1
0. Opportunity
“Will you be going home?”
“No. I have somewhere else to stop by, so you should get off work first.”
After sending his executive secretary away, Do-uk got behind the wheel and headed for the apartment where Seonha lived.
— Then let’s move on to our story segment.
A rather familiar voice flowed out of the radio he had switched on without thinking; it was the radio DJ Seonha used to listen to from time to time in the mornings. Perhaps the reason she had stopped listening to morning radio at some point was because that DJ had moved to a different time slot.
— This time, it’s a story from a male student in the middle of a fresh first love. He says he’s worried about how he should confess to the girl he likes.
At the keyword confession, a deep crease formed between Do-uk’s brows.
He hadn’t meant to confess in such a tasteless way. Even an elementary schooler would probably know that moment had not been the right timing to confess that he loved her.
What could anyone expect from a man who, by the age of thirty-three, was truly taking someone into his heart and falling in love for the first time?
“Damn it.”
Even when he was sitting still, the moment he thought back to that day, a coarse curse burst out of him. If he were to make an excuse for himself about how idiotic he’d been then, it was because his heart had been too frantic.
He had practically half-threatened Munhyeong into telling him her new phone number and saved it, but he had not been able to contact her. No matter how plainly he tried to write, when he checked it at the end, the message was full of clinging sentiment; sending something like that to her seemed as if it would only make her recoil further.
Confessing his love by something like a call or text was unthinkable, so he had stubbornly waited. He kept telling himself that compared to her, who had spent three years painfully hiding her feelings and waiting, a mere two months was nothing.
Then, at last, he heard that she had come to Seoul. The moment he received the report during the day, he suppressed the urge to rush out of the company and waited again. How could he put her back where she belonged? What could he say to make her look at him again? He had to work hard at turning over a mind that was utterly bleak when it came to romance.
The moment he saw her face after such a long time, his heart burned as if scalded. His blood seethed, and even his throat trembled as he swallowed. He had desperately hidden it because he didn’t want her to notice… but ridiculously enough, he had been so nervous that his entire body had stiffened.
There was no way this feeling was not love. It felt as though the emotions he had struggled to suppress until now had burst out, flaunting themselves.
He did not want them to keep missing each other anymore. He did not want to use the wounds he had received from his parents as a child as an excuse to ignore the emotions blooming inside him.
Most of all, he did not want to lose her. He wanted to be loved by her, and he wanted to love her fiercely.
If only he had been able to look into his heart sooner, she would still have been by his side without any need for those two months apart. The sight of her filled his pupils. Longing and desire, enough to swallow his body whole, tangled together and squeezed his chest.
He wanted to put everything back in its place as quickly as possible. He wanted to return to the time when she smiled beside him, a time that had seemed natural but had never been natural at all.
Even if he had acted stupidly all this time, now that he had found the answer, he was confident he would never wander again. He resolved to become a good husband to her, enough to make her forget all those indifferent, terrible days.
He had already been pressing down his impatience and trying to persuade her step by step, but then he heard something he had never expected. The instant the words blind date struck his eardrums, his spine went rigid.
Was she really thinking of going on a blind date? Had she already forgotten him? Had he been waiting meekly for the past two months for nothing? Perhaps another man had caught her eye during her trip.
All the imaginings that gnawed at him, the ones he had tried so hard not to let into his head, rushed out as if they had been waiting and threw his mind into chaos.
When she provoked him with those ambiguous words, asking if there was any reason she couldn’t see another man, his impatience only grew worse. In the end, without properly considering the situation, he threw out the words that he loved her first.
And from Seonha, he heard an answer that said she could not believe him. It was a shock as if he had been struck hard in the back of the head.
He had expected that even if he showed his sincerity and confessed, she might not accept it easily. He had thought she might, if anything, become even angrier. It was a feeling he had realized so absurdly late. Even as kind and gentle as she was, she might not calm down easily, so he had braced himself inwardly.
But he had not imagined she would refuse to believe the very words I love you and dismiss them entirely. It was not a simple complaint directed at him for how indifferent he had been.
In her eyes, there was no trust toward him. She still firmly believed that he was holding on to her solely because of sex.
It felt as though the floor beneath his feet had collapsed. He had believed that if he confessed his love and worked endlessly to soothe her anger, the problem would be solved. Perhaps that had been tremendous arrogance.
Seonha could not believe in his belated love, and more than anything, her eyes held the firm decision that she would no longer love him.
