“How is it going?” Sung Gyu’s voice was on the phone while I had Sung Jong’s car, which I borrowed for the night, parked across the road from the Chinese restaurant. Though I had made this solely a case, an investigation, it had now so much as engorged into more of a personal affair overnight. It was as if Sung gyu had entitled me to a secret mission, as his own spy on his cheating wife. Not that I did mind as much, as long as the rush of adrenaline and excitement lasted, but I wouldn’t exactly like it if he’d call me every night to check the progress. Not that he did call me every night either, given that the case only started the day before. The thought irked me, nevertheless.

I looked out the shutter and found that the car was still there, the white Lexus. A few taxis came and went, and some employers of Harvey and Kim who were probably pulling all-nighters rushed in to have quick dinners while I waited, stomach churning, screaming for food.

“Not so bad” I said in the end. “Got a few clues ruled down, all good”

“Hmm” He went, and he asked no more of it. Instead he said, “Woohyun’s wedding is on Saturday, yes?”

“Yeah” I replied, sounding very less enthusiastic and fumbled around, looking for my binoculars. I had finally opted to use one to behave like a true private investigator. I wasn’t taking photos or gathering solid proof. At least the use of a pair of binoculars would put me in the likes of a true private investigator. Or so I thought.

“Getting ready?”

“Hmph” I looked out the two peek holes and sighed.

There was silence on the other end, and a car whizzed by as though they had a death wish. Then Sung gyu said; “Here, I know you don’t give advice or whatever…but it’s related to your brother and our little secret…Bomi and I, we kind of, sort of went on separate ways last night…”

“Oh…” I said and lowered the binocular. “But what has it got to do with Woohyun?”

“We have to attend the wedding together, I don’t want him to know that we’re having problems…”

“So?”

I could hear him let out an exasperated sigh. “I was wondering if you had any idea what I should do about it, to drag her alone”

“Threaten her” I said, recalling what I did the previous night. “Tell her that you know she’s giving you or whatever and get her to come” I hesitated, raised the binocular again and added. “Well, that’s what I would do”

“You’re no use” He said, almost through gritted teeth and it actually made me laugh. “I’m married you know. I can’t possibly go and threaten her…”

“I guess you’re right” I said with a smile. “That’s probably why you shouldn’t have asked me” and then finally I noticed two figures hurrying down towards the Lexus. Only one went inside, two were coming back. I must have missed out on the people who entered then. So I said to the phone, “Look, I am at the moment following your wife around to see whom she’s cheating on you with. Can I get to you later?”

“What?” His voice echoed on the phone, but I threw it aside, looked through the binoculars again, and realized that I had actually missed figure number two. It was a man and it had disappeared into the car.

In the end, having tried following it again and having it missed, I returned to the office, fighting the impulse of attempting road-kills and happened to find Sung Jong impatiently waiting outside, shooting daggers at my direction. I gave him a smile and threw the key across the hall at his direction.

“Not a dent”

 “You seriously need to get a car” he tittered and stomped off in a huff. Afterwards, I kicked the tables and hit the walls, frustrated that all the following had lead me to nothing and decided to go to sleep in an empty stomach. It was almost impossible, given the circumstances. So I made myself a mug of coffee, drank halfway through, spilled the rest into the sink and went to sleep anyway, making a mental note to stock a few instant food up in the kitchen cabinet to last my stay.

*

The next two days went to naught for the reasons that,

1. Woohyun phoned me up and said I should help him with the wedding preparations, which I did, reluctantly, and
2. Yoon Bomi called in sick, and Sung Gyu confirmed it true and he had somehow gotten her back into his flat again, and he had his eyes on her too.

Therefore, even against my own will, had I helped Woohyun through with his so called wedding preparations. There weren’t exactly much to be done, given that Woohyun and Chorong had already perfectly well settled everything from the church ceremony to the wedding reception. What Woohyun had indeed needed was mortal support, which he expected me to give while I sat and waited on the night before the day of the wedding, sipping a glass of wine, listening to him blabber away while he sipped one of his own.

