ENTITY- The New Beginning ( skz brother's ff)

Episode 17

As the words left Jiwon’s lips—"Sol, is everything okay?"—Sol stood frozen, her body rigid. The weight of the question and the concerned gazes bearing down on her felt like a spotlight piercing through years of silence. Her voice caught in her throat, unable to answer, while a swirl of dark memories began to unravel in her mind, each one sharper than the last.

Her chest tightened as images of the Shin family played like a haunting reel: the cold, empty rooms, the harsh voices, and the loneliness that never seemed to let go. Memories resurfaced—nights spent in silent pain, hidden away from prying eyes. How could she possibly explain?

How could they ever understand? she thought, her breathing shallow. The pain had been invisible to others, but all too real to her. She had once been surrounded by people, yet she felt like a ghost, unseen and unheard, a stranger in her own life. I laughed when I felt like crying. I acted strong when I was breaking. I tried to fit in with them, bending and reshaping myself until I lost who I was.

A silent plea rose in her heart: I reached out in silence, but the world’s noise drowned my whispers. I held out my hand, desperate for someone to see me, to understand—but they all looked away.

The memories tightened their grip. She remembered turning to art for solace, her drawings dark and jagged, reflecting the hidden ache she could never speak aloud. Her skin had become her canvas, where a knife had replaced her pencils, leaving scars as deep as her anguish. Each cut felt like a scream, a desperate cry that no one would ever hear.

Felix reached out, gently placing a hand on her shoulder, his voice soft and uncertain. “Sol…?”

His touch jolted her back to the present, her eyes filling with unshed tears. She tried to force a smile, but it was thin, fragile, and easily shattered. Chan, Hyunjin, and even Changbin watched with a mix of concern and helplessness, while their parents’ faces mirrored nothing but worry.

Jiwon’s voice was barely a whisper. “Sol, please… talk to us.”

Seeing their expressions, a part of Sol wanted to open up, to let them see the hurt she had buried for so long. But how could she tell them? How could she explain the self-inflicted scars, the pain that once pushed her toward the edge, when all she had wanted was someone to care?

The silence stretched out, each family member feeling the weight of her pain. Sol’s mask had cracked, just enough for them to see the wounds underneath, and they began to realize—this was not just a bruise or a scar. This was a cry for understanding, a lifetime of loneliness that could no longer be ignored.

In that moment, her family surrounded her, their love and support a quiet promise: she was no longer alone. They would stand by her, piece by piece, to help heal the broken parts she'd carried for so long.

Sol’s hiccups slowed as she looked up at her parents, her eyes filled with a vulnerability they had never seen. Reaching for them instinctively, she began to talk in a voice shaky yet determined, as if a dam had finally broken. Her parents listened, their hands gently supporting her, each word filling them with a mixture of heartbreak and quiet fury.

“I was always the good kid," she whispered, her voice barely audible at first. "In the Shin family, I was the one who got blamed, even for things I didn’t do. I said sorry for mistakes I never made. I’d cry alone at night, wondering why no one saw what I was going through. I wanted to scream sometimes… but I kept quiet.”

Her mother, Jiwon, wrapped her arm around Sol’s shoulders, brushing back her hair with trembling hands. Tears pricked at her eyes as she tried to steady herself, feeling the weight of Sol’s years of silence.

“Sol, we’re here now,” her father, Soohyun, murmured softly, his usually strong and authoritative voice cracking just a little. Yet, behind his softness, there was a flicker of something darker—an anger that simmered, ready to defend the daughter he had only recently welcomed into his life.