#hhbio

you’re expected to change your place from one at your father’s feet to one at your husband’s. he is decided for you at a young age. he is the son of a friend of your mother’s; the family he comes from is humble and not as affluent as yours. when you question why him and not someone richer, your father’s gold wedding band tightens around white knuckles and your mother’s red lips purse tight around a wine glass and turn away.

you learn that a place at your father’s feet is not the place to ask questions.

every little heiress with a social standing like yours is meant to be beautiful and cultured, and able to hold pleasant conversations with her husband when he wants it and entertain him when he needs it. you are no different. you haven't met the young man yet, but you are still below him, no matter how high above him you are in the ranks of society. and so your parents put forth all the best for your future husband, training your voice into that of an angel and your fingers into a single unit with the keys of a piano. they educate you for him, turning you into a clever young girl by the time you are five.

but clever doesn't necessarily mean well-mannered, and you demand the best and shiniest trinkets to be yours, and yours alone. your skin grows pretty and clear under the warm jeju sun, and you sip cool water in the lobbies of your father’s hotels. but enough is never enough, and you rage for more and more; perhaps it is attention you seek, because your parents simply refuse to give it to you.

they say that you are a problem. if you are a problem, then boyeon is the solution.

boyeon is ugly and knobby-kneed and beady-eyed and being paid a hefty sum by your father to strike the fear of god in you. all the other nannies have tried, and all have left your mansion with tear-stained faces and scratches along their cheeks where you slapped them and holes in their heart where you tear into them with cruelly honest words. boyeon, everyone insists, is different. you own everything but the sky itself-- but that won't stop old, cranky boyeon from putting you in your place. you discover so when your six-year-old hand reaches out and gives her coarse gray hair a mighty tug-- and the hag cackles at you, and lets the rest of her hair down, and dares you to try pulling harder.

effectively, boyeon is everything you fear you will become: ancient, wrinkled, and rigid, but she earns your respect faster than a whip when she towers over you with that disapproving gaze. no matter how much you beg or scream or threaten, she won’t give you what you want. in that sense, you want to be boyeon.

the clock ticks by and you spend most of your young years with boyeon. you don’t think she ever learns to care for you— you’re just another brat to her who needs to be straightened out, but she quickly becomes your world, and everything revolves around pleasing her and making her approve of you. when she pins your hair back into a curly updo and paints pink your pretty lips, her touch is gentle, not loving— but you can pretend anyway.

when you are ten, you are old enough to meet your future husband. he is handsome, but not gorgeous. courteous, but boring. four years older than you, he has a level of maturity that makes him tolerate you like you’re a child throwing a neverending tantrum, and that throws you off-balance even more than boyeon does. you’ve never been tolerated before. you’ve always been loved and adored like the princess you are (you ignore that boyeon has only barely tolerated you till now). you hate him immediately.

your complaints to boyeon fall on unattentive ears, for the woman has heard your voice too many times to care. eventually, she snaps at you as she always does, telling you that it’s ridiculous for you to judge the man before you even know him. still, you do not understand why your family insists that you marry this man when you turn eighteen— but when you see your mother gaze lovingly, longingly at his father in the way she never looked at yours, boyeon snatches the top of your head and roughly turns your eyes away.

the attention you crave isn’t given by this future husband of yours, nor is it given by your father and mother. only by boyeon, and she’s outgrowing you anyway. you seek release. you find it one day at twelve as you sit in a pretty dress, fanning yourself on the open air porch of your father’s sleek, white hotel. your friends surround you. they croon over your silky hair as they let it fall through their fingers and stroke the back of your milky hand as you recline, bored of listening to them marvel at how soft your skin is or how you ought to buy them a dress as lovely as yours so they can deserve to be seen beside you.

it is then that they enter: five girls who can’t be much older than you, strutting across the lobby with photographers and young men holding their bags. you are rudely abandoned by your friends as they shriek and run to take pictures with those girls and you stare alone, envy forgotten as you carnivorously drink up the sight of not one, but five girls who dare to be above you.