I had expected the day before the wedding to be the day of panics and last minute doubts, but it indeed wasn’t the case for Nam Woohyun. It was, for him, the day and the most rightful moment to discuss my pathetic derailed marriage.

“Now, Eunji” He was saying while picking out the bad ones from a handful of peanuts. “Have you thought of what you should be doing afterwards?”

I was only half concentrating, my mind quite fixed on something entirely different so I said, “Well, go home, have a wash and a nap?”

Woohyun rolled his eyes and popped in a couple of nuts. “No, silly, after cancelling the wedding!”

“It’s canceled already” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Tell everyone…cancel the bookings and honeymoon flights”

“But what happens to you?”

I turned around and gave him a questioning look. “What could possibly happen to me?”

Woohyun let out a sigh and leaned over the table towards me. We were in the lawn of his massive house, sipping wine and eating peanuts and crackers, enjoying the balmy wind and the last few seconds of being the family of only him and myself. Quite frankly I couldn’t believe that he wanted to talk about something despondent like this at such a moment. If I were him, I’d be evoking the time we ran around in underpants, riding tricycles.

“Look, Eunji. I know you’re going around in the hot headed, strong, independent woman mask which is not so much as a false bravado-,”

“What?”

“Listen!” He snapped and finally sat back. “Whatever it is, I can’t look after you forever…”

“But I can ing look after myself!” I snapped back, irate. “I am grown up, and did I ever tell you to interfere?”

“Well, no” He said and gave me a smile. “But you are my little sister, my responsibility…whatever the you have in mind right now, I’m sure it doesn’t really mean you should cancel weddings and live like you could go on like this forever. You’re a woman, and not even a man could go on alone without being cared for. Neither could you. I am here to help you through that. You could either think things out and get back with Howon or you could look another way-,”

“Oh for god’s sake!” I hissed, and I almost got up and left, but then I didn’t because stomping out from conversations was for losers, and I was not one of them. I sat back down and poured a glass of myself, and then gulped it down in one go, enjoying the burn of the alcohol down my throat. For a moment, we were silent then. Woohyun munching peanuts, me staring at the blinking garden lights. He had put these ridiculous fairly lights over the empty branches and browning leaves. At times I find it difficult to figure out what sort of a person Woohyun really is. Then I realize that he indeed had many faces of himself, and the brotherly side was what I despised the most.

“Mother and father wouldn’t give a you see” He was suddenly talking again, his eyes focused on the crimson liquid in the glass. “They gave birth to you and left you, so I suppose you’re my responsibility” Then he looked up to meet my eyes, he was smiling. “And I kind of want you to have the best”

I was deeply disturbed by this one fact so I threw him an annoyed look. “Oh off”

“I said I didn’t want you to marry Howon” He went on as though he didn’t hear a word I said. “It might as well have ended up this way”

I wanted to protest, but then I thought of what he did to me, how he was refusing to attend the wedding with me, and he did when I threatened him. For once, Woohyun had been right.

“So what?” I said, nevertheless, and Woohyun gave me a smile.

“I was trying to set you up with Sung gyu Hyung, you know”

I was rendered speechless, flabbergasted by the sudden revelation.

Sung Gyu? With me?

Following my silence, however, he carried on, saying, “He was quite keen of you, although you two haven’t personally met. He adored the feisty kind, much like himself. But the lad got married to someone else”

I was still silent, so he shrugged and poured another glass for himself. “Hmph, he’s having a wonderful married life now…Well, maybe I shouldn’t have interfered after all…”

I stared up at Woohyun, my glass of wine, now empty and abandoned while he went on devouring the one of his own, looking satisfied of himself. My mind was flooding and reeling with all sorts of thoughts. Sung Gyu was keen of me? Woohyun tried to set us up? Him and I? It was as though he had landed a sudden bombshell on me and it had exploded without ticking, without giving me time to escape. In my mind I was screaming at Woohyun, telling him that he was wrong, that Sung Gyu was having a terrible life with his wife. But I couldn’t bring myself to. Not because I was guarding Sung Gyu’s secret, nor was it because he was an important person for Woohyun, no, but because my thoughts could never battle and win over my pride.

