A Handkerchief to Wipe Away the Rain

"Where does it hurt?"

At that flash of sudden concern, Mu-young's eyes stung with unexpected heat. For one unguarded instant, it felt as though the boy who had once sworn to stay by her side forever had come back to stand before her.

"Or did Assemblywoman Min chew you out?"

The follow-up wrenched a hollow, rueful laugh out of her. This, too, was the old Baek Kang-ho she remembered — the knack for turning a heavy moment weightless in a single breath. He'd always been like this, dissolving her worries with some offhand joke until she couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.

"Chew me out? Who would dare."

Mu-young walked past him without stopping. She had been heading for the restroom to dry her soaked clothes when she abruptly halted. When she glanced back, Kang-ho was still standing there, exactly where he'd been — like a man who had been watching her retreating figure all along.

"Do you have a moment?"

By the time she collected herself, the thought had already taken hold. She needed to tell him that the matter of Representative Son's release had to stay secret. He didn't look like the type to blab or leak, but one could never be too careful. Since they were here anyway, it seemed better to say her piece.

"Something you need to tell me?"

"Yes."

She cast about for a suitable spot, and her gaze landed on a dressing room beside the waiting area, its lights off. Going any farther felt strange, so she stepped in first. Just as before, she made a point of finding and switching on the light at the entrance — a precaution against any accidental collision of bodies in the dark.

Behind her, at her thoroughness, Kang-ho let out a soft snort of laughter. Feeling it graze her ear only made her mood stranger.

"There's something I need to ask of you."

She stepped inside, turned, and laid out her business.

"And that would be?"

The moment she leaned against the shelf beneath the makeup mirror, he closed the distance between them. Far closer than necessary. The room wasn't cramped — which made it feel deliberate — and Mu-young narrowed her eyes.

"Do you have to stand that close?"

"You're about to share something no one else can hear, aren't you?"

Kang-ho shot back without a trace of shame. "Up close, only I catch every word."

Faced with that easy smirk, Mu-young surrendered, her expression giving way to resigned defeat. The way he lounged there with both hands tucked into his trouser pockets annoyed her too. She let her gaze travel over the posture, and when she lifted her head, Kang-ho was smiling as though he'd read her straight down to the bone.

"So I am what's bothering you."

And enjoying it, no less. The man's gift for turning people inside out was exactly the same as it had ever been. Which was probably why this stubbornness kept taking root in her. She wanted to quit — but who was she doing all this for, if not him? Her heart swayed on its own, refusing to find its center.

"Aren't you busy?"

She circled around to it — may I say what I came to say?

"I am. But I'll listen."

Kang-ho tilted his head with practiced ease.

"I'd like the matter of Representative Son's release kept quiet for now."

At her words, something cold flickered through his eyes. A trace of incredulity, and beneath it, a slow kindling of anger. He had clearly concluded that she'd raised this because she didn't trust him.

"What did Min Ji-ae say to you?"

Kang-ho cut straight to the bone, skipping several steps at once. His eyes said he'd already worked out how Min Ji-ae had cornered her, and exactly what suspicions she'd planted.

"It's nothing like that."

Mu-young had no choice but to play ignorant for now.

"Did you tell her the man you're marrying is me?"

He interrogated her like a prosecutor squeezing a confession. He had no intention of letting her deflect her way past this. Mu-young met his gaze.

"You didn't announce it the way you did on purpose, did you? In front of everyone?"

Truthfully, a little resentment was creeping in. This was not the timing, and not the manner, in which she had ever wanted her marriage made public.

But now that he had been the one to break the news, silence on her part would only make it look as though she were scheming behind closed doors. He had handed her the very pretext she now stood accused of. She couldn't help thinking it.

Of course, even without Kang-ho stepping in, Ji-ae had been harboring those doubts all along. Still, as she stood here being painted as an ambitious opportunist, she found herself wanting to blame this man's methods — just a little.

After all, he had only invoked their marriage as a convenient defense, a way out of the misunderstanding he'd landed in while tangled up with a close friend's younger sister. Maybe that was why every single one of his moves tonight grated on her nerves.

"So you did hear something."

He said it like a verdict. She tried to keep her face neutral — don't fall for this interrogation tactic — but it wasn't easy.

"Don't tell me you walked into this without even that much resolve?"

He meant: you should have seen Ji-ae's reaction coming. His eyes said the part he couldn't fathom was that she'd agreed to this marriage without even calculating how it would look to the world.

"I was only thinking of what I wanted."

There'd been no room to consider anything else, Mu-young fired back. His jaw tightened at her answer, and he said, low and deliberate:

"That sounds to me like a confession of how desperate you were."

"It was. And… I understand Assemblywoman Min's position, too."

"You still don't know enough to be afraid of politicians."