Seeing her look as though she had completely given up made his heart feel as if it were being torn to shreds.
Was he too late?
But even if he was late, he could not give her up.
*
Seonha was sitting at the desk against the living room wall, blankly staring at the computer monitor spilling blue light, when Dae-ae, who had been sitting on the sofa playing classical music said to be good for prenatal education on her phone, quietly approached.
“Are you going to prepare for graduate school?”
Dae-ae asked after bending slightly from behind and scanning the internet window that filled the screen. From the phone in her hand flowed a familiar melody, though the title was just beyond recognition.
“I’m just going to look into it a little for now.”
At Seonha’s lukewarm answer, which still did not reveal her honest feelings well, whether as a child or now, Dae-ae shot her a look and laughed.
“What’s the title of the music you’re listening to? I’ll play it on this. It feels stifling listening on a phone.”
“It’s fine. Trying to listen to classical music when it’s not even my hobby is only making me sleepy. I should get some sleep.”
“Okay, rest. Call me if you need anything. Oh, and especially if there’s something you want to eat, you have to tell me. They say if you can’t eat what you crave when you’re pregnant and just let it pass, you keep thinking about it later and feel so sad. And Gangho isn’t even here.”
“What is this? Why are you acting so dependable? You’re making a married woman’s heart flutter.”
“Didn’t you know? Right now, I’m standing in for your husband.”
At Seonha’s sly answer, Dae-ae burst into laughter and headed for the master bedroom.
The sound of her covering her mouth and yawning at length vanished as soon as the door closed. The moment silence settled over the leisurely living room, Seonha’s hand, which had been clicking the mouse, stopped.
“……
Should I just take a nap too?”
Because of a single voice that filled her entire head whenever she was alone, the truth was that lately she could not properly focus on anything.
Seonha squeezed her eyes shut and covered her face with both hands. She didn’t want to recall it. She didn’t want to think about it, so why?
He loved her.
It was absurd. She was not foolish enough to swallow those words whole and believe them. He had either lied or mistaken his emotions. She must not be shaken.
But from the moment she heard those words until now, she had not been able to stop her heart from vibrating violently. Even as anger rose in her, her heart pounded hard.
They were words she had believed she could never hear. Words she had thought would never, ever come out of that cold man’s mouth.
It was pathetic that she was so easily shaken again, but the heart never obeyed as one wished. The more she turned his words over, the more she found herself hoping, thinking, perhaps…
When she first heard his confession that he loved her, anger surged as much as astonishment did. Because she firmly believed he was mocking her.
Who on earth could simply believe those words? He was a man who seemed as though he would never do something like love, even if this vast world collapsed.
Because she was still useful to him, because he needed her, he was trying to stop the divorce; she could only think that he had finally gone so far as to use her sincerity as well, cruelly hacking at a heart that was already wounded. She could not trust his feelings in the slightest.
But the more she reflected on it after coming back, the stranger something felt. Was a man like Choe Do-uk the type to hold on to someone by telling such a miserable lie? No matter how she looked at it, it was unnatural. Was she someone of such tremendous value that he would tell a lie like that?
To say it was only because he did not want to break apart a familiar environment, he was acting far too persistently. Whenever she tried to find some reason that would make sense, no matter how much she thought about it, no suitable answer came up except the “love” he had spoken of.
‘……
Impossible.’
But whenever that answer floated up, Seonha immediately tried to empty her mind. No matter how much it disguised itself as the correct answer, it had to be wrong.
When she checked the clock, it was already well past four. There were about three hours left until he came. Couldn’t he be genuinely busy today and not come?
Her smooth forehead furrowed at the thought that had come without meaning to. Because she realized she looked as if she were anxiously waiting for him.
Was he planning to tame her like this? She did not know his intention, but for some reason it made her even more peevish.
After she had mercilessly rejected his confession, Do-uk came to the apartment every evening after work, just like that day. He did not contact her separately to ask if he could see her face for a moment, so at first she had not even known he was coming.
Last week in the evening, she had gone out briefly to the convenience store and been startled by the sight of Do-uk getting out of his car as if he had been waiting the moment he saw her. When she asked why he was here without a word, he answered without the slightest hesitation.
The words felt so unreal that they made her doubt their sincerity even more. Had someone written lines for him separately? Was he a man who could sincerely say such ticklish words? The situation was absurd, that the love confession she had so desperately wanted to hear from him even just two months ago was now something she endlessly doubted, but she simply could not believe it.
