Stay the Night

As soon as her mother disappeared into the kitchen to fetch more rice, Ji-su turned her back on the huge spread laid out across the living room table and reeled Jae-gyeom in under her breath.

"Yoon Jae-gyeom. What do you think you're doing?"

"Doing? Eating."

"No. Quit messing around."

"Your mother's cooking is no joke. Would it be too much if I asked her to pack me some to go?"

Ji-su heaved a deep sigh and pressed a hand to her forehead. First, get him fed... Right, the moment he finishes eating, we leave. Come to think of it, how lucky was it that she'd dodged her mother's questions by promising to "sit down and talk about" this boyfriend sometime. As far as her mother knew, the only thing that had changed was that Kim Young-baek had become Yoon Jae-gyeom. It was a little unfortunate that her mother had taken such a liking to Jae-gyeom, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Fruit and juice appeared on the table once the meal was cleared. As if she'd been waiting for Jae-gyeom to finish every last bite, her mother turned to the two of them with a smile and posed her question.

"By the way, I mean... how on earth did you keep a relationship secret for six years? Even if he lived far away, you should have brought him home ages ago so I could see him often."

Just as Ji-su braced herself for the conversation she'd expected, Jae-gyeom casually knocked it off course.

"Ma'am, we haven't actually been together for six years. I loved her on my own. And that goes back much further than six years."

"Oh my goodness. So that's how it was. And here I was, completely in the dark."

Her mother then naturally brought up recent events.

"I had a mild stroke a while back. Thankfully, I lost consciousness while I was with the neighbors, so they got me straight to the hospital. I recovered quickly and barely have any lingering effects, but going through something like that, I couldn't stop worrying—what if I died, and my Ji-su was left all alone?"

"Mom. Why are you bringing that up?"

"Jae-gyeom deserves to know!"

Gripping Jae-gyeom's hand, her mother laid her heart bare.

"So I told Ji-su I wished she'd get married soon. And out of nowhere, she suddenly confesses she has a boyfriend. And that he, on his end, is in a hurry to get married too."

"Ah. Yes."

"Oh dear, am I talking too much?"

From there, the conversation drifted naturally toward family. In a calm, even tone, Jae-gyeom offered a courteous explanation—his mother had passed away long ago; the truth was his family situation was complicated; his father was living with someone else. Brief, dry confessions, delivered as though recounting someone else's story.

"That's why I... never found the courage to approach Ji-su. But I'm truly grateful just to meet you like this now and pay my respects, ma'am. If you oppose us... then I'll simply keep doing right by Ji-su and by you, until the day you give us your blessing."

Tears welled in her mother's eyes.

"Your poor mother. How heartbroken she must have been, closing her eyes for the last time and leaving behind such a wonderful son."

Her mother wept as she projected herself into the position of Jae-gyeom's late birth mother, then followed with the observation that no one gets to choose their parents—which was also her way of saying that a complicated family background was no reason to object. Still, understanding his circumstances was one thing; her mother didn't shy away from the practical questions.

"But what about your relationship with your stepmother? I worry... that our Ji-su might go off and marry into a family that won't love her."

"I'd like to tell you it's good, but I almost never see her."

"......."

"I have no intention of getting entangled with the rest of my family. I can promise you she'll never suffer over in-laws. Not on my watch."

At that, her mother couldn't quite manage a smile. However much she liked Jae-gyeom and however dependable he seemed, he was, at the end of the day, a stranger she had met for the first time today. She couldn't very well take at face value a promise like she'll never suffer over in-laws from a man she'd known for a few hours.

The conversation lapsed into a lull. Ji-su knew it was time to step in.

"Mom. We have to go now."

"What? Go? Go where?"

Ji-su shot to her feet so quickly that Jae-gyeom, reading the room, chimed in without missing a beat.

"Something urgent came up at Ji-su's office—she has to go in tomorrow. It's a morning shift, so we really should be leaving now."

"Oh no, but I already put fresh bedding on the bed in Ji-su's old room... and what about breakfast tomorrow? There's all this food—I can't eat it all by myself."

Her mother declared that she'd pack it up for them to take, then hurried into the kitchen. Ji-su quickly followed her in.

Though the smile had left her face, her mother's expression as she transferred food into containers wasn't exactly grim. This was a connection that wouldn't be carried forward anyway, so Ji-su had no intention of adding anything more to it.

"This one I'd packed to give you when you went back up—good thing I put some aside earlier too. If you were leaving this suddenly, you should've said so from the start."

