The Bride Who Refused the Altar

Outside the bridal waiting room, a crowd had begun to murmur.

"Isn't the bride ready yet?"

"I didn't see the groom or his mother with the groom's party, either."

Outside the wedding hall, the corridors buzzed with politicians. Whoever the bride was, she was marrying into the family of Jin Soo-sung — a name that commanded instant recognition, a man touted as the leading presidential candidate — and the power players of the party had gathered in droves to make his acquaintance.

And now those same people had converged on the bridal waiting room, all of them burning with curiosity about who had become the daughter-in-law of the most powerful politician in office.

"I heard she comes from a plain family."

"Her father's supposedly a manual laborer. In poor health, too."

"They say Representative Jin's side is covering all the surgery costs."

"That's Representative Jin for you. A cut above the rest."

Curiosity and speculation loosened every tongue in the crowd.

That was when an argument erupted from inside the bridal waiting room.

"You're not getting married? Are you out of your mind?!"

The voice carrying through the door was unmistakably Dong-chan's.

Every head in the crowd swiveled toward it at once.

And then—

The door burst open. A bride in a pristine white wedding gown came flying out.

Dong-chan shouted after her before she'd cleared the doorway.

"Woo Seol-hee, have you lost it?"

Then Yeo In-ok caught her by the hand.

"Please, my son. Calm down. Seol-hee, honey, don't do this. It's only natural to feel jittery before a wedding. It'll pass, sweetheart. Don't do anything you'll regret — just listen to your mother. Let's get through the ceremony first and talk this through calmly. You trust Mom, don't you?"

Seol-hee swallowed a breath.

She was sick to death of that word — Mom. Her stomach churned with nausea.

"Who are you calling Mom?"

"Uh… wh-what?"

The innocent twenty-four-year-old Seol-hee who had once wilted in loneliness no longer existed. There was only the Woo Seol-hee who had weathered a decade of every trial imaginable — including a full-tilt war of regression.

Not in this lifetime. Not a chance.

"Did you give birth to me?"

Before In-ok could arrange her face, panic bloomed across it.

Seol-hee wrenched her hand free. In-ok swayed where she stood, dumbstruck.

"My son!"

Dong-chan rushed to steady his mother.

"How dare you—"

Seol-hee strode straight toward him as he began to flare up.

Something in her gaze was deeply wrong, and his shoulders flinched back of their own accord.

She combed through her memories.

The woman Jin Dong-chan took up with right after the wedding… Ryu Ah-reum, wasn't it?

Of all the women who had passed through his hands, she had been the most significant — the one who made even the notorious womanizer Dong-chan tremble at the mere mention of her name for a while.

It was too soon to bring up the aekbaji, the misfortune scapegoat that hadn't yet been put in place. She needed a legitimate reason to blow up the wedding.

Seol-hee narrowed her eyes.

"You're sponsoring her."

The murderous glare in Dong-chan's eyes — eyes that had looked ready to seize her and strangle her on the spot — wavered visibly.

She pressed her advantage.

"…She's twenty, isn't she. Eight years apart? Did you leave your conscience in your mother's womb?"

Dong-chan's face drained to a ghostly blue.

He looked like a man wondering how on earth she could possibly know that.

Of course I had no idea on my wedding day.

If she'd known back then, she never would have set foot in the wedding hall in the first place. It was only after the marriage that she'd found out.

"That is — that's…."

Seol-hee raised one hand as if to strike him.

Dong-chan stumbled backward, caught his own feet, and went down hard.

So that flimsy lower body of his was failing him ten years ago too.

And this was the man who had the audacity to run around on her — the shameless piece of work.

"Not worth the effort of hitting you."

Seol-hee let out a short, contemptuous laugh, turned her gaze away, and started walking.

Behind her, In-ok shrieked in fury.

"You're disgracing this whole family, and you have no sense of proportion at all! Get up on that altar, you!"

Seol-hee answered without slowing down.

"No, I won't. Ma'am."

Then she plunged straight into the crowd.

The onlookers erupted into murmurs. The click-click-click of phone cameras went off without pause.

"Hey, Woo Seol-hee, if they catch you— aack!"

Dong-chan, shoving his way through the crowd after her, suddenly crumpled.

Thud.

Seol-hee glanced back from the exit.

In-ok was rushing to the fallen Dong-chan, wailing as though the world had ended.

"Aigoo, my precious son!"

Leaving that sobbing voice behind her, Seol-hee turned her feet toward the outside.

Summer was drawing to its close.

She ran, letting the sunlight filtering through the green leaves wash over her, without once looking back, until her breath gave out.

She ran as if she needed proof that she was still alive.

Never noticing the eyes fixed on her back.

A few moments earlier—

"This is pure entertainment."

Dong-chan's friends had been standing nearby, watching the spectacle unfold before the bridal waiting room with great interest.

"Looks like the clueless bastard got caught by his fiancée over Ah-reum."

"And here I thought he was hiding it so smoothly. Tsk. What an idiot."

A cold shadow fell over the men as they snickered among themselves.

"What was that?"

At the low voice by their ears, every head snapped toward the sound.

Do Yi-hyuk, a full head taller than any of them, was looking down at them from a slight angle.

They studied his expression warily. His eyes were utterly still.

Standing before Do Yi-hyuk had always had a way of making their spines shrink.

