Dreams Come True

“I was worried when I couldn’t reach you, Oppa. You said you’d think it over carefully and give me an answer — I never imagined you’d go completely dark over it.”

Mihyeon had been waiting by the window of the reception room, dressed in an elegant black silk gown far better suited to a red carpet than a funeral. Against the white marble floor, beneath the glittering chandelier light, standing beside a window that framed a sky dense with stars, the woman in black looked like a model stepped out of a fashion spread.

“You look exhausted, Oppa.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m glad to hear it. So — have you reached a decision?”

……Uncle. If you don’t want to do it, you can run.

A sharp voice rang suddenly in his ear, clear as a struck bell. Lee-won closed his eyes for a moment. The instant he thought of that child, something hot surged up from his chest. The emotion rising in him was not singular. Bewilderment, pity, relief, gratitude, guilt — or disappointment, a sense of betrayal — every one of them was simply intense.

If you can avoid it, avoid it. If you can run, run. And if you can be happy wherever you’ve run to — then just live happily like that.

……What could possibly matter more than you being happy, Uncle?

That small child had taken a deeply buried truth, stamped it out in a single stroke, and dragged it up into the light. The moment he heard the word run, Lee-won felt a pain as if his chest were being torn open.

He knew exactly why it had hurt so much. Because the words were true.

Yes. He had wanted to flee from where he stood. He had wanted to cast off every burden and shackle loaded onto his shoulders. He had wanted to take the path that suited him better — the path he had longed for — a peaceful, quiet road.

He had called that a priestly vocation, His calling. No — without realizing it, he had brainwashed himself into believing it. And so even now he had been thrashing, trying to claw his way back onto that holy and peaceful path.

But that had not been the truth.

Lee-won half-closed his eyes and recalled the vocation-discernment questions he had heard at the pre-seminary gatherings. Over a long stretch of time he had repeated them to himself until he knew them by heart — more than ten of them, as he remembered — and the second had gone like this:

Are you seeking to escape because you cannot overcome the difficulties of social life and human relationships……

He squeezed his eyes shut hard. It felt as if someone were driving an awl into his chest; he could not keep them open. Acknowledging the truth often hurt this badly.

……Yes. He admitted it. He had been trying to escape. From a hard road, from a crushing sense of responsibility, he had been trying to run away in the ugliest fashion.

Only — until now — he had refused to acknowledge that feeling, had turned away from it, had denied it. Until that child had dragged it out into the bright sunlight.

Now that he knew, he must not go back to the school. Absolutely not. His path was not an emergency exit left open for whenever things got hard. It must never become a road chosen simply because it was easier. It was a holy and difficult path that only those who staked their entire lives on dedicating themselves to Him could bear.

He should have tried harder to discern His will more deeply. He should have faced his selfish desire and his urge to flee much earlier than this.

Was that, perhaps, why He had arranged for him to meet that child?

There was no way of knowing. His will always existed somewhere beyond the reach of human wisdom and calculation.

What was certain was this: he must now bear the responsibilities given to him, from the place where he stood.

Lee-won turned his gaze to Mihyeon, standing about five paces away. Just as people so often admired, she was a woman of goddess-like poise — elegant, intelligent, beautiful.

……Yes. He ought to consider himself more than fortunate with this much.

Show-window couples had their own set of rules. Even without love, the contract had to continue, and marital duties had to be performed faithfully. The contract would provide each of them with the foundation of support they needed, and living together as husband and wife would naturally bring children. Affection might grow along the way; perhaps a day would even come when they truly loved each other.

……Whether it did or didn’t — there was no choice left now, was there?

Having settled his heart, Lee-won smiled faintly and nodded.

“I’m embarrassed and a little ashamed to receive such a generous proposal. I’m sincerely grateful, and I’ll gladly accept.”

Mihyeon’s lips parted slightly. Blink, blink — her long lashes moved with graceful elegance. Lee-won stepped toward her and held out his hand.

“I’ll do my best to be a good husband. Take care of me, Mihyeon.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say I love you at a moment like this?”

Mihyeon asked in a faintly trembling voice as she laid her hand over his. He could see her eyes growing slightly wet.

Can I trust even a little of those tears?

A bitter smile slipped out before he could stop it. Mihyeon was far too accomplished an actress for him to believe them. She knew perfectly well that unnecessary emotional provocation would only backfire, and she could stop even her tears at precisely the right line.

