“Are you okay, Miss Park? Do you need some water?” Dara softly taps the nervous bride, Park Bom, on her shoulder and the latter snaps her head towards Dara, impulsively gripping on Dara’s extended hand. Dara, however, can’t help herself to groan inwardly when the edges of her crisp shirt’s sleeve is crumpled by the rather neat grip.

Wedding jitters, of course. Dara convinced to herself and puts on a convincing smile on her youthful face.

Bom shakes her head earnestly. “I can’t do this. I just can’t, Dara-sshi. God, what the hell I’ve been thinking? I can’t do this.” Her breath hitches, distorting her usual cheerful demeanour and her irises darting all over the place, a gesture of guilt.

“Of course you can. It’s normal for bride to freak out before going down the aisle. You’re about to give half of yourself to another person anyway.” Dara smoothly speaks her mind. It’s a sentence she keeps repeating to almost every bride she have worked with, whose in the same boat as Park Bom, suffering a case of anxiety attack. Bom bit on her lips and fight back the urge to claw everyone out of the bride room.

With a small tug, Dara frees her hand from the grip and fix the veil covering Bom’s doll-like feature. It is a simple semi-transparent fabric of Italian Silk Tulle with a silver t at the edge of the piece, chosen specifically by her for the highlight of this wedding. The luxuriant veil drapes gorgeously on her face without messy pouf damaging the beauty of its simplicity and the beauty of Bom’s face.

Warm feelings swell in her gut, some sense of pride of her work wash over her. A small groan from the bride breaks the silent and Dara’s hand hung on the veil, immobile. She sense something ground-breaking is heading her way.

“You, you don’t understand.” Bom’s hand grips on the edge of the dressing table as subtle sounds of human chatters, masseuse and hairdresser giving their service to the family members and clinking of jewelleries from one to boast on another melts into the background. There had never been so silent in this boisterous noise as this moment. Dara is giving Bom, her fullest attention.

“What, do you suppose, I don’t understand?” Her voice is stern and cautious. No one have ever ed up any plan she have painstakingly did on the very day of the wedding. Dara is the best-in-town and all she have done is usually spot on with what the customer wanted for their wedding.

Instead of replying, Bom nibble on her plump lower lip. “I can’t get married.” There’s a silent again before Bom continue. “I’m pregnant.”

“Well…” Dara is too stunned to respond. She didn’t seem to get what is the need to be so freaked out over the issue. Both the groom and the bride is a four-year-long lover. One or two is inevitable, perhaps more. “You’ll get married to the father of the baby anyway so there’s no big deal.”

“The problem is… I don’t know if I should tell you, Dara-sshi. The groom is not the father.”

Dara blinks. Once. Twice. “What?!” Adrenaline is coursing through her vein and clouds her sense. She can’t project the statement earlier.

“It’s a one-night stand, three weeks ago. We were fighting.