★ 彡 true beauty • kdrama/webtoon 彡 ★

🜸 ! # han seojun x m!oc ‹

― I'M SICK OF CRYING, SO I TRIED SMILING ―

SONG YOHAN felt hollow. It wasn't the kind of emptiness that comes from losing a specific thing—it was far worse. He felt like a shell of who he once was, haunted by a tragedy that had shattered his life five years ago. Time had passed, but it had done nothing to heal him. The pain lingered like an echo in his chest, and the worst part was that he couldn't even pinpoint what exactly he had lost. He only knew that whatever it was, it had once defined him. Without it, he felt like a stranger in his own skin.

At first, he tried to convince himself it was just a phase. "You'll get through it," he thought. "Smile, pretend it's fine, and eventually, it will be." For a while, it almost worked. He'd laugh at jokes that weren't funny and let his friends believe his world was as perfect as his fake grin suggested. But the truth had a cruel way of clawing its way back. Every time he thought he was beginning to heal, life would blindside him with another reminder that nothing would ever be the same again.

It didn't help that his father had seemingly mastered the art of moving on. Barely a year after the tragedy, his dad had started erasing the past, one piece at a time. The house they'd lived in for years? Sold. The family traditions they once clung to? Forgotten. And then came her. Baek Yoonah. The "young chick," as Yohan bitterly referred to her in his head. His dad didn't even bother to ease her into their lives—one day, she was just there, all bright smiles and careful kindness, trying too hard to fit into a space she could never truly belong to.

Yohan had met her once, at a forced family dinner a few months before their move to Seoul. She was everything he hated on principle: young, stunningly beautiful, with a voice so soft it grated on his nerves. Worse, she was nice. Annoyingly, genuinely nice. The kind of person who left no room for easy hatred. But Yohan hated her anyway. He hated how easily she slipped into the role his mother had left behind. He hated her polished politeness, her shy attempts to connect with him. He hated the way his father looked at her—like she was the answer to a question Yohan hadn't even realized his dad was asking.

More than anything, Yohan hated the ease with which the rest of his family had accepted her. His little sister, Jiyoon, had been won over in an instant, drawn to Yoonah's warmth like a moth to a flame. "She's really nice, oppa," Jiyoon had said one night after dinner. "You should give her a chance." Yohan wanted to scream. He wanted to shake her and yell, "How can you move on so easily? How can you forget her?" But instead, he just nodded, his lips pressed into a thin, tight line.

And then there was his dad. The man who once held their fractured family together with trembling hands had somehow rebuilt himself, brick by brick, into a version of someone Yohan didn't recognize. He laughed more now, talked about the future in ways that made Yohan's stomach churn. How could he look forward when Yohan was still stuck in the past, replaying memories like old film reels? It felt like a betrayal.

But the truth Yohan hated the most—the one that burned like acid every time he looked in the mirror—was that his anger wasn't really about them. It was about himself. He despised his dad for moving on because Yohan couldn't. He resented his sister for adapting because he was still trapped in the rubble of who he used to be. And he loathed Yoonah because, deep down, she wasn't the problem. He was.

Yohan was terrified of change. Change meant admitting that the life he once had was gone, that it wasn't coming back. Change meant letting go of the past and stepping into a future he didn't feel ready for. And so he stayed still, frozen in a place where memories were safer than reality. He hated himself for being a coward, but he didn't know how to be anything else.

Moving to Seoul was supposed to be a fresh start. A chance to escape the suffocating weight of his family's fractured dynamics. But Yohan knew better. He could change his surroundings, change the people around him, even change the way he styled his hair or the music he listened to. None of it would matter.

Because no matter where he went, the real problem would always follow him. It wasn't his dad. It wasn't Yoonah. It wasn't even the tragedy that had shattered his family in the first place.

The problem was him.

And Yohan didn't know if he would ever be able to escape himself.

#𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐀!꩜

This book will be following both the k-drama's and the webtoon's plotline. I only own song yoohan, song yihwa, min wooyoung, baek yoonah, song changnam and their story.  This book includes trauma, depression, death, homophobia, eating disorders and other sensitive topics.

English is not my first language, and this is the first book that I write in English, so I'm trying hard with the grammar. If you notice any mistake, please tell me, so I can fix it!

2024 DECEMBER: Started rewriting it:)

I recommend reading this book with light mode, and Gill Sans font. I hope you will enjoy reading it! - MEG

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐃 ― 210406

𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 ― TBA