— “Hyunseo, why are you asking for the gayageum even though you’re hospitalized?”

— “Just to loosen up a bit for the competition. I haven’t been able to practice for days.”

— “Still, be careful. If you practice too loudly, someone from the room next door might come over. The atmosphere there is intense.”

— “Huh? Why?”

— “You didn’t see? The room right next to yours — there were some scary-looking men hanging around outside the door. Looks like a really dangerous person is hospitalized next to you.”

It must have been obvious that I’d been lost in thought for a moment. In the middle of her story, Heo Yeonseo tilted her head and asked.

“Is something wrong?”

I shook my head quickly, brushing away the fragments of the past.

“No, please continue.”

“They argued for a while, but finally decided to keep the adoption a secret, or so it seemed. According to my sister, they had raised Seol-won for almost twenty years and always boasted that he was their handsome, intelligent youngest son. So to suddenly reveal that he was adopted and then disown him would be a shame for the family. It looked like they felt they had no choice but to keep him buried. But I’m not sure – Mr. Seol-won would know best.”

“They must have really needed a son, even if they had to adopt one. A family obsessed with bloodlines and desperate for a son.”

“Jae-shin unnie suspected something similar. She said that since the main house had only one daughter, they were constantly ridiculed. So they pretended someone was pregnant and secretly adopted. The second aunt had two or three early miscarriages, and people whispered behind her back, wondering if she’d end up sterile. Then, not long after, they proudly announced a pregnancy and said they had a baby boy. They brought him in secretly.”

“I knew it…”

“So, Mr. Seol-won revealed a secret he didn’t even have to share, and just like that, the engagement was easily and cleanly called off. Since only their family knew about it, and not a word of it leaked out, they must have handled the situation with serious damage control. If they had just waited a little longer and made it to the wedding, my parents probably wouldn’t have rushed into divorce so quickly. A broken engagement and a divorce are two very different things. Since the invitations hadn’t even been printed, it was easy to write off the broken engagement as a last-minute disagreement over terms. But divorce? That makes the news, and people gossip about it for years.”

Heo Yeon-seo raised her head. Her piercing gaze cut through me.

“The timing and the circumstances… don’t they seem a little too convenient?”

“……”

“The talk show was right around the corner, so there was no time to hesitate, weigh options, or argue. Everything happened in an instant – all the engagement news was taken down and the show went on as planned. If the engagement news had been brought up again during the show, it would have made it harder to quietly bury the breakup. The timing was perfect.”

Heo Yeon-seo’s clear, unwavering voice echoed in my ears.

“What if I told you that Mr. Seol-won chose that exact day to visit our house on purpose? What do you think – does that sound far-fetched to you?”

I couldn’t say yes, but I couldn’t say no either.

Even I couldn’t make sense of my own feelings, so I couldn’t really understand Lee Seol-won’s determination to finally break off the engagement, or Heo Yeonseo’s state of mind after suddenly losing her fiancé.

“…Ms. Heo Yeonseo.”

The words weighed heavily on my tongue.

“Do you… want to take back the breakup?”

The question itself was heavy.

“Did you love Lee Seol-won?”

Come to think of it, I had only vaguely understood how much this engagement might have meant to him – but I had no idea what it meant to Heo Yeonseo, or how she had felt going into it.

Lee Seol-won was the kind of man you would find sympathetic. The kind of man you’d want to win over. Even in short, candid clips shot by fans, it was easy to see how naturally he captured people’s attention.

If Heo Yeonseo had felt the same way about him…

“Ah.”

It was a short exclamation.

But the lingering tone was ambiguous – as if she was admitting it, or perhaps denying it.

“Um, let me start with this,” she said. “When the breakup was finalized… I thought maybe it was for the best.”

Her answer was so far beyond anything I had expected that I was momentarily thrown.

The sudden change in direction, impossible to read, left me a little dazed.

“Ever since we got engaged, I’ve been unsure about marriage. I think deep down I always had this vague feeling that it might not last. That if something happened and the engagement fell apart, I wouldn’t be too surprised. In other words, I didn’t come here to confront you or argue with you, I just didn’t want you to misunderstand.

