She pulled her jacket closed and looked up at the banner rippling in the wind. A sudden, unbearable longing for her husband came over her. She felt like pressing her cheek against his warm back would make this anxiety go away.

What is he doing right now?

Taking advantage of her absence, drinking a Coke and writing his report?

She shouldn’t have come.

She regretted it. No, it was something closer to self-reproach. She had done something foolish, yanking loose a knot her husband had tied tight.

“Gu Morin?”

A familiar voice reached her along with a faint smell of cigarettes. It was Noh Yoonji. She walked toward Morin, drawing deeply on a cigarette, her steps in heels slightly unsteady. She might have been drunk.

“Unnie.”

“You were going to leave without saying hello?”

Noh Yoonji approached with the ease of someone greeting a friend she had seen just yesterday, brushed the hair blowing across Morin’s face aside, and ran her fingertips down the lapel of the jacket Morin was wearing. Her fingers smelled of cigarettes.

“Let me see. Our Morin… you’ve really become a woman.”

Satisfied, perhaps, to see Morin wearing her clothes, Noh Yoonji gripped both of Morin’s shoulders and released them.

“The show today was really….”

“Where’s Ikhyeon?”

Noh Yoonji cut her off. It was embarrassing, and more than anything, it grated on her to hear her husband’s name fall from lips wrapped around a cigarette.

“He was busy, so I came instead. He said to pass along his congratulations.”

“Did he? He really said that?”

Noh Yoonji exhaled smoke into the air and smiled faintly.

Her ears burned, feeling caught in a lie.

“Then why are you leaving without congratulating me?”

“You looked busy. I didn’t want to get in the way. I’m glad I ran into you like this, though. Congratulations. It was a genuinely wonderful show.”

Morin thr*st out her hand.

Oh, that’s not right.

She had wanted to be more relaxed, more composed, more natural about it. She stared at her own hand, trembling pathetically, like it belonged to someone else.

Noh Yoonji’s gaze settled on the hand Morin had extended, or more precisely, on the diamond ring sparkling on her ring finger.

“Just words?”

A cold hand took hers, and a thumb lightly stroked the diamond ring a few times before letting go. Noh Yoonji released her hand and giggled as though something was deeply amusing.

“Why are you laughing?”

Of all the expressions a person could make, was there anything as varied as a smile? It had always struck her as remarkable that joy, elation, happiness, anger, despair, sarcasm, contempt, mockery, deflation, and disbelief could all be expressed through the same set of facial muscles. Noh Yoonji’s smile right now was unmistakably a mocking one.

“Nothing. Does Ikhyeon treat you well?”

“Yes.”

Her husband was a warm person.

“Well, he would be. He’s always been kind.”

It sounded less like a compliment and more like a suggestion that he was kind to everyone, not just to her.

“Warm but firm. That’s Kwon Ikhyeon. Morin, don’t let that smile fool you into thinking he’ll accept anything. You’ll feel it too, once he blindsides you. He has a guillotine inside him.”

Noh Yoonji shrugged as though she knew her husband inside and out. It was infuriating, but Morin kept her expression neutral and only smiled. Kwon Ikhyeon and Noh Yoonji had shared too much time together for her to bristle over it.

“Weren’t you hurt?”

“By what?”

Before the marriage, maybe, but since they married, her husband had never once hurt her feelings.

“Is that right? Then why do I feel so hurt?”

“……?”

“Maybe it’s because I’ve known you longer than I’ve known Ikhyeon, honestly.”

What on earth was she trying to say?

“Still. A man who recycles his proposal ring. Is he indifferent, or just careless?”

“Re… cycles?”

Morin’s brow furrowed.

A word that made no sense in the context of this conversation had just dropped out of nowhere.

“No. It can’t be. I must be mistaken.”

“Mistaken about what?”

Noh Yoonji looked at her with something like pity, smoking at her leisure.

“What I’m mistaken about is….”

She drew it out for a long moment before speaking.

“Maybe I’m just imagining that the ring I turned down looks similar to yours? It can’t be. You wore it out here so proudly. Of course it can’t be.”

“…….”

Morin couldn’t quite process what Noh Yoonji was saying. Words like proposal, ring, rejection, recycle buzzed around her ears like noise.

“So you’re saying….”

