The Call He Didn't Want

After that, the conversation about the wedding continued, but nothing went the way Hye-seon wanted. Kang-ho made sure of it. He took Mu-young's side completely, voicing her position as if it were his own — to the point where Mu-young almost wanted to tell him to ease off.

And so the sang-gyeon-rye came to a close, however unevenly, and Mu-young's family was the first to head down to the lobby on the first floor. While they waited for their parked car to be brought around, Mu-young offered her uncle's family her apologies and her gratitude.

"Thank you for coming. I know how busy you all are."

"What are you even saying," Jung-mi said, her tone turning serious, and Ji-soo cut in.

"Right. We're family, aren't we? Don't let them get you down, unni. We won on numbers, anyway."

"Won what? Is this a fight?"

Jung-mi gave her daughter a look of pure exasperation. Off in the distance, Hyun-sik stood waiting for the car with a cigarette clamped between his lips, and all Mu-young could do was watch him from afar.

"Mom, a sang-gyeon-rye is a battle of nerve. I researched it all online before I came. And unni — seeing him in action today, brother-in-law's actually pretty good."

"Good at what? Honestly, the way you talk…"

"Tell him I officially accept him as my brother-in-law starting today."

"Ah, the car's here. Mu-young, we'll manage on our own, so go take care of your business. Ji-soo's dad, let's go, come on."

Jung-mi blocked her daughter's mouth with one hand and climbed into the car as Ji-soo tried to say more. Hyun-sik gave Mu-young a brief nod on his way over.

"Yes. Drive safe. See you at dinner."

With that farewell, the car pulled away.

Mu-young stood there for a while, staring blankly at the spot where it had vanished. She felt hollow, and yet somehow lighter, and the two feelings tangled into something complicated and hard to name.

Was this how everyone felt when they got married? Though given that hers was a marriage entered for a purpose unlike anyone else's, maybe it wasn't so similar after all.

Did Baek Kang-ho feel this way too? The moment the thought crossed her mind, Mu-young let out a hollow laugh. Because she was fairly certain the answer was absolutely not. The way he'd spent the entire sang-gyeon-rye winning his stepmother over — calm, methodical, as though he'd taken a seat at a debate table — looked no different from the Assemblyman Baek she saw every day.

Marriage as just another task on the agenda. That was his will, after all.

Mu-young brushed the thought aside and turned to go. That was when Kang-ho emerged from the hotel alone. He told a member of the staff his license plate number, then walked toward where she stood.

"I thought you'd gone with them. Were you waiting for me?"

Her standing there alone gave Kang-ho the opening for that signature crooked grin of his, and it flattened Mu-young's mouth into a straight line. He seemed, if anything, to enjoy provoking that reaction.

"I was standing here because I have somewhere else to be."

Not a single word about having waited forever, of course. At her stubborn stiffness, Kang-ho let out a short laugh. There was already a look in his eyes that said he had her completely figured out, so all Mu-young could do was pretend she didn't notice.

"Heading to the National Assembly?"

He came to stand beside her as he asked. It was the weekend, and there was nothing that urgently required her presence. Ever since word had spread that she was marrying Kang-ho, Assemblywoman Min's summons had noticeably tapered off — for no reason other than that she didn't want to hand Baek Kang-ho even the smallest thing to hold against her.

Either way, it meant her working hours had loosened. Whether she should be glad about that or not, she couldn't decide. Her feelings tangled, she answered.

"No. I'd rather not work today, of all days."

"Fair enough, then."

Kang-ho watched his car pull up and moved toward it. There was no icy gust of indifference, but something about his manner had shifted in temperature all the same. Mu-young decided it must be a trick of her own oversensitivity and let it go.

The handkerchief she'd woken early to iron, intending to return it today, was still tucked inside her bag — but she never found the right moment. Leaving that foolishness of hers buried, she walked down from the hotel instead of hailing a cab at the entrance. After the rain had cleared, the weather had turned impossibly bright.

Tap-tap-tap. Kang-ho's fingers, gripping the steering wheel as he waited at the light, drummed out a steady rhythm as though deliberating over something. He should have offered to drive her out, at least. The thought arrived too late. She'd said she wasn't going to the Assembly, so he'd turned away and told her to go her own way — and that had been that.

Their parents had said they'd linger over one more coffee in the lounge, which was why he'd come down alone. And there she was, having sent her family off, standing by herself. He'd thrown out a joking remark about whether she'd been waiting for him, but he knew better than anyone that such a thing was out of the question.

