Chapter 10b The House with a Cherry Tree
The House with a Cherry Tree
Snow in Seoul always feels a little theatrical. Maybe it’s the city itself—a drama queen of neon and ambition—that makes even a dusting of white feel like it’s been choreographed by a world-class production designer.
The backdrop softens, the air sharpens, and suddenly, I’m not just a woman trudging through the wreckage of a scandal; I’m the villain of a winter romance. Or at least, that’s the story the city insists on telling.
That’s me. Yoon Min-hee. Currently unemployed, semi-homeless, and legally cleared—but still trending as #IcePrincess.
The universe has a wicked, ironic sense of humor.
The official police results came in last week in an anticlimactic email. Negative. I hadn’t touched anything illegal.
But by the time the government portal quietly confirmed my innocence, it was too late.
The damage had already stacked in triple layers: the drug allegations, my brother selling made-up stories about our family to the media, and the agency cutting me loose.
Sponsors and offers had vanished. I’m officially blacklisted.
It feels ridiculous, but I’m almost grateful they didn’t tack on a massive fine with my exit. The tabloids and gossip sites have moved on, found their next prey. I’m finally free. Except this freedom feels more like a punch to the ribs.
My old apartment is quiet in all the wrong ways—too much of me, and nothing to drown it out. No scripts. No schedules. No camera flashes. Just me. Alone.
But here, the silence feels different. Not empty—just… shared. A kind of quiet I don’t feel responsible for filling.
I drift through Suho’s apartment, half-asleep, half-aware I’m moving like someone afraid to get too comfortable. Alarmingly, I start to feel… okay. Not at home—but maybe close enough to unpack a single sock.
I sit by the window with my favorite mug, watching snow collect on the ledge. Just still enough to wonder if something might change, if I wait long enough.
Suho, of course, shows up one evening with his own brand of chaos. He walks in, a steaming bag of tteokbokki in hand, with that specific, self-satisfied expression that means he’s just done something wildly irresponsible on my behalf.
“What did you do?” I ask, suspicion coloring every word.
“Can’t a man bring his girlfriend spicy rice cakes without an interrogation?” he says, tone light and innocent.
The word hangs in the air like bait. A deliberate, careful test—and he doesn’t take it back.
I blink. “Girlfriend?”
He freezes, chopsticks halfway out of the drawer, pretending confusion. “What?”
“You just called me your girlfriend.” I hear the way my voice shifts—just enough to give me away.
His shoulders lift in a shrug far too casual to be real. “Well… yeah. You are. Unless you’d rather be ‘random woman I occasionally feed tteokbokki.’”
A laugh tumbles out—shaky, disbelieving. My chest tightens; my cheeks flush. Of everything we’ve done, this feels the most intimate.
“You said it like it was nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” He looks at me, more certain than I expected. “It’s always been you, Min-hee. You know that, right?”
For a moment, I just stand there, completely undone by those four words. After everything—years of hiding, almosts and maybes, the breaking and piecing back together—he says it. Out loud. Like it’s the simplest truth in the world.
And despite the chaos, despite me being at the lowest point in my life, he doesn’t hesitate. He says it anyway.
***
The decision to leave doesn’t arrive all at once.
It comes in fragments—quiet, painful, liberating moments that unfold over the next two weeks.
The first fragment comes wrapped in an envelope. No sender—just my name scrawled across the front in neat, official text. Inside is a simple receipt: Seoul National University Hospital—balance paid in full.
I don’t need to ask who. There’s only one person in the world reckless enough to interfere, generous enough to mean well, and emotionally constipated enough to pretend it’s nothing.
When Suho gets home that night, I’m waiting by the door.
“You paid my father’s bill.”
He freezes mid-step, a flicker of guilt flashing across his face before he smooths it away. “Did you eat? I was thinking we could order—”
“Suho.”
He stops, shoulders stiff, eyes flicking anywhere but me. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It is,” I say. “You don’t get to fix my messes behind my back. I have money too, you know—I don’t want yours.”
For a second, his facade slips. His jaw tightens, but his gaze softens at the edges. “Then consider it an advance,” he says finally, voice low, a faint, crooked smile tugging at his mouth. “On all the headaches you’ll give me later.”
I want to stay mad. I really do. But part of me can’t help loving him for it.
My stupid, infuriating, impossible boyfriend.
The second fragment is the long-overdue confrontation.
I don’t go inside the hospital this time. I tell my father to meet me outside, in the narrow courtyard behind the building where the smokers linger. Hardly anyone comes here, and the air smells like winter and… well, smoke.
He arrives with my brother, Yeong-gi, already scowling before I even speak.
“I came to settle things,” I say, my voice calm, almost detached. “The hospital bill is paid. Not by me. Not by you.”
Yeong-gi scoffs. “So, what—here to brag about your rich boyfriend?”
“No,” I say evenly. “I’m here because I know what you did. You took the deposit I sent—and gambled it. Then you sold stories about me to the tabloids.”
He opens his mouth, but I cut him off. “Don’t bother lying. I know the truth. You didn’t just take my money—you took my name and fed it to the tabloids. Congratulations. Was it worth it?”
My father looks between us, confusion curdling into shame.
