The Rolling Pin at Midnight

Seol-hee quickened her pace. They'd said it would take twenty minutes. It hadn't even taken ten. The man who had been leaning against his car pushed himself away from it. Seol-hee rolled the candy around in her mouth once, then took it out. When she bowed her head in greeting, the man gave a silent nod in return.

"If you'd told me in advance, I would have come to you. Here... your shoes."

She held out the paper bag straight away. He didn't even give the shoes a proper look. He only gazed down at her, standing face to face.

"You don't need to check the shoes?"

She asked, puzzled by the heat of his gaze. Only then did the man take the shoes out and inspect them, if only for form's sake.

"They're clean. Thank you."

"Not at all. I just hope I haven't been a nuisance for nothing. I'm the one who should have delivered them, after all..."

Just as she was racking her brain for some way to repay his trouble, Seol-hee brightened and rummaged in her pocket.

"Wait a moment. I don't have much to give you... but here."

Do Yi-hyuk looked down, puzzled, at the lime-green bar candy thrust suddenly in front of him. The moment he saw the wrapper, unchanged despite the passage of time, a fragment of the past flashed through his mind.

Seol-hee found his strange silence utterly baffling. His atmosphere had definitely changed since she'd seen him a few weeks ago. Could it be that he didn't want the candy?

"If you don't like it..."

Just as she moved to withdraw her hand, he accepted it.

Yi-hyuk stared down at it for a moment, then exhaled a low breath and murmured,

"Today has been... unusually hard."

Seol-hee made her slow way home. Chewing thoughtfully on the finished candy stick, she sank deep into thought.

Today has been... unusually hard.

The image of the man talking to himself kept snagging at her footsteps. She'd decided it was none of her business, an excessive amount of concern, and had turned away as if she hadn't heard. Perhaps he, too, had simply had an unlucky day, like hers. That was the assumption she'd settled on.

She had just turned the corner toward home when—

"Huh?"

Someone seized her wrist. Startled, she whipped around by reflex. Standing there was Dong-chan, his brow knotted in fury.

"Hey, you—come with me!"

"Let go of me!"

When Dong-chan roughly yanked her wrist, Seol-hee flinched with fear. She immediately twisted her arm free.

"I said let go!"

Ignoring her resistance, Dong-chan dragged her along by force. Unable to bear it any longer, Seol-hee bit down on his arm with all her strength.

"Argh! Son of a—! Hey!"

Worried the bite might have given him some disease, Dong-chan scrubbed frantically at his wrist, staring at Seol-hee in disbelief.

"You... you just bit me?"

Watching him flounder, too flustered to know what to do, felt exhilarating. In the past, she would have followed him without a word of protest. But not anymore.

"Don't you dare grab me like that."

She glared at him. This was the man who wouldn't raise his voice in front of his own mother, who groveled and fawned — yet with her, the easy target, he bullied and bellowed, threw things to frighten her whenever it suited him. It would have been easy for him. He was the kind of man who couldn't even muster pity for a weak animal he'd caught and caged.

"Hey, Woo Seol-hee. How... how could you do this to me—"

This was a man who deserved nothing less than to be grabbed by the collar and buried alive, but she held herself back. She exhaled briefly, trying to rein in the emotions surging up and down inside her. She tried to say it as gently as she could, but her fist clenched all the same.

"That's why... you use words. I'm startled too, you know."

Before Seol-hee's calm face, Dong-chan actually shrank back. Ever since the wedding, she had kept feeling strangely unfamiliar. She was the woman who used to tremble at the mere sight of a wound on her own fingertip. But something about her had subtly shifted.

"Fine, I'll let it slide, just this once. So come with me. There's something I need to say."

Throwing his weight around, Dong-chan turned away, assuming she would follow as she always had. But when he looked back, she was walking the other way, back the way she'd come.

"Seriously—Woo Seol-hee!"

He sprinted after her and planted himself in her path. He grabbed her wrist again to drag her off, but the bite throbbed and he lowered the hand he'd raised.

"Why won't you ever listen?"

"If you have something to say, come at dawn."

"I have something to say right now!"

"Then say it here."

"God, you're so damn stubborn."

His pride was wounded, but Dong-chan forced himself to hold it in. Pressing a hand to his forehead, he lowered his voice.

"That guy earlier — from the intersection. Who is he?"

"What guy?"

Seol-hee blinked at him with wide, round eyes and stared him dead in the face. The word had slipped out of her mouth without hesitation. The Seol-hee she knew used to watch her language around him, as if carefully managing her image.

"You... you're swearing..."

"I swear all the time. Want me to do some more? You're a pathetic, spineless, worthless son of a bitch."

Though the curses spilled from her mouth, Seol-hee's eyes shone clear and bright.

"My father worked at construction sites his whole life. Growing up in a place swarming with grown men, the first swear word I ever learned was one for bastards exactly like you."

Seol-hee stepped forward, one deliberate stride, and lowered her voice to a whisper.

"So. If you want a swearing battle with me, keep going."

"Ah, for chrissake—"

Caught off guard by her momentum, the curse rising in Dong-chan's throat slid right back down. Somehow, meeting Seol-hee's gaze wasn't so easy anymore.

Taking a deep breath, Dong-chan reminded himself why he'd been angry with her in the first place.

"So... that man you met at the intersection. Who is he?"

He picked his words carefully, trying not to curse. Right up until the wedding, he'd hidden his true nature well. But once the marriage to Seol-hee fell apart, irritation and rage kept surging up unbidden, and it was all he could do to choose his words.