The more she thought of him, suddenly changed as he was, the more her fingertips repeatedly grew hot, then cooled cold.
During those two months, she had traveled and cut off contact with him because she had wanted to give herself time to sort out her feelings, but she had likewise wanted to give him time as well.
She had wanted to show him, who had grown too accustomed over those long three years and refused to let her go, what it was like for her not to be there again. At first, it might be a little inconvenient and empty, but she wanted him to see that she did not occupy so large a place that he could not live without her.
Just as he had become accustomed to life with her, she thought that if he became accustomed again to a life without her, then the strange obsession that had begun the moment she said the contract was over would come to an end. She had thought about two months would be enough, but the situation seemed to have worsened instead. To think that the conclusion he reached while she was gone was “love.” It was a result she had never once pictured in her mind.
“What is this, really… now, after all this time.”
Her eyes trembled as she muttered as if complaining. She had finally made up her mind to try to forget him, but as if to tell her to wake from that dream, he had thrown a huge stone onto her heart. It did not merely create small ripples; it was threatening enough to bring down the clumsily built defensive walls she had raised.
*
She disliked the feeling that she kept waiting, wondering whether Do-uk would be there again today, so she suggested to Dae-ae that they go out for dinner. After eating out, they planned to watch a recently released movie together because it had received good reviews.
Dae-ae had casually said she wanted to eat golden-brown grilled pork belly for the first time in a while, so Seonha was searching for pork belly restaurants on her phone. Would it be better near the movie theater rather than near home? Seonha muttered soundlessly as she scrolled. Gangho, Dae-ae’s husband, did have a car, but today they planned to take taxis.
After searching around for this and that, Seonha checked the time and rose from the sofa where she had been sitting. Dae-ae, who had finished getting ready and gone briefly into the bathroom, had not come out for quite a while.
“Dae-ae?”
She knocked on the bathroom door, but there was no answer. In that instant, an ominous feeling came over her, and Seonha urgently reached to turn the doorknob, when the door quietly opened.
“Why is your face so pale? Are you sick?”
“……
Seonha.”
Dae-ae looked at her with a bloodless face. Seeing the fear in her eyes, Seonha’s heart sank.
“I’m bleeding down there… What do I do?”
“What?”
“Wh-what do we do? Is something wrong with our Kongkong? I’m scared….”
Seonha firmly clasped the hand of a panic-stricken Daae and forced herself to calm her own startled heart.
“Does your stomach hurt or anything?”
“I-I don’t know. But there’s so much blood….”
“First, calm down. Let’s get to the hospital.”
She hurried into the master bedroom, brought out Daae’s coat, and helped her into it. Comforting the terrified Daae, she caught the elevator.
“Daae, it’s going to be all right.”
Ever since they were young, Daae had been straightforward and almost like a woman of great spirit, so for Seonha, seeing her this weakened was nearly a first. Even when the other children had childishly teased her for having no parents and being poor, she had never so much as changed expression as she talked back to them. But now, at the possibility that something might be wrong with the child in her womb, she was trembling visibly.
Even as Seonha told the anxious Daae that everything would be fine, she could not stop her own heart from pounding low in her chest. It was Daae’s first pregnancy, but Seonha had never carried a baby either, so she knew nothing for certain.
Surely nothing was really wrong…. It wouldn’t be.
Having grown up lonely without parents, Daae had been overjoyed enough to leap when she found out about her first pregnancy after marriage. If anything happened to the child she had looked forward to so much, the grief would be immense.
Unlike herself, Daae was loved by her husband and living beautifully, and whenever Seonha saw that, she felt envious, yet she had always hoped that only happiness, and no more misfortune, would dwell with her. She had wished for Daae to build a solid family and live a warm, cozy life.
That was how grateful she was for this friend, and how dearly she cherished her. In her heart, Seonha prayed desperately that nothing would happen to Daae or her baby.
Supporting Daae, whose body was trembling faintly, as they came out to the apartment entrance, a familiar silhouette got out of the car parked right in front. Do-uk approached with urgent steps and quickly examined both their complexions as if trying to grasp the situation.
“What happened?”
“……
My friend isn’t feeling well, so I think we need to go to the hospital.”
Seonha answered quietly, glancing at Daae, whose eyes were brimming with tears. Daae had no room to care why her friend’s ex-husband, whom she was seeing for the first time since the wedding, had appeared in front of her house.
