Good lord, the sight of her was a shock. But what was stranger was himself. He found Yunjoo like this beautiful. Could a woman looking like that actually look beautiful? Kangwook stood for a moment, just watching her. By any measure she was far from looking her best, yet he didn’t find her off-putting at all. The expression on his own face as he stared blankly was exactly the look of a man smitten with a woman.

Her dark eyes sparkled, shining brighter than any jewel. Yunjoo had cried out when she spotted Kangwook standing there in that dazed state.

Kangwook hadn’t even noticed the smile that kept slipping through, loose and unguarded. He came downstairs still smiling to himself and spread the bento out on the dining table. The image of Yunjoo’s startled face and her blank, stupefied expression wouldn’t leave him, and the more he thought about it, the funnier it got. Aside from his time studying abroad, Kangwook had never once set food out on a table with his own hands.

A little while later, the woman came back down, clean and restored to the version of herself he knew. She sat down, looked over the food laid out on the table, and stared at Kangwook. The question in her eyes was simple.

“What is all this?”

“Have you never seen a bento before?”

“No, it’s just that this is clearly not a regular bento, isn’t it?”

“A bento is a bento. Let’s eat.”

“Mr. Kangwook.”

What the man had brought was a bento in name only. It was a proper spread: steak, sushi, salad, and even eel.

“Yunjoo, eat and go back up to sleep. You said you were tired.”

Thud. A strange sound rang out. It felt like her name coming from his mouth had struck her heart. He was not a man who called her that.

Yunjoo looked at Kangwook. He met her gaze and smiled faintly, calm and wordless. Yunjoo felt a strange flutter at the bento he had brought himself and at what he had said. He had never spoken to her like that before.

“Alright, let’s eat. Thank you for the food.”

She hadn’t thought she was hungry, but the sight of the food stirred her appetite. She felt like she needed to eat quickly and get away somewhere Kangwook wasn’t visible.

“You need to eat well when you’re doing hard work.”

“I do eat well.”

“How long have you been starving yourself?”

“I haven’t been starving. I just got by on bread. Going around breaks my focus and throws off my calculations, so I end up like this.”

“Do you always work that way?”

“No. CAD drawings are just especially precise, so that’s how it goes.”

“So when you were at your parents’ house, you said you did it in secret. How did you manage?”

“I worked at the studio then. That was also done in secret, so it was a bit rough. And thanks to my father, who absolutely would not allow overnight stays, I was always stuck working in pieces and struggling because of it.”

“Your father did well on that front.”

“What?”

“The overnight stays.”

Suddenly the thing he had done well was stopping her from staying out overnight.

“It must have been hard, but you still wanted to do it?”

“Yes, I love it. I really love it. Even doing it in secret, I was happy. Working like that meant everything took twice as long, and on the days we installed the sets, the angles would be off and I’d end up sawing constantly and getting scolded like crazy. But I still loved it. Enough to survive without eating or sleeping.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off Yunjoo’s face as she spoke, thinking, is this woman really the woman I know? Every morning she baked bread and cooked and smiled quietly at parties. How suffocating must that have been? It was remarkable that she had performed so convincingly that even calling her an actress felt like an understatement, waiting only for the last day to come.

As he listened to Yunjoo, Kangwook’s chest sent out another sharp, stinging pulse, and he sat watching her eat with abandon.

“You should have told me after we got married that you wanted to work.”

“Would you have listened? I know exactly what kind of person Choi Kangwook thought Cha Yunjoo was back then. I’m not that oblivious or dim.”

Kangwook’s heart dropped at Yunjoo’s words. She had known his true feelings from the very beginning. She had known every thought he’d had about her, and yet Yunjoo had lived as though she didn’t. She had gotten through each day, breathing and living, for the sake of the time she was waiting for.

Was that it? Had that been how she was living?

Kangwook felt a growing heaviness in his chest over what to do about Yunjoo. The deeper his eyes grew, the lighter the words he tossed her way. When he ate breakfast, she would set things out and then step aside or find something to do, and when they happened to share dinner, she would pick at her food and get up. 

Seeing this woman eat properly was something new. On top of that, Yunjoo, who had said she didn’t want to eat, was eating so well that it was turning his own ridiculous actions into something worthwhile. Watching a woman eat with her cheeks full of food wasn’t bad at all.

“Someone who eats this much said she wanted to skip eating and sleep?”

