An Unfamiliar Face

Time slipped by quickly, and two months had passed since Lee-hwan's funeral.

The wound his death left behind hadn't fully healed, but life couldn't simply stop waiting for them, either.

"I'm heading out. I made some new side dishes and left them in the fridge, so make sure you eat a proper lunch."

After leaving a string of nagging reminders with her mother, Lee-jin hurried out of the house.

Go Myeong-soon waved her off, but there wasn't a trace of energy in the gesture. Since Lee-hwan's death, she had barely been able to eat. Her face, gaunt from the weight she'd shed so rapidly over the past two months, looked especially haggard today.

The more she falls apart, the harder I have to hold myself together.

Lee-jin steadied her heart. Truthfully, she was afraid that if she didn't, she would be the next to crumble.

As a teenager, she had resented how her mother doted on her brother more than on her. But Lee-hwan was good at everything he did and endlessly warm-hearted, so at some point her resentment had quietly given way to understanding. After all, he hadn't just been a good son to their mother — he had been a good brother to her, too.

Lee-jin had studied ceramics in university and now ran her own workshop. Serenitas, worn with the mark of her own hands, was both her livelihood and her only sanctuary.

She used to travel outside to teach one-day classes as well. Word of mouth had spread, and just as the teaching requests were starting to pour in, disaster struck Lee-hwan. These days, all outside lectures were on hold.

Her reservation-based workshop still drew a steady stream of visitors — people hoping to try their hand at pottery, or wanting a special piece of ceramics made by their own hands — so she stayed quite busy.

By the time she finished the last class, which began at seven in the evening, it was nearly nine o'clock.

"Thank you for coming. Please visit us again."

As she saw the last customers out and turned to head back inside, she heard footsteps.

"Looks busy. Lots of customers again today, huh?"

"Oh, Kang-hyun-oppa."

The tall man who had been standing in the dark shadows stepped forward into the light. Lee-jin greeted him now with the ease of familiarity.

"Busy is a good thing. Come on in."

In the two months since Lee-hwan's funeral, the two of them had often eaten dinner together, or Kang-hyun would show up around closing time at the workshop. What had begun as her way of thanking him for all his help with the funeral arrangements — treating him to meals — had continued on ever since.

In the old days, Lee-hwan used to drop by around closing time, too, so Lee-jin felt nothing but comfort at Kang-hyun's visits.

"You haven't had dinner yet, have you? I thought we could eat together."

He set a takeout box on the table, brought all the way from a famous sushi restaurant.

"Thank you. Next time, I'll buy you something even better."

That was how she always was — anything received had to be returned in kind. Kang-hyun, who knew Lee-jin's nature better than anyone, allowed the corner of his mouth to curl upward.

If she knew this little game was exactly how I've kept these meetings going, what kind of face would she make?

"I got some for your mother, too. Bring it home to her."

"You're too kind, always looking after my mom like this."

"Hardly. Lee-hwan's mother is my mother, too."

At his glib reply, Lee-jin let out a soft laugh. Kang-hyun drank in her smiling face as though committing it to memory.

"Hey, you see that? This kid's little sister is goddamn gorgeous."

"Saw her smile the other day and my heart nearly stopped."

"Then let it stay stopped and go to your grave, why come back to life? Save yourself the trouble and keep your eyes off my sister."

"Man, Seo Lee-hwan, you didn't look it at all, but you're a total case of sister complex."

"You figuring that out only now?"

Seo Lee-jin had been fairly famous among her schoolmates growing up.

With a beauty that was hard to forget after a single glance, she became a minor celebrity the moment she enrolled. The foundation ran the middle school and high school on the same campus, so boys loitering around just hoping to catch a glimpse of her smile were everywhere.

But because Seo Lee-hwan barked like a rabid dog at any boy who so much as glanced in his little sister's direction, none of them found it easy to get close.

And through it all, the only one who could slip past Lee-hwan's guard and get near Lee-jin was Moon Kang-hyun.

Because even as a teenager, he knew how to keep his true feelings hidden.

Honestly, to Kang-hyun — who had been helping his grandfather with business and dealing with grown men since childhood — the boys of adolescence were nothing more than children playing pretend. If you were interested in someone, you simply didn't show it. That had never been a difficult thing for him.

Gazing at her smile now, he could almost hear the voices of those boys from the past, swarming the window every time Seo Lee-jin in her school uniform walked by.

The only difference between then and now was this: her smile belonged to him, and him alone.

"What do you think? This place has great sushi, right?"