Her tear-filled vision had blurred, and her tightly pressed lips were trembling as if she were cold. Sunk in anxiety, she could not even properly take in the sounds around her.
Clutching Seonha’s hand tightly as if grasping at a straw, she clearly could not see anything else right now.
“Get in the car. We’ll go to the nearest hospital.”
As if there was no time to delay, Do-uk got the two of them into the back seat. Seonha, too, was in no position to weigh his kindness and hesitate. Right now, the most urgent thing was to get Daae to the hospital as quickly as possible.
After closing the rear door for them, Do-uk immediately got into the driver’s seat and started the car. The temperature inside was chilly. How long had he been waiting? Though she knew she had no time to be distracted by such thoughts, Seonha stole a glance at the back of his head.
“We’ll be there within fifteen minutes.”
At Do-uk’s words, Seonha lifted her head. Their eyes met quietly through the rearview mirror.
“Don’t worry too much.”
He spoke in a low voice, as though soothing the agitation in her eyes. His gaze was so gentle that, for a moment, the man named Choe Do-uk whom she had known until now felt unfamiliar.*After arriving at the hospital and undergoing blood and urine tests, Daae waited for a while on a bed in the emergency room.
Startled out of her wits by the first bleeding she had experienced since becoming pregnant, Daae had been anxious the entire way from home to the hospital. But as the medical staff explained that it was not uncommon for pregnant women to experience bleeding in the early stages, she gradually regained her composure. Fortunately, aside from the bleeding, she did not feel any abdominal pain.
Once the medical staff left and the two of them were alone, Daae muttered that she thought her obstetrician had once explained early pregnancy bleeding to her, then gave an embarrassed laugh. It was her usual laugh, but it was clearly drained of strength.
“You must have been even more shocked because of me. I overreacted too much. I swear, today’s the first time I realized I was this chicken-hearted.”
“What do you mean, overreacted? I would’ve been the same.”
“Just a little while ago, I thought something had happened to our baby and my mind went completely blank, but I feel better now. Our Kongkong will be okay. I’m sure of it.”
“Yeah. Everything will be fine. Let’s just wait a little longer.”
Perhaps Daae had felt even more anxious because Gangho was far away. No matter how close a friend Seonha was, and no matter how carefully she looked after her, she could not have perfectly taken her husband’s place.
“By the way, where’s Mr. Choe Do-uk?”
As soon as she came to her senses, the question seemed to arise first after all.
“Uh, that’s…”
“The person who brought us to the hospital was Mr. Choe Do-uk, right?”
“……
Yes.”
“I was so out of it that I couldn’t even greet him properly. It was the first time I’d seen him since the wedding.”
The corners of Seonha’s mouth twisted up bitterly.
Right after Seonha had married Do-uk, Daae had once asked casually when Seonha was going to properly introduce him to her. Since she had not even been introduced to her closest friend’s husband before the wedding, she had every reason to feel hurt. But Seonha could not give a definite answer that she would arrange for them to meet, so all she could do was smile vaguely.
After that, whenever Daae met with Seonha, she never again brought up introducing Do-uk. Knowing that Do-uk was not someone from an ordinary background, she had been a broad-minded friend who understood Seonha’s awkwardness.
“He’s gone now, right?”
“Yes. It was late, so I told him to go first.”
“Good. But… you two aren’t completely over, and it’s still ongoing, right?”
“……”
“Isn’t he insanely busy, but still coming to our place to see you? That car Mr. Choe Do-uk was in earlier, I’ve been seeing it in the parking lot every evening lately. Since this flashy foreign car kept showing up every day, even the apartment ladies were whispering among themselves. I had no idea the main character was your husband.”
The title had changed from ex-husband to husband—had she simply forgotten because she was still disoriented? Or had he somehow been promoted before anyone noticed? This was the same friend who, though Seonha had not properly told her the reason for the divorce, had blindly taken her side, insisting that it was definitely, one hundred percent, the husband’s fault.
“Don’t do that.”
Seonha weakly glared at Daae.
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t try to tie us together for no reason. We are over.”
If she revealed even the slightest wavering emotion, she felt she would be hounded endlessly, so she cut it off in a firmer tone. Lying in bed, Daae scrutinized Seonha’s expression and asked,
“Then what about the blind date I mentioned?”
“I told you. I’m not interested. A blind date out of nowhere? That’s ridiculous.”
