Disclaimer: I do not own SBS' The Heirs / The Inheritors nor any of its characters.
Authors Note: Please keep in mind my native language isn't English so thanks in advance for treating any grammar or spelling mistakes I might have missed with kindness.
Watching The Heirs got me deeply fascinated with Lee Hyo-shin's character and when his story ended up a bit neglected I was left longing for more. So... after years and years of writing for myself only, I decided to publish this series as a dedication to Lee Hyo-shin. There are too few Lee Hyo-shin-stories out there and he deserves better.
This is inspired by an extraordinarily brilliant writer. I gotta say her series of drabbles can only be described as a true masterpiece.
Universe & Timeline: The Heirs-Universe though I'll definitely bend the story to my liking - takes place sometime within the DramaSeries. Please note that I have the unpleasant habit of altering the story-facts to my liking. You'll read many things that actually haven't happened in The Heirs, I just can't withstand the urge to fit them into my own little universe.
Pairing: Hints of RachelxHyo-shin - I also ship Young-Do/Hyo-shin, but I'm not that comfortable yet to do anything more than fantasise.
Rating: M
Warnings: Coarse language, mentions of self-abuse and suicide
Summary: "And I sit here without identity: faceless. My head aches." - Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
This is the 1st piece in my series of Stand-Alone's called 'A Thousand Deaths per Minute' and can be read as a One-Shot.
I - Faceless
She sat on the roof staring blindly at the pebbles at her feet. Above her the sky was tinged with grey, within her there was a numbness she hadn't felt since the early years.
With only herself as company Rachel thought about her life, realising with sudden clarity that everything in it, including herself as a person, was bleak.
Bleak like the sky above.
Bleak like her past and the future ahead.
She was a blank space. Faceless. Forever doomed to drown in the darkness that was her mother's shadow.
She was nothing but a pretty face, curiously blank - perfect for her mother's promotional campaigns. Just a bargaining chip in her mother's power game, though it was doubtful she was even worth the value.
For a brief span though she'd had a value, it had been when her mother had set up the engagement with Kim Tan.
The prospect of getting married to Tan in the future had given her hope; hope that she existed. Cause as Tan's wife she would have existed. At least then she would have had an identity to go by, a name and face people would have remembered. A name and a face people actually would have acknowledged.
As opposed to her situation now, she would have had a status – a place in life – even if it had just been as Tan's wife. True, being someone's wife wasn't really an achievement but at least she would have known where she belonged to. At his side. At his house. In their home and she would have been able to call it her own.
When people would have looked at her then, she would have been recognised as Tan's spouse and not just another face, hopelessly drowning in the world of nameless fashion and tiring games of power. And till she finally would have had that status she'd always been able to blackmail Tan into acknowledging her, endlessly nagging and reminding him that she existed. Even though she'd done it just so she wouldn't forget herself. She was there, real and breathing. She existed. She was alive.
But Tan had cancelled that engagement, had taken away her only chance at getting an identity, and no matter how hard she'd fought to make him stay – bitching and nastily reminding people that she was still there – he'd gone and taken her identity with him. It wouldn't have mattered to her that he hadn't been in love with her, it wouldn't have mattered that he hadn't cared one bit – as long as she would have been able to stay at his side; being someone.
Yet he'd gone and fallen in love with that welfare-student, creating such a ruckus all eyes were now fixed on him, while Rachel had fallen back into the deep black abyss she'd been down before, where she lay forgotten.
In the aftermath of terminating the engagement she'd been struggling; arrogant and cunning; fighting the fight of her life. By then she hadn't cared what people would remember her by, Tan's future-wife or ex-fiancé - it hadn't mattered, as long as they remembered.
That's why she'd given her best to be the bitch everyone expected her to be – it was the only role people allowed her to take after he'd dropped her like a hot potato, not caring in the least. He couldn't have made a more obvious display of how little she mattered to him, how insignificant she really was. She was faceless now and acting like a spoiled, jealous brat had granted her at least a fraction of acknowledgement. And she'd done it, taken that role gladly. She hadn't wanted to vanish back into nothingness again.
In order to stay alive in people's mind she could act the way people wanted her to. She'd done it all her life, her skills were honed by years of experience, so acting was not problem. Not in the least.
But she would be damned if there wasn't a tiny bit of honesty in her cruel act towards Eun Sang.
When Tan had chosen Eun Sang over her that girl had gotten everything Rachel had ever wanted. By terminating their engagement Tan had taken Rachel's future; her hopes, her prospects – her existence – and given it to Eun Sang. Rachel had needed Tan to exist but that girl, Eun Sang, she'd already existed before Tan had fallen in love with her. She didn't need all that. Rachel did and she couldn't help the jealousy eating her from the inside out. Cause despite the fact that Eun Sang was just a plain and dirt-poor girl, daughter of a mute cleaning-woman, she had an identity. She'd had one even before Tan had chosen her.
But why?
