South Korea
Seoul University
Hana Lee came running out of the school building, her bag flapping wildly in her hands. The text she had read at the end of her philosophy lecture had sent a ripple of shock throughout her body. She ignored the weird looks of mockery coming from all directions towards her; she was used to it already, she thought, and ran rapidly towards the taxi stand, her curly short black hair disheveled beyond recognition. She showed the taxi driver her house address saved on her phone as she was winded and entered the back seat. Her phone vibrated, signaling an incoming call, but she ignored it in anger, already knowing who the caller was. She tried to deviate her attention from the impending doom waiting for her at her destination and tried to focus on the beautiful scenery outside the cab's window, but her mind continued to swirl in turmoil.
Her grandma, her only living supporter and guardian, was struggling in the hospital, her life hanging on a thread, and her good-for-nothing brother had texted her to inform her of his decision to remove her from life support in favor of receiving the funds directly from the chairman. Hana looked at the time on her phone: 5:15 PM. She bent her head on her lap, her weariness evident in every facet of her being. From the time she was born, she had been abandoned by her mother to the care of her late father's mother. Born of a weak constitution, her grandma, a spiritualistic shaman, had tried very hard to provide every form of care to her ailing grandchild by renting out her services to every Jack and Jill that was suffering from demonic oppression and suppression in the backwater village she had grown up in, a village not even represented or known on the Korean map, just to raise funds for Hana's treatment and homeschooling.
Hana sighed as she remembered the days the old woman had sacrificed her health and desires just so her grandchild could eat and attend lessons outside their village in Seoul when she clocked ten. It was during these tough times that her mother, now married to a Korean conglomerate spoiled heir, had returned after eleven years of noncommunication to reclaim her daughter because of her inability to produce a male heir for her aging, impotent husband. Her grandma had refused to hand over her now healthy grandchild into the hands of her uncaring mother, her gift of the supernatural showing a black cloud of misfortune on the family her mother had married into. But when she turned thirteen, her grandma had suffered a stroke at eighty and gone into cardiac arrest after two years of fighting her prodigal daughter in the city's court concerning the custody of Hana; it was Hana herself that had gone begging to Mrs. Anyong Lee for help due to the lack of funds necessary for her grandma's treatment. She had accepted the contract drawn up by her mother's lawyer to be accepted into the Lee family registry on the condition that they would take care of her grandma's hospital bills and provide the best care for her in one of the chairman's leading Seoul hospitals. Hana alighted at her destination and paid her cab fare. She breathed in to prepare herself for the storm awaiting her in the mansion she stood in front of. Unfortunately for her mother, it had come to light, during Hana's twentieth birthday and freshman year at the university, that the chairman son had conceived a bastard with one of the prostitutes he frequented during his carousing days at an American university. Without the guidance of a father to groom him, Anthony had grown to become as useless as his father and a drug addict until the chairman, Hana's paternal grandfather, had found him in one of the investigations concerning his baseless son. The gate opened when Hana announced her name in front of the intercom.
As soon as she entered the mansion, she could hear glass breaking from the living room, accompanied by the shouts of her mother and half-brother. 'Who gave you the right to question me?' her mother shouted shrilly, followed by another glass breaking. 'How long are you going to spend my father's money on an old biddy hanging on death's door?' a deep voice responded. Hana's heart skipped a beat at the venomous tone present in Anthony's voice; this had been one of the persistent issues she had fought with him daily until she had escaped to the university dorms with the help of her grandfather. Chairman Kang Lee valued familial connection and would do anything to maintain his philosophical image in front of the public; that was why he had tolerated the constant troubles his good-for-nothing son had caused him and provided solutions to solve them before the press could discover them. He had been the first person to accept Hana into the family, due to his connection with Hana's shaman grandma in the past, but had been powerless to protect her from his son pervasive hands and her mother's and brother bullying when she resided in her family mansion; it was one of the reasons why he had been all too willing to provide her with her allowance after her request to live in the school's dormitory. 'What is your business with what I do with my husband's money?' She asked in anger
'Well, I'm not concerned with what agreement you have with that bastard daughter of yours, all I know is that without delay, I'm taking that witch off the life's support today'
Hana ran into the living room at the decisive tone evident in her brother's voice, she knew that her mother didn't really care whether her grandma died or not, all her mother cared about was the contract which Hana had signed at thirteen, there was a clause in the contract which stated that with the acceptance of Hana into the family registry, her mother was no longer obligated to provide a male heir to the family,as Hana would be willing to marry whoever her grandfather chose for her at the end of her studies and provide a male heir who would not only take over his father's business but also ths Lee's family fortune, this not only guaranteed her mother's position in the family hierarchy but since it had been drawn up before the discovery of Anthony in America, it excluded him from the family fortune and this had aggravated him into tormenting Hana after he found out.
As Hana ran into the living room, her head came into contact with a flower vase that had been thrown by her mother towards her exiting brother but, due to her bad aim, instead spiraled into her. Hana first felt the pain before registering the look of shock present in her family eyes, as blood poured out rapidly from her head and she went down, hitting the floor on impact.
'Hana'