“What’s ridiculous about it? If it’s really over, you should prepare for a new beginning. No matter how I look at you right now, you don’t seem like someone who’s over it. Same goes for Mr. Choe Do-uk. Knowing your personality, I don’t think you’d do that, but did you maybe get angry and divorce him in the heat of the moment, and now the two of you are clinging to lingering feelings and having some lovers’ quarrel—”
Daae’s relentless attack was temporarily cut off by a nurse who entered while drawing back the curtain.
“Ms. Min Daae, we’ll take you straight up to the obstetrics and gynecology examination room.”
After the ultrasound, Daae was diagnosed by the doctor with a threatened miscarriage. Fortunately, there was nothing wrong with the baby, but the opinion was that she needed sufficient rest for the time being. She was told she would have to visit obstetrics and gynecology regularly for follow-up observation.
Until arriving at the hospital, Daae had been imagining the worst, but while the doctor comforted her by saying that many babies were born healthy in such cases, he also explained the possibility of it progressing into a missed miscarriage. Daae nodded calmly.
Relieved along with Daae, Seonha came down with her to the hospital’s first-floor lobby. Since there had been bleeding, it could not be said that the situation was completely stable, but just hearing Kongkong’s clear heartbeat was enough to set them at ease to some extent.
“Are you really not going to tell Mr. Gangho?”
“For now. If I tell him, he’ll just worry for nothing. He still has a long time before he can come back.”
“Still.”
“He already feels bad enough that he can’t be with me. I’ll tell him slowly.”
Seonha nodded slowly. Her sense of responsibility, that she had to look after Daae well in place of her husband, grew stronger.
“Wait, isn’t that Mr. Choe Do-uk over there?”
As they left the hospital and were about to catch a taxi, Daae raised her hand and pointed to one side. Since he was a man whose presence stood out clearly wherever he was, Seonha had also already confirmed his presence almost at the same time as Daae.
Her eyes met Do-uk’s as he stood leaning against the car. While Seonha stood there blankly, unable to continue speaking, he walked over in long strides until he was right in front of them.
“Are you feeling all right?”
At the sound of his voice asking Daae, not only Daae but Seonha as well flinched in surprise. Though she had never experienced him firsthand, Daae had held a prejudice that Do-uk would be extremely blunt and stiff, and Seonha knew that it was not merely a prejudice. So how could they not be surprised when he suddenly spoke so naturally like this?
“Ah, yes. Thanks to you. I couldn’t even greet you properly earlier. Thank you for taking us.”
“Not at all. Please get in.”
Daae stealthily gauged Seonha’s reaction. She was asking if it was all right to get in. Seonha looked troubled for a moment, but without pondering for long, she nodded. As soon as Daae got into the back seat, Seonha lightly caught hold of his sleeve.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you to go. I said it could take a while.”
“My car’s better than a taxi.”
“What kind of foolish—”
Seonha’s eyes, which had been about to rebuke him for choosing to wait blindly without even knowing when they would come out, stopped near his throat. A vivid blue necktie. It was the one she had prepared to give him as a Christmas present. In the end, she had never given it to him.
It had not been in the drawer where she had left it last time, so she had wondered, and it seemed he had found the gift. Because of Daae’s condition, she had been too distracted earlier to notice it. She had chosen it without much deliberation because she thought it would go well with his cool yet intense air, and as expected, it really did seem like the perfect color for him.
“Did you know what it means when a woman gives a man a necktie?”
“……”
“They say it means she wants to bind you.”
Do-uk deliberately tightened the tie that had been knotted straight and not crooked, capturing her gaze.
“For reference, I’m more than ready to be bound.”
She did not have the energy right now to deal with that man, who had even equipped himself with sly charm.
“I didn’t know there was such a meaning.”
Seonha consciously averted her eyes.
“And I didn’t give you a necktie.”
“You bought it to give to me.”
“In any case, I didn’t give it to you. You found it. I was originally going to throw it away.”
At her consistently cold response, Do-uk let out a deep breath.
“Do you really not believe my feelings at all?”
Passing by him as he grew frustrated, she said,
“Daae needs to go home and rest quickly. If you’re not leaving right away, we’ll take a taxi.”
Do-uk looked at her, devastated, as she turned away from him, then soon took a step.
“I’ll get you there safely, so get in.”
At his hand opening the passenger door for her, Seonha hesitated for a moment before getting into the car. Then Do-uk got into the driver’s seat and smoothly pulled out of the hospital parking lot.