later, boyeon explains that those girls are a part of a famous girl group away on holiday, and that’s why they got so much attention. you want to do that too. you want the attention of all five to be on yourself. and what you want, you get.

you get your greedy hands on an audition at worldwide records and make it into the company on account of your voice, thanks to all the fine arts lessons your parents paid for. boyeon, in perhaps the only loving thing she’s ever done for you, signs the contract in place of your legal guardian.

for the first time in your life, you have something to work for, and your desire to be an idol becomes true in its passion. it’s the only thing you can call yours. you spend every day in their practice rooms, singing and dancing till your lungs give out— for once, you look in the mirror and see dark circles scored beneath your eyes, and you are proud of them.

the boy you are meant to marry reaches out, for you are fourteen and he is seventeen, and he does not wish to marry you when you are eighteen without knowing you at all. you are flattered that he wishes to get to know you beneath the hotel-chain heiress, but take a smug satisfaction that he doesn’t realize you won’t marry him at all. you will become an idol, and leave him in the dirt.

but your future husband is kind, polite, generous— his distant etiquette that bored you at ten makes your heart flutter at fourteen. you are falling in love, and boyeon looks at you in pity.

it is getting difficult to manage your time— you will stop for nothing to become an idol and garner this attention you so desire. but your fiancé has begun to give that attention to you, and now your heart is torn.

at sixteen, you are selected for the lineup of a group called luxuri. a group; not a solo act, which you had intended. that sets your decision: you will choose love over attention, and you will decline the contract to join luxuri.

you run to tell him once you decide. and as always, he is there, in the lobby of your father’s hotel— and he has a girl in his arms.

she is simple and plain and boring. her clothes are not expensive like yours, and her skin isn’t both moon-beamed and sun-kissed in the way yours somehow manages to be. she is obviously common, so clearly in the same lowly economic class as his. yet despite this, she is still taller and prettier and older than you, with a certain warmth emanating from her that you know you do not possess. he kisses her softly and bids her goodbye, love for her shining in his eyes. as she leaves, he catches sight of you and smiles that same polite, at-arms-length smile, and you burst into tears.

he did not love you. he thought you knew that. boyeon had told him of your idol dream and he had gone ahead and fallen for someone else, assuming that you would not fall for him in the way you did. he is regretful— he kneels at your feet and cries for how he hurt you. your heart aches— yet in the first unselfish thing you’ve ever done, you let him go, and tell your parents that you will not marry him at eighteen, and continue on with your contract for luxuri.

you debut with jewel at sixteen. the way you carry yourself is one that you are ashamed to look back on. without your beloved to temper you, you revert back into the same selfish, foolish, material girl who cares little for those around her. you are little more than a middle school bully, worsened by the adoring screams of fans who can’t see past the good-girl front you put up. you make a name for yourself at bc— and it isn’t a good one.

the way you treat your members isn’t much better— any kindness you show them is just enough to make sure they don’t flinch away from you on-camera. before all your labelmates, you flaunt your riches, your beauty, your talent— they are yours, the same way the sun and sea and sky of jeju all belong to you.

then in 2014 when you are twenty-one, boyeon passes away.

you hold her hand as she dies— you lovingly stroke the silver hair that you had pulled when you were six. the only person you care about looks you in the eyes and says,

“Han Jiae . . . you are a disgusting, hateful, selfish girl, and I wish I never loved you.”

she barely gets the words out before she dies, and you, rattled to your core, run from the room weeping. boyeon never had to stay with you so many years— she loved you, truly, but somehow hated you just the same. nobody can blame her. for every part that you are loved, you are two parts hated— and for that, you cut all ties and leave luxuri, leaving scandals in your wake.

you move to a small oceanside home in busan, where your father buys you a quiet, private beach in unspoken exchange for you staying away from him. there, you cry alone and stay away from rumors of why you left GROUP— if they had known the true reason, you would be ruined forever.

you learn to garden. you learn to cook. you learn to make money online, and learn to spend only what you earn instead of what you’re given. you learn to appreciate small things, like the beauty of the sunrise over the ocean, which you never would have woken up for before. you learn that your ex-fiancé married that girl from the hotel, and that boyeon had grandchildren who just started their first day of elementary school (you fund their studies anonymously and plan to do so well into their lives, and you open an education charity under boyeon’s name).

