be-ayan

Chapter 10: The benefactor

The creak of the blue cardboard door was a sound Taeyeon felt in her teeth. It wasn’t the heavy, resonant groan of a wooden door or the sharp click of a lock; it was a dry, papery rasp, the sound of a wound being pulled open. Taeyeon instinctively recoiled, melting into the pitch-black alcove behind a stack of rusted meat hooks. She held her breath until her lungs burned, her eyes fixed on the sliver of indigo as the figure emerged.

When Jessica finally stepped into the dim light of the slaughterhouse ruins, the world seemed to tilt. She didn’t walk out so much as she leaned into the cold air. She looked like a sketch of the girl she used to be, drawn with charcoal lines that were smudging at the edges. The “Regal Heart” was now a shivering frame draped in a coat of grey industrial felt, cinched at the waist with a length of blue twine. Her skin was the color of skimmed milk, slick with a cold, unhealthy sweat that made her hair mat against her forehead. She moved with a jagged, halting gait, her left hand pressed hard against the slaughterhouse wall for support as a fit of coughing seized her. It was a wet, heavy sound. Taeyeon watched from the shadows, her knuckles white as she gripped the rusted iron. She stayed there long after Jessica had limped away toward the night shift at the mills. She stayed until her own limbs were numb, her brain—the one that prized action and resolution—completely paralyzed by the sheer scale of the wreckage.

Taeyeon didn’t knock. Instead, she became a ghost. For the next few days, she existed in a state of hyper-vigilance, renting a room in a derelict hotel three tram stops away but spending every waking hour in the shadows of the Ex-Macello. She watched Jessica’s life as if it were a dataset of suffering. She watched her wake up at 5 AM, when the frost was thickest on the cardboard walls. She watched her try to clean her indigo-stained hands with cold water and a scrap of lye soap, her fingers so raw she would often stop to press them against her eyes, shaking in silent pain. The contrast was a physical ache; she remembered the Jessica of the orphanage who could make a simple laundry chore look like a royal procession. Now, Jessica moved with the heavy, crushed spirit of a woman who expected nothing more from the world than the next breath of damp air.

Jessica’s face was a map of fifteen years of denial. The bruises on her cheek were fading to an ugly yellow, but new ones appeared on her arms—shadows of the brutal physical toll the indigo vats took on a body never meant for such things. Taeyeon watched her eat a crust of bread that she wouldn’t have fed to an animal in Seoul, watching her shiver in a house made of paper while she herself wore a coat that cost more than Jessica’s life’s work. She wanted to run to her, to scream, to pull her into the light, but she realized she was the one who had sent her into this dark. She didn’t know how to apologize for a decade of silence when the evidence of that silence was written in the scars on Jessica’s hands.

On the fifth night, Taeyeon decided to stop being just a witness. She began to play a dangerous, silent game. She waited until Jessica left for her grueling twelve-hour shift at the laundry, then, moving with the quiet precision of a thief, she approached the indigo-painted door. Her heart was a frantic, drumming thing in her throat as she left a heavy, down-filled parka—the warmest one she could find in Milan—folded neatly on a clean plastic sheet. Inside the pockets, she tucked jars of high-protein porridge and a thermal flask of hot tea. She didn’t leave a note. It didn’t need words.

The next day, from her hiding spot, she watched Jessica return. She saw the moment the girl noticed the bundle. Jessica froze, her eyes darting around the ruins with a sharp, feral suspicion that broke Taeyeon’s heart. She didn’t look happy; she looked terrified. She circled the coat as if it were a trap, her breath visible in the freezing air. Finally, driven by a cold that had likely reached her bones, she reached out and touched the fabric. Taeyeon watched her bury her face in the warm, clean down of the coat. For a split second, Jessica’s shoulders dropped, and she looked—just for a heartbeat—like the girl in the orphanage garden again.