Daae and Do-uk’s belated greetings took place in the car. Though the paperwork had not yet been processed, they were still separated, and now, of all times, her closest friend and her ex-husband were interacting. It was such a bizarre situation that she could not even laugh.
Daae had been quick-witted since childhood. As they conversed, she easily grasped that he was in a situation where he was clinging to Seonha. At first, Daae had been slightly intimidated by Do-uk, but gradually, she began treating him far too comfortably.
“If you were going to chase after her like this, why did you get divorced?”
Enough to say something like that without hesitation.
“We didn’t get divorced.”
“Pardon?”
“We didn’t stamp the papers. And I have no intention of doing so in the future either.”
Do-uk glanced at Seonha beside him, but Seonha was staring straight ahead as if she could hear nothing.
In truth, unlike her indifferent expression, she felt uncomfortable inside. She wanted to stop Daae, whose personality was such that, unless she was warned once, she would rush forward as though the reins had been cut loose, and she also wanted to avoid Do-uk, who kept looking at her throughout the drive as if observing her. But because she did not want to step in for no reason and show signs of being shaken, she was standing by and letting their conversation continue.
“Yu Seonha, is that true?”
“We’re definitely separated. The paperwork has only been delayed because of his situation. Otherwise, why would I have moved all my things and be living with you right now?”
Seonha answered firmly, cutting off the expectation in Dowook’s gaze. It was also a warning for him to be careful, since Daae didn’t know their marriage had been a contract.
“That’s what she says?”
“I have no intention of getting divorced.”
“Hm, that’s your business. I doubt the grounds for fault lie with Seonha.”
Though she didn’t know the exact details of their circumstances, Daae was certain that the crisis in their marriage had not been Seonha’s fault. At her subtly pointed tone, implying he must have done something wrong, Dowook readily admitted it.
“It was all my fault.”
Daae, who had only been probing, seemed a little surprised by his unhesitating answer. She stared at the back of his head for a moment before opening her mouth.
“It wasn’t another woman, was it?”
At the blunt question, Seonha was more taken aback than the person involved and was about to belatedly stop her when he answered shortly, without a trace of agitation.
“Absolutely not.”
“Are you sure?”
“There is no woman in my life other than Seonha. There never will be, either.”
Before she could stop it, Seonha’s face flushed hot. What on earth was this man saying? Something so ridiculous…
“Well, as long as it wasn’t cheating…”
Daae’s voice, which had been like a protruding thorn, softened without her quite realizing it. The words that would have followed “as long as it wasn’t cheating” were probably that it would be all right if the two of them got back together.
Even ordinarily, Daae had always preached that if a man was caught in any one of three things—cheating, gambling, or violence—then you had to break up with him without ever looking back.
She hadn’t been able to ask Seonha outright after hearing she was divorced, but she had suspected that perhaps Dowook’s infidelity had destroyed their home. Hearing that the issue she had worried about most—a woman—wasn’t the cause had put her at ease.
“Min Daae, shouldn’t you be focusing on prenatal care? Stop worrying about our business and think only pretty thoughts, would you?”
At Seonha’s weighty warning, Daae stuck out her tongue and obediently closed her mouth. As an old friend, she knew exactly when to push and when to retreat.
But as soon as they arrived in front of the apartment, Daae opened the car door first, as if she had been waiting.
“I’ll go up first, so you two talk and then come in.”
“Daae.”
“A busy man waited around without any plan just to talk to you. It’s only right that you give him that much time. Seonha, don’t be so rigid.”
Perhaps she meant to repay Dowook for taking them to the hospital quickly and safely. Daae sided with Dowook, whom she had seen for the first time since the wedding, over her longtime friend, and disappeared.
“She told you not to be so rigid?”
Left alone with him somehow, Seonha let out a short, hollow laugh.
“When we lived together, you were always so busy. I suppose you aren’t these days.”
At the faint sarcasm, he answered honestly.
“Back then… you didn’t go anywhere. You were always there. So I felt at ease. Whenever I went, you would look at me as if you’d been waiting, so I took my time. I was foolish. Now I’m terribly anxious.”
“So that’s why you keep coming to find me, wasting your time like this?”
“I don’t think of it as wasting time. I’ll do anything if it means I can find my wife.”
Words that didn’t suit him at all.
She let out a small laugh, like air slipping free, and turned her head toward the window. Even as she shook her head, thinking it made no sense, she couldn’t help being shaken because she knew he wasn’t the kind of man who could say such things as lies.
