He gripped her chest greedily and whispered.

“The Silla clay figurines we saw in Gyeongju.”

He was always like this. Stirring her most private desires.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“Liar.”

He was right. It was a lie.

There was no way she could forget the clay figurines decorating the Silla pottery she had seen at the museum where her father-in-law used to work. Seventeen-year-old Morin had been so startled by the figurines depicting explicit s*xual acts that she had gotten the hiccups. Her husband had gone to the vending machine and brought her a Coke. She also hadn’t forgotten that his face had been just as red as hers when he handed it to her.

“I’ll help you remember. I promise.”

“No. Who said you could make promises on my behalf?”

Morin twisted and resisted, but her husband kept his one-sided promise in the end. He refused to let her go until she confessed she remembered, and he went ahead and reenacted every last absurd position from those figurines.

“That’s what you get for lying.”

He carried her exhausted body to bed and held her from behind. Morin lay on his arm and let out a languid sigh. Who would ever know that the man living the elite life the world had quietly mapped out for him was this strange.

“You’re making breakfast tomorrow. I can’t see myself getting up.”

“What do you want?”

“Toast with sugar on top.”

“That’s all?”

He laughed and pulled her closer, rubbing his chin against the top of her head.

“Yeah. That’s all.”

What Morin wanted was to greet the morning with her husband and a single slice of toast. It was a small thing, maybe even barely enough, but it was something she held onto.

She breathed in his familiar body wash deep into her chest, and then a cruel thought crept in.

Did he hold Noh Yoonji like this too?

Until her whole body shattered with unbearable pleasure.

With this much tenderness, enough to make her heart melt.

Morin’s heart became hell in an instant.

“Oppa, did you say you have to write a report this Wednesday too?”

She knew she was descending into deeper hell, but she couldn’t stop.

“Wednesday? Probably.”

She caught a split second of hesitation in his voice.

“Good, then.”

“Why?”

Morin turned over, wrapped her arm around his waist, and pressed her ear to his smooth chest. Thud. Thud. Thud. His strong heart pumped blood in a steady rhythm.

“I made plans. Going to see a friend who’s back in the country after a long time.”

“Which friend? Don’t tell me it’s the one with the dreadlocks.”

“No. She’s in New York right now.”

“Then who?”

“Would you know them?”

“Will you be late?”

His heartbeat seemed to quicken slightly.

“Maybe.”

Maybe what they should have shared that night wasn’t s*x but a conversation, Morin thought.

“Stop and let’s go.”

She snapped at Hyungrin for no reason.

Throb. The headache came back.

***

“This is insane.”

Gabit Island, where the fashion show was being held. Hyungrin whistled as he looked up at the massive banner wrapped around the circular glass building. The banner rippled in the wind in a color somewhere between purple and chocolate brown, something in between. It reminded her of wilted iris petals, or the color of aged mulberry wine she had drunk at her grandfather’s brewery.

For a theme called “first love,” the color carried a strange loneliness, more like looking back on a love already gone. In the center of the vast, enigmatic banner, the NOhYOON.Z logo was stamped in vivid, defiant relief.

“Jealous?”

Hyungrin’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at the banner, as though tracing a memory.

“Honestly. My stomach hurts.”

He admitted his envy of his childhood friend’s success without pretense. Hyungrin had left S-Mulsan two years ago and started his own brand. In other words, he was in the thick of the struggle.

At the reception, staff checked the invitations and fastened after-party wristbands around their wrists. Morin was examining the ribbon, the same color as the banner, when the crowd around them suddenly stirred. Camera flashes went off and a wave of cheers followed as celebrities began to arrive.

“It’s a madhouse. Let’s go up.”

Hyungrin led Morin up to the terrace where the VIP lounge was.

“Wow. Chairman Erné is here too.”

The open terrace deck and the standing tables decorated with flowers were packed with people waiting for the show. As though flaunting the full weight of LVMH’s backing, it looked like every chaebol family member, fashion influencer, and celebrity Morin had only ever seen in the media had gathered in one place.