you learn the feeling of shame when you watch luxuri’s stages without you and realize that they never needed you in the first place. you learn that they are talented young women, far more talented than you ever were, and that bc is better off without you. you learn how rotten and wicked and ugly you were on the inside, and that everything boyeon was on the outside was you all along.

you learn the meaning of humility, and with it comes the fear of turning back into who you once were. you learn just how much you love to sing, and that attention is not worth having if you are stepping on others to have it.

the next chapter in your life begins when you finally manage to work up the courage to open your own little vegetable stall. you’re carrying a heavy basket of garden-grown veggies home for the day and looks up and— ohmygodinheaven that is the most beautiful man you’ve has ever seen in your entire life—

turns out it’s jeon hamin from hero.

it’s been so long since you’ve seen his face that you didn’t even recognize him for a moment. any thoughts of hiding how floored you is are totally gone when your eyes meet, and you can’t even duck for cover anymore. but loneliness is a powerful motivator— in a split-second decision, you calls out for him. you’ve gotten quite good at cooking; perhaps he would like to come in and have a bite?

time goes on and before you knows it, he’s proposing to you and you’re saying yes and he’s quietly paying for your dream wedding and people are screeching because suddenly, holiday han is back from the dead. your wedding is attended by his two sisters-- one of whom isn’t your biggest fan-- and victoria lee, your ex-leader. it’s victoria you apologize to-- and it’s victoria who says that perhaps it’s time to leave the past behind.

when you decide to return to the industry with all your new knowledge, you do so quietly as a soloist underneath starscape— you cannot bear to show your face to any worldwide artist, too ashamed of how you once were and too guilty of the pain you caused them.

you are too aware of kindness now. the monster is brewing beneath you, waiting to come out, and you fear it. you treat other starscape artists with all the compassion your husband shows you and humble yourself beneath them— even though you debuted before them, your years with luxuri are ones you wish to forget.

you’re expected to change your place from one at your father’s feet to one at your husband’s. he is decided for you at a young age. he is the son of a friend of your mother’s; the family he comes from is humble and not as affluent as yours. when you question why him and not someone richer, your father’s gold wedding band tightens around white knuckles and your mother’s red lips purse tight around a wine glass and turn away.

you learn that a place at your father’s feet is not the place to ask questions.

every little heiress with a social standing like yours is meant to be beautiful and cultured, and able to hold pleasant conversations with her husband when he wants it and entertain him when he needs it. you are no different. you haven't met the young man yet, but you are still below him, no matter how high above him you are in the ranks of society. and so your parents put forth all the best for your future husband, training your voice into that of an angel and your fingers into a single unit with the keys of a piano. they educate you for him, turning you into a clever young girl by the time you are five.

but clever doesn't necessarily mean well-mannered, and you demand the best and shiniest trinkets to be yours, and yours alone. your skin grows pretty and clear under the warm jeju sun, and you sip cool water in the lobbies of your father’s hotels. but enough is never enough, and you rage for more and more; perhaps it is attention you seek, because your parents simply refuse to give it to you.

they say that you are a problem. if you are a problem, then boyeon is the solution.

boyeon is ugly and knobby-kneed and beady-eyed and being paid a hefty sum by your father to strike the fear of god in you. all the other nannies have tried, and all have left your mansion with tear-stained faces and scratches along their cheeks where you slapped them and holes in their heart where you tear into them with cruelly honest words. boyeon, everyone insists, is different. you own everything but the sky itself-- but that won't stop old, cranky boyeon from putting you in your place. you discover so when your six-year-old hand reaches out and gives her coarse gray hair a mighty tug-- and the hag cackles at you, and lets the rest of her hair down, and dares you to try pulling harder.

effectively, boyeon is everything you fear you will become: ancient, wrinkled, and rigid, but she earns your respect faster than a whip when she towers over you with that disapproving gaze. no matter how much you beg or scream or threaten, she won’t give you what you want. in that sense, you want to be boyeon.

