“Should I just go downstairs and play dumb?”

The alcohol did it, not me, she could brazen it out like that. No, she turned it over quickly in her head, but there was no answer.

“No. That prickly man Choi Kangwook would never let it go.”

“Should I just say thank you and play it cool? Ugh, alcohol is the enemy!”

It had been a long time, and she had felt like her old self again, but no, none of that was it. It was because of that man. Why did he have to show up and stay so long. She had been on edge because of him, and that was why she kept accepting every glass that came her way. That was the problem.

“Cha. Yun. Joo. Why did you do that!”

As though he knew exactly what Yunjoo was going through, Kangwook was downstairs drinking his coffee with a pleased smile. He hadn’t known Cha Yunjoo was a woman who could show him so many different sides of herself. The truth was, he wanted to go upstairs under the pretense of coffee, but he was holding himself back. He slowly set down his cup, intending to clear out of the house and give her space.

“I’m leaving for work, so you can come down now!”

He called out loud enough for the second floor to hear, announced his absence, and left the house.

Even after Kangwook shouted up toward the second floor and walked out, Yunjoo stayed upstairs for a long while before coming down. In three years of living together, she had never once given him anything to hold over her, and now, of all times, right after she had declared she wanted a divorce, she had gone and made a mistake like this. She hated herself for it so much she felt like she was losing her mind.

Yunjoo found it remarkable that in just these past few days she had run into Kangwook more than she had in all three years of living with him. They had almost never traveled in the same car, and they rarely sat down to eat across from each other. 

In the mornings, Kangwook ate alone and read the newspaper, and Yunjoo simply watched and made sure he had what he needed. In the evenings, he was too busy to even eat at home. Perhaps it was precisely because they had so little friction that she had been able to endure three years. 

After they married, his family home had sent someone over at first, but knowing what people would say if they saw how she and Kangwook actually lived together, she had asked them to send someone only once a week and taken care of the small things herself. She had maintained her life with that kind of thoroughness, and now, right at the end of it all, she had made this mistake. It was beyond absurd.

For several days after that night, Yunjoo had been avoiding Kangwook. Today too, she had planned to come home before he did, eat dinner, and not come back down from the second floor. She was moving briskly around the kitchen when Kangwook’s voice came from behind her and her body went rigid.

“Any chance I can have some of that dinner?”

“……”

“I’ll go change and be right out.”

‘What, why is he home so early?’

The schedule she had been given said he would be late, and Kangwook’s sudden appearance threw her into confusion. She was reminded of the day, right after marrying Kangwook, when she had first received a schedule from the secretarial office. That person’s week laid out in full, the events she was expected to know about and prepare for, the evenings he would be home for dinner, all of it on a single sheet of paper.

A single sheet of paper that spared him the trouble of telling her things like when he had a business trip. That sheet of paper was what her three years with him had amounted to. She had lived with that schedule, sent over by his secretary, stuck to the refrigerator like a kindergarten lunch menu.

She had been a woman who only needed to move according to the schedule his secretary provided. And today, finally, Yunjoo had peeled that sheet of paper off the refrigerator and thrown it in the trash. But of all days, the man had come home early and was standing behind her saying things.

‘But why has he been like this lately? I thought he had something on today, or did I get that wrong?’

The two of them were spending more time in the same space and exchanging more words than they had in all three years before, and it felt awkward and yet somehow natural at the same time. She wondered if that was just what time did to people. None of this was part of her plan, and strangely, lately things kept refusing to go the way she had planned. She stood in the kitchen listening to the sound of Kangwook going into his room and thought.

‘Right, it’s not like there are many days left anyway. What is there to be scared of! I’ll just feed him.’

Kangwook was watching Yunjoo clench her fist and give a firm nod to herself. He had pretended to go into his room but hadn’t actually gone in, and stood watching her. Yunjoo, with no way of knowing that, was still muttering to herself, swinging between self-reproach and self-consolation, her face cycling through all kinds of expressions as she bustled back and forth between the kitchen and the dining table.

