ATTEW – Chapter 1

“A foul-tempered girl. A stubborn, vicious bitch.”

Those were words Eunho had heard so often since she was nine that her ears had grown calloused to them.

Before that, she’d been called a rat bastard, a piss-ant little shit. The nicknames fit Eunho well back then—head shaved down to the scalp, darting through filthy alleyways at top speed.

To survive, you had to be quick to read the room.

To protect your body, your presence had to be fierce.

How many years had she lived like that?

So there was no need to make a fuss now.

She was alone again—but she could live on like before, stubbornly, viciously.

“Haah, haah……”

Beyond the pale puff of breath bursting from her lips, a dazzling white hill appeared. At last, she had emerged from the forest so dense it let in no light, where everything around her had been pitch-black.

She stopped for a moment to catch her breath, drew in a deep lungful of cold air, then stepped forward again. Sniff—she twitched her nose, and the reddened tip stung sharply. It was, truly, a damnably cold day.

As she trudged through the snow, sinking deep with every step, the hem of her wool skirt grew heavier and heavier. Wet snow clung to it, steadily adding weight. Her shoes, her socks, even the cuffs of the pants she wore underneath were soaked through and frozen stiff—her feet had gone numb.

Still, she had to go. She had to keep moving.

Her destination wasn’t far.

Just a little farther.

Just a little more……

Whoosh—a loud noise made her turn. A pile of snow had tumbled from the trees in the forest she’d left behind. Farther off, she heard the crack of branches breaking. The snow that had accumulated overnight must have been immense.

“Hoo…”

Even as chills seeped into her bones and made her shiver, sweat beaded on the nape of her neck beneath her wrapped scarf. Crossing a snowfield buried up to her calves was no easy task.

But she had to go. There was something she had to do when she arrived.

Eun-ho slipped a hand inside her scarf to wipe away the damp sweat, then stepped forward once more. Staring fixedly at the pure white snow clinging to her legs, she kept moving her feet endlessly—and a curse slipped out.

“Ha, seriously……”

This goddamn snow.

Someday, she wanted to live somewhere without winter at all. Or at least somewhere that had winter, but not like this—somewhere not so brutally cold.

That was how much Eunho hated winter. If she were to write down all the reasons she despised it, she was confident she could fill an entire book.

First of all, she was born in winter. Born in a snowfield much like the hill she was crossing now, she had let out her first cry and then—still nothing but a bundle of blood and flesh—been abandoned, wrapped tightly in a scarf.

The cold air that rushed into her lungs with her first breath stabbed mercilessly at organs meant only for softness. The chill that burrowed into tender skin, the cold that seeped down to her bones—it burned. It hurt.

With eyes not yet fully formed, she faced the great, fluttering snowflakes as they fell. They touched her reddened skin, flushed from pouring out hot cries with all her might, and dampened the corners of her eyes like tears shed by a newborn who didn’t yet know how to cry.

That was her oldest memory, her very first memory.

No—that wasn’t right. No matter how sharp people said she was, there was no way she could remember the moment of her birth. The reason she could recall that instant so vividly, like a photograph…

“…….”

Eun-ho pressed her lips together as she reached for that distant memory. Then she thought of another reason she hated winter.

Her mother had died in winter, too. The woman who said that a poor woman gained nothing from being pretty—only a ruined life—had never once loved Eunho, right up until the day she died. And yet Eunho had loved her. Was there any child in the world who didn’t love their mother?

That was only possible because her mother had passed away before Eunho ever learned what resentment was. Letting a bitter smile fade, she lifted her head and looked back.

Under the sunlight, only her own footprints remained in the glittering snow. Snow must have fallen for days on end for it to accumulate in such a thick layer. And yet today’s sky acted as though nothing had happened—clear and brilliantly blue, as if it had never poured snow at all.

“Phew……”

Lifting her skirt, Eunho shook off the clumps of snow stuck to it and caught her breath. Only now had she reached the highest point of the hill. As her eyes slowly swept over the landscape below, she spotted a persimmon tree, looking desolate in the dead of winter—just as she remembered it.