the clock ticks by and you spend most of your young years with boyeon. you don’t think she ever learns to care for you— you’re just another brat to her who needs to be straightened out, but she quickly becomes your world, and everything revolves around pleasing her and making her approve of you. when she pins your hair back into a curly updo and paints pink your pretty lips, her touch is gentle, not loving— but you can pretend anyway.

when you are ten, you are old enough to meet your future husband. he is handsome, but not gorgeous. courteous, but boring. four years older than you, he has a level of maturity that makes him tolerate you like you’re a child throwing a neverending tantrum, and that throws you off-balance even more than boyeon does. you’ve never been tolerated before. you’ve always been loved and adored like the princess you are (you ignore that boyeon has only barely tolerated you till now). you hate him immediately.

your complaints to boyeon fall on unattentive ears, for the woman has heard your voice too many times to care. eventually, she snaps at you as she always does, telling you that it’s ridiculous for you to judge the man before you even know him. still, you do not understand why your family insists that you marry this man when you turn eighteen— but when you see your mother gaze lovingly, longingly at his father in the way she never looked at yours, boyeon snatches the top of your head and roughly turns your eyes away.

the attention you crave isn’t given by this future husband of yours, nor is it given by your father and mother. only by boyeon, and she’s outgrowing you anyway. you seek release. you find it one day at twelve as you sit in a pretty dress, fanning yourself on the open air porch of your father’s sleek, white hotel. your friends surround you. they croon over your silky hair as they let it fall through their fingers and stroke the back of your milky hand as you recline, bored of listening to them marvel at how soft your skin is or how you ought to buy them a dress as lovely as yours so they can deserve to be seen beside you.

it is then that they enter: five girls who can’t be much older than you, strutting across the lobby with photographers and young men holding their bags. you are rudely abandoned by your friends as they shriek and run to take pictures with those girls and you stare alone, envy forgotten as you carnivorously drink up the sight of not one, but five girls who dare to be above you.

later, boyeon explains that those girls are a part of a famous girl group away on holiday, and that’s why they got so much attention. you want to do that too. you want the attention of all five to be on yourself. and what you want, you get.

you get your greedy hands on an audition at worldwide records and make it into the company on account of your voice, thanks to all the fine arts lessons your parents paid for. boyeon, in perhaps the only loving thing she’s ever done for you, signs the contract in place of your legal guardian.

for the first time in your life, you have something to work for, and your desire to be an idol becomes true in its passion. it’s the only thing you can call yours. you spend every day in their practice rooms, singing and dancing till your lungs give out— for once, you look in the mirror and see dark circles scored beneath your eyes, and you are proud of them.

the boy you are meant to marry reaches out, for you are fourteen and he is seventeen, and he does not wish to marry you when you are eighteen without knowing you at all. you are flattered that he wishes to get to know you beneath the hotel-chain heiress, but take a smug satisfaction that he doesn’t realize you won’t marry him at all. you will become an idol, and leave him in the dirt.

but your future husband is kind, polite, generous— his distant etiquette that bored you at ten makes your heart flutter at fourteen. you are falling in love, and boyeon looks at you in pity.

it is getting difficult to manage your time— you will stop for nothing to become an idol and garner this attention you so desire. but your fiancé has begun to give that attention to you, and now your heart is torn.

at sixteen, you are selected for the lineup of a group called luxuri. a group; not a solo act, which you had intended. that sets your decision: you will choose love over attention, and you will decline the contract to join luxuri.

you run to tell him once you decide. and as always, he is there, in the lobby of your father’s hotel— and he has a girl in his arms.

she is simple and plain and boring. her clothes are not expensive like yours, and her skin isn’t both moon-beamed and sun-kissed in the way yours somehow manages to be. she is obviously common, so clearly in the same lowly economic class as his. yet despite this, she is still taller and prettier and older than you, with a certain warmth emanating from her that you know you do not possess. he kisses her softly and bids her goodbye, love for her shining in his eyes. as she leaves, he catches sight of you and smiles that same polite, at-arms-length smile, and you burst into tears.