How come an ordinary girl had an identity while she hadn't? Why did Rachel - wealthy, famous and pretty - have none? How come she was drowning in a crowd of faceless people while Eun Sang who literally had nothing, could rightfully say she was being recognised? And why didn't that girl realise how much damage she'd caused by stealing Tan from her? The only person who could have given Rachel a face to be remembered by? Didn't she realise she'd ruined Rachel's life with that? Was she really that oblivious she couldn't see Rachel's behaviour as what it was – sheer desperation?
No. Shaking her head and burying her face in her hands, Rachel exhaled deeply. No, she couldn't think about that again. She'd been pondering the why's and how's ever since her life as a person with a face had ended. It was all she'd been able to focus on.
Night after night after night, she'd been lying awake going over the same questions again and again. She couldn't keep on doing that or she would go insane - for sure.
It was time she finally came to terms with her fate: She was a nobody. Again. Another brick in the wall of the building her mother was trying to construct. It was laughable too, since she wasn't even an important brick, at that. She was nothing.
Rachel looked up from the shelter she'd created with her own hands when she noticed a change in lightning, the world getting even darker than it had been before.
She'd been found. Dammit. She'd been hoping to get enough privacy up here she could let her guards down, getting a break from playing the picture of ultimate perfection. Yeah, a tiny fraction within her had wished someone would come up looking for her – finding her – but not like that. Coming face to face with Hyo-shin she was disappointed she'd been found at all.
To say she was surprised it was Hyo-shin who'd found her would have been a lie though. He had the annoying tendency to show up when you expected it the least. And still she wondered.
Why was he here anyway? She'd thought nobody would even know about the unlocked rooftop, nobody ever came here. And why, out of all the people, did it have to be him finding her?! Right now she didn't have the energy to deal with him, her mask of perfection cracked beyond repair.
"You found my secret hide-out", Hyo-shin said then, sounding playful, despite the trepidation in his voice that disclosed his own disappointment.
Rachel met his eyes with curiosity. Wait.. she had found his secret hide-out? If anything she would have thought it was the other way around. But no, he looked comfortable standing there. His hands shoved casually into the pocket of his slacks it looked like he belonged here.
So... was that where he vanished to whenever she looked for him in the broadcasting-room, finding it curiously empty? What the hell was he doing up here all alone?
Glancing around she couldn't make out anything that could have sparked his interest. Except for some autumn foliage the rooftop was pretty much empty. Deserted. He had a quick mind, a mind that always needed to be kept busy. Up here there wasn't anything worth his attention though... or was there?
Well, it didn't matter in the end. She was still angry he'd caught her without her perfect mask on.
"Why for Gods sake do you need a hide-out?" she all but spat then, resentful and raw to the bone. He was a genius, a prodigy. Hard-working, intelligent, disciplined. If it wasn't for his aloof behaviour, she would have dared to call him perfect. A perfect little robot.
He didn't need to hide.
In a sense he was everything Rachel was not, so he had no right to be here. None at all.
He must have read her thoughts right off her face cause his expression changed visibly in response to her silent accusation. And her features lit up in surprise as a small smile spread on his lips, fragile and significantly forced. Allowing himself to show just a hint of weakness, a second before he turned away. Hands still stuffed casually into the pockets of his slacks he gazed silently at the balustrade at the edge of the roof. His eyes were tinged with longing, longing to... what..? Watch the horizon maybe? The people below?
Rachel couldn't tell what this smile had been about but somehow she felt as if he'd been making fun of her – belittling her by showing weakness while she could not. As if he knew something she did not; laughing about a joke she hadn't gotten yet. 'But what did he know?', she thought angrily.
He was the son of the general attorney, president of the broadcasting-club and permanent first-rank on every test. Ever-present, observant and all-knowing about everything that happened in this school he'd become quite untouchable too, someone you wouldn't want to have as your enemy considering the numerous secrets he knew about.
With such superiority at hand he could have influenced anything he wanted to and yet he stayed curiously uninvolved. Sometimes he bothered to give people a piece of his mind, dropping a playful remark that was as blunt as it was cutting, razor-sharp in its intensity.
All in all he definitely had an identity to go by and despite his attempt to get lost in the crowd, staying faceless, Hyo-shin was someone. He had everything Rachel would ever dream about.
He had potential.
Then he turned his head and looked at her. Really looked at her. Seeing her. Looking into her. And she froze, stunned into breathless heaves as she saw his eyes reflect the matters of her heart. Laid out like a photo series she could see the same emptiness in his eyes that had been hidden in her heart. He'd seen her – seen her like no-one else had seen her.
And in the next instant his eyes turned into stone, transforming into two dark gems of hot charcoal, tinged with so much bitterness and weariness of life that she wondered if even one of his smiles had been honest.
No, they had been a lie.
For a moment he seemed so foreign that Rachel didn't recognise him, couldn't recognise him. And with a startling suddenness she huffed a laugh.
He'd fooled them all.
Honestly, he'd acted so well, played his role so extraordinarily brilliant they would have been none-the-wiser if he'd carried on for a lifetime. Even if he'd spelled it out for her, she wouldn't have guessed any better. And yet she felt stupid beyond reason, now that she could see the truth.
All of him had been a lie.
And they'd been stupid enough to believe it.