“Want me to get you something to drink?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you cold? The river breeze is getting chilly….”

Hyungrin had been scanning the terrace when his voice trailed off, as though he had spotted someone. Where his gaze had stopped, a woman stood looking in Morin’s direction, glamorous and polished enough to pass for a celebrity. The look pouring from her striking eyes was anything but friendly. Morin was less thrown by the woman’s sharp gaze than by her outfit. The woman was wearing a dress in almost the same tone as Morin’s, with an oversized black jacket, and on top of that, a black velvet choker around her pale, slender neck. Morin and the woman exchanged a mutually awkward, embarrassed look.

“Do you know her?”

The moment she asked, she recognized the woman as Kim Sehui, head of the fashion and resort divisions at S-Mulsan.

“Oh, I know her. She looks so much better in person.”

Kim Sehui looked far younger and more feminine than she did in the media or in print. She had been staring at Hyungrin without blinking, but then she tossed her full hair and turned, walking back inside the building.

“You’re on your own, kid.”

Hyungrin watched Kim Sehui’s retreating figure for a moment, then suddenly strode after her through the revolving door she had pushed through.

Left alone among unfamiliar faces in an unfamiliar place, Morin leaned against the railing and looked out at the sky bleeding into sunset and the park along the Han River. Far below, two girls who looked to be in elementary school were skateboarding. In their short crop tees and wide-leg cargo pants, they rode just as dynamically as any boy. Watching their helmeted heads, their hair flying in the wind, she found herself thinking of the time she had ridden bikes with Noh Yoonji long ago. With three older brothers in a row, Morin had looked up to Noh Yoonji like a real older sister, and Noh Yoonji had always been happy to take Morin along, even though she was four years younger.

“What are you reading?”

Morin had come back from a loop around the park on her bike and asked Noh Yoonji, who was sitting on a bench reading. Yoonji lifted her eyes from the book and looked at Morin. Since starting high school, Noh Yoonji had often worn an expression that seemed suddenly older.

“Coco Chanel.”

She held up the cover for Morin to see. On it, a photo of a woman with downcast eyes was printed with the title Coco Chanel above it. A cool, remote-looking woman.

“What’s it about?”

“A book about how a poor but talented woman succeeds.”

“How?”

“By finding a man who will invest in her talent.”

A moment from the past surfaced, and Morin smiled bitterly.

The sky deepened to the same dark plum-violet as the banner, and the girls tucked their boards under their arms and left the park. Just then, an announcement came over the speakers directing guests to enter the showroom. Morin watched the last person disappear inside, then fished a Tylenol from her clutch and swallowed it dry, pressing it down with her tongue. The headache had become unbearable.

“Ms. Gu Morin?”

She was making her way to her assigned seat with the help of a staff member, the showroom already dark, when the woman in the next seat called her name. A woman in a crisp white shirt with a bomber jacket draped over her shoulders smiled brightly.

“Director?”

It was Eun Mokyeon, the director of Mokyeon Art Museum, where Morin worked. Running into the director at a fashion show was unexpected. She always seemed to live at least three steps removed from the world, untouched by ordinary life.

“Yoonji and I went to the same school. Mokyeon Arts High.”

The director spoke before Morin could even form the question.

“She’s my sunbae, actually. Yoonji unnie. At Mokyeon Arts High.”

Even as she answered, Morin already knew how the director would react. She would say, “Oh? You went to Mokyeon Arts High too, Ms. Gu?” with that look of someone marveling at the coincidence.

“Oh? You went to Mokyeon Arts High too, Ms. Gu?”

Morin let out a quiet laugh. She had answered the same question at least ten times since joining the Mokyeon Art Museum. The woman who had every artwork in the museum’s collection and every corner of its storage memorized was as loose as an untied ribbon when it came to anything else.

“Did I do it again? I used to not be like this….”

The museum staff said the director had changed somewhat after brain surgery following a car accident, but Morin had only known her after the accident and had no way of knowing the difference.