Sweeping his fallen bangs back, Dong-chan chewed on his lower lip.

"Is he... why you bolted from the wedding hall?"

He had seen it with his own two eyes, unmistakably. He'd been on his way to meet Seol-hee. He'd witnessed her talking with a man at the intersection. With the man's back to the road, he'd only managed a glimpse from behind, but a man showing up at this hour of the night was proof enough that they weren't just casual acquaintances. On top of that, the man he'd glimpsed was taller than him, and his car was in a different class at a glance. He'd wondered if it was the very man he suspected. No — that man would be in America right now. There was no way he'd be in Korea.

"Playing the noble hermit, and then in the end you scrap the whole wedding over a man and pin it on me!"

Watching the square footage of his flaring nostrils, ready to spout fire, Seol-hee couldn't help it — she let out a snort of laughter.

Are you laughing at me right now?

"Hey! Woo Seol-hee, you—!"

"The man from the intersection is someone I met after the wedding."

Seol-hee said only the truth. She didn't bother explaining in detail. There was nothing between them, after all. She didn't even know his name.

But at this answer, offered up as if it were an excuse, Dong-chan sputtered, dumbfounded.

"You expect me to believe that?"

"Then don't."

"Argh!"

Nothing he threw at her landed. That was what was driving him out of his mind.

Dong-chan could neither curse nor shout. Instead, he took his frustration out on an innocent trash bag left by the roadside, kicking it over and over. After a few blows the bag tore, and its contents spilled out. When some unidentifiable filth splattered onto his designer shoes, he stopped kicking and grimaced.

"Oh, for God's sake. Disgusting!"

Seol-hee looked at him with contempt. If she'd known this side of him from the start, she never would have married him. The moment he slammed his foot down, everything he'd hidden came spilling out.

Having barely composed himself, Dong-chan stood before Seol-hee.

"Fine. Good. Let's both wrap things up with whoever it is, and start over."

"I seem to remember saying I wouldn't marry without love. Care to say it again?"

"Forget that. Yes... from now on, let's love each other. Truly, with everything we've got. Deal?"

At Dong-chan's nonsense, Seol-hee met his eyes in earnest. Expressionless, her gaze was calmer than it had ever been. With no anger and no hatred, she spoke low and even, the way one addresses a weed not worth the effort of pulling.

"Jin Dong-chan. I will never love you, not even if I die. And..."

Seol-hee continued, her voice level.

"Blocking me from getting a job isn't going to make me come back to you. Not in a million years."

Dong-chan flinched, his eyelids fluttering.

"If nowhere in Korea will take me, I'll go abroad. If that fails too, I'll disappear deep into the mountains and live off the land. Works out nicely, actually. I can shoot an episode of 'I'm a Natural Person off to Care for My Father.'"

Dong-chan's eyes wavered, visibly. He hadn't considered the possibility of Seol-hee going overseas or vanishing without a trace. If Seol-hee truly disappeared from before his eyes, it would be a catastrophe. Seol-hee was vital to Dong-chan and In-ok. All the more so as long as they hadn't found anyone to replace her. The mere thought of bearing, with his own body, the blame and fury that would come crashing down on him made him dizzy.

"Are... are you threatening me?"

"If it sounded like a threat, your instincts aren't bad."

Seol-hee turned to leave, having said her piece, then pointed at the security camera that had been watching the two of them. At her silent gesture, Dong-chan's eyes followed.

"Clean up the trash before you go. It's all on camera."

"Damn it... my foot hurts."

Watching him swallow the rest of his curse, Seol-hee clicked her tongue. Dong-chan, grimacing in disgust, shoved the trash back into the torn bag.

As Seol-hee sighed and turned away, Dong-chan shouted after her.

"Woo Seol-hee, don't you walk away! I'm not finished talking. So are you actually dating that guy? Are you really not marrying me? You're not seriously going to disappear into the mountains, are you?"

She was walking toward home, wondering how on earth she could seal that mouth shut, when—

"Seol-hee!"

From the end of the alley, Song-geun appeared in a checkered pajama top and slippers. In his hand, incongruously, he carried a wooden rolling pin.

"Dad!"

Song-geun rushed over and planted himself in front of her.

"What's that?"

"I made a huge batch of your favorite kimchi dumplings to put in the freezer before my surgery. I was out borrowing the landlord's freezer when I figured I'd come find you."

"Oh, right."

Seol-hee subtly stepped to block Song-geun's view of what lay behind her.

"But why are you so late? Were you meeting some..."

She saw it. She couldn't help but see it — the murderous light slowly gathering in Song-geun's eyes as he peered over her shoulder.

Crouched over the burst trash bag, wrestling with its contents, Dong-chan suddenly felt a chill run through him.

"What the hell is that son of a bitch doing here."

Before anyone could stop him, Song-geun marched forward, step by heavy step. Sensing Song-geun with some animal instinct, Dong-chan slowly rose to his feet. A brief standoff followed.

Song-geun shifted his weight onto the balls of his slippers and tightened his grip on the rolling pin. Early-stage stomach cancer had stolen his appetite, shrunk his meals, and melted away even the muscles forged over a lifetime on construction sites — but in that moment, vitality surged through him. Pain, too, was powerless before a father's love.

"Dad!"

And so, in the dead of night, a ferocious chase between Song-geun and Dong-chan began.