*

The thing I despised most about weddings was that all the old ladies and smug married couples would poke on your arms with their flabby fingers every ten seconds or so, give cheeky smiles and say “You’re next!”

If it had been before back when I was indeed the next, I wouldn’t have reacted any badly. I’d have ignored, given them smiles and went ahead sipping my chilled sparkling champagne. But at that moment I wasn’t happy, I was irritated and Howon who sat beside me looking as though I had brought him to imperil him to man slaughter was not doing any good to it either. As of now about fifty people, friends of family, family of friends and people I suppose I’ve met but couldn’t recall, have asked me when my wedding was to be. I had to lie, or bend the truth momentarily and tell everyone that we were still considering the dates. Howon wasn’t gratified and kept sending daggers at me whenever I gave them plastic smiles.

The wedding was a success. It was rather beautiful and Woohyun had planned everything impressively well. Chorong was beautiful, dressed in a flowy white dress with a long train sweeping the floor and silver embroidery on its bodice in fine detail. Woohyun was in an immaculate suit and all smiles as though it was his happiest day on earth. Perhaps it was. And despite all the hatred I had towards him it would be a lie if I’d say I wasn’t impressed. In fact, I was amazed at how well he had done everything so far in his life, all on his own. At least I had him guiding me, planning my life all alone. And him, he had none. And I hadn’t supported him in any possible way.

And then I spotted Sung gyu, which was rather surprising at first but figured I might as well do. He was speaking to Woohyun and his circle of friends, dressed in a sleek black tuxedo and hair in a stylish up-do. He actually was quite attractive today. Then suddenly my thoughts went off to the conversation Woohyun and I shared the other day before I could stop myself. I felt strange, and the feeling was rather unappealing and completely inappropriate so I cleared my throat and looked away.

When I turned back to the table, Howon was typing on his phone and looking behind him over his shoulder simultaneously, which was rather brazen of him. He was probably texting his crimson bimbo. I almost wanted to snatch his phone and box him on his face. But we were over, and I couldn’t care less about whatever went on with his life. I sat still, quietly sipping on my champagne, contemplating my life and having despicable inner conversations for the next ten minutes until Woohyun came around, his booming voice interrupting my calm. Howon was equally distracted that he actually dropped his phone in surprise. We both turned back, and for a moment I could feel Howon stiffen beside me. Woohyun was standing behind me with Chorong in his arms, accompanying Sung Gyu who warmly held Yoon Bomi’s hand, a smile in his eyes.

“Eunji, you have probably met Sung Gyu already” Woohyun said, gesturing with his hand. “And this is his lovely wife, Bomi”

I gave them both a quick bow and a polite smile and almost said that I had met Bomi before but I bit my tongue. Everything would come out tumbling if I would say it now, and was fearfully waiting if Bomi would reveal it herself, but she didn’t. Instead she reached over and shook my hand warmly as though we were meeting for the very first time. “How do you do?”

She was all smiles, hands slithered around Sung Gyu as though she hadn’t been more perfect of a wife for him. I was duly amazed by her exceptional acting. It was indeed very disturbing for me.

I raised my hand and kept aside the flute of champagne, all ready to introduce Howon as my husband, on in this case, former husband-to-be, but before I could even say a word, at least out of courtesy, Howon’s phone buzzed and he walked away, excusing himself, with the phone pressed to his ear. I shrugged and picked up my glass. “Oh well…”

Sung gyu gave me a polite smile as though understandingly, and Woohyun at the very moment announced that he would like him to meet some of his colleagues from school, and the four of them walked away.

I didn’t know what I should feel, sitting alone in an empty round table, only the taut roses keeping me in company. I was having inner conversations again. We were talking about what would happen next. I was still homeless, and my business was failing. I hadn’t still gotten hold of Bomi’s secret boyfriend, and maybe it wouldn’t even matter anymore since their going seemed good, between Sung Gyu and her. Then I thought of Sung Gyu and what Woohyun revealed to me the other night. I asked my conscious the usual what if questions, but as always, my soul had no answers. I felt lost even though I wasn’t entirely lost. And I needed another champagne. Or maybe even a glass of Vodka to help me keep my mind off unnecessary things.