Kangwook watched her like that for a long while and wondered how she could have hidden so many different faces and lived that way, and then he realized it wasn’t that she had hidden them. He simply hadn’t been looking.

She had been living behind a mask in this house, showing nothing of what was inside her. Then what had been going on in Yunjoo’s heart all this time? All that liveliness, all those smiles, buried under a thick mask, living encased in a cold armor of composure.

The only place Yunjoo had truly been alive and breathing was her own space on the second floor. Sensing the weight of everything Yunjoo must have pressed down inside herself, Kangwook’s expression grew heavy.

“You’re here, so sit down. I was only making enough for myself, so there isn’t much. I know you’re particular, but just eat.”

At Yunjoo’s words, Kangwook smoothed over his darkened expression, sat down at the table, and decided to tease her a little.

“So you’ve decided to go with playing dumb?”

“About what?”

“Never mind.”

“Just eat.”

“Does hiding that hard make it go away?”

“Who’s hiding? The timing just happened to be off.”

“Hap, pened, to.”

Kangwook narrowed his eyes and looked straight at her, and Yunjoo choked on something and started coughing. With his face that close to hers, it wasn’t easy to keep her nerve.

“Cough cough, hack hack!”

Yunjoo’s reaction was both funny and endearing, and Kangwook had been thinking about pushing further, but watching her cough he decided to stop and handed her a glass of water. A woman who could be bold and sharp one moment, then in the very next instant turn guileless and flustered and completely at a loss. Kangwook handed Yunjoo the glass and spoke.

“Here, drink some water and calm down. What are you going to do with a heart that fragile?”

“A fragile heart?”

“That’s right. Fragile. Now eat.”

Kangwook dropped the subject and started eating without another word, and Yunjoo steadied her breathing and started eating too. They ate in silence, like two people with nothing between them, and then Yunjoo looked up at Kangwook.

“By the way, why did you come home early today?”

“A plan got cancelled.”

The truth was, he had been the one to cancel it. He had been curious about Yunjoo, who had been tucked away out of sight for days, and he hadn’t wanted to spend the day wrestling with stuffy board members and then cap it off with dinner alongside a subsidiary president. When Kangwook cancelled his evening schedule, the most startled person had been Team Leader Moon. He had stumbled over his words, and Kangwook had let out a short laugh watching him.

He found himself wondering whether one cancelled schedule from him was really enough to cause that much surprise. Kangwook left his stunned staff behind, came home, and the moment he saw Yunjoo there, he felt at ease. He had felt that way for a long time, that a house with her in it was comfortable. When he was worn out and exhausted, going home was the first thing that came to mind. It was Yunjoo who broke the easy mood.

“Oh, right. Please take care of the divorce paperwork.”

“Is it really that urgent? You endured three years. Is being in the same house with me for even a moment that unbearable?”

Kangwook’s words turned cold so quickly it was hard to believe he had ever been anything but, and Yunjoo looked up from her food and met his eyes. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but this house no longer felt uncomfortable to her. 

And a fleeting thought crossed her mind that if things stayed like this lately, she might not have brought up the divorce at all. She even caught herself thinking something ridiculous, that she might just keep living here and leave when it was time to go study abroad.

“No, it’s not like that.”

“Then since you’ve already been patient this long, try a little longer.”

“Why should I?”

“Do you think your father will accept this situation? So wouldn’t it be better to wait until I’ve handled it?”

“Fine.”

Her father. He would probably try to destroy her.

‘Right, buying time until I can go study abroad isn’t a bad idea. He says he’ll handle it, so I might as well trust him on that.’

She had no desire to face her father head-on. To Yunjoo, her father was practically a stranger to her own life. She had been planning to ask that even after the divorce, news of it not reach anyone until after she had already left for abroad.

“Cha Yunjoo, will divorcing me be enough to get you out from under your father?”