Prologue - A Misaligned Confession
Clink.
Sujin quietly set her spoon down.
“……”
“……”
They sat across from each other at the table, yet only silence filled the air.
As it always did.
The suffocating chill of the atmosphere had long since become familiar to her, so familiar it no longer even stung.
Foolish hopes had faded, resignation was all that remained.
A dinner without words, a phone that never rang, cold eyes, a frigid voice, a back always turned away.
Recalling the three years of her marriage, a bitter smile brushed Sujin’s lips.
There had been days when the pain was so raw she cried until she felt she would shatter.
She had once prayed, however faintly, for change, for even the smallest shift.
Not for love, perhaps, just for a little more kindness. For one brief moment in a day when they might face each other and smile.
For them to share, if not everything, then at least the important parts of their lives.
There was a time when she had thrown her whole being into that wish.
But now…
Sujin slowly lifted her head to look at the man before her. For three years they had lived together under the hollow title of husband and wife.
Yet their relationship had never once aligned enough to warrant that name.
It had been that way from the very beginning. Like an old cart creaking down the road, the two of them were always out of sync.
Perhaps it was because theirs was a marriage of four, not two. Each person clinging to their own place, pushing and pulling against the others.
“……”
As thoughts of those uninvited to this marriage rose in her mind, Sujin closed her eyes tightly.
Just as she had pretended not to see the rings, different in color, that she and her husband wore.
Through all those years, their mismatched rings shone with stubborn light, unable to be extinguished, as though symbolising a permanence neither had chosen.
They revealed at a glance the false nature of a marriage that bound not two but four.
“……”
Her long lashes trembled against the pale of her cheek.
So… had they been doomed from the very start? Perhaps that was only natural. Perhaps she should have accepted it.
Then why? why on earth?…why did I have to fall in love with you?
Her lips pressed together, the familiar self-reproach biting into her flesh, but no tears came. Her eyes, long since dried, stung with emptiness.
Aimless, her gaze wandered, then, as if by instinct, returned to the man across from her.
“…Ryu Kyungkwon.”
She broke the heavy silence, calling her husband’s name softly.
Ryu Kyungkwon.
A name she had never stopped loving.
Even though throughout their marriage she had seen only his back, she could not help but overlap his figure with the boy she once saw swearing an oath in front of everyone on the first day of high school.
A bright, fresh season. The glow of that day. That boy who had shone so brilliantly.
‘Sujin.’
When she closed her eyes, he still came to her from those years past, reaching out his hand. And so, no matter how much time passed, Sujin never learned how not to love him.
It must have been foolish lingering attachment. But now, truly now..
“……”
She dropped her gaze to her left hand. The wedding band she wore was a gift from her late fiance, its light still achingly beautiful.
Over that radiance, her husband’s indifferent voice echoed, “You’ve already received a ring, haven’t you? It suits you well enough. Keep it on.”
The cutting dismissal of any bond between them still rang in her ears. His words, declaring that their marriage was mere formality, had wounded her for years.
“……”
Blankly, she blinked, staring at the ring on her husband’s hand. Its piercing brilliance made her shoulders shrink.
That ring held the love he had for his longtime lover. Even today, it shone resplendently. Its glow suited her, more than it did him.
And Sujin knew who she was.
Yoon Hyeyoung.
Yoon Hyeyoung and Ryu Kyungkwon.
In high school, the two of them had been a well-known couple.
Though romance was strictly forbidden at their prestigious academy, their relationship was so open that even Sujin, who was often absent due to hospital visits, knew of it.
It was a bond that had begun then and endured until now, one that a mere marriage of appearances could never sever.
Unlike Hyeyoung, Sujin and Kyungkwon had been nothing more than classmates, occasionally exchanging a word or two.
Even those words had been no more than kindness on his part to the oft-absent class president.
She had merely admired him from afar, cherishing scraps of conversation, nursing a secret love alone.
Perhaps that was why she had, absurdly, dared to expect something. She had wanted, if only once, to touch that dazzling light that had never belonged to her.
But no longer. It was truly time to stop.
To stop her lonely love. To stop this hollow marriage.
To stop gathering the broken shards of her heart and piecing them together with pitiful hope.
All of it.
There was nothing left to break. Her long-burning love had already turned to ash; even grief had abandoned her.
“……”
Her eyes, emptied into darkness, lingered one last time on the man who had once been her husband. And then, firmly, she called his name, each syllable weighted and clear.
Ryu Kyung Kwon.
As though it were the first time she had ever spoken it.
“Ryu Kyungkwon.”
This time he seemed to hear. He raised his head.
“……”
But as soon as their eyes met, his brows furrowed. His lips twitched as if to speak, but he pressed them shut again.
‘Did he have something to say?’
A fleeting, foolish hope flickered in Sujin before she let out a dry laugh. Of course not. If anything, he wanted her silence.
She remembered clearly the day he had scolded her at the table for chattering idly.
“Let’s eat quietly, without talking.”
That frigid voice, the look of revulsion as if he could not bear even the sound of her.
He had always struggled to endure her, before and after marriage.
“…Im Sujin.”
Her name was ground out between clenched teeth, crushed beneath a sigh. He never failed to add her surname, addressing her like a stranger.
The veins bulged on the back of his hand. Clearly, her attempt at conversation had displeased him deeply.
“……”
Sujin flinched, blinking. She could already hear the cold rebuke that was sure to follow.
“Didn’t I tell you to be quiet while eating? How many times must I repeat myself?”
His voice froze her where she sat. Weariness and fear pressed in on her as she bit her dry lips. A few strands of hair fell across her pale brow with her sigh.
“…I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I—”
She barely managed a protest when he, as though unable to bear it, turned his head aside and raked his hair back.
“If you have something to say, then say it. I do too.”
Something to say? That was new. Never once in their marriage had he said such a thing.
Perhaps he, too, was exhausted beyond bearing. Perhaps he was ready for an end.
She thought it might not be so bad to hear him first.
“…Then go ahead.”
Her weary eyelids drooped.
“You first.”
He leaned back, gesturing lightly as if yielding.
“……”
“……”
Silence once again stretched across the table.
As always.
They waited for each other, wordless, until at last both, after long hesitation, opened their mouths at the same time, averting their eyes.
“…I—”
“I—”
Just as Sujin lowered her head to speak the words she had buried in her heart for so long, he too began to speak, the timing fatally misaligned.
“…Let’s get a divorce.”
“I think I may have fallen for you, Im Sujin.”
Breathless after finally voicing the truth she had long carried, Sujin thought she had misheard.
“…What did you just say?”
Once, her eyes would have shone, but now they were dry and brittle, on the verge of breaking. She stared blankly at the man before her.
“……”
His face twisted with anguish, he gazed at her in silence, as though he had not heard a word she said.
Or was it because he had? Was that why he wore such an unfamiliar expression?
Why… why now?
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I mean, I… Im Sujin, perhaps from the beginning—”
That sharp gaze, so familiar, now held something strange, something earnest. Sujin’s heart plunged into confusion. She shook her head.
“I cannot make sense of this. What are you trying to say?”
“……”
He, too, seemed lost, his stubbornly tight lips falling slack.
“…Sujin.”
Sujin.
Her name, spoken gently for the first time in ten years, rang in her ears until the room swam. She no longer knew who sat across from her.
“I don’t know either.”
With his face wrenched in torment, he dropped his head, hair falling loose. Sujin, white with disbelief, sat motionless, staring at him.
Same place, same time, same people.
The only thing that had changed was the way they looked at each other.
“……”
Once more, Sujin could not breathe.
Just as she had three years ago.
On the day she met him here, before their marriage began.
Right here.