He recycled the proposal ring? He proposed to Noh Yoonji with this ring, got turned down, and then proposed to me with it again, and I accepted it with tears in my eyes?

Morin’s lips moved but the words inside her wouldn’t come out. She stared blankly down at the ring on her finger.

“Let’s get married.”

The temperature, the wind, the humidity, the sound of her husband’s breathing on the day he slipped this ring onto her finger were all still vivid in her ears.

“So why did you have to go and touch it? You’re not even equipped to handle it.”

Noh Yoonji blew cigarette smoke into Morin’s face and laughed.

“Gu Morin, you were quite the little schemer. Wedging yourself right into the gap that opened between Ikhyeon and me over some misunderstanding that amounted to nothing.”

“That’s your version.”

“Is it, though?”

“The person oppa chose in the end was me.”

She felt small for saying it. It was pathetic that she could only reach for the word “chose” instead of “loved.” Morin shook her head. Right. Whatever the reason, her husband had chosen Gu Morin, not Noh Yoonji, as his partner for life.

“In the end? Not ‘in the end.’ More like ’as things happened to turn out.’”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you already know better than anyone? You were Kwon Ikhyeon’s second choice.”

“A second choice can become the best choice.”

She had meant to answer with confidence, but her voice had no strength behind it.

“Whether it was the best choice or a painful mistake is something only Kwon Ikhyeon knows, the man who gave you that ring.”

“Stop pretending you know everything.”

Morin’s voice was already as feeble as a defeated soldier’s last stand.

“Don’t I know Kwon Ikhyeon better than you do? Kwon Ikhyeon will never be satisfied with you. How long have you been married? Three years? Well, I’m not without fault either, so I thought I could give it three years, let Kwon Ikhyeon have his little detour with Gu Morin. But Morin, three years… it’s a long time. I’ve been patient enough. If you were going to take what belonged to someone else, I’d hope you came prepared.”

Noh Yoonji murmured into Morin’s ear with a sweet voice.

She always felt this way, but the frustration of not being able to fire back brought tears surging to the surface. No, not now. If I cry now, it’s over. Morin bore down on her tear ducts.

“I’ll be staying in Seoul for a while, so give me a proper congratulations next time.”

The cigarette b*tt flicked from slender fingers traced a red arc as it fell. Noh Yoonji clicked a few steps forward and ground the b*tt on the deck with a shoe pointed like a dagger. The way she might crush Morin’s clumsy attempt at defiance underfoot.

“Your mom and dad are doing well, I hope? Give them my regards.”

Noh Yoonji turned away with the elegant pivot of a model on the runway. The tears Morin had been holding back fell. She wiped them with the back of her hand, and from behind her came a sound. Achoo. She startled mid-wipe and turned toward it.

“I’m sorry. I was waiting for my husband. I know it sounds like a convenient excuse, but I genuinely wasn’t trying to listen. I just missed my moment to leave….”

Eun Mokyeon rose from a chair surrounded by spirea blossom arrangements, pressing a handkerchief to her nose and sneezing in quick succession.

“I have a pollen allergy.”

The director tucked the handkerchief into her clutch and came toward Morin.

“She’s exactly the same as she was at nineteen.”

Was she trying to offer comfort?

Morin had heard that the director remembered almost nothing from before the accident. Not knowing how to take what she had just said, Morin looked at her.

“Some memories stay sharp.”

The director seemed to read Morin’s expression, shrugged, and turned to look at the river. Morin stood beside her and faced the river breeze, watching the water shimmer under the lights of Banpo Bridge. The two of them stood side by side in silence, letting the wind hit them. She wanted to flee from the embarrassment of her boss having witnessed that scene, but there was nothing else she could do besides look at the river. The taxi still hadn’t arrived.

“Ms. Gu Morin, you’re not actually going to believe what that vicious woman said, are you?”

The director sighed and asked in her unhurried voice.

“No.”

She neither believed it nor wanted to.

The director smiled as though she approved of the answer.

“Belief takes courage.”

The director gave Morin’s shoulder a gentle pat and left.

Morin watched blankly as the director’s husband wrapped a scarf around the director’s neck and carefully drew her hair out from under it, then buried her face in her palms.

She wanted to believe in her husband, but she couldn’t find the courage.