It had been that way since childhood. For all that they were the same age, something about his bearing put him on a different plane entirely, and striking up even a casual word with him had never come easily.

As befitted the son of a respected political dynasty, he radiated an aristocratic dignity impossible to hide.

One of the men broke the silence awkwardly.

"Right, you were abroad, Yi-hyuk, so you wouldn't know. Our boy Dong-chan's been sponsoring someone."

Another man sidled up close to Yi-hyuk and lowered his voice.

"Ryu Ah-reum — rising rookie actress, everyone's talking about her. She shot the coffee commercial for Gayun Foods. Dong-chan's absolutely obsessed. Slurping her up like candy. Something about her being a perfect match for, what did he call it, releasing the stagnant blood congestion built up in his body?"

"And his mother's just as deep in that shamanism nonsense as he is. She had their compatibility read from birth charts and then found her son a mistress. Must be nice, huh. So jealous."

Yi-hyuk's impassive gaze touched them.

It felt like the edge of a blade pressed to their throats, and every mouth snapped shut.

Just then, from the bridal waiting room, In-ok's voice rang out, sharp and shrill.

"You're disgracing this whole family, and you have no sense of proportion at all! Get up on that altar, you!"

A bride in a pristine white gown swept past right in front of them.

Tap-tap—

The cheerful heels of her wedding shoes struck the marble floor as she cut a straight line through the crowd.

Yi-hyuk's gaze locked onto the woman flashing before his eyes.

A smile laced with liberation and defiance held his attention far longer than it should have.

The corners of his eyes narrowed faintly.

Even after she vanished completely into the crowd, his gaze lingered on that spot.

"Hey, Woo Seol-hee, if they catch you—"

That was the moment.

Dong-chan, one foot already lifted to give chase, pitched forward.

Thud.

With a dull, heavy sound, he crashed flat onto the floor.

It looked as though he'd slammed his forehead into the ground.

"My son!"

In-ok came sprinting over in a panic.

Dong-chan rolled on the floor, clutching his forehead and knees.

From somewhere in the crowd, someone stole a glance at Yi-hyuk and muttered under his breath.

"Hey, didn't Do Yi-hyuk just stick his foot out under Jin Dong-chan?"

"Yi-hyuk? What kind of nonsense is that. We're not kids. Why would he pull some juvenile stunt like that?"

"I'm telling you… I clearly saw it."

Yi-hyuk's expression didn't change by a single muscle as the man's suspicious eyes found him.

The man kept tilting his head, back and forth, watching Yi-hyuk's retreating back.

* * *

"I'm back!"

Clutching a wedding shoe in each hand, Seol-hee shouted toward the Han River.

She had run the whole way to Mapo Bridge without a single break.

Her lungs burned, her throat stung raw — and even that felt good.

The river wind raised goosebumps on her skin. She wiped the trickle from her nose with the back of her hand.

Watching the sinking sunset, something tightened in her chest.

Without the wedding dress still clinging to her body, she might never have accepted it — that she had really come back ten years.

She peeked down at the soles of her feet, hot and raw from running barefoot, and grinned like a madwoman.

How had she come back? Why had she come back? A hundred questions swirled unanswered. But for now, it was enough to be alive, to be here.

"Hah. Now I can undo it all."

She wanted a life entirely unentangled from Jin Dong-chan's family — a life truly her own.

But.

A shadow fell across her face, gilded though it was in brilliant orange.

"They won't just give up."

In-ok and Dong-chan were never ones to back down easily.

They would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. Ten years at their side had taught her that they must never, ever be made into enemies — which was precisely why she had hesitated so long over divorce.

And yet, even for the child she had lost, she could not go on living that way.

Perhaps it was the river wind, or perhaps the ache of longing for the child she'd sent away, but her eyes grew damp.

The hope of finally having a family to cherish and love had only deepened the grief of losing one. Having not a single blood relative left in the world had left a vast hollow inside her.

Suddenly, her late father came to mind. The only person who had ever been on her side.

"I miss you, Dad."

The words scattered into the wind and the empty air. Then, in an instant, Seol-hee's eyes flew wide open.

"Dad…!"

She had forgotten.

"Ten years ago, you were still alive!"

She'd been so consumed with escaping the wedding hall that her father had never once crossed her mind.

Seol-hee stamped her feet.

She'd called off the wedding — so by now, he would be heading home from work.

"I have to get… get home."

There had been so many nights she'd prayed for him to appear even in her dreams, begging for just one more glimpse of her father, saying that would be enough.

Her heart began to race.

"A taxi… I need to catch a taxi."

Only then did she realize she was broke.

Her clothes and handbag had been left in the care of In-ok's personal secretary. How long would it take to walk home?

Worse still, her body — its dopamine flood finally subsiding — had begun to chill.

And why was the neckline of this dress cut so absurdly deep?

Another grievance to add to the pile against In-ok, who had gleefully dressed her up like a doll in a gown so far from her own taste.

"Brr — s-so cold."

Ring-ring—

A group of students with young faces pulled their bicycles to a stop in front of her.

A strange woman in a wedding dress standing on the bridge railing — curiosity getting the better of them, perhaps?

She tensed, bracing for trouble, when an unexpectedly gentle question came back to her.

"Miss? Are you okay?"

"…Mi— Miss?"