I stood up, picked up my bag and walked off feeling many eyes on me. Of course I could tell what they were thinking without sparing a glance at them. They were wondering what I was doing, sitting by myself. They were wondering what could have possibly happened to the once beautiful relationship we shared. One of those days I will break the news to them that the wedding was off, that the marriage was never going to happen, that I picked up the pieces and walked off on my own, that I had made the decision myself. Then they’d all call me cruel, they’d all call me a pathetic commitment phoebe. They’d call me a heartless heartbreaker, that I was despicable and arrogant. They were, however, all the good things that I’d rather associate myself with than being pitied and sympathized for being cheated on by my fiancé. Or being told that I had been incapable of securing my marriage. None of them defined me. Nonetheless, that one thing about relationships is that, once they are over, you’re either a heart breaker, or the heart broken. There was no in-between.

Woohyun’s wedding was held at a classy expensive reception hall somewhere in Gangnam which had unblemished cream walls and high roofs and marble floors. The bar was up in a patio, the dining hall was a darkened little expanse with ice structures glistening under neon lights. It was still in the afternoon, and the days were quite warm in the autumn these days. I walked into the bar, kicked my shoes off, slid onto a bar stool and ordered myself a glass of raspberry vodka before drowning myself in absolute self-loath and despair.

A few minutes later, someone sat in the stool beside me. There was a pair and they were speaking in low husky voices but I could still catch the odd words, though I didn’t intend to while I remained with my head buried in my arms.

“…Would that be possible? Would that be enough…?”

“Spoke to Yong Hwa….he’s in HR…”

“But straight up? Just like that?”

“…Anything’s possible, Bomi-ah…”

At the mention of the name, I almost sat up, alert, my mind running off in every direction. I had the great impulse to look up because I wasn’t certain if it was Sung Gyu that she was sitting with. But I couldn’t. Suddenly, I was back in the process of investigating. I had to be in under-cover. So I stayed still, trying to strain in more of the conversation.

“You have the CV ready? And the letter of work experience?” the other voice whispered, which I figured as of a male.

“I’ve got the CV but not the letter of work experience” Whispered the female voice which I figured as of Bomi’s. “The firm is going to merge the HR and recruitments department next Monday, and I’d have to get through Sung Gyu to obtain the letter”

Sung Gyu, she was mentioning Sung Gyu, and I was certain now, that it was about her shifting to Harvey and Kim. I had worked for Harvey and Kim for four years. I know practically every single attorney who did corporates. And this man, whoever who was her secret boyfriend was, definitely worked in corporates because Bomi did so too, and Yong Hwa was one of the most influential partners in corporate, someone I knew closely well, the partner whom I worked for before I left. The partner who, in fact, slacked me. It’s all coming back to me now, and before I could stop myself, I had raised my head and I wasn’t even surprised when I saw Howon sitting beside Bomi who sat next to me, their heads brought close, hands holding one another.

For a moment I was considering screaming, yelling, telling the world that my fiancé was just caught red handed, cheating. But I didn’t. My pride was more important. I did not intend to get any unnecessary attention, and if he were revealed now, it would be an easy way out and he didn’t deserve that. So I just quietly slid off the stool, gathered my things and walked out of the bar, in search for a washroom before the last strings snap.

It was once I had walked into one, then into a cubicle in my bare feet and not giving two hoots about all the disgusted glances I got and sunk onto a closed commode seat that it occurred to me with a start.

Sung Gyu.

Howon was shagging Sung Gyu’s wife.

And I, his hired private investigator had now thereby successfully solved the mystery.

*

About fifteen minutes later, I found myself with a terrible headache, silently slipping into the fire exit on bare feet and producing a cigar from my clutch. I wasn’t a smoker. I didn’t smoke at a regular basis and a smoke wasn’t always necessary for me to get by. Nonetheless I would always carry a couple of cigars in my bag because there were the odd moments when a smoke was the biggest requirement, when I needed to keep my mind off things, when all the complications pile up on me and I needed them to be lifted. Cigars help me think. The burn in my throat and the smoke in my eyes helped me retaliate. So at that very moment when it occurred to me that my ex-fiancé was cheating on me with my brother’s best friend’s wife and that my brother’s best friend was my client and that I had been indeed trying to get hold of the man who was my ex-husband without really trying to get hold of the woman whom my ex-fiancé had been cheating on me with, I take a smoke.

