Bring a Sandwich

She had taken it for granted that she would be having dinner with Lee-kyung, and when the evening fell apart, the feeling it left behind was strange. Won-young's lips parted.

"Seonbae, have you been busy lately?"

"I wouldn't think so."

"He said he was, though."

Ji-an went on, snipping green stems short with her scissors.

"He's not. After his exhibition ended two months ago, he said he was going to rest for a while. Oh—maybe it's the lessons?"

"Lessons?"

"Yeah. There's a student who comes to learn painting from my brother these days. About twice a week? Aside from looking after that student's lessons, he shouldn't have anything to be busy with."

"A woman?"

Ji-an, who had been speaking so evenly, lifted her head, and her eyes went wide. Those already large eyes swelled until they shone far too brightly.

"No. The name was Oh Se-hyung. Sounds like a man's name, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. A name like that is obviously a man. Seonbae hates getting tangled up with the opposite sex for no reason."

"......"

"What?"

"It's just the way it came out. That sounded an awful lot like jealousy."

"It didn't."

"It really didn't?"

Embarrassed, and a little mortified, Won-young hiked her shoulders for no reason at all and then let them drop.

"I really can't hide a thing in front of you. Fine. The truth is, I can't even picture Seonbae getting involved with any woman who isn't me."

"What is that. It sounds exactly like you're saying you still have feelings for my brother. What do you think?"

"Hard to say."

With a look that all but asked, No way—is that actually true?, Ji-an stopped what she was doing and came to stand beside Won-young. It was the face of someone with far too many questions.

Strangely pricked, Won-young let her gaze flee this way and that.

"It's not what you're thinking. I had a younger boyfriend until not that long ago. You know that."

"Mm."

"Hey, I said it's not that."

"Who said it was?"

"It's not. It's not."

She trailed after Ji-an, who had gone back to tending the flowers, pressing her insistence that it wasn't true. Even so, when Ji-an answered like a person whose soul had stepped out of her body, Won-young bit down on her lower lip almost at once.

There had been a reason she flew from Florence back to Korea. She could not say Ryu Lee-kyung was the whole of that reason, but she could not say he had not been even one percent of it.

Maybe I...

Yes. Maybe I...

"I still don't really know. But yesterday, the moment I got to Korea and saw Seonbae's face, I was glad. Seeing him for the first time in years, in that place—his face mixed in with the smell of dawn—it felt strange."

Her eyes tangled with Ji-an's. How much Won-young had loved Lee-kyung. How fiercely the two of them had burned, for a while. How she had set that love down.

As the friend who knew all of it, Ji-an had nothing she could say.

Only this.

"Won-young."

"Yeah?"

"Go see him."

"What?"

"That guy isn't busy. I'll swear to it. If you go, he'll be glad. Just show up and stick your face out."

"......"

"Do it the way you used to."

Could she, though? Barging in after he had said something had come up—when they were young, that had been nothing but nerve, but things were different now. There was no chance Seonbae would indulge her if she charged in heedless, the way she once had.

They had broken up. They were two people who sometimes called and shared the ordinary pieces of a day. Nothing more than that, and nothing less.

"Ji-an."

By the time she spoke the name, Ji-an had already called Lee-kyung and was holding the connected phone out to her. It startled her, but at the familiar voice coming from the other end, Won-young answered before she knew she meant to.

"Seonbae? It's me. Won-young."

"Yeah. Talk."

"Just let me see your face for a minute. Thank you for taking me home yesterday—thinking about it, I don't think I even said a proper hello. I'm heading over now. Should I bring something? Anything you feel like eating?"

It was nothing like the feeling of seeing him at dawn. She had thought of him only as someone comfortable and familiar, someone she could look at again without strain, but now she was uneasy, and awkward. Her heart beat to a strange degree, her chest tight with it.

Perhaps the reason she had been able to call him now and then from abroad was that she had believed he was someone she would never meet again. She hadn't known it when all she heard was his voice. The moment she faced Lee-kyung in the flesh, the feeling turned uncanny, and the fact that she had been with him all through the early morning seemed like a dream.

She held her breath and waited for his answer.

"Bring a sandwich."

"Oh—okay."

Only then did Won-young drag in a breath.

She stopped at a bakery nearby and, besides the sandwiches, chose all kinds of bread. In particular she bought more than ten twisted Korean doughnuts, the kind Ryu Lee-kyung had loved ten years ago.

She hurried as if something had taken hold of her. By the time she came halfway back to herself, she was already standing at the door of his studio.

Won-young pressed the bell.

A moment later, footsteps. The door opened, and he came into view with his bangs fallen to just beneath his eyebrows. Dark gray T-shirt, loose pants—dressed as carelessly as a person could be, and still carrying an air no one could easily draw near.

Eyes that looked almost painfully sharp found her.

"Come in."

"Sorry. You said you were busy, and I still asked to see your face."

She slipped off the heels she had worn and set them neatly by the entryway.

Following him at an unhurried pace, she could not keep from marveling at a studio so much larger and more refined than anything ten years ago could compare to. Even a rough guess put it past two thousand square feet, a penthouse of no small size: a handsome sweep of the city through the panoramic windows, an easy sofa, a broad table of marble. More than any of that, the long-awaited workspace where Lee-kyung painted all day was so considered it might as well have been a gallery lifted whole and set down here.

"Wow. Seonbae, you really made it."

Won-young put the sandwiches she had bought into the refrigerator and turned to look at him.

"I got a bunch, so take them out whenever you want. No, wait. Sandwiches don't keep, so you ought to eat them soon. Want one now?"

"No."

"You're not hungry?"

"I am."

"Then—"

She had been about to tell him to hurry up and eat one, but as she reached to open the refrigerator again, Lee-kyung stopped her. He looked at her with eyes that had gone a little cold.

"Let's go."

"Huh?"

"You said you wanted to drink with me."

"Is that all right?"

Lee-kyung gave a short laugh, as if to ask since when she had ever stopped to consider a thing like that. By the time she found her way back from being struck by that smile, he had already gone into the room and come out with a coat.

In truth, she had imagined it many times in Florence—how she ought to act if she ever met Ryu Lee-kyung again. She had run the simulation over and over, in every version she could think of, and none of it helped. When a man who had lived for years only inside her imagination tangled himself stubbornly back into her life, Won-young did not know how she was supposed to behave.

She pressed a heavy hand to the place just beneath her heart. She hoped, this time, that it would not be love. She prayed she would not like him.

Ryu Lee-kyung and Noh Won-young. The only feelings that ought to fit between those names were a little pity, a fierce admiration, kindness and care. Just that much. Not that it would be so.

"There's a tent bar nearby. That's fine, isn't it?"

Lee-kyung asked as he pushed his arms into a black jacket.

"Yeah."

When they stepped out of the studio and stopped side by side in front of the elevator, Won-young very nearly forgot how to breathe. She stood there blank, even the button forgotten, and in her place he reached his arm out to the right.

The profile of the man she had loved so terribly shook her. Her vision blurred all over, and her head went light. The world she had never known as anything but him warped out of shape, and a very old memory raked its way through her.

"Noh Won-young."

"......"

"Won-young."

"Huh?"

She looked up, and he was already inside the elevator. Leaning against the cold wall with his hands shoved carelessly into his pockets, he tipped his chin.

"You getting on, or what."

"Ah—right."

She blinked. Even in that slip of a moment her eyes tangled with Lee-kyung's, and Won-young hurried into the elevator where he waited.