Chapter 7b A House of Cards #2
Gigi, Aerin, Duri, Soo-bin…
Gigi still works in entertainment. Aerin married a rich businessman. Duri went back to school. Soo-bin vanished. We were five satellites tethered together by a shared dream and a punishing schedule, and the moment the schedule broke, the ties snapped.
Our group was once dubbed “The Nation’s Little Sister Group,” and I was the face of the group.
Now I’m just a national disgrace, sitting alone on my hookup’s expensive couch.
I’m so lost watching these ghosts dance, my mind a blank slate of grief and static, that the sound of the front door closing is swallowed by the silence. The soft thud of keys hitting the marble countertop is what finally breaks the spell. I flinch, my head snapping up.
Suho’s back. He’s standing in the archway to the living room, his jacket half off.
The frustration from our earlier fight is still tightening his jaw, but the expression melts away the second our eyes meet.
He takes one look at my tear-streaked face, then at the glowing screen filled with our younger, happier selves, and stops cold.
“What happened?”
My throat tightens. “It’s nothing.”
“Min-hee.”
I point vaguely toward my phone. “My dad’s in the hospital.”
His face changes. He grabs the phone, scrolls through the texts. His jaw clenches so tight I can almost hear it.
He doesn’t say “I’m sorry.” He doesn’t offer a platitude. His response is immediate, pragmatic, and utterly insane.
“Okay,” he mutters. “Let’s go.”
“Wait—what? No. I’m not going.” I say. “You read the messages. He just wants money. And I can’t—” My voice cracks. “I can’t see him like that again. Not like before.”
Suho’s voice softens. “You don’t have to. But you’ll hate yourself if you don’t.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I do.” His tone is quiet, not the kind that needs to prove anything. “When my dad cheated on my mom and ran off to LA, I told myself he was dead. I meant it. Every word. And when he called one day, wanting a favor, I almost hung up. But I’m glad I listened.”
A faint half-smile tugs at his lips as he looks down. “I didn’t do it for him. I did it so he’d stop living rent-free in my head.”
Something in me twists, loosening painfully. “I wish I could tell you my dad was good once. But he… he never was. He drank, he disappeared, and my mom… she finally left.”
A streak of tears slips down my cheek. “And yet… I still feel guilty for thinking he’s a terrible father.”
“Because he’s still your dad,” Suho finishes quietly. “It’s easier to hate the man who was never there than to reconcile with the man who was there, but only caused pain.”
The words sit between us, fragile and real.
“Let’s go,” he says finally. “Not because it’s the right thing. Just because you deserve to walk out of there knowing you tried.”
“And I’m coming with you,” he adds.
“You can’t,” I snap. “You, Kim Suho, are going to waltz into a hospital with me, Yoon Min-hee, in the middle of a national scandal? What is this, a death wish?”
He walks to the closet, grabs my coat, and tosses it at me like we’re going on a hike, not into a war zone.
“No one will see us. You’ll see him for five minutes. No cameras. No headlines. Just in and out. A covert op.”
He gives me an impatient look. “And I’m not asking. I’m telling you.”
It’s messy. It’s reckless. But for the first time ever, he hasn’t chosen to run from my problem; he’s chosen to jump into the fire with me.
“This is a terrible idea,” I whisper, my voice almost lost under the thrum of my own racing heart.
“I know,” he says. “Now get your shoes.”
***
The hospital smells of antiseptic and recycled bad memories. Outside, Suho waits in the car. His assistant and bodyguard—recruited into this bizarre, high-stakes mission—flank me as we enter, moving with the quiet, tense efficiency of a security detail smuggling state secrets.
I could feel their collective professional discomfort radiating off them, annoyed to be pulled into a messy family drama.
I pause at the door to my father’s room, my hand hovering over the handle.
My entire life, my relationship with my father has felt like a script with a massive plot hole; a story full of dramatic scenes that never added up to anything meaningful.
I take a breath that does nothing to calm me and step inside, leaving Suho’s assistant and bodyguard on quiet watch just outside the door.
Dad looks… smaller. Grey and shrunken against the white sheets, a stark contrast to the looming, red-faced man who haunts my teenage memories.