Fire exists were made for people to smoke. Nobody came in or nobody went out unless they were there for a smoke themselves, and there were no fire alarms, and you can hear the sound of your breath pounding and echoing in the narrow confines, the inner conversations would be louder just when you needed them.

Though I had a cigar in my hand, I had no fire and it maddened me. I took my coat off then, which I used to top my expensive, lacy ‘very pretty’ dress, threw my shoes to a side and sat on the first-most step on the stairwell and covered my exposed thighs with the coat. I held the cigar in between my teeth, chewing onto its in frustration and cursing every living being on earth. And then my phone rang. As though he had read my mind, it was Kim Sung gyu.

“Hello?” I said, my voice beating up on the quiet inside of the stairwell.

“Question. Do lawyers generally escape weddings and hide out in the fire exit?”

I almost smiled. “You got a smoke?”

“I do”

“Come down then” I replied.

Soon enough I could hear the sound of leather hitting granite echoing loudly in the quiet hide-out and I could feel his presence behind me. He sat down on the steps beside me and I, unintentionally even, took a deep breath of his dizzying breezy scent. Not only did he look incredibly attractive today, he smelled irresistible too and I felt my head pound in response. He held out a lighter at my direction, its flame almost touching the skin on my face. I leaned over and got my cigarette lightened, took a long drag and let out a long cloud of smoke into the air. Sung gyu lightened a cigarette of his own and spoke with it held between his teeth.

“You smoke?”

“I don’t” I said, and added when he gave me a questioning look. “Only an odd stick or two…”

“Ah, to escape weddings?”

“To escape weddings” I nodded. “To hide out. To get mind off things…Do you smoke?”

“Occasionally” He nodded and let out a cloud of white smoke. “When I’m annoyed?”

“So are you?”

He tapped on the of the piece and replied; “I had a row with Bomi”

“Must have been bad”

He was silent, examining the burning end of the cigarette, his eyes shadowed with something close to despair, so I said, in hopes I was changing the topic; “You said she was sick”

“She is” He said with a nod. “She’s caught a cold”

Bomi’s been sick. She’s caught a cold. Sung Gyu had somehow brought her back to his home, their home and had tended to her but now she had put up a fight with him and was planning her secret shifting with her secret boyfriend who cheated on me and went with her. I didn’t know what I should feel about it. Sympathetic? Betrayed?

“She was staying with you the past three days?” I asked, concerned.

“She was at her friend’s. Her friend phoned me so I brought her home…”

I could hear the strain in his voice. How hard he was holding on to stop himself from crumbling into pieces. Maybe I should feel the same way too. I felt something. There was something inside me which was making me to clutch onto my hair and scrape at my face, but I couldn’t let my emotions to show. Sung gyu didn’t need to know where I stood. I hated to think that he’d see the irony of it all, myself, a woman with a broken love life trying to fix a broken marriage of another.

But before I could even stop myself, I was suddenly speaking my heart out to this perfect stranger. My cigarette had burnt halfway through, but I no longer had the urge to drag the smoke out anymore. Sung gyu seemed to have forgotten it too, and was silently watching its orange burn making the stick seem shorter. He was deep in his thoughts, and I interrupted them.

“I’ve worked in a few cases…one or two…and I think I learned my share of knowledge when it comes down to relationships…”

Sung gyu tapped the cigarette against the wall and watched the ashes fell by his feet. “Which are?”

“None of the couples ended well….” I said and stole a glance of him and saw how his face darkening. Perhaps he was convinced his life would return to how it was, perhaps he was convinced he could somehow save his marriage. But Bomi wasn’t someone who deserved someone like Sung Gyu. Someone so kind hearted, someone who tried so much to win her back. She didn’t deserve him, and he had to know it himself.

“I’m sorry I am telling you this…but every single one of them ended up…divorced. Not a single happy ending. It was sad…but the truth is, all such couples were of people who realized that they were with the wrong people a little too late…”

Sung gyu was silent, watching his cigarette, and I who had never opened up to anyone this way, was still talking.