Thinking back to the provocative smiles and the sarcastic lines he'd drawled, she realised that he had given them hints about what was behind his indifferent exterior. More than enough hints. If they'd truly wanted to see they would have, if they'd just looked beyond the surface.
Rachel cast her mind back to the carefree air with which he carried himself around school and snorted to herself. She pondered his laid-back attitude that had gotten him the reputation of being an effortless genius and wondered if his success really had been achieved without any difficulty. He'd made it seem as if his personal matters were trivial and hell, he'd fooled them all.
She remembered Tan and Bo Na inquiring about his well-being, suspiciously probing him when their instinct had hinted that something, something was wrong with Hyo-shin. And she remembered how he'd shrugged them off time and time again with a ridiculously confident reassurance, mocking them and himself in the wake.
They'd all thought that he couldn't be off that badly if he was still capable of pulling such jokes about himself.
In hindsight it almost hurt now that she thought back to every remark he'd made about himself. Each word as razor-sharp as the blade he'd used on himself to create those inconspicuous, paper-thin lines on his wrists she'd seen when his sleeve had ridden up in a moment of distraction.
Back then she hadn't been able to make a connection, thinking it had been just a diffraction of light on his flawless tanned skin, especially since his smile had been deceivingly light when he'd silently tugged his sleeve back down. But now that she knew what lay behind his deceptive façade, there was no doubt about what exactly she'd seen back then.
Scars. Rough tissue that started in a thick line only to thin out completely at the end. They were a testimony of trials that had been made in moments of utter desperation just to end up staying marks of hesitation.
Right at this moment he allowed her to see it all, his dark eyes displaying the utter truth. And all of a sudden Rachel had been given an identity. He had given her one.
Out of the endless pool of secrets he kept, he'd given her a secret of his own, the most momentous one. The only one that mattered.
By letting her see what was behind his careless demeanour he'd made her into a person – suffering, breathing, knowing – alive. He'd acknowledged her as a person, attaching importance to her being by letting her in on something only she would know.
And just as sudden as it had happened it was over and he closed off again.
The person she'd gotten a glimpse of vanishing behind that impenetrable mask once more, his dark eyes lost the intensity she'd seen only a second ago. Seemingly out of habit that trademark-smile of his, tiny and yet so sardonic, spread on his lips, pulling at the corners of his mouth.
In a rush she was on her feet and without her knowing she'd closed the distance between them, her hands, strong and desperate, clinging to both of his jacket-clad arms. "Don't you dare", she hissed, fingers clawing at the smooth synthetic. Don't you dare to jump.
Suddenly she was terribly afraid that the person who'd given her an identity wouldn't be there to watch her define it. She couldn't tell why but somehow the thought of him being gone frightened her like nothing else. He was the only person who'd seen her. Out of all the people, he'd been the only one. And during those moments of utter truth had come an realisation.
They were alike.
But however hard she tried to keep him from hiding again, the moment had passed and Rachel was left staring at his artificial expression. The only chance to reach out to him, to really get through to him, might have been during that short window of opportunity. It pissed her off she'd totally missed out on doing so.
And her scowl got even darker when he chuckled, flicking her forehead. "Stop scowling. You don't wanna get wrinkles, do you?"
She huffed and let her hands drop from his arms, strangely smug about the fact she'd left prominent crinkles in the fabric of his jacket. At least that way he would remember the moment of suffering they'd shared – even though both of their faces would betray nothing, hidden behind a mask. "You're an asshole, I hope you know that" she said with an almost-pout.
"Mh.. nasty." He was grinning slightly, humming in amusement as he glanced away to look at the empty plains of the rooftop. After a moment he exhaled in a sigh. "Well, since I'm an asshole anyway... would you mind leaving my hide-out now? Your presence really ruins the peaceful scenery. And besides, don't you have people to terrorise? Your poor victims are probably missing you already."
She hit his shoulder, her scowl getting even darker. But if there was a tiny smile tugging at her mouth, she couldn't help it. "As I said: Asshole. Are you gonna accompany me back down at least?!"
Looking back at her he raised a provocative eyebrow. "Why, are you afraid you might get lost on your way down?"
Huffing in exasperation, she gave him a small push before she turned on her heel and started marching towards the exit, face set in a picture of annoyance. "Fine. Try not to fall off the roof then."
For some reason or anotherthough, her steps got slower and slower the closer she got to the exit. It was as if here legs were gradually turning into lead and she didn't know why. Right now she could have gone and never looked back. Frankly, it could have been all the same to her whether he stayed up here or not. Why should she care? And just because they'd shared an emotional moment together didn't mean they had formed a bond. It wasn't as if they were friends or anything.
Somehow though, somehow, she couldn't help caring though. So when she finally reached for the door-handle, Rachel paused, glancing back at him, all annoyance forgotten. "But I'm serious, you know.. try not to fall off, ok? The mess down below would be a pain to clean up."
The small smile Hyo-shin gave her was tinged with such honest appreciation it made Rachel feel as if she'd done something right in her life for once.
He wouldn't jump.
No, he wouldn't.
Not today.
A/N: My stories and my writing-style tend to be a little peculiar, you can let me know if it got too out of hand.