Second Overtime | JENSOO & CHAELISA

Chapter LXII

The television changed scenes, and Chaerin watched her past unravel in real time.

A church appeared on the screen, a large, modern building with a spire that caught the winter sunlight and a broad set of stone steps that had been photographed for a dozen fundraising brochures. 

The building looked pristine, untouched by scandal, the kind of architecture that had been designed to convey permanence and moral authority in equal measure. But the cameras crowding the front steps told a different story. They were the same cameras that had been outside the hospital when Jisoo was discharged, the same cameras that had filmed the brass letters being pried from the facade of Chaerin's former firm. The news cycle had found its villain, and it was not letting go.

Pastor Kwon emerged from the church's heavy wooden doors surrounded by a phalanx of elders. He was a tall man with silver hair and the kind of face that had been designed for pastoral comfort, soft jaw, kind eyes, a mouth that settled naturally into an expression of benevolent concern. 

Chaerin had known him for fifteen years. He had eaten at her dining table, accepted her donations, prayed over her daughter with both hands pressed to Jennie's head while Jennie sat rigid and silent and utterly unreachable. He had blessed Little Hope Sanctuary from the pulpit, calling it "a place of healing for young people struggling with confusion." He had looked Chaerin in the eye and told her that a mother's duty sometimes required painful intervention, that the Lord tested those He loved, that Jennie's attachment to Jisoo was a spiritual infection that needed to be cleansed.

Now he stood before the cameras with his hands folded and his face arranged into an expression of solemn, wounded innocence. The captions crawled across the bottom of the screen in their indifferent yellow letters: "THE CHURCH CONDEMNS ALL FORMS OF VIOLENCE AND COERCION. WE HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE PRACTICES OCCURRING AT LITTLE HOPE SANCTUARY."

Chaerin's mouth curved despite the split at the corner. The motion pulled at the scab, and she tasted fresh blood, a reminder of the laundry room, of knuckles against her cheekbone, of the folding table catching her hip. 

Pastor Kwon had known everything. He had known about the fasting protocols and the isolation rooms and the cold-water immersions. He had known about the electric shocks, he'd called them "aversion therapy," a clinical term that made the practice sound medical rather than medieval. He had known, and he had approved, and he had cashed every check Chaerin had written to support the program. Now he spoke of coercion as though he had discovered the word that very morning, as though it were a foreign concept he was only beginning to understand.

The broadcast cut to footage of former participants coming forward. Not one or two, dozens. The screen filled with silhouettes, faces hidden by shadow, voices digitally altered to protect their identities. But the details they shared were sharp enough to cut. 

Fasting until they collapsed. Isolation rooms so cold they could see their breath. Forced confessions written and rewritten until they learned to say the words without feeling them. Electric shocks administered by people who called it therapy. Religious instruction used as punishment. Bible verses recited while they were denied food, denied sleep, denied contact with anyone outside the facility's walls.

One survivor held up a photograph of a form. The camera zoomed in, and Chaerin's stomach dropped. The signature at the bottom was hers. She recognized the slant of her own handwriting, the particular way she'd formed the letters of her name. She remembered signing that form. 

She had barely read it at the time, certainty had made reading unnecessary. The intake paperwork was standard, the director had told her. Just a formality. She had signed it without looking, trusting that the people she had chosen to cure her daughter knew what they were doing. Why would she have doubted them? They had been recommended by her pastor, endorsed by her church, staffed by professionals who understood the particular challenge of children who refused to be saved.