“The thing about relationships is, it’s hard to save them when they have fallen. Marriages are the same….” I looked down at the cigarette in my hand myself and lifted it, then brought it onto my palm. The tip of it was burning my skin, and I could feel Sung gyu watching in alarm, but I went on.

“They are like glass. Fragile, vulnerable glass…and once they are crushed...” I crumpled the cigar in my palm, my hand balled into a fist, and it was hurting me. But I ignored and opened my hand which was trembling in pain. “…They just never be the same again…”

“Eunji you’re hurt” He said, finally in a soft voice. Indeed I was. There was a furious glistening red wound in the middle like the answer to all the problems I had. And for the first time I could feel it, coming with the thoughts I let out for once in my life. I felt pain. Not only in my hand but a raging, hustling pain right in my heart .Thus I lifted my head and gave him a smile which insinuate nothing close to what I was feeling inside. I didn’t care that our faces were inches away, that we our breath collided as we spoke. It felt natural to be so close, the pair of us, the broken, the betrayed. Like two pieces of a puzzle that finally fit together.

“That’s the scar” I said and dropped the cigarette by my foot. “The scar that it leaves in the end”

Then we both looked down at the cigarette which had fallen by my feet, it was crushed and misshaped. Its glow had finally disappeared, leaving only a trail of darkened ashes behind.

*

I went back to the office that night, taking the tube in the goddamned ‘very pretty’ dress and walking on bare feet, only a coat covering just above my thighs and smudged make up dripping down on my face. I was gaining thousand odd glances. People huddled in circles at the station and on the roads were saying things in mild whispers. The kind of things I didn’t deserve but received nevertheless, and for the first time in my life, I actually cared. I cared about the things that people said about me, I cared about the things that they might assume, they might see of me. For the first time in my life, I wanted to hear them. I wanted to know. I wanted to find myself wherever I had lost myself, and I wanted their cruel words to guide me home.

The ride back to the office was slow and agonizing. It was too crowded for a late Saturday evening and the excruciating stench of perfume and perspiration was making my head pound. A sea of crowd would surge back and forth, knocking others off their feet at every stop, though I was seated, though passengers willing made space on the plastic seats among the strange girl on bare feet in an expensive dress and her make-up smudged, the excess of humans around me, breathing down on my neck and pushing me around every passing second wasn’t helping the state of mind I had at that very moment. The inner conversations were louder than I wanted them to be, and we were talking people this time. People with cold hearts and cold hands, people with warm hearts and warm hands, people with cold hearts and warm hands, and then the people with warm hands and cold heart. My conscious asked me which category I fell into, and I hadn’t any answers. In fact, I couldn’t put classify anyone around me into any of the categories we had enunciated. Perhaps I hadn’t known people enough. Perhaps I had never really bothered to. And it maddened me.

It was during the walk from the station to the office on my bare feet which could no longer feel the cold tarmac ground that I realized that I had completely numbed out of all emotions. I was no longer angered or saddened or completely bewildered. There was no emotion reigning me, there was no feelings being summoned by my relentless thoughts. In fact, I no longer thought, I no longer had internal conversations. My thinking process had momentarily shut down. I was only tired. And I only wanted a proper sleep.

Nonetheless, when I had finally reached my destination, I didn’t do anything as per I had wanted to. Suddenly my irrational thoughts were on the toll. I was gradually losing the grip on myself as though I was slowly slipping into a state of insanity. It needed to be stopped. I was stuck with my own emotions, being strangled by them; slaughtered by them, my own feelings nourishing on me as though they were ferocious beasts that I had locked away without being fed. I was losing my mind. I needed distraction before I would completely lose myself.

Thus, when I had finally gotten into the quiet, tranquil confines of my office room, the inside of which was calming and pacifying the incontrollable state of my mind, I didn’t change out of the ‘very pretty’ pathetic excuse of a dress, I didn’t get rid of the smudging, crusted makeup on my face. My hair was in a bumbling mess and my feet were covered in dirt and tarmac, they hurt in a way that they had never before. But none of it mattered anymore. I needed distraction. Not coffee, not alcohol, not cigarettes, but distraction.