If she went around that tree, she would reach the place she’d come here for.

“Let’s go.”

Listening to the crunch, crunch beneath her feet, she tugged her scarf down a little where her damp breath had touched it. Her legs felt weighted, as though lead had been hung from them, but she moved again, pushing through the snow.

As she kept going, memories unfolded in her mind—people she was grateful to, people she missed, people she would never see again. All of them were people who had let Eunho live like a human being.

At the same time, they were also tied to another reason she hated winter. Thinking of them……

“…….”

Her vision blurred instantly. The bridge of her nose stung, her eyes grew hot. A few fat tears fell onto the snow with a plop.

“Hngh……”

She bit her lip hard and squeezed her eyes shut. If she let her guard down even a little, it felt like a name would slip past her lips. And if that happened, she would probably collapse and cry for a long time.

No. I promised I wouldn’t cry. I can’t cry.

To suppress the emotions surging up again, she bit down on her lower lip until it hurt. Still unable to stop them, tears welled once more and streamed down her cheeks.

She raised her sleeve to wipe them away. Facing the knife-edged wind that tore through her brown hair, Eunho closed her eyes. She held the cold air in her lungs for a long moment, until the roiling in her stomach finally settled. When she opened her eyes again, having regained her composure—

“Ah.”

In the distance, she saw the house that had once taken her in when she had nowhere else to go. The house that no one would be waiting for her in anymore still stood in its place.

Left unattended for just a few months, it looked almost like an abandoned ruin. It had always been old, but not this bad.

“It’s fine. There’s plenty of time.”

The fact that there was so much to do—scrubbing, polishing, beating out the dust—was almost a relief. Doing something would make the time pass faster. Reassuring herself like that, Eunho quickened her steps.

After a long while, she finally descended the hill completely. She hurried toward the house, her eyes deeper than when she had left.

It had only been a few months since she’d left, thinking she would never return here again—and yet here she was. There was only one reason.

Because she knew that if he came looking for her, this was where he would come.

And she wanted only one thing.

‘If only I could meet him just once more. This time, I would never let him go.’

At last, Eunho reached the blue front gate and placed her hand on the cold metal. A few winters ago, it had been so rusted she couldn’t even tell what its original color was—until he had painted it a vivid blue.

That evening, they sat facing each other at a small table, mixing rice into a pot of spring cabbage and soybean paste soup. Unaware that the man would soon leave, Eunho had asked him what he wanted to eat tomorrow. She’d even suggested they go to the market over the weekend and boil a chicken.

Drunk on the gentleness with which he placed a slice of pickled radish atop her spoonful of rice, she hadn’t even noticed he hadn’t answered—she’d just smiled, beaming.

“…….”

Shaking the thoughts away, Eunho tightened her grip. The old country-house gate creaked open. Annoyed at how stiff it was, as if the oiling he’d done were a story from long ago, she shoved it shut behind her with unnecessary force and lifted eyes heavy with emotion.

“Grandma, I’m back.”

She spoke even though she knew there would be no answer. And then……

[“Chanhee, is that you?”]

A thin voice, calling fondly, rang in her ears.

Lee Chanhee. The name Eunho had coveted seven years ago, when she was twenty—the name that had let her keep living.

“This isn’t the time for this.”

Night was enough for being crushed by longing. Taking a deep breath, Eunho turned away. She picked up the stubby broom that still lay exactly where she’d left it months ago and began sweeping the veranda, now thickly blanketed with snow.

She tied up her fallen hair neatly and rolled up her sleeves. Soon after, she shed her scarf and heavy coat as well, sorted through usable firewood to light a fire, and flung every door wide open to air the place out.

Today, she beat and hung out the bedding that reeked of must after just a few months without human touch. Today, she wiped dust-caked household items until they shone. And today, she turned over the years gone by.

Seo Jae-eon.

Day one of waiting for a man who might already be dead.

Knowing how futile it was, still tracing the past—this was the day twenty-seven-year-old Lee Eunho had to live through.