A Fate in Its Season

Ji-an was stirring the tteokbokki she had thrown together to eat right then when she glanced up at Won-young, who sat across from her looking half out of her mind. The two of them did not keep many secrets from each other—not when they could talk about a dream this outrageous.

Won-young answered with a face steeped in disappointment.

"The alarm went off. Of all moments, I woke up right then."

Ji-an picked up the egg and set it on Won-young's bowl. Only one egg ever went into the tteokbokki, and when she ate it with Lee-kyung she never once gave hers up—yet for Won-young, there was nothing she could not hand over. She wrinkled her nose.

"So. You got thoroughly chewed out last night?"

"Yeah."

"And you said you weren't doing anything with my brother. It hasn't even been twenty-four hours, Won-young."

It was as good as asking whether she had fallen for Ryu Lee-kyung all over again without lasting a single day, and Won-young laughed without a sound.

"You don't get it, do you?"

"Get what."

"Your brother is seriously good-looking."

"Ugh."

No matter how hard she tried to get used to it, the one thing that never got easier was people praising her brother Ryu Lee-kyung's looks until their mouths went dry. Objectively, yes—she knew he had a decent face. What she meant was that it was nowhere near worth praise like this.

"Seriously, what part of that guy is supposed to be handsome?"

Rummaging through her bag, Won-young pulled a compact mirror from her pouch and held it up to Ji-an.

"He looks like this."

"Huh?"

"He looks like this. Just with shorter hair."

"…"

"People still ask for your number all the time, don't they? A girl who looks like you, and the owner of a flower shop on top of it. Be honest. Do men swarm you, or don't they?"

Ji-an could not answer lightly. It would have been absurd to pretend she did not know that both siblings drew eyes wherever they went, thanks to the superior genes they had inherited from their parents. From her school days on, her popularity had been extraordinary—boys from other schools asking for her number, or turning up unannounced outside the gates, more of them than she could count.

Even so, she had always found other people's gazes a burden. If a stranger's sleeve so much as brushed hers, her heart dropped with a thud, and at the mere thought that someone's hand might touch her, it felt as if she might stop breathing altogether. She wanted to be alone, and at the same time she wanted no one to leave her alone.

Even then—when her breathing sped up before she knew it, when her whole body trembled, when she was cold and the tears would not stop—Ji-an wanted to live. She had never once wanted to die. And yet panic disorder, whether she wished it or not, regardless of what she wanted, often drove her to a place where death seemed to crash over her and she might never draw another breath.

It was the day a rather unusual transfer student, Noh Won-young, stepped deep into Ji-an's life. Won-young was the only friend who understood her exactly as she was, without Ji-an ever having to explain her symptoms. She never once asked why Ji-an collapsed, and on the days the attacks came on hard, she was the friend who took off the coat she was wearing and silently covered Ji-an's whole body with it.

The pool Ji-an had thought she could never enter, the shopping mall, even the school trip—all of it had been possible because Won-young was there. Sometimes like a mother, sometimes like an older sister, she was the one who always stepped forward and claimed the place of Ryu Ji-an's guardian. In those days, because Won-young was there, Ji-an could do anything. She wanted to repay that kindness for the rest of her life.

Watching Ji-an sink briefly into old memories, Won-young waved a hand in front of her.

"Hello? Unni's asking. Did the men swarm, or didn't they?"

Instead of answering, Ji-an offered a shy smile that meant yes.

"Was there a handsome one among them?"

"Not really."

"See? Your face looks like this, so of course your standards are sky-high!"

"They are not."

"This is not the time for you to be worrying about your brother. You should meet someone too."

Ji-an smiled bitterly. The reason she had never been able to properly be with a man had a great deal to do with the father she had watched as a child. Her childhood had been an unbroken string of unusually unhappy days. Every day something shattered and something broke, and the blows her father hurled at her mother kept her living in fear the whole time.

He was a terrible hypocrite. On the days of his exhibitions, Ji-an always had to wear her very best clothes, hold her mother's hand, and smile as if she were innocent. Before other people's eyes her father acted as though he cherished her mother, and the moment they came home she was forced to face his true face, invariably seized by rage.

And then—the night of that incident.

Ji-an fainted.

She could not bring herself to tell Won-young this story. All she had told her, back in childhood, was that her father was in prison, and that he had committed a crime. Won-young, who asked nothing more, told Ji-an her own secret that day. And so the two of them became the closest of friends.

Sometimes Ji-an thought it would have been better if Noh Won-young had been a man. If you had been a man, I probably could have started the kind of love everyone else gets to have. And so, often, she thought something else as well: that she envied her brother, Ryu Lee-kyung. It made her blood boil that he had let a woman like Won-young slip away, and yet, looking at it another way, she thought she might understand—why, back then, he had not held on to Won-young as she left.

Ji-an looked at her, cheerful as ever, as if last night had barely left a mark. She ached to cheer on that stubbornness of Won-young's, the kind that seized whatever she wanted by whatever means it took.

"Won-young."

"Yeah."

"Do you know the saying a fate in its season?"

"Yeah, I've heard it a lot. I don't know what it actually means."

"It's a Buddhist term. It means nothing in this world happens until its season comes. So the person you're meant to meet, you'll meet no matter what. The person meant to leave will leave, no matter what you do. And a bond that's meant to be formed will be formed, one way or another."

"…"

"Give it everything you've got. I'm on your side."

In her heart Ji-an prayed, and prayed again. Please, let this be the season their fate was meant to arrive. For Ryu Lee-kyung, and for Noh Won-young. Let them have only a beautiful love. Let them not be hurt. Let them be happy, all the way through. If I could see a love like that, I think I could find the courage too. Please. Please—this time, let it come true.

She wished it, fiercely, and wished it again.

Won-young stood before the front door of Lee-kyung's studio. Coming back here again after only a day, without a shred of composure—it was enough to wound her pride, but she did not care about that at all. She had thought about calling first, then changed her mind and simply pressed the bell.

Ding-dong. A moment later the door opened, and he leaned his face out. She had thought it would be a mercy if he did not ignore her coldly, but a gentle Lee-kyung said only, short and plain:

"Come in."

If I admit I felt a little relieved, will I look pathetic? The face that had been locked stiff finally loosened a little.

"Were you working, Seonbae?"

He swept his bangs back as if it hardly mattered, and again answered only what he had been asked.

"Yeah."

Won-young looked for a vase for the red roses she had brought from Ji-an's Flower Shop. Rummaging through someone else's kitchen without permission did not seem right, so she was about to ask Lee-kyung—but he had already found a vase and was washing it. She watched his face.

"Leave it. I'll do it."

"How much do you remember?"

"Huh?"

"Last night."

At the low voice cutting through the air, Won-young flinched. She had no intention of lying.

"Mm. If you want exactly how far I remember—you said you didn't want me, and that next time the three of us should go on a trip with Ji-an. Up to there?"

"That's all?"

"Yeah. I was wrong. I'm sorry I latched onto you the second I got back to Korea and couldn't act like a rational person."

Lee-kyung's brow creased, just slightly. She could not understand why he would frown when she was apologizing. Still, she had to apologize. For not remembering all of last night, for the things she had blurted out without thinking, for acting like a child—she wanted to apologize for all of it.