he did not love you. he thought you knew that. boyeon had told him of your idol dream and he had gone ahead and fallen for someone else, assuming that you would not fall for him in the way you did. he is regretful— he kneels at your feet and cries for how he hurt you. your heart aches— yet in the first unselfish thing you’ve ever done, you let him go, and tell your parents that you will not marry him at eighteen, and continue on with your contract for luxuri.

you debut with jewel at sixteen. the way you carry yourself is one that you are ashamed to look back on. without your beloved to temper you, you revert back into the same selfish, foolish, material girl who cares little for those around her. you are little more than a middle school bully, worsened by the adoring screams of fans who can’t see past the good-girl front you put up. you make a name for yourself at bc— and it isn’t a good one.

the way you treat your members isn’t much better— any kindness you show them is just enough to make sure they don’t flinch away from you on-camera. before all your labelmates, you flaunt your riches, your beauty, your talent— they are yours, the same way the sun and sea and sky of jeju all belong to you.

then in 2014 when you are twenty-one, boyeon passes away.

you hold her hand as she dies— you lovingly stroke the silver hair that you had pulled when you were six. the only person you care about looks you in the eyes and says,

“Han Jiae . . . you are a disgusting, hateful, selfish girl, and I wish I never loved you.”

she barely gets the words out before she dies, and you, rattled to your core, run from the room weeping. boyeon never had to stay with you so many years— she loved you, truly, but somehow hated you just the same. nobody can blame her. for every part that you are loved, you are two parts hated— and for that, you cut all ties and leave luxuri, leaving scandals in your wake.

you move to a small oceanside home in busan, where your father buys you a quiet, private beach in unspoken exchange for you staying away from him. there, you cry alone and stay away from rumors of why you left GROUP— if they had known the true reason, you would be ruined forever.

you learn to garden. you learn to cook. you learn to make money online, and learn to spend only what you earn instead of what you’re given. you learn to appreciate small things, like the beauty of the sunrise over the ocean, which you never would have woken up for before. you learn that your ex-fiancé married that girl from the hotel, and that boyeon had grandchildren who just started their first day of elementary school (you fund their studies anonymously and plan to do so well into their lives, and you open an education charity under boyeon’s name).

you learn the feeling of shame when you watch luxuri’s stages without you and realize that they never needed you in the first place. you learn that they are talented young women, far more talented than you ever were, and that bc is better off without you. you learn how rotten and wicked and ugly you were on the inside, and that everything boyeon was on the outside was you all along.

you learn the meaning of humility, and with it comes the fear of turning back into who you once were. you learn just how much you love to sing, and that attention is not worth having if you are stepping on others to have it.

the next chapter in your life begins when you finally manage to work up the courage to open your own little vegetable stall. you’re carrying a heavy basket of garden-grown veggies home for the day and looks up and— ohmygodinheaven that is the most beautiful man you’ve has ever seen in your entire life—

turns out it’s jeon hamin from hero.

it’s been so long since you’ve seen his face that you didn’t even recognize him for a moment. any thoughts of hiding how floored you is are totally gone when your eyes meet, and you can’t even duck for cover anymore. but loneliness is a powerful motivator— in a split-second decision, you calls out for him. you’ve gotten quite good at cooking; perhaps he would like to come in and have a bite?

time goes on and before you knows it, he’s proposing to you and you’re saying yes and he’s quietly paying for your dream wedding and people are screeching because suddenly, holiday han is back from the dead. your wedding is attended by his two sisters-- one of whom isn’t your biggest fan-- and victoria lee, your ex-leader. it’s victoria you apologize to-- and it’s victoria who says that perhaps it’s time to leave the past behind.

when you decide to return to the industry with all your new knowledge, you do so quietly as a soloist underneath starscape— you cannot bear to show your face to any worldwide artist, too ashamed of how you once were and too guilty of the pain you caused them.

you are too aware of kindness now. the monster is brewing beneath you, waiting to come out, and you fear it. you treat other starscape artists with all the compassion your husband shows you and humble yourself beneath them— even though you debuted before them, your years with luxuri are ones you wish to forget.