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In the beginning, she’d had no idea what a monster her cousin’s husband was, all she knew was that the only family she had was sick and that she didn’t want her to be alone - truth be told, she’d liked him just fine back then.
It hadn’t taken too long to figure out the illness was actually poisoning, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell Myung Hee who she suspected was behind it. Wook and Soo herself were the only people she saw regularly that seemed to make Myung Hee feel better, since Baek Ah couldn’t make it as often as they’d like, and she couldn’t ruin that because she had a hunch. In the end, it was Wook himself who told her, months after Myung Hee was gone - he’d called her drunk and bragged about it, and Soo had had to yell for Jung in the other room to help her hold Baek Ah down; when he calmed down enough to listen, they swore revenge.
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Meeting Wook’s younger brothers again and getting to know Soon Deok was the only good that had come out of Myung Hee’s marriage to Wook, in Soo’s opinion. She could never help comparing how Baek Ah and Wook looked at her cousin, and it hurt to know it was the latter Myung Hee was married to.
Myung Hee had talked about Baek Ah before his first visit since Soo came to live with her, she’d described him as one of life’s greatest blessings to anyone who has him in their life, and Soo couldn’t help but agree every time he put aside his own pain over losing Myung Hee to help Soo deal with hers. When Soo hadn’t been able to stay in the house where her cousin had been killed, Baek Ah had helped her move in with him, Eun, Soon Deok and Jung.
Eun and Soon Deok were an odd couple, Soo thought, it was strange to see someone in a family in that world so unchanged from the bright and cheerful child she'd met when visiting Myung Hee years ago, and stranger still that Soon Deok - notorious for taking after her father in her less-than-gentle way of getting what she wanted from rivals - could be so sweet and always have a smile ready for her friends. Jung had changed more than Eun since childhood but, after they met again (entirely by accident and, admittedly, not under the best circumstances, to Jung’s embarrassment and Soo’s amusement even to this day), he looked up to her the same way he had as a kid.
Being with them was good for her; Soon Deok was the first to get her to eat and sat with her telling Soo how she and Eun had started dating and non-ironically offering to teach her how to strangle whoever had done that to Myung Hee or do it herself if Soo didn’t have the hang of it yet by the time they were certain, and she and Jung would drag her out to jogs in the park that inevitably ended in Soo timing their races. Eun would insist she go with him whenever he went to buy something for Soon Deok, be it flowers, makeup or clothes - if they wanted to buy her clothes for working out they brought Jung too - and told her about what the flowers meant, or why the clouds looked different on different days with a childlike excitement so endearing that he got Soo to promise she’d do his makeup whenever it was he and Soon Deok married because “she can’t be the only one that looks good in the pictures Soo, you can’t let me go through that”.
Wook checked in with her with an unsettling insistence for Soo and Baek Ah, both suspecting him of being the one behind Myung Hee’s poisoning, but their suspicions were worth little on their own. He was always perfectly pleasant, asking after her health and talking to her more than he ever had while Myung Hee was still alive, saying she was welcome to come back anytime if she wanted to - and their suspicions stayed just that for months while Soo and Baek Ah healed and spent long hours trying to think of other possible suspects and coming up empty-handed. He was perfectly pleasant, until the night of Myung Hee’s birthday.
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Soo and Baek Ah were in his room, sitting against the wall one of Baek Ah’s sketchbooks full of drawings of Myung Hee and an increasingly empty bottle between them, Soo’s phone in hand with almost no battery left from looking at so many pictures and videos of a healthy, happy, younger Myung Hee. It had become a tradition of sorts, for when neither of them could take it anymore - it happened less often as time passed, but the memories and pain hit hard on Myung Hee’s birthday and they’d been on the floor for hours.
The screen of Soo’s phone lit up with the incoming call, and they both stared at it blankly for several rings before her thumb swept across the screen and pressed the speaker button to let slurred words break the silence.
Later, neither of them would be able to remember the exact words. Someone who had seen it would’ve said the two of them froze up until Soo hung up, threw the phone across the room like it had burned her and froze again. It was Baek Ah who moved first then, lunging for the door and shaking Soo off when she tried to stop him, Soo didn’t remember calling Jung to help her but later he told her she had - Eun, Soon Deok and Jung always made sure not to be far away when Soo and Baek Ah closed themselves off.
It took all of Soo’s self control to not try to run at Wook with a knife like Baek Ah had tried, so she left Eun and Jung to calm him down - Soon Deok’s small hand was on her shoulder then, and her eyes shouted she’d meant every word of her promise to strangle the poisoner. Soo met Baek Ah’s eyes, too, and silently they swore revenge.
If Jung or Eun noticed a change in Soo and Baek Ah, they said nothing; if they noticed how her eyes were darker and his jaw tighter, they said nothing; if they noticed how they had conversations with Soon Deok just the three of them, they said nothing. If they knew they lived with three people who were planning a murderer’s murder, they said nothing.