As always. As if nothing had happened. As if it were simply work. He wanted to handle everything that way. He'd achieved that goal to a reasonable degree at the sang-gyeon-rye, too. We're a team; let's each take what we want from this. He knew exactly what the woman wanted, so he'd reasoned there was no need to muddy the arrangement with unnecessary emotion.

"Hah… why won't this light change already."

Even so, the aftermath kept sitting wrong with him. The woman had a way of stirring in him an inexplicable sense of debt. Even now she had him debating whether he should turn the car around and pick her up after all.

Would it be so bad to offer her a ride — not to the Assembly, but partway along her way? Then he could have played the gracious escort and dropped her off. The way she drew lines around herself, determined never to owe anyone the slightest thing, kept provoking him into these childish maneuvers.

"Haah… seriously, she makes everything so irritating."

In the end, he turned the car around. It was just past the lunch hour on a weekend, so calling a taxi from the hotel would take her a while. Judging that the woman would still be standing there waiting, Kang-ho stopped on the hill road to wait for the left-turn signal. That was when he caught sight of someone walking down toward him.

"Honestly…"

The timing was almost comical. Should he just tell her to stand there and wait? He was reaching for her number on his Bluetooth-connected phone when he saw her pull out her own. She pressed the phone to her ear as if placing a call somewhere, and so he held off on the call button, waiting. It might be her, calling him.

Before long, his phone really did vibrate. Kang-ho's hand moved to answer, certain it was the woman ahead of him — then stopped dead the moment he looked at the screen.

The person calling him wasn't Mu-young. It was Hee-jin, sounding as if she had more left to say. Kang-ho let the call ring through to voicemail. But Hee-jin's name surfaced on his screen again.

"Honestly, so stubborn. Just like her brother."

Kang-ho moved to press the button and tell her this was no time for a call. At the same moment, the crosswalk light changed, and the woman came into view just ahead, walking.

The phone at her ear, she was smiling. In that expression — someone deep in a call with another person — there was an ease he had never seen on her face. Who could she possibly be talking to that put a face like that on her? Another wave of that unpleasant, sour feeling rose in him.

Then the light changed — he had no idea when — and from behind him came the blare of horns. Move. Left with no choice, Kang-ho made the turn and drove toward the hotel. He parked in the entrance driveway and stared at the screen still ringing. Hee-jin was trying again, refusing to give up.

He finally pressed accept.

He answered in a deliberately businesslike tone. Just as he intended, Hee-jin flinched and replied in a small, evasive voice.

"Oppa. It's me, Hee-jin…"

"I know."

Part of him wondered what the point was of taking his frustration out on her, of all people. She would need time, too.

"What do you want?"

Even so, the line had to be drawn clearly.

"Where are you right now?"

"On my way out from the sang-gyeon-rye."

He told her plainly. At that, Hee-jin's voice spiked with agitation.

"Oppa, are you seriously going through with this marriage?"

The question was strange. The nuance made it sound as though his were some tainted union. It wasn't a marriage born of love like other people's, but neither was there anything legally disqualifying about it.

"How long are you going to be like this?"

"Oppa…"

"Have I ever once given you hope?"

The cruelty inside him finally spilled out. Because she was his best friend's younger sister, he had always tried not to wound her beyond what was necessary. But if the other person crossed the line, then he, too, had no choice but to turn cold.

"There's a limit to what I'll tolerate. If you bring up my marriage one more time after today, I'm deleting your number. So let's end it here."

He had given the sternest warning he could manage and was about to hang up when Hee-jin, her voice thick with tears, spat the words out as if forcing them past her throat.

"Is she that good? What's so good about her? Why won't you give me a chance — why does it have to be her, of all people! You said there was no one you liked! You said you couldn't remember anything! You said you'd forgotten it all! Why did you lie to me?"

"Now you're writing fiction. I'm hanging up."

Kang-ho ended the call without listening to another word. There was only so much nonsense he was willing to absorb. The phone he'd been about to toss onto the passenger seat, he powered off entirely. Strange as it was, his nerves had grown so raw that a headache was beginning to throb behind his eyes. Steadying his breathing, he pulled the car back out and looped around toward the hotel entrance.

'As if I only gave her a chance?'

Recalling the bitterness clogging Hee-jin's words, Kang-ho let out a genuine scoff. Even as he wondered where on earth she'd gotten it so wrong, he felt no particular need to correct her. Letting her believe he and Mu-young had known each other before didn't seem like such a bad thing — not if it helped Hee-jin put her feelings to rest.