The shadows of the Ex-Macello were never truly empty, and by the sixth night, Taeyeon realized she wasn’t the only one watching the blue door. As she crept toward the threshold with a heavy bag of medicine and high-grade blankets, a figure lunged from behind a rusted pillar—a man whose eyes were hollowed by years of cold and whose movements were driven by a jagged, desperate hunger. He didn’t want the mystery; he wanted the value of the burden she carried. He swung a heavy, clumsy fist that caught Taeyeon squarely in the jaw, the force of it sent her sprawling into the freezing muck. Her vision swam, the metallic taste of blood blooming in her mouth, but as he reached for the bag, a primal, protective fury took hold of her. She scrambled up, screaming a raw, wordless sound of defiance, and threw her entire weight into him, clawing at his arms and shielding the supplies with her own body. She was a consultant who had never been in a physical fight in her life, but in that moment, she fought like a cornered animal, taking a bruising kick to her ribs just to keep her grip on the bag. Shocked by her sheer, frantic violence, the man eventually hissed a curse and retreated into the darkness, leaving Taeyeon gasping in the mud, her face throbbing and her lip split, but the gift for Jessica remained untouched. She kept it in the same spot and retreated herself to her hiding spot, heaving a sigh of relief.

While the gifts brought Jessica physical warmth, they cast a dangerous, glowing heat on the social fabric of the settlement. From her hiding spot, Taeyeon watched as the neighbors—the silent, paper-thin residents of the surrounding boxes—began to watch the blue door with a sharp, glittering jealousy. They looked at Jessica’s new, thick parka and the steam rising from her thermal flasks with eyes that were narrow and hungry. They whispered in the corridors of cardboard, their voices a low, suspicious hiss that followed Jessica whenever she limped toward the tram. Because the residents lived in a code of forced silence to avoid the police, no one dared ask her where the riches were coming from, and Jessica, isolated by her own trauma, never reached out to bridge the gap. She became an island of relative luxury in a sea of rot, and the resentment from the others grew like mold in the damp walls. Jessica remained entirely unaware of the “Ghost” guarding her or the blood Taeyeon had spilled in the mud to ensure those jars of porridge reached her doorstep; she only felt the weight of a thousand envious eyes as she clutched the jasmine jar to her chest, wondering why she had been chosen for a mercy she felt she no longer deserved.

The offerings became more specific as the days blurred together. Taeyeon left thick envelopes of currency hidden inside boxes of Korean snacks, medical supplies like antibiotics and high-grade lung salves, and eventually a small battery-operated heater with clean, filtered water. Each time, Taeyeon watched the suspicion turn into a dazed, feverish wonder. Jessica began to look around the ruins more often, her eyes searching the shadows for the ghost who was feeding her. She would sit on her cardboard doorstep, wrapped in the new coat, clutching the hot tea as if it were a miracle, her gaze often drifting toward the very alcove where Taeyeon lay hidden. Taeyeon felt like a coward, waiting for Jessica to look strong enough to survive the sight of her, waiting for the veil to fade just enough so Jessica wouldn’t see only the girl who had betrayed her.

On the ninth night, the wind shifted, and the snow began to fall in heavy, wet flakes. Taeyeon watched through the blur of white as Jessica stepped out of her paper house, wearing the coat, her face slightly flushed from the medicine. She looked at the spot where the gifts usually appeared, but she didn’t find food this time. Taeyeon had left a single, fresh sprig of jasmine, protected from the cold by a small glass jar. Jessica picked up the jar. She didn’t cry. She simply stood there in the middle of the paper city, the snow swirling around her, and whispered a word that the wind carried straight to Taeyeon’s hiding place. It was the old nickname, the one only used in the garden, and it hit Taeyeon harder than the cold ever could.

“Taengoo?”

——

Diary Entry: October 22nd

Location: The Ruins of Ex-Macello, Milan

“Jess, today I fought for you like how I should have done all those years ago. My face is bruised and my ribs ache, but when I saw you pull that parka tight against the wind, the pain didn’t matter. The neighbors are watching you now with hungry eyes, and it terrifies me. I’ve made you a target by trying to save you. I’m hiding in the dark, watching the ‘Blue Door’ and realizing that my silence is no longer a shield—it’s a fuse. I heard you whisper my name into the snow tonight. I’m so close, Jess. I’m right here in the shadows, just gathering the courage to face you. Just wait for me. I love you. I love you.I love you.I love you.I love you.”

As if the universe whispered back “I love you”.