But Lee-won had no confidence he could summon acting of Mihyeon’s caliber. So instead of giving her the answer she wanted, he bent deeply at the waist and pressed his lips to the back of her white, soft hand.

“I’m still not used to that kind of expression…… It’s a little awkward. I’m sorry.”

“Well, I understand completely. Then while I’m away, practice hard in front of the mirror for me.”

Mihyeon smiled radiantly and rested her hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll make sure you don’t regret this. Oppa.”

A languid fragrance drifted into Lee-won’s nose.

“Don’t worry. I’ll quietly settle everything myself. No matter how much Uncle hounds Mother, once I’ve said I’m getting married, what power does he have to overturn the board?”

“There’s a lot to settle here and there — I’m grateful you’ll handle it quietly. I don’t sleep well when things get noisy.”

At the unexpected reply, Mihyeon’s face stiffened for a moment. She had immediately grasped that “things to settle here and there” meant not only her uncle but also her relationship with Maurice. That Lee-won had never once spoken the man’s name was a petty scrap of pride. He would likely never speak that name again for the rest of his life.

“Don’t worry, Oppa. These days they make excellent earplugs for upstairs noise, I hear.”

She would keep the rumors and articles from reaching his ears — an extremely arrogant form of consideration. Seeing Lee-won’s mouth harden for an instant, Mihyeon quickly added,

“I’ll do my best so you don’t have a hard time either. Let’s have fun and live well together.”

The joker in black smiled captivatingly and pressed her forehead to Lee-won’s. The breath mixed into her whisper was sweetly warm.

It was not an answer that she would end things with Maurice. But it seemed at least to amount to a promise that she would try to be faithful to their married life. This sharp, clever woman had known Lee-won a long time, and she was carefully gauging the Maginot line that his innocence and pride could bear. She knew that if she pushed any further he might overturn the whole board, and so she had taken one step back.

……So this was the line of what he could obtain.

Lee-won suppressed the desolation and quietly kissed the woman’s cheek. From lips so dry they had begun to flake came a dry little sound.

That night, Lee-won dragged his exhausted body to the rectory and reported to the head priest his father’s will and the news of his own engagement. As he apologized for having made an unreasonable request and for having troubled both the head priest and even the bishop, his face was calm and composed.

Once home, he fell seriously ill for several days, skipping meals entirely. His temperature hovered at 39.3 degrees Celsius and would not easily come down. From time to time he moaned for a long, long while, as if he were sobbing.

Dreams☆come true.

That old, worn-out, idiotically optimistic sentence had been a magic spell fashionable when Woo-yeon was in kindergarten. She had known nothing of the World Cup frenzy, but she remembered clearly the packed plaza flooded with red, the rhythmic sound of clapping, and that magic spell her father had drilled into her so earnestly.

Woo-yeon had prayed desperately, just as the magic spell instructed, for her dreams to come true. I want to live somewhere without Mom and Dad. I want to live at Kyung-hee’s house. I wish I could be reborn as Mi-yeon. I want to live with my kindergarten teacher.

But as time passed, the wish that Mom and Dad would simply disappear began to surge up more and more often. Each time it did, she would startle, hastily repent, and try to forget — yet the sudden upwellings grew more frequent, and the guilt grew fainter.

Then, around the time she learned the truth about Rudolph and Santa, Woo-yeon stopped praying. She had finally understood the real reason that splendid magic spell had enchanted the entire nation of Korea at the time, and why it could still endure.

Dreams, by nature, were things that did not come true. That was why people went wild for them. If wishes came true exactly as desired, no one would ever get excited. Who gets excited over something as ordinary as food turning into waste? There was a reason that in Korean the word for dream and the word for dream shared the same sound.

And so, when a dream suddenly came true, Woo-yeon found it bewildering. It felt rather like a fairy popping into existence before her eyes and conjuring a pumpkin carriage. Dreams existed to be broken; they were meant to stay locked inside sleep. When a dream came true in reality, that reality itself felt dreamlike, unnatural — as if at the stroke of midnight it would all collapse back into a shriveled pumpkin.

That was probably why. Even hiding in the shelter, Woo-yeon could not escape her anxiety. Her father was notorious for holding grudges long and pursuing them relentlessly.