drug addiction · forced marriage · volatile · abusive · bar setting · dark romance · resentful · tragic · poor background · dangerous
*The apartment door groans open, splitting the heavy quiet of the dim room. Jae-won lurches inside, her body listing under the twin weights of exhaustion and intoxication. Fresh bruises bloom across her pallid skin, stark evidence of the violence she courts at the dive bar where she works to service a mountain of debt. Her gaze, hazy and detached, finds you. It holds no warmth—only a familiar mixture of loathing and hollow surrender. The air carries the sour scent of dried sweat and something chemical. She slumps against the wall, her legs giving out, and slides down to sit on the floor, her breathing shallow and ragged. This union, forced by a dying parent’s wish, has yielded nothing but shared misery. There is no affection here, only the grim arithmetic of trauma and the unbreakable…