyes, and a deep velvet-smooth voice. And since that day, it was as if this boy was singing to her. 

And since that day, whenever So-Hee is down and out, scared, or crying, she just listens to his songs and suddenly, everything is better. It was Taehyung's songs that drew So-Hee out of her fears and gave her another chance at life.

She's standing in the long line to collect the receipts for admissions when a voice from behind says, 'You're from Daegu?' It's a boy. He's drooling and he's not even trying to hide that he's hitting on her.

 'I live in Seoul with my father. My mother died when I was three. And I have cut my hands a few times because I was raped when I was five. Also, I have a boyfriend,' says So-Hee, coldly, and shows the boy the little scars on her hands. 

These tricks are really old, but they never fail to work. Conversation dries up. The death of a sibling, of a mother, rape, failed suicide attempts, a terminal disease, etc. are certified, conversation killers. It's assumed that anyone who has gone through any of these must be under continual and unending trauma. The boy says nothing, a little confused whether So-Hee is joking, and even if she isn't, he doesn't want to take the chance. 

Just as she is about the leave, her phone rings and it's Jeon Jungkook, the most handsome and unnaturally ripped-off boy in Daegu. A walking piece of muscle and a perpetual protein shake guzzler. 

She'd started dating him when she was fifteen, and he was eighteen, a college boy. It all started when one day he forcefully made her drink at a small party. He kissed her that day, and she, drunk, had regretfully kissed him back. The news spread like wildfire in her school and his college and since So-Hee didn't want to be called a slut, she started dating him. She dated him for two long, torturous years before they broke up last year. 

For those two years, So-Hee was nothing more than a piece of furniture to him, something that he owned and could be territorial about. Now that she thinks of her relationship with Jungkook she can't find a single reason why she was with him. 

Yes, he was a possessive boyfriend. He never allowed anyone near So-Hee. He was also very connected, so when So-Hee had told him about the warden and her molestation, he and his friends in the police had hunted the woman down and she was beaten in So-Hee's presence. 

Ever since Jungkook had done that for her, she was indebted to him somehow, and she didn't know how to pay back that debt. So she stayed with him and put up with Jungkook's abusive behavior, his anger problem, and his highly chauvinistic attitude. Most often he would get angry whenever So-Hee refused to get intimate with him. 

In the two years that they were together, So-Hee hadn't kissed him more than twice and she got slapped quite a few times for her resistance. But she just couldn't free herself from him.

' Everyone's doing it, why can't you fucking do it as well?' he used to shout. So-Hee used to break down into tears and tell him that she wasn't comfortable doing it. 

'Oh c'mon! Just because you were molested when you were five, you can't continue being depressed and never do anything! SHE WAS A WOMAN AND SHE FORCED YOU! I'M NOT RAPINGYOU!' 

And then he would grab her by her arm and shake her. And strangely, his touch reminded her of the warden's.

' TELL ME!' he used to shout.

 So-Hee used to cry and beg him to leave her and he would. She never gave into Jungkook and eventually, they broke up. Jungkook has had a few flings since then. But to date, Jungkook acts as he owns So-Hee, and though So-Hee is an extrovert, a happy girl, she still gets scared and apprehensive and guarded whenever Jungkook calls. 

She's not sure if he's any less scary than the warden who had molested her.

'Hi Jungkook,' she says.

'Where are you? I called you yesterday and you didn't answer. You were in college, right?' he asks in a tone that only steady boyfriends and parents can use.

'I'm sorry. It was just that Dad was around,' she answers.

'You could have called back.'

So-Hee can already sense his anger on the phone so she apologizes again. 'Let me send you a phone from here so that I can call you on that number. You can use it just to reach me. How about that? Can we do that? The new iPhone just came out. It's awesome and it's only for seventy thousand.'

'I don't need a phone, Jungkook. My phone works just fine. I would have called you. You just got to be a little patient with me. It's just that Dad and the college formalities and . . .'she pleads, her voice imitating a small puppy's. There's nothing to sort out between her and her father; it's a dead relationship, but she's hoping Jungkook will withdraw.

'Okay, okay! Fine. Next time, pick up my call on time,' he grumbles. 'If you need anything, a friend of mine studies in the same college. I will ask him to keep an eye out for you. He is connected. And next time I call, pick it up at once.' 

'Fine.' She wants to shout and ask him to fuck off, but somehow her voice fails.

So-Hee disconnects the line and plugs in the earphones again.

 She hopes that with time, Jungkook will stop treating her like a piece of property and will forget her. 

She watches Taehyung sing in the small video, his eyes always slightly watery, wide-open, like they are searching for something, like a little pup's eyes. She feels better all of a sudden. 

And just like that, she's no longer scared.

 She sends Taehyung a mail from one of the twenty fake accounts she has created to thank him for his songs. 

'Fuck you, Jungkook,' she mutters.