“I’m glad that the grandpa said that to us. Finding a house out of a blue would have been…”

“Is that it?”I pointed at the small house that was right in front of us. “Is a little…old. Don’t you think so?”I turned to Jong Woon. But he was looking at it with his eyes sparkling.

“Is perfect!”he smiled as he grabbed my hand and pulled me after him inside the courtyard of the little house. “Hmmmm…we’ll have to make a new roof,”he stood there, looking up at the hole that was in the roof. “And the doors should be changed too. But I think it will all work out! What do you say?”he turned to me with that flashy smile on his face.

What was wrong with me? Why was I feeling like I was about to give up to him? As if my own opinion was erased from inside my head, I nodded, agreeing with him. Just like an idiot.

♃~✵~♃

“Look, your young wife is here!”the old men exclaimed as I arrived on the field with the basket full of food.

“Ae Ri!”he wiped off his sweat that was running down his neck.

“I brought you some food,”I smiled at the sight of his half body. “You shouldn’t work out in this heat,”I handed him over the water I brought for him. “You’re so tanned now.”

“Where are you looking, Ae Ri?”he smirked as he leaned closed and caught my chin between his index finger and thumb. “Like what you see?”

“Oh you…!”I lowered my eyes and stared at the heated ground under my feet, making the others laugh at my silliness.

“You’re one lucky man, Jong Woon!”smiled grandpa Choi, the one that gave us the permission to take his late son’s house. “You have a young and beautiful wife that’s in love with you.”

In love? What was that old man blabbering there about?

Jong Woon looked at me and smiled as he took a bite from the rice cookies. “I know.”

He knows? How can he know something like that when I wasn’t sure of what I was feeling anymore? I sighed and looked up at the bright, blue sky. Thinking back, after the incident back in Tang, I never let myself believe that there was another way there for me, that among all those I played around, there might have been the right man for me. I played around with hearts, I dropped them on the floor and broke them in million of pieces. And now, now I was the one made of porcelain, fearing of being broken by…what? By love.

“Are you alright, Ae Ri?his hand came in contact with my forehead. “You should go now. You’re going to get sun-burned if you stay longer,”he smiled as I looked at him strangely.

I sighed. “I’m tired of being alone all day long!”I mumbled as I stood up.

“Go and make some friends!”he laughed as he went back to work.

Yeah! Easy to say that when you’re so popular among the villagers! But for me…every single woman in the village was looking strangely at me, thinking that I might go after their men. Silly women! I had my own, now didn’t I?

I took the road down towards the village, enjoying the scenery as the river’s water was flowing somewhere behind the forest nearby. The sun that was playing between the leafs of the trees and the butterflies that were flying around me made me go back to those days when I used to go butterfly-haunting with Seung Ho. And how we were chasing the multicolored wings all around the fields around my house! Those were happy days. Bright days. But even so, I wouldn’t trade the present ones to go back there. Even though I had to go back from scratch and learn how to hold a house, how to help around the house, how to look after the poultry, I was happy. Happy to cook for Jong Woon, happy to give him the nails he needed when fixing stuff around our place, happy just to be able to be around him. And I wouldn’t trade that for nothing in the whole world!

The dog began barking at a stranger that approached the fence as soon as I entered the courtyard.

“Excuse me!”he called. “Are you Jong Woon’s wife?”

Although I should have already gotten use to being called that way, I just couldn’t help not to feel butterflies inside my stomach. “Yes, that’s right,”I smiled at the stranger. He was a young man around Jong Woon’s age. And