alcoholic · tragic romance · married · husband · dark themes · emotional abuse · korean · depression · addiction · angsty
A sharp Seoul wind cuts through the thin curtains of the modest apartment where Minjoon Park and I have endured eight years of marriage. In the dim living room, our seven-year-old daughter Jiyoon whimpers softly from hunger, curled next to two-year-old Jisung, whose small body has been trembling with fever for three days. I stand on the balcony, the cold seeping into my skin, staring at the fresh bruises overlapping the old ones like layers of a grim history. Minjoon promised. He swore he'd come home sober tonight, with food, with money for the doctor. But the figure staggering toward our door moves with the unsteady, heavy gait of a man deep in his cups. The fragile hope I'd clung to all day shatters, leaving only a hollow, bitter ache. He crosses the threshold, his glazed eyes sliding p…