She had stubbornly insisted it couldn’t be true, but it was becoming difficult to deny his feelings any longer.
She had gradually begun to feel it from the moment he started coming to her place every day without fail. When she faced him after he had waited in front of the hospital for more than three hours, when he appeared before her wearing the tie she had gifted him and showed eyes steeped in desperation, the emotion she hadn’t been able to grasp became clear. He truly had feelings for her.
It was something she had dreamed of for a long time.
Then why was she still hesitating? Had her stubbornness hardened into stone? Why couldn’t she accept his feelings? What had she become afraid of? She couldn’t get her bearings at all.
Cheongyangdaek must have said it in the hope that their relationship would recover, but after hearing about his childhood stained with wounds, Seonha was finally able to make up her mind that she truly had to give him up.
He needed a better woman by his side. Someone who had grown up receiving love to her heart’s content and could give love properly in return. He needed a bright, warm woman like that. Not a woman like her, who forced herself to smile while suppressing her emotions even when she didn’t want to, always watching other people’s reactions.
She, too, had grown up lonely and was twisted somewhere inside, and she had worked tirelessly to hide it. She had thought that perhaps the reason things hadn’t worked out between them wasn’t entirely his fault. Surely much of it was her fault as well. Two people starved of love had met.
Could her incomplete self love the wounded him completely? With only a presentable exterior and an inside that had festered, she would not be able to give him proper love. Even now that he was speaking of love, she had no confidence that she could love.
“All right. I’ll believe you now.”
“Then.”
“But I told you back then. I forgot you. I forgot everything before I came. Even if you say you like me now, nothing changes.”
Dowook’s smooth face distorted.
“You forgot me? Don’t lie.”
She answered with silence. He let out a low sigh.
“That makes no sense. It’s only been two months. Does love change that easily?”
“I never said I loved you.”
“What?”
“Try to remember. I said I had liked you. I never said I loved you. It wasn’t a very deep feeling, so it wasn’t hard to forget.”
Dowook glared at her with eyes darkly burned.
“For me, it’s love.”
“That’s none of my—”
“I’m either zero or one hundred. If I give, I give everything. Other women are zero, and you are one hundred. For the rest of my life. Even if you leave home, go on blind dates, cheat on me, abandon me, I’ll stay at one hundred. Until the day I die.”
“Why are your examples so…”
Flustered, Seonha stammered. The blind date, which they had argued about once before, was one thing, but what was this about cheating, and what did he mean by abandoning him? Even as examples, they were far too extreme.
“Even if you don’t love me, I’ll keep loving you. I realized it late, but this much I know for certain.”
“……
Mr. Choi Dowook.”
“Even if you really have forgotten me, that’s fine. Since I’ll keep loving you, I can wait as we live on until the time you come to like me again.”
“Why should I do that?”
Biting her lower lip hard, Seonha reached out to open the car door. Dowook caught her wrist.
“Let go. Daae is waiting.”
“Fine, then divorce me.”
She was dumbfounded, wondering how someone who had just glibly said he wouldn’t change could change his mind so quickly, but when she looked back, his eyes held more desperation than ever.
“Instead, give me a chance. Go on exactly five dates with me.”
“……
What?”
“If you give me a chance, I’ll make you like me again. I’ll do my absolute best. For the record, this is the first time I’ve ever begged anyone like this. And there won’t be anyone but you in the future, either.”
As Seonha tried to pull her wrist free from Dowook’s grasp, she unwittingly burst into laughter.
“Did you perhaps spend the time I was gone cramming by watching romance movies or dramas?”
He frowned.
“I’m being extremely serious right now. Isn’t it too cruel to say you believe my feelings and then laugh right in my face like that?”
“I’m sorry. It struck me as such an unoriginal ploy that I laughed.”
“……
If you pay the price for that laugh, I’ll accept your apology.”
In other words, he was telling her to accept the five dates.
He would “accept” her apology. He had said it was the first time in his life that he had ever begged anyone, but it seemed his particular shamelessness hadn’t disappeared after all. For some reason, the laughter that had just burst out of Seonha began to slip free again, troubling her.
The reason she ultimately couldn’t refuse him firmly was… because in the eyes of this man, who had lived with all warm emotions killed off, she had seen the boy from that childhood. A stubborn little rascal, and an ordinary boy who had yearned for love.