"Then what's all this?"

Containers even bigger than the ones she'd called her own began stacking up, neat as a tower.

"This is braised short ribs, and this is the kimchi I just made. Goodness, it's chaos. Jae-gyeom seemed to really enjoy the side dishes earlier—should I add the stir-fried anchovies and the soy-braised beef too?"

"Mom, no. Stop it."

"Stop what? You know how he misses a home-cooked meal—doesn't it break your heart a little to see that? *Sigh*. It hurts Mom's heart, that's all."

Then, glancing at Ji-su, her mother lowered her voice as if worried Jae-gyeom might hear from outside.

"I trust you."

"Huh?"

"What does it matter what his family is like or whatever else? When you're married, it's the two of you living that life. When you brought him home saying you wanted to marry him, that meant you'd already made up your mind to build a good life with him. That's how decisive and capable my daughter is."

Ji-su couldn't bring herself to agree.

The truth was, the decision had been made in a rush of impulse—shaken by her mother's collapse, and after Young-baek's family had wielded lines like six years together means it's time to marry and you might think she's still young, but my son is at marriageable age like weapons to pressure her into a wedding. If she were truly the decisive, capable daughter Im Ji-su her mother believed in, none of today's mess would have happened in the first place.

"...Mom, I'm sorry."

Sorry for being such a disappointment of a daughter. Sorry even for this very moment, making a man she barely knew bow to her mother under a false introduction as her future groom.

"Sorry for what? We'll talk more about Jae-gyeom later, just the two of us."

"No, there's nothing more to talk about later."

"It's not right, leaving a man sitting out there all alone. Even without words, you can tell he probably grew up lonely. Be good to him."

Unwilling to keep lying, Ji-su couldn't bring herself to promise anything—she simply let her mother's hands push her out of the kitchen. Taking the paper bags bulging with side dishes, Jae-gyeom bowed with perfect formality. His thanks for the meal sent a fresh bloom of warmth across her mother's face.

"My Ji-su... I never meant to marry you off so early. When you collapsed out of nowhere like this, all this talk of weddings came up—but the truth is, whenever I did imagine the day, I just hoped you'd marry into an ordinary family and be loved in an ordinary way. So when Jae-gyeom said his 'family situation is complicated,' honestly, my heart dropped. But..."

"Yes, ma'am. Please speak freely."

"Ji-su says he's good, so I'm going to like him too."

"I will never give you a single thing to worry about."

The summer night in the countryside was unusually pitch black. After hugging her mother one more time and promising to see her at Chuseok, Ji-su climbed into Jae-gyeom's car.

She'd meant to scold him—what if you'd introduced yourself with your real name and said Kim Young-baek?—but instead, she simply passed along the quiet words of her heart.

"Thank you. You went through a lot today."

"What's with all this thanking? You've been at it all day."

She found herself thinking, all over again, how handsome he looked with his face set in pure concentration on the road. Feeling her gaze, he flashed her a smile, and she hastily looked away.

The clock on the car's flashy dashboard warned that nine o'clock was fast approaching. The last bus from Gyechon to Seoul usually left at nine thirty.

Ji-su had assumed, naturally, that they were headed to Gyechon Station—but the car was retracing the road they'd come by earlier.

"Huh? This isn't the way to Gyechon Station."

"You left your phone at my place."

Come to think of it, no calls had come. She distinctly remembered talking to her mother before they left, and... ah, she must have set it down while she was tying his tie and walked right out without it.

Stopping by Jae-gyeom's house meant missing the train. But she couldn't just go without her phone—or no, wait, should she? The shorter the deliberation, the better. Ji-su sorted through her thoughts at speed.

"Fine. We stop by your place, I grab my phone, and we head out."

"And once we're out, where exactly are you going?"

"I'll call a taxi and get to the town center first."

"And after that?"

Gyechon's town center had exactly three places to stay. The Gyechon Motel, the Gyechonjang, and the Gyechon Self Check-in Inn.

The options were woefully, seriously thin. He knew that perfectly well; that was why he was asking. A military base sat nearby, and on weekends the town was always humming with soldiers on leave.

Far up ahead, his house—the one where the two of them had briefly lingered earlier—was coming into view. The hand gripping Ji-su's seatbelt tightened. Not strength, exactly—more like nerves. Was it some premonition of what Jae-gyeom was about to say? Or, possibly, expectation?

"It's the weekend. There won't be a single vacant room in town."

"......."

"Stay the night."