This time I really didn’t know how to react. I stared at Heo Yeonseo, stunned.

“I don’t understand what you mean. I don’t even know why you came to see me.”

“The reason I stopped you earlier…”

Heo Yeonseo let out a long hum, her throat vibrating with the sound.

“As someone who was directly involved in the breakup, I still have some unresolved questions about Lee Seol-won. I don’t think I’ll ever come across such a mysterious relationship or such a strange man again.”

“Strange…?”

I wasn’t sure. He was certainly a man whose thoughts were hard to read, but was he strange enough to be described that way?

“Around the time the engagement was finalized, Seol-won said something really strange to me.”

Heo Yeon-seo shrugged again.

“He said he didn’t mind if I saw other men. Even I was surprised. Lee Seol-won struck me as the kind of man who would sign divorce papers the same day without a second thought if his wife ever cheated on him. And yet he said it was okay if I wanted to see other men? What kind of commitment is that?”

“Right? Usually it’s the opposite. People usually say things like, ‘If you’ve got someone else, sort it out before the wedding’ or ‘Don’t cause any scandals. That would be the normal approach. But instead he said he didn’t want to get involved in my personal life. As long as I was careful not to end up in the media, he didn’t mind if I quietly saw someone on the side.”

“What the…?”

I imagined Lee Seol-won’s face – so distant, almost cold.

“Of course, I was completely taken aback. So I asked him directly if he was seeing someone else. I even asked if he was suggesting that we both just cheat on each other.”

Heo Yeonseo paused for a moment and swallowed a sigh.

I had no idea how to erase this awkwardness. So I remained silent and waited for her to bring up the next topic.

“But honestly, if he had just meant that we’d both be free to cheat, I think I would have understood that more easily. There are people who marry like it’s a business contract – they each keep their own lovers and live as a show-window couple.”

But what Lee Seol-won said was even harder to accept than infidelity. Otherwise, there would be no reason for Heo Yeonseo to act so confused.

“Lee Seol-won… you see.”

“Yes.”

“He said he sees sound with his eyes.”

This time I couldn’t help but be confused.

“What?”

“He said he sees what should be heard and hears what should be seen. At first I had no idea what he meant. I thought, ‘What’s that supposed to be? It’s not like he has superpowers or anything. I assumed he was joking. But it wasn’t a joke at all – he was completely serious. He said he had synaesthesia. I was so stunned that I looked it up right in front of him.

“Synaesthesia…?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“I’ve heard the word in passing, but I don’t know much about it.”

The only kind of synaesthesia I had ever encountered in real life was the kind described in textbooks – the synaesthetic images used in literature. Even though I worked in the art world, a place where people often talked about things like “natural talent,” “strong energy,” or “spiritual connections,” and where rumors circulated about individuals who were “chosen,” I had never actually met anyone who claimed to be synaesthetic.

And yet… that man said he was a synesthete?

Even as I remained skeptical, certain memories began to resurface with sudden clarity.

— “Those moldy olive-green moans… get rid of them.”
— “The whole place is covered in water moss.”
— “Your voice brings in the sea.”
— “It feels like I’m walking into sewage. It tastes foul.”

Those strange murmurs I once thought were hallucinations brought on by medication—perhaps they hadn’t been metaphors to him at all, but something he truly perceived.

— “But unnie, what would you think if someone could pick out your melody—clearly and precisely—amidst all the ensemble played by dozens of members?”

Come to think of it, Eun-sae had also asked me a strange question once.

— “You don’t believe it, do you? It makes no sense. It’s a lie.”
— “Of course it makes no sense. But sometimes, in some corner of the world, impossible things just happen by chance.”

Impossible things happen by chance…

And yet this impossible thing had happened.

It was something that couldn’t be explained or accepted by any conventional logic.

Had Eun-sae also known? About the synaesthesia he supposedly had?

My head was a whirlwind of confusion.

The topic, the pace – everything was too much to follow step by step.

But Heo Yeonseo gave me no time to untangle this knotted thread.