The orphanage was in an uproar all morning after Hwirim showed up with her hair cut short. The commotion only died down sometime in the afternoon.

Myojeong went to find Suhyang and told her that Hwirim had returned.

“She’s back? Really?”

Suhyang looked genuinely shocked. She knew Hwirim’s personality better than anyone. Hwirim was proud to a fault and hated losing. Once she made up her mind, she almost never turned back.

And yet she had returned of her own accord.

Suhyang hurried to see her with Myojeong trailing behind. But the moment she found Hwirim, the delight on her face twisted into something strange.

“Your hair...”

Her eyes widened at the sight of Hwirim’s cropped hair.

“Did something happen while you were outside?”

Her voice carried real concern.

“No. Nothing happened.”

“Then why did you cut it?”

“I cut it myself.”

“You did? Why?”

“Just because. It felt suffocating.”

Suhyang frowned before she realized it.

“......”

Hwirim had always been treated differently at the orphanage. The other children especially disliked her. She was isolated, constantly dragged into fights, and endlessly surrounded by conflict. A stone jutting out from a neatly paved road was bound to be kicked aside.

“Really? Just because you felt suffocated? That’s all?”

For some reason, frustration welled up inside Suhyang.

“What exactly are you so dissatisfied with?”

She didn’t know what kind of change Hwirim had gone through during the few days she had been away, but when Hwirim returned on her own, Suhyang thought she must have finally accepted reality. That she had compromised. That she had given up her impossible ambitions.

But she immediately realized she had been wrong.

Hwirim had no intention of losing.

No matter what it was.

“Hwirim. What is it you want?”

At the sharpness in her voice, Hwirim paused.

“There’s such a thing as the proper path in this world.”

The atmosphere chilled instantly.

“There’s no reason to choose a harsh, difficult road. Water flows from high ground to low ground. Life is the same.”

Suhyang let out a quiet sigh.

“I’m saying this as someone who cares about you.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

Hwirim asked softly.

“Living according to an order someone else already decided?”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m different from you. I’m not greedy the way you are. The reason you suffer is because you want too much. So stop coveting things that aren’t yours.”

At Suhyang’s advice, Hwirim slowly knit her brows together.

“Why can’t you just be honest?”

“What?”

“It’s not that you don’t have greed.”

Hwirim looked straight at her.

“The reason you don’t covet things is because you’re greedier than anyone else. You already believe you’ll never be able to have them no matter how badly you want them. So you don’t even allow yourself to desire them in the first place.”

The expression slowly vanished from Suhyang’s face.

“......”

She said nothing.

She simply stood there, frozen in place.

Hwirim stared at her for a long moment before quietly turning away. She headed toward the door, leaving Suhyang behind in stunned silence.

Myojeong looked back and forth between the two of them, bewildered by the sudden tension. Unable to understand what had just happened, he eventually hurried after Hwirim.

Hwirim walked toward the stream.

She didn’t say a word on the way there. Myojeong followed closely behind, watching her the entire time. Even he could tell she was upset after the argument.

It was the first time Hwirim and Suhyang had ever fought.

When they reached the pebble-covered bank, Hwirim bent down and picked up a flat stone. She lowered her body slightly and flicked it across the water. The stone bounced again and again before disappearing into the distance.

“You try.”

[I don’t know how.]

“I’ll show you.”

Hwirim demonstrated again. Myojeong awkwardly copied her movements. The first few attempts were terrible, but he caught on quickly. After only a handful of tries, he was already throwing stones farther than she could.

“See? You may look dumb, but you’re good at everything.”

Hwirim grinned and lightly smacked him on the back.

Myojeong felt relieved seeing her smile.

But only briefly.

The smile soon faded from her face again, replaced by a heavy shadow. Watching her grow quiet and dejected made him uneasy, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to say in moments like this.

So the two of them continued skipping stones in silence for a long time.

Then, eventually, Hwirim spoke.

“What do you think?”

[About what?]

“What Suhyang said.”

Myojeong thought for a moment before cautiously asking,

[Do you think she’s wrong?]

“No. Not really.”

Hwirim gazed into the distance.

“Maybe she’s right. Maybe everything in life is decided from beginning to end.”

Myojeong tilted his head, waiting for her to continue.

“But if that’s true...”

Hwirim’s voice grew quiet.

“Then it’s unbearably sad.”

At first, Myojeong didn’t understand why that would be sad.

But then he remembered how devastated he had been when the divination told him Hwirim would never return.

He still didn’t know whether the divination itself had been wrong from the start or whether something had changed afterward. But none of that mattered anymore.

What mattered was that Hwirim had overturned the future foretold by the divination and come back to him.

[Yeah.]

Myojeong nodded slowly.

“It is sad.”

Hwirim rubbed the back of her newly exposed neck as she spoke.

“Suhyang’s words make sense. If there really is a fate you can never escape no matter how hard you struggle, then maybe the wise thing would be to surrender to the current and live quietly.”

She gave a faint smile.

“But I don’t think I’m capable of becoming that kind of person.”

After a pause, she muttered,

“Maybe I take after my father.”

[Your father?]

“This is a secret.”

She glanced at him.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

After making him promise, Hwirim quietly began her story.

“My father once took part in a civil revolt.”

Her father had once carried enormous ambitions. He wanted to change the world, and those ambitions eventually drew him into the uprising.

The revolt failed.

Most of the people involved met miserable ends, but her father survived by fleeing to a remote place where nobody knew him. After that, he spent the rest of his life hiding deep in the mountains.

After learning the truth about her father’s past, Hwirim often wished her parents had met sooner.

Her mother had been a shaman. Even if she couldn’t clearly see the future, she had still possessed the kind of intuition shamans often had—the ability to sense major tides of fate, disasters, and approaching misfortune.

So Hwirim regretted that if her father had met her mother earlier, he might have known the revolt would fail and avoided making such a disastrous choice.

But her father’s own story had been unexpected.

He told her that shortly before the revolt began, he had encountered a famous monk who could supposedly see the future.

Her father had grabbed the monk and asked him directly:

“Will the thing I’m planning succeed?”

The monk shook his head.

“Unfortunately, it will all end in vain. A terrible disaster awaits you, and you may even lose your life. Your fate is poor. Even if you devote your entire life to effort, the most you will ever gain is a small measure of fortune. If you refuse to accept that and continue reaching for greater heights, ruin and collapse will surely follow.”

And in the end, everything happened exactly as the monk predicted.

The world remained unchanged.

Nothing improved.

Instead, her father lost his status, his wealth, and his name, spending the rest of his life hidden away in obscurity.

A pathetic ending.

And yet, even after hearing that prophecy, he still threw himself into the flames willingly.

Even knowing he would fail.

Hwirim had asked him once:

“Why would you do something so foolish when you already knew it would end badly?”

Her father had smiled.

“Well...”

The smile had looked strangely lonely.

“I guess I was simply born that way.”

Then he asked Hwirim a question in return.

People who believe everything is predetermined come to see the world as something merely given to them.

But people who refuse to believe that see the world as something they create for themselves.

So which kind of life would she choose?

A life spent preserving and obeying what had already been decided for her—

or a life spent shaping things with her own hands?

Hwirim fell silent for a while, staring at the flowing river.

Then she turned toward Myojeong.

“Which one would you choose?”

Myojeong blinked blankly.

The question sounded strange to him.

A life that followed what had already been given.

Or a life that created something new with one’s own hands.

He had never once thought he could choose between those things.

No one had ever given him a choice.

Because his fate had already been decided from the moment he was born.

And Myojeong already knew his future.

One day, he would become a Bangsangsi.

And he would die young.