The Weapon She Shouldn't Have

"Who was it?"

Hae-joo asked as soon as Mu-young hung up. She was not the type to pry into Mu-young's phone calls as a rule, but this time she couldn't hide her curiosity.

"Announcer Choi Hee-jin."

Mu-young answered plainly, and Hae-joo's eyes lit up like she was watching a train-wreck drama unfold in real time, dopamine coursing through her.

"What, what does she want? She wants to meet you? This is a face-off if I've ever seen one."

Hae-joo started jumping to conclusions on her own, practically vibrating with excitement.

"Did she blow a fuse because you took her spot? But who does she think she is, summoning you around? It's not like you're the one who dumped Baek Kang-ho and she's venting on his behalf."

Then, mid-rant, something seemed to occur to her. She snatched up her own phone and held it out, all business now.

"Looking at this, she's clearly gearing up to slap you across the face. When you walk in, have your phone already in video mode. I'll show you exactly how scary a friend who works in journalism can be."

Hae-joo was laying out everything — the other woman's intentions and how to handle them — and Mu-young found herself laughing despite it all.

"You're kind of fired up, aren't you?"

"Is it showing?"

Hae-joo admitted it like it was nothing. Honestly, she didn't seem all that worried. This was Lee Mu-young, after all — hardly the type to get steamrolled anywhere. And truthfully, what struck Hae-joo as strange wasn't Choi Hee-jin. It was Baek Kang-ho.

"I've got to say, Assemblyman Baek is smarter than I gave him credit for."

She started reasoning out the logic of the marriage on her own.

"Installing you as his wife to absorb another voter bloc — is that the scheme? 'Bipartisan unity' sounds so good on a campaign poster. And don't even get me started on your image as his chief legislative aide. A National Assembly badge backed by a five-term lawmaker grandfather, plus a wife who used to be the earnest public face of a reformist office — that would shut up every sneering hack who ever called him a creature of the entrenched elite in one stroke. Oof, the man's a genius. Birds of a feather, I suppose."

Her analysis landed close to the truth in places. Years of reporting on the society desk had clearly sharpened her eye for this sort of thing.

"Honestly, this is an opportunity. Seduce the man properly. Then dump him flat."

"You want him to suffer that badly?"

From Mu-young's standpoint, Hae-joo's hostility was hard to understand.

"Because he's insufferable. Men who have it all handed to them make my blood boil — call it a character flaw on my part. And it's obvious he's planning to use you."

"Why does it never occur to anyone that I might be using him?"

When she pushed back, Hae-joo laughed it off.

"Oh, you are. Shall I tell you why you suddenly agreed to this marriage? It's about Assemblyman Son, isn't it — saving him, saving your party."

Mu-young couldn't argue with her friend's uncanny deduction.

"Come on, do I not know Lee Mu-young? That cursed sense of justice of yours, that bleeding heart — you threw away an assistant professorship to go work at the Assembly over things like that. You're going to exploit the great Baek Kang-ho for personal gain? You wouldn't marry Baek Kang-ho for all the money in the world."

Having delivered her verdict, Hae-joo added one last possibility.

"Well... unless you actually loved him, I suppose."

"……"

"Which will never, ever happen, right?"

At her friend's flat declaration, Mu-young said nothing. She just smiled.

The moment she stepped out of the taxi, she spotted the woman sitting by the café window. Choi Hee-jin. TUS announcer. Twenty-six years old. The younger sister of Baek Kang-ho's closest friend. That was the extent of the dossier Mu-young had assembled from Hae-joo's intel.

When they'd crossed paths by the waiting room that time, the woman had seemed less like an announcer than a young college student. Her makeup and attire had been textbook broadcasting-department, but perhaps that was because she'd been pleading with Kang-ho emotionally at the time.

Mu-young didn't know precisely what the two of them were to each other. Whether things had progressed to the point where the families had discussed marriage, as Hae-joo's information suggested — or whether it was, as Kang-ho had claimed, simply a close friend's little sister.

One thing seemed certain: the woman's feelings ran deeper than the relationship Kang-ho had acknowledged. No younger sister would arrange a separate, secret meeting with her brother's best friend's fiancée wearing a face like that.

Mu-young stood where she was and observed her for a moment. It was a habit left over from her days as a chief aide. In politics, you read a person's temperament and posture before engaging, and matched your response to it — only then did you get what you wanted.

Unaware she'd arrived, the woman kept lifting her teacup and setting it down, restless. Once or twice she bit at her nails. A nameless anxiety seemed to seep out of her.