At Kangwook’s teasing words, Yunjoo looked embarrassed. Even by her own measure, she was eating quite a lot.

“You told me to eat…… It would be a waste to leave it, so I’m eating.”

“I’m not saying you’re leaving it. I’m wondering if there’s enough.”

At Kangwook’s words, Yunjoo quickly scanned his plate. She wondered if she had eaten so much that there was nothing left for him.

“I’m joking, eat. Is it all done now?”

“No. There’s still more. I have the SketchUp work too.”

“Hm?”

“Oh, I need to render the stage in 3D to get an overall picture of how it’ll look. I have to fit together what’s in the CAD drawings. And test the lighting too. Once I finish that and go over it with Mr. Sangyun and we decide, the stage installation work begins.”

“Mr. Sangyun?”

Yunjoo answered Kangwook’s question without any particular reaction.

“Oh, the director.”

“You’re on a first-name basis with the director?”

“What’s the matter with that? He said it was easier.”

“Cha Yunjoo, you’re not divorced yet. Are you aware of that?”

“I know. But don’t try to manage my personal life and my friendships.”

“What? Friends?”

“Yes, I’m friends with Mr. Sihyeong too. You know him, right? The actor.”

“Ha, that film actor…….”

“Let’s not interfere with each other’s space. What’s mine is mine. You know that, right?”

“Being friends with men…….”

“Should I date them instead, like you do?”

“Cha Yunjoo!”

He knew it was just a throwaway line, but his voice rose a little.

“What? That’s exactly why I’m telling you to stay out of it. I’ll be careful about scandals until the day we sign the papers, so don’t worry.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“I’m not one of your employees to manage. Dinner was wonderful.”

Kangwook’s eyes gleamed dangerously as he watched Yunjoo clear the table. He hadn’t even sorted out his own feelings yet, and Yunjoo already looked ready to step outside the fence. She was unfamiliar to him, but this woman kept drawing his eyes.

The way she threw everything into her work, pushed herself to the limit, and made no effort to keep up the appearance of a pretty woman pulled at his attention in a way he couldn’t control. 

The women Kangwook knew lived to be called beautiful. They bought luxury goods, dressed themselves up, and would never do anything that might compromise their appearance. But Yunjoo was different, and this woman was shaking something in him.

Yunjoo had no idea which side of herself was unsettling Kangwook, and right now she didn’t have the energy to spare on it anyway. She just wanted to get into bed and lie down as soon as possible. 

While Kangwook’s eyes stayed fixed on her, Yunjoo finished clearing the table, said goodnight to Kangwook, and disappeared into her space on the second floor. Left behind, Kangwook felt his head ring at the thought of what lay ahead with Yunjoo.

‘Cha Yunjoo, I’m already overwhelmed just trying to sort myself out, and now you’re stepping forward too.’

Kangwook stood for a long while staring up at the second floor where Yunjoo had gone, then walked into the study. He sat down intending to work on what he hadn’t finished because of his early departure, but he couldn’t concentrate. Kangwook leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

To Kangwook, marriage had simply meant a woman moving in to live with him, and with the belief that it would be the same no matter who it was, he had proposed to Yunjoo at their second meeting. Given her father’s character, the woman had moved in under circumstances where she had no choice but to accept. Not like a wife, but like a live-in employee.

He should have looked at Yunjoo properly at that first meeting. What kind of eyes she had. What kind of thoughts she carried. At some point, Kangwook’s nights had grown longer.

* * *

Yunjoo had woken up early and was filling the house with the scent of coffee. He had been about to leave for an early morning breakfast meeting when the smell of coffee told him Yunjoo had come downstairs, and he stepped into the dining room.

“Is there any for me?”

“Oh, you haven’t left yet? Sit down. There are croissants. Store-bought, of course.”

“Did you go out?”

“It’s enough to last a few days. Of course, Choi Kangwook probably doesn’t eat things like this.”

“Coffee is enough.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

“First thing in the morning, don’t be sarcastic. It’s a breakfast meeting.”

Yunjoo sat across from Kangwook as he took the coffee she handed him and drank it, tearing off a piece of bread and speaking to him.

“By the way, Mr. Choi Kangwook, don’t you have a girlfriend? Why do you keep coming home without fail?”

“……?”

“No, I mean, you’re doing things you don’t normally do. You bought a bento, you answered every question I asked. I was wondering if you’re coming home because you don’t have a girlfriend and you’re bored.”