The moment their eyes met, Kang-hyun asked the question with practiced smoothness. She, utterly unaware of what was running through his mind, nodded.

"Mm, it's delicious. You really do know all the best restaurants, oppa."

"Eat up. Have you been keeping your meals down lately?"

His gaze traveled over the slender wrist holding her chopsticks, the long, straight line of her nape.

"I've been eating well. Thanks for worrying about me."

She flashed him another lovely smile. But the shadow that the smile couldn't quite conceal needled at Kang-hyun's nerves.

They ate the takeout together, trading small talk. Once the meal was cleared away, Kang-hyun rolled up his sleeves and asked,

"You've got a lot to carry, don't you?"

Clay, glazes, and the other materials for her pottery classes were heavy things.

"No, it's fine. I've moved most of it already, and Jin-hee's coming by tomorrow to help."

Lee-jin waved her hands in flustered refusal. He'd been hauling heavy materials for her every time he stopped by the workshop, but she wasn't yet comfortable enough to dump a whole job on him just like that.

Not yet, huh.

Kang-hyun's eyes narrowed for a beat — then, as though her protest had never reached his ears, he simply moved. He already knew the workshop's layout by heart.

He ferried the materials off the display shelf to wherever each belonged, quick and effortless. Watching him, Lee-jin frowned briefly, then seemed to give up and busied herself tidying the studio instead.

With every move she made, objects sped back to their rightful places. By the time Kang-hyun finished moving the last of the materials and returned to the workroom, Lee-jin was putting plates onto a shelf.

Along one wall of the workroom, plates and ceramics sorted by shape and size were arranged in neat rows. The plate she was trying to shelve sat fairly high up.

Rising onto her toes, she reached to set it in place. The posture looked precarious — one small slip and she would topple over.

And sure enough — wobble. Her body tipped, just slightly.

It wasn't enough to cause any real accident. Left alone, she would right herself in a second. But Kang-hyun was not a man to let such a rare, precious opportunity slip past unused.

"You have to be careful."

He caught Lee-jin's waist with one hand and steadied the plate she'd been reaching for with the other. She sucked in a sharp breath at the unexpected contact.

Kang-hyun stood nearly 190 centimeters tall with a solid, muscular frame. With a body like his enveloping her from behind, the difference in their size was impossible to ignore.

"Oh... thank you."

Unsure what to do with the suddenly delicate atmosphere, Lee-jin laughed awkwardly. Kang-hyun wasn't uncomfortable at all — but whenever the air turned strange like this, once in a while, he never quite knew how to play it.

As if his only purpose had been to keep her from falling, he released her quickly. The hand wrapped around her waist withdrew at once — yet strangely, he didn't step back.

Lee-jin turned and looked up at him, her expression full of question. Sandwiched between the display shelf and Kang-hyun, she had little room to move.

The look on his face as he gazed down at her was somehow unfamiliar. Why was he wearing that expression?

It was a far cry from the harmless, ever-smiling face of Moon Kang-hyun, her brother's friend.

"Lee-jin, I'm about to say something really important..."

What on earth could it be, that he's building up the mood like this?

Caught up in the sly, deliberate air radiating off him, Lee-jin nodded slowly.

"I'd like you to look favorably on a proposal I'm about to make."

He hadn't even said what it was, yet somehow her heart was already racing.

"Wh-what is it?"

Her voice, forced out through a dry throat, cracked slightly. Seeing that, the corners of Kang-hyun's mouth curved into a soft round smile.

"You remember I told you I was designing a building? I just finished a traditional hanok, and it needs ceramics for the interior. I want you to take on that work."

"Huh? Ceramics?"

Lee-jin echoed him with a slightly dazed face. Perhaps because his proposal was the last thing she'd expected, her feelings tangled into something complicated.

"The fee will be generous, I promise. So scale back the workshop for a while and help me out."

He said it smiling, wearing the familiar face of the brother's friend she'd always known. That strange expression from moments ago might as well have been a dream — his face was exactly as it had always been.

"Hmm. Let me think about it. I don't have to answer right away, right?"

The closeness between them felt stifling, and Lee-jin asked the question while subtly angling her gaze away.

"Of course. Take your time. I'll send over the proposal, so look it over and we'll talk."

Having said his piece, Kang-hyun stepped back. Lee-jin hurried to slip free from where she'd been cornered.

"Oh, and Lee-jin..."

At the sound of her name in his voice, her footsteps stopped.

"Were you hoping for a different kind of proposal?"

Under his gaze, which seemed to see straight through to her innermost thoughts, her breath caught in her throat once more.