"This is the only punishment I can give you."
"Your foolish little sister will be happy as well."
The first thing she does in her new shop is take out a small box of cubed radish. She hasn't done this in a while, hasn't needed to because of Euntak and Lawyer Kim, but now she sits in front of the windows and eats the crunchy cubes in an attempt to satiate her unending longing.
The people in her neighbourhood quickly take notice; the beautiful chicken shop owner with the sad eyes is what they call her. She hears their whispers about how she must be cursed to have such beauty but no husband at her age.
She ignores the gossip of women with too much time on their hands and while her shop sees no customers for the first few days, it quickly takes off and soon there are too many customers waiting in line to eat her chicken.
When she sleeps, the memories of her past life are free to take over and further embed themselves into her heart, leaving her to wake up with her hand clutching her painfully tight chest and tears streaming down her cheeks.
She envies Euntak even as she knows how silly her jealousy is. Even when her memories had gone, Euntak had at least had the rain to remember Shin by.
She has nothing as poetic as the rain.
She has only her memories and the morbid questions that arise in her mind whenever she sees news of terrible accidents: had they seen him? Had he been the one to guide them to their next lives?
The bitter cruelness of the gods hits her all over again. Nine years, nine centuries should have been enough grieving to let her move on but the pain is fresh and her love for him unending, engraved into her very soul.
A man begins to come to her shop every day, and despite her clear disinterest, he continues to sit next to her at the window and make an effort to know her. He gives her a business card that she throws away without a glance. He brings her flowers and she swiftly passes them to one of her employees who blushes at their beauty.
One day, he's sitting next to her and talking at her as usual, when he asks about her hobbies and playfully says his own hobby is her.
Unbidden tears spring to her eyes and she abruptly stands up, her chair screeching against the floor. He stares at her with wide eyes, startled at the first reaction she's given him but she's only vaguely aware of him, remembering another time in another place when she'd swooned at the declaration that she was his hobby.
She stalks to the back and closes the shop early, and the next day, the man doesn't come back much to her relief.
The rainy season seems to last forever and she cries with her brother in spirit, knowing the only thing that could hurt him this much. She cries for the loss of a beautifully innocent girl who was like her sister at times and like her daughter at times, but takes solace in the knowledge that her brother is not alone.
He will take care of him.
As the rain finally comes to an end, she remembers the promise she made to her brother, and so she takes a deep breath, and moves on with her life.
She never stops missing him and her heart never stops hurting but she befriends the younger girls who visit her shop often and remind her of Euntak and Lawyer Kim. They are innocent and prone to giggling, but when they ask her if she's not interested in marrying, she tells them that she's already met her king and they leave the topic be without further questions.
They ask her for her opinion on things ranging from their future careers to their love troubles. She's not sure how helpful her words are but they take a liking to her 4D personality and somehow, her chicken shop turns into a place where young girls from the high school nearby come to her for advice.
She turns no one away and when her very first friend in this town returns first with a university degree, then with a husband who's also a physician, and eventually with a small child, she finds herself crying tears of happiness for the first time in a long while. She plays them off as tears caused by the wind but the young woman hugs her anyway.
Her heart never stops hurting but she is happy.
She passes peacefully in her sleep, content in the knowledge that she's kept her promise to her brother.
When she next opens her eyes, she blinks and looks around before realising where she is. Her heart trembles with the weight of a lifetime of unexpressed emotions but she takes a moment to compose herself.
With steady hands and a ready heart, she opens the door.
A/N: I recently watched Goblin, which emotionally wrecked me, and I really wanted to read/write a oneshot about Sunny after she left. That combined with my deadlines (i'm so screwed) led me to write this.