“I’ve spent years trying to save this family,” I say quietly. “Covering debts. Being the responsible one. But I’m done. The money stops here.”
“Min-hee—” my father starts, his voice frail, almost pleading.
“I can’t be your crutch anymore,” I say. “I can’t keep saving you when you won’t even try to save yourself.” My voice doesn’t rise. It’s quiet, but clear—the kind of goodbye that doesn’t need to be loud to be final.
I walk away without looking back. My heels echo against the tile, steady and sharp. It hurts—but it’s a clean pain, like a surgeon’s cut. Not the slow rot I’ve been carrying for years.
The final fragment comes a week later, on Suho’s rooftop. The city stretches below us, silver and soft under falling snow.
“You’re restless,” he says, watching me pace.
“I don’t know who I am without all this,” I admit. “Without the work. The scandal. The noise. I feel… erased.”
“You’re not erased,” he says quietly. “You’re between scenes. Waiting for the next script.”
I let out a dry laugh. “That what we’re calling a breakdown now? A dramatic pause?”
He doesn’t smile. He just looks at me—really looks. “What if the next act isn’t Seoul?”
There’s something in the way he says it—sincere, open—that makes me pause. It’s an escape plan, but somehow it feels like he’s asking me to choose him, too.
“So,” I say, forcing a small smile. “That offer. LA. Does it come with an expiration date?”
***
Dismantling a life, it turns out, is less a dramatic montage and more an obscene amount of paperwork. The next few weeks are a blur of boxes, hours spent in the waiting rooms at the US Embassy, and signing so many forms my signature starts to look like a cheap forgery.
We move through it as quietly as possible, slipping through back doors and side corridors.
I feel the familiar anxiety creep back at the hum of the airport on our departure day, but this feels different. This is just movement, the thrum of life without the expectation of performance.
I clutch my backpack a little tighter, grateful for its bulk. It’s stuffed with the spoils of my final Korean grocery run—tins of kimchi, dried seaweed, a few tubes of gochujang, and one absurdly large bag of gochugaru.
Suho stares at the backpack and just shakes his head. But he’ll thank me one day in Los Angeles. Something tells me the takeout there won’t live up to his Seoul standards.
Some habits from when I was younger and basically the only responsible one in the house (lol) stick, no matter how much the world tries to turn you into a delicate celebrity.
The plane lifts off, engines thrumming beneath us. Suho’s hand finds mine without ceremony, fingers curling through like a secret we share. I press my forehead to the window, watching Seoul shrink beneath us.
I don’t feel sorrow for the life I’m leaving—just a strange clarity, a sense that, for the first time in years, my life is mine to reclaim.
***
Los Angeles sunlight is bright, relentless, and completely unapologetic—the embodiment of the American mindset: you fail, you fall, you get up and try again, and nobody judges the attempt. A world away from the constant, unforgiving perfection expected back home.
Months pass, and the rhythm of our new life forms itself out of chaos. It’s not quiet. It’s loud, but with a different kind of noise.
The arguments aren’t about trust or scandal; they’re about whose turn it is to take out the trash.
The tension isn’t about being discovered by paparazzi; it’s about Suho trying to assemble a flat-pack bookshelf with the quiet, simmering rage of a man personally betrayed by a wordless diagram.
At the grocery store, I stare in horror at a small tub of “artisanal, imported” kimchi that costs twelve dollars.
“This is a hostage situation,” I declare.
Suho just laughs. “Welcome to America. Freedom smells like overpriced fermented cabbage.”
I buy it anyway. It feels like reclaiming a small piece of Seoul in a city that smells of sunscreen and possibility.
He’s traded his scripts for a surfboard. And he’s terrible at it. The prodigy of physical grace spends most of his time looking like a newborn giraffe trying to stand on a unicycle. He gets knocked over by waves a toddler could handle. He falls. A lot.
But he always gets back up, paddling back out with that stubborn grin. He comes home exhausted, smelling of salt and sunscreen, sand in places I didn’t know sand could go—and he’s happier than I’ve ever seen him.
And me? I haven’t found a new purpose. Freedom, it turns out, is terrifying. Most days, I just walk—hours along the beach, no mask, no hoodie, letting the sun beat down until I feel real again.
Eventually, I come across a small photography exhibition. I volunteer to help—assisting with the displays, arranging frames, and guiding visitors. It’s not glamorous. It’s not measured in applause or likes. But it’s mine.
Every print, every visitor who lingers on an image feels like a quiet reclamation of the life I’ve built for myself.
One afternoon, I crouch to show a student how to adjust the light on a print. Sunlight spills through dusty windows, catching in tiny, glittering clouds. I look up and see Suho leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, hair a mess, smiling in a way that’s all for me—unguarded, unperforming.
I grin. “Checking on the troublemaker?”
He shakes his head, amusement soft in his eyes. “Checking on what my heart wants—what it wants.”
I laugh. The sunlight warms the floorboards, and a quiet joy fills the room—the kind that doesn’t need validation.
We’re not perfect. We’re not fully healed. We’re a chaotic duo of flawed wrecks, washed up on a shore where we can finally breathe.
And somehow, that’s more than enough.
***