Orlet

“You’re not coming to the wedding?” Minji asked. Her voice was soft, hopeful.

Yuri, her childhood friend, adjusted her makeup in the mirror. “Come on, Minji. It’s not really… appropriate. I mean, it’s my wedding. There’ll be photos.”

“So?”

“So I can’t have you in them,” Yuri said bluntly. “What would my in-laws think? I mean, they’re really classy. And… you know…”

Minji’s heart dropped. “You don’t want me there… because of my face?”

Yuri sighed. “Don’t make this a big thing. It’s not just your face. It’s everything. The way you dress. The way you smell. Honestly, Minji, sometimes being around you is like walking past a trash bin.”

Minji said nothing. She couldn’t. Her words choked inside.

Yuri stood and grabbed her purse. “Look, it’s not like I hate you. You were great when we were kids. But people grow up. Some grow out. Others… like you, just rot.”

She smiled politely.

“Anyway, take care.”

The door closed.

Minji didn’t move for a long time.

(Present)

She remembered a man from the market last week. A stranger. He glanced at her, then quickly looked away. His face tightened, nose wrinkled like he’d just stepped in something foul.

“She’s leaking,” a kid had whispered behind her. “Mom, her face is melting!”

No one corrected him.

No one defended her.

She walked home in silence. Every mirror in the house was covered. Her mother had done that years ago—not out of shame, but for peace. “It’s just easier this way,” she’d said. “For all of us.”

They’d stopped going to family gatherings. Relatives used to ask, “Is she… contagious?” Once, her uncle said during Chuseok, “Honestly, if I were her father, I would’ve just…” and made a slashing motion across his neck.

Her father left six months later. No note. Just his toothbrush missing.

Her mother stayed. But not for love. For routine.

“You can’t get married,” she once told Minji flatly. “Don’t even fantasize about it. Do you think a man would touch you with that… thing? You think he’d kiss you? Look at you during sex? You think love letters are written to people who make babies cry in the street?”

Minji looked away.

Her mother continued, “You should be grateful we even let you stay here. Honestly, you’re old enough to live in a shelter now.”

(Later That Night)

Minji lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. The silence was loud. Even the rats in the wall didn’t bother her anymore. They probably pitied her.

She whispered to herself, “Am I even human?”

Then chuckled. “No. No, I’m something else. Something between mold and memory.”

She looked at her palms. “These hands… never held anything warm. Never been held.”

The cyst pulsed again.

She winced. “Shut up,” she told it.

There was a part of her—tiny, buried deep—that still wanted to be seen. To be loved. To be more than the punchline of a joke.

But the world doesn’t love the grotesque. It mocks it. Shuns it. Feeds on its shame.

And Minji? She was full-course entertainment.

To You, Dear Reader

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “This is too much. It’s too ugly. Too cruel.”

Good.

It should be.

Because this world? It doesn’t hold back its punches. So why should this story?

You want happy endings? Go read fairy tales. Here, we deal in scars. In wounds that never close. In truths that crawl under your skin and settle like parasites.

Minji isn’t your heroine. She’s your reflection—if the mirror showed your worst day on repeat.

You’re still reading?

Good.

Then we’ll continue.

But don’t expect hope.

Not yet.