“I’ll get out here, please.”

Morin had the taxi stop in front of the convenience store near her apartment. She wasn’t ready to face her husband. She went inside, bought a strawberry milk, and sat down at one of the tables. All she had consumed the entire day was one Tylenol and a glass of sparkling water. She swallowed a few cold mouthfuls of strawberry milk on a parched throat and her stomach let out a low gurgle. 

The tightness in her chest didn’t ease even with something cold going down. She set the milk carton down and pulled the tie from around her neck to stuff it into her jacket pocket, and it fell to the floor. She bent to pick it up and found herself staring at her own hand. The cold gleam of the wedding ring she had worn out like some absolute ring of power crept along the veins of her finger and into her chest like a poison-tipped snare.

Morin clenched her fist and pressed down on her constricting heart. If she could, she would go back to a week ago, before she had found the invitation in her husband’s study.

Ha.

A hollow laugh escaped her.

She should have just let it go.

It was almost funny, the way she had tripped herself up with her own scheme.

The wind was cold, but she couldn’t bring herself to get up.

Had her husband’s proposal been not a drunk truth but a drunken mistake?

Was her husband thinking, as Noh Yoonji had said, that marrying Morin was a mistake? Maybe. Even if he had realized he had made a mistake, he would have tried to hold the marriage together out of responsibility and duty. He was that kind of person. He might have dressed resignation up as serenity, telling himself this life was just how things were.

With each gust of wind, magnolia petals fell onto the table one by one. She picked up a petal, blotchy and browning at the edges.

It had been a spring day just like this.

The day her husband proposed to Gu Morin.

“Gu Morin.”

Someone called her name on her way back from the library. She turned and saw Ikhyeon sitting in front of a convenience store. He was wearing a khaki flight jacket and waving both arms at her. It was the jacket Hyungrin had designed as a gift for Ikhyeon when he got his job. When she had asked why a jacket and not a suit, Hyungrin had said, “He’ll be wearing suits until he’s sick of them,” and made Ikhyeon the jacket instead. Every time he waved, the orange lining flashed bright. He looked like a bird-of-paradise doing a courtship dance.

Morin climbed the convenience store steps and walked over to him.

On the plastic table printed with the Coca-Cola logo, six empty beer cans stood arranged in a triangle like bowling pins. That meant Ikhyeon was drunk.

His drunk habit was to compulsively organize things. He would line up empty bottles or cans like bowling pins, straighten the chopsticks or forks of whoever he was drinking with into a neat row, take out his lens cloth and wipe the fingerprints off people’s phone screens, or button up people’s shirts all the way to the collar.

And if he got even more drunk, he did the dishes. He would wash the already-washed plates again and again, then quietly slip into the bathroom and fall asleep sitting on the toilet. Her brothers, not even noticing he had disappeared, would find him napping peacefully in the bathroom and burst out laughing. They enjoyed teasing him so much that they would pour him even more drinks.

“Morin.”

Ikhyeon called her name in a voice slower and lower than usual. They say fashion is completed by the face, but Ikhyeon’s aesthetic was completed by his voice. His broad shoulders, his elegant fingers turning the pages of a book, his long and lean legs good enough for a jeans ad, all of it was more than enough, but what made Ikhyeon himself was undeniably his voice. It was like a forest in spring rain. Cool and sweet and clear. She had once confessed to her best friend Yeongeun that Ikhyeon’s voice felt like it was releasing phytoncides into the air, and she had been treated like a lunatic for it, but Yeongeun had eventually admitted she was right.

Morin.

Whenever Ikhyeon called her name with that warmth, Morin would breathe in deeply, the way you do in the middle of a forest.

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.”

Ikhyeon smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, his Indian dimples appearing on his cheeks. Kwon Ikhyeon was a terrible person. Even a joke from him made her heart pound like this.

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying. Hyungrin stood me up and your dad isn’t home.”

“Dad went to Yangpyeong.”

“Ah, right.”

Ikhyeon nodded, chin in hand.

“Sit down. What, do you still not want to look at my face?”

He pulled out a plastic chair for her.

“When did I ever say that?”

“You did. You said you didn’t want to see my face anymore.”

She had. The first night Ikhyeon had stayed out, Morin had asked him to please leave their house. Watching Ikhyeon love someone else had been like self-harm to eighteen-year-old Morin.

“Holding a grudge over something that old.”

She scoffed and sat down in the chair he had pulled out.

“Back then, I felt like Gu Morin had abandoned me.”

Ikhyeon had been the first to leave her behind. The Morin of that time had been imagining, on her own, that Ikhyeon felt the same way she did.

“And someone who felt abandoned bolted the moment they got kicked out?”

“Want some?”

Ikhyeon held out a beer can to Morin, who was pursing her lips. She took it and swallowed a few mouthfuls. The beer was flat.

The wind blew and magnolia petals fell onto the table one by one. Morin jabbed at the browning petals with her fingernail and drank the beer without enjoying it. Ikhyeon stood against the convenience store wall with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the magnolia tree. His face as he looked at the blossoms was melancholy. It wasn’t the look of someone seeing flowers, but of someone reaching back for a memory left somewhere far away.

“It’s the weekend. Why are you like this?”

“Because it’s the weekend, that’s why I came to see you.”

“You said you came to see oppa.”

“Two birds, one stone.”

Two birds, one stone. That was what she was to Ikhyeon. Not first priority, but second. A bonus supplement, nice to have but fine without.

Morin stood abruptly, went into the convenience store, came back out with a carton of strawberry milk, and sat back down. The flat beer wasn’t doing anything for her thirst. She sucked hard on the straw until the carton crumpled and swallowed the strawberry milk. She was clearly swallowing liquid, but her throat stung like she was swallowing shards of glass. Ikhyeon tilted his head and just watched her.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Like you’ll accept anything I throw at you. It drives a person crazy.

“No reason. You just remind me of Seokgeum.”

“Seokgeum?”

Seokgeum. Ikhyeon’s old, gentle dog. She remembered the day Seokgeum crossed the rainbow bridge, when she and her dad had walked Ikhyeon to Seoul Station. His back, running so as not to miss the KTX, was already crying. For a long time after that, Ikhyeon had missed Seokgeum. She remembered one night, finding Ikhyeon with his face buried in Seokgeum’s red collar, weeping.

“You said it. ’Seokgeum, goodbye. I won’t forget youuu.’”

Ikhyeon imitated a small child’s voice and laughed.

“I said that?”

“You did. When your whole family came to visit in Gyeongju.”

Had Seokgeum really remembered those words?

When Morin went back to Gyeongju in high school, Seokgeum had taken an enormous liking to her. Like a friend reunited after ten years. She still remembered the feel of Seokgeum’s dried-out nose rubbing against her palm.

“See this scar?”

Ikhyeon thr*st the back of his hand in front of her face. She had known there was a scar on his hand. She had always been curious but had never asked. She was afraid asking about the scar might open another one.

“I was trying to break up a fight between Seokgeum and a stray, and Seokgeum bit me in the excitement. He must have been shaken by what he’d done himself. He moped around for days, tail drooping, wouldn’t eat. Couldn’t look me in the eye, but he licked and licked my hand….”

How much had Seokgeum loved his owner?

“It’s the mark he left on me. I’m grateful for it.”

Without thinking, Morin reached out and touched the scar with her fingertips. It was raised slightly above the surrounding skin, and hard.

“Do you still miss him?”

Maybe Ikhyeon looked at this scar every time he missed Seokgeum.

“The way you ask things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Most people ask if it hurt.”

“…….”

She lifted her hand from the scar and looked at him.

“You looking up at me like that makes you even more like Seokgeum.”