I worked that night. I planned to work the entire night. I wrote down the report of Sung Gyu’s investigation in one go, the investigation which needed no more research, inspecting or background check because I knew of it more than I needed to, because I myself was, surreptitiously, unintentionally, a part of it. I wrote it down, my hands and mind working ferociously. It was as though my hand and my mind had different controls. I wasn’t myself for a while but somebody else. Someone who was trying so hard to not lose herself on the way. Someone who’s mind was in desperate release but couldn’t get herself around it because she had much more important work to do. It didn’t occur to me that I had, eventually, lost my grip, snapped all my strings after all. It was after I had concluded the report that I finally came into realization of it. It hit me so suddenly like a bullet penetrating my brain. It was then that I couldn’t hold on any longer. I had, indeed, lost my mind.

I stood up, paced around the room, my fingers painfully entangled in the strings of my hair. I had a great urge to pull them off, one by one until they hurt me and numb me once more. I couldn’t do so because there were so many, just as many as all the many problems I had. So I gave up, screamed until my throat was sore. And then I cried. I cried while kicking at the shoes I had discarded and the papers that had fallen off its constraints. I kicked at the cushions, threw them on the floor, lied down on the carpet and stared up at the roof until it turned into a blur. I thought of the Patels’ upstairs. The Patels who were on a research trip from India. I had no idea how India was like. But I was sure they had a happier world out there who fed on Paratha and partied all night. The Patels had a house, the Patels had family. The Patels had a proper job, and they had each other to rely on. I envied them. I wanted to go and throw stones at their windows and teach them how ing consumerism worked. How it killed people. How it slacked people at Harvey and Kim for missing out on ing Memos. All in all, what I really needed was an orderly, proper life.

After all was done, I sat up and had inner conversations. We talked about the options we had after this. Woohyun and Chorong would be going abroad tonight. They were going to spend two weeks of Honeymoon in Thailand. We wondered why they weren’t going to India, then got back on the track of discussing the options we had. I had a spare key to his monstrosity of a house. I had access to it because Woohyun had granted me access whenever I pleased. I could slip into it and live for the two weeks of their honeymoon while I find another place to stay. Thoughts of honeymoon unintentionally led my mind off to the honeymoon plans that Howon and I had. We were supposed to have a western tour, and Howon always had Paris in mind. I was never the kind to do this but I had always fantasized how it would be like, walking along Seine, looking over at the city from the Eiffel Tower on colder winter nights. All of these seemed so far away now. The unnecessary thoughts only angered me. Then I thought of Sung Gyu. Poor old Sung Gyu who was convinced he could save his marriage, he could bring his guileful, mendacious, unfaithful wife back. It was dismaying to think that he’d realize the truth a little too late. I was suddenly feeling empathetic towards him. Sung Gyu was a lovely person. He truly was. Bomi didn’t know just how lucky she was. And then, before it even occurred to me, I was thinking; ‘What if things had been different than now? What if Woohyun’s plans had worked?’

It gave me horror, and so many unrecognized, inappropriate feelings about a married man. Then I realized that this was happening only because I wasn’t getting my thoughts straight. I had to straighten out my whole life. I had to start somewhere. I had to move on and live myself without being an incomprehensive, irrational mad-hatter. I had to be composed. For this I had to brave up, start somewhere. To be the person I had always been.

And it wasn’t so hard, because I had never left.

So I phoned Woohyun up that night who was probably busy packing and preparing for their trip. But I had always been his priority and I knew this. He picked up the phone on the eighth ring.

“Eunji?”

“Woohyun”

“You sound…” Hesitance. “Eunji, are you okay?”

I took a deep breath, and brought myself together. Woohyun didn’t need to know.

“Yes, I am…I just wanted to tell you that I’d like to calleveryone from the engagement”

“Whatever for?” Woohyun sounded perplexed. “Eunji, are you really-,”

“I want to call off the wedding” I said in a stern voice which I myself didn’t think I could muster at that point, but I did. “I want to call off the wedding for once and for all”