Kang-ho offered the advice with glacial eyes. "From now on, Min Ji-ae will use you, Lee Mu-young, as her weapon. She'll keep you at her side, work you to the bone, and never once cut you loose. Can you endure all of that?"

His gaze, reading several moves ahead, laid the situation out with piercing clarity. Mu-young's head knew it too. She had no way of predicting how Ji-ae would come at her. But smoothing things over now — declaring the marriage never happened — was no solution either. The water was already spilled; the trust could never be won back.

If so, then the right move was to salvage whatever goal she'd set out to achieve in the first place. However Ji-ae chose to use her, endurance seemed to be the only road left.

"I'll handle it myself."

At that clipped, decisive answer, Kang-ho laughed lightly.

"Your confidence, at least, I like. I was half afraid you'd say you couldn't go through with this marriage."

You were the one hoping I'd say exactly that, Mu-young shot him a look across the room. In response, Kang-ho drew his hands from his pockets and stepped in closer still. Legs planted, he leaned forward and braced one hand on the drawer cabinet behind her.

With nowhere left to retreat, Mu-young could only look up at him, cornered. Caging her in like a rat in a trap, Kang-ho spoke — quiet, but unmistakably clear.

"Even if you tell me now that you can't go through with this marriage, I have no intention of letting you out of it. Once I've made up my mind, I go all the way."

It felt as if the words were pressed directly against her heart; the hand braced on the shelf behind her tightened without her permission.

When I love someone, I love them to the very end.

That was what he had said, once. That Baek Kang-ho. It had been his vow in reply to her denial — her insistence that their meeting was a passing impulse, a mirage that would evaporate the moment they turned away from each other.

And now she had to hear those same words in this room, from a man who couldn't even remember her. How much that hurt, the man in front of her would never, ever know.

"So let's do this right. We're on the same team now."

Kang-ho straightened up, his voice almost casual. Mu-young could only hold his gaze, her mind gone blank. Then, without warning, a handkerchief appeared before her eyes.

"I can't tell if something got in your eye, or if the water just got to you."

He held it out, telling her to at least wipe her face, but Mu-young only stared at it. She'd been thinking of nothing but her soaked clothes; she hadn't realized water had splashed her face. No — perhaps it really had spilled from her eyes after all. When she didn't move, he pressed the handkerchief into her hand.

"Return the handkerchief. Ironed, if you please."

At that warning dressed up as a request, Mu-young let out another helpless laugh. Satisfied, Kang-ho slipped out of the dressing room. She looked down for a long moment at the handkerchief in her hand, then turned toward the mirror.

The eyes reflected there were still faintly damp, her makeup smudged at the corners. A passing stranger wouldn't have noticed. But thinking of him — of the man who'd seen it anyway, who'd bothered to mention it and press a handkerchief into her hands — only made her chest tighten further.

It was a symptom that had appeared the moment she'd run into that boy again. And the cure, as of now, looked impossible even to attempt. Without using the handkerchief, Mu-young tucked it into her pocket and left the dressing room, later than she should have.

"Where did you disappear to? You weren't answering your phone."

"A conversation on the other side ran long…"

The moment Kang-ho stepped into the waiting room, Jeong-pyo — phone in hand, pacing — rushed straight over. Kang-ho had said he'd only be gone a moment and had taken far longer, so the man's exasperation was fair enough.

His phone had rung while he was in the dressing room, but he'd switched it to silent and ignored it. He'd meant to come back from that encounter in the corridor with a word of political advice for the woman's sake; instead, he'd returned having lost a handkerchief to her.

Strangely, every so often, when that woman looked at him, he felt an odd sensation — a dull throb near his heart. Those eyes, glistening as though she were about to cry when she was only looking at him — was that just his oversensitive imagination?

Even to himself, the thought was absurd. He hadn't felt any such thing facing Hee-jin, mascara streaked, sobbing her eyes out. Back then, he hadn't even thought to offer her a handkerchief.

Kang-ho couldn't shake the feeling that all of this was a bad omen.

"Where's the script they sent over?"

When he asked, trying to clear his head, Jeong-pyo sprang into action and handed it over, then settled into the seat in front of him and added:

"Assemblyman, about that guest at lunch today—"

Kang-ho looked up at the unexpected report.

"I kept thinking his face was familiar. It finally came to me."

He meant he knew the man. Kang-ho gave an indifferent nod, eyes dropping to the script, only half listening — until Jeong-pyo uttered a name that snagged on something.

"He's Representative Son Tae-seung's son."

Ah. So that was it. A dry, humorless laugh escaped him. So it hadn't been someone younger after all — someone older. A man desperate enough to plunge forward without looking where he was going…

He swept the stray thoughts aside and forced his focus back onto the script.