So she wasn't the brazen type. She had summoned Mu-young without telling Kang-ho, which meant she'd have to clean up after herself, and with no clear sense of what kind of person she'd invited, there would be a certain helplessness in that.

How many times, really, could an announcer of twenty-six — raised in comfort, only just out of her rookie days — have been caught up in a love triangle this sordid?

Having finished sizing up her opponent, Mu-young walked briskly into the café. Hee-jin, whose eyes had been flicking to the entrance with every ring of the door, froze the instant she spotted her. She tried to manage her expression, to act natural, but her mind had gone white before they'd even faced each other.

"You're Announcer Choi Hee-jin, I take it?"

Mu-young approached and greeted her with composed familiarity. Hee-jin could neither sit nor stand, left hovering half-risen, and ended up saying nothing at all.

"I'll order us something to drink first."

Mu-young set down her bag, took out her wallet, and moved at her own unhurried pace, as if Hee-jin were of no concern to her at all.

"Haah..."

Paralyzed, Hee-jin could do nothing but sink back into her seat without answering. Even to herself she looked hopelessly green, and she had to bite her lip. Her opponent, meanwhile, showed not a flicker of unease.

Watching Mu-young's perfect calm, Hee-jin felt a surge of pure spite rise up in her. She had gotten the number impulsively and made the call, sure — but she'd agonized right up until this meeting.

Is this really the right thing to do? If Kang-ho finds out, won't he hate me even more? And either way — if he actually goes through with the marriage, isn't it all over anyway? Once that thought took hold, she decided she might as well do everything in her power.

— So now he's writing fiction too.

Kang-ho had clearly known nothing. He'd treated her confession like the hysterical rambling of an overwrought heart. No matter how much he dismissed her as a person, lying simply wasn't in his nature.

That was when Hee-jin began spinning out a new possibility. If his memory of that time truly hadn't returned, then Kang-ho might have met this woman knowing nothing at all. And the woman, conversely, would have volunteered to marry him knowing everything.

Whether she had approached him deliberately or it was coincidence, Hee-jin had no way of knowing — but she needed to understand this woman's intentions. If she had come deliberately, then Hee-jin needed to know what she hoped to gain from marrying him without ever revealing their shared past.

If she had hidden it on purpose, it would poison her in the end. One way or another, she'd be the one who deceived him. That was why Hee-jin had concluded it was better to strike a deal with this woman than to reveal the truth to Kang-ho first.

The Kang-ho she knew was the sort who, even once a secret came to light, would push a settled marriage through to the end. Which meant she had no choice but to use this weapon to make the woman let him go herself.

"Sorry for the wait — the coffee took a while."

At some point she'd come back to herself, and the woman was seated across from her. She set down the simple iced coffee she'd ordered, then slipped off her coat and laid it over the next chair. Every motion radiated steadiness.

She'd said there was a formal family banquet today. Appearing in the very clothes she'd worn there, the woman looked somehow different. Perhaps it was the neat two-piece outfit.

It was a presence Hee-jin hadn't registered when they'd brushed past each other by the waiting room. Back then, the colorless suit had made her seem drab, dimmer than she was now.

Today's outfit wasn't so different in its modesty, but the lighter tones suited her beautifully. Elegant and mature — that was the only way to describe it. Her hair, smoothed back and pinned neatly, framed the fine lines of her face. She wasn't strikingly pretty, and that was precisely what made her so hard to look away from.

Just imagining this woman walking beside Kang-ho in a wedding dress made Hee-jin's chest ache.

Why not me? That place was always going to be mine. She had never once doubted it. She'd never imagined that a landmine from his past would come flying out of nowhere and wreck the future she'd counted on.

"May I ask why you asked to meet me?"

The woman conveyed — with impeccable courtesy and precision — that she did not intend to spend much time here. Not a tremor in her, no matter what was said to her. That unshakable composure goaded Hee-jin's emotions all the more.

"What's your reason for showing up again in front of a brother who can't even remember you?"

There was no need for pleasantries. If the woman wanted to play busy, she'd meet her with a blade of directness. She could see the change in Mu-young's eyes now — no longer wariness but certainty. This was confirmation.

"You do know the two of you were together once, don't you?"

"……"

"What happens if I make that known?"

Hee-jin drew a single photograph from her bag and held it out. A polaroid: Kang-ho and Mu-young, faces close together, cheek to cheek. Something even Mu-young no longer possessed.