He’s hooked to an IV, his eyes half-lidded, but when he sees me, he perks up with the manufactured energy of a C-list celebrity at a fan meet.
“Min-hee!” His voice is a raspy, overly enthusiastic burst. “You came!”
I freeze, my practiced smile failing to form. “Hey, Appa.”
“You look so… famous.” He grins, as if that’s the highest compliment in the universe.
My brother is slouched in the visitor’s chair, radiating the specific, simmering resentment of a man deeply inconvenienced by someone else’s crisis. I glance his way, but he refuses to meet my eyes, suddenly engrossed in a scuff mark on the linoleum floor as if it holds the secrets to cold fusion.
“How long have you been here?” I ask him, the words clipped.
“Long enough,” he mutters to the floor.
“Still blaming me for everything?” The question slips out, acidic and reflexive.
He finally looks up, and his scoff is a weapon. “You act like you’ve been around to be blamed for anything.”
“I’m here now.”
“Yeah,” he sneers, gesturing at my own masked-and-hatted disguise. “Ready for your close-up. So proud.”
Dad lets out a loud, attention-grabbing cough. “Enough,” he rasps. “Don’t fight. Please. It’s good to see both my kids. Together.”
Neither of us dignifies that with an answer.
“Listen,” he continues, shifting awkwardly against the pillows. “They want me to stay. Observation, tests… you know. But I told them, I just need rest. Maybe a trip somewhere warm? Get my strength back.”
My eyes narrow. There it is. The pivot. The ask. He gives me the look—the one that says, you’re the successful one, the rich one, what’s a little money to you?
My carefully constructed composure cracks. I stand up. “Get better, Appa.”
“Min-hee—”
“No.” My voice is firm, a solid thing in the room. I look from my father’s hopeful face to my brother’s resentful one. “Don’t ask me for money. Don’t turn this into a transaction. I came. That is all I have to give right now.”
I walk out without waiting for a reply, the silence chasing me down the hall.
Suho is right where I left him, his car—a discreet SUV—tucked near the staff entrance.
The interior light is off, but the faint glow of his phone screen casts his masked profile in a cool, blue hue.
The moment I step out of the hospital doors, his head snaps up, and the car locks click open like a quiet welcome.
He doesn’t press for details during the drive, reading the silence between us. A few blocks from the hospital, he pulls over to drop his bodyguard and assistant. They give a small, respectful nod before stepping out, leaving just the two of us.
Back at his apartment, the quiet follows us inside. He doesn’t flip on the harsh overhead lights, letting the soft glow from the city skyline filter through the windows instead.
He takes my hand, his thumb gently brushing over my knuckles, and leads me to his room.
He flips the comforter back, and I crawl under it, still blotchy-eyed but too wrung out to care. Instead of leaving me space, he slides in behind me.
“Suho,” I murmur, trying to stop my tears, tired of feeling this emotional. “There are times when… I don’t want to live anymore.”
There’s a long silence. I feel his arm snake around my waist, a quiet desperation in the way he holds me—like he knows everything he’s about to say won’t make me feel okay, and all he can do now is hold on.
His voice, when it comes, is low and unhurried. “Hey… you don’t have to be okay all the time. But I need you to stay. Even if it’s just to yell at me for being an idiot.”
He presses a light kiss to the top of my head. “And good thing you’re a terrible quitter, because I’m not done with you yet.”
A broken laugh escapes me.
“Also,” he murmurs against my ear, trying to ease the air just a little, “I saw something weird today.”
“Weirder than me?”
“Objectively weirder. A fan tagged me in a photo. He got my face tattooed on his calf.”
I let out a startled chuckle. “Okay, that’s pretty weird.”
“But here’s the thing.” His tone drops into that conspiratorial register he uses when he’s about to say something both profound and stupid. “What happens when he’s old? Skin all wrinkly and saggy. Does my face wrinkle, too? Do I end up looking like a melted candle on some seventy-year-old’s leg?”
This time, a real laugh explodes out of me. He shares the sheer, unadulterated absurdity of his fame, assuming—correctly—that I’m the only other person on the planet who would understand.
When the laughter dies down, the moment feels different—less like a mess, more like a truce. Like maybe the whole house of cards we’ve been living in isn’t about to collapse.