❝ chapter thirty-seven

e r i c ’ s

[blue text = spoken in english]

    “What song are you going to sing?” Yongsun asks after taking a bite of her self-made burger. 

It is three days to our wedding and we’re sitting inside the American BBQ restaurant in Itaewon. When the news first broke, many people showed hostile toward it. Mainly, from both of our fans but they’ve finally come around now after 3 months. Many of them now leave nice comments for us on my social media and a lot of them now congratulate us. Well, given that there’s only 3 days left until we’re officially wed. 

    “Which part of surprising each other do you not understand?” I laughed. “Will you tell me yours too?” 

    She whines. “Ah, you know I can’t wait.” She puffs her cheeks a little. They disappeared a lot, those cheeks, she said she’ll have them back after the wedding. “No.” 

    I laughed. “That’s not fair.” 

A lot of people know exactly who we are and a lot of them are taking pictures but we try to be oblivious to all of these. Sometimes, it’s tiring to hide and it just feels weird to hide. Actually, we don’t even want to. Not because we want to attract attention on ourselves but really, it feels a lot more like an ordinary date without the mask and cap and big oversize coat. 

Yongsun makes plans for the wedding, she does almost everything herself from the flowers to the theme colors to the seat arrangement to the after party. Basically, how she wants it to be. I know wedding is every woman’s fantasy and it’s her once in a life time moment and she deserves to have it however she likes. I really don’t mind though, I can get married anywhere or anytime as long as it’s with her. 

    “Where did you say you’re bringing me to after this?” She asked after finishing the last piece of meat. 

    “You’ll see.” I smile and she frowns confusedly at me. 

I have yet to tell her about the house. Parts of me fear that it might goes completely wrong and that she’s going to hate it so much because I’m hiding it from her. Parts of me are just excited that she finally gets to sees what I’m planning for her - for us. 

Apparently, everyone knows about this now except Yongsun. My family and her family know about this, and her members know about this. Well, this will never work if they don’t know about this. They’re still those people who know about Yongsun a lot more than I do because they’ve been with her almost their entire lives and what she prefers, what she likes but doesn’t really tell me because she always thinks that it’s unnecessary to put herself first before anyone else and that her preferences should always comes later which is why I wanted this wedding and this house to center around her. I can live anywhere, I can get married anywhere, I really don’t care but at the end of the day, if it’s her who I’ll be seeing after a long day of work, then I’m more than happy. 

After dinner, I take her to the house and she’s bugging me for a hint throughout the whole ride but I stay completely silent on my part and allow her to wander a little in her little imaginary circles. She likes to imagine things, things that she’s looking forward to. That’s one of the things I’ve learned about her after all these things. If you let her wander just a little in that circle, god knows what this woman can creates. She can comes up with amazing things. I guess that’s what makes her a great performer on stage. 

Oue house slowly comes into view as we get closer to it. It looks different from the rest of the house because we’re more on the American vibes, that’s what her dream house has changed into during our Hawaii trip. There isn’t a roof but rather a terrace, an open terrace that would makes a great space for both of us when we want to compose. The outside is painted in light gray accompanies by mostly huge glasses that are only visible from the inside and completely invisible from the outside eyes. 

There’s a big enough porch filled with grass in the front and a garden at the back. I contemplated between our own pool or our garden but decide that both of us are probably exhausted enough from our schedules to clean the pool so I chose the garden and mainly because, Yongsun loves flowers and she did mention that she'd love to grow something and harvest them whenever she wants to eat them. She’s happy just from seeing them so a garden filled with her favorite types of flowers would probably makes a better choice. 

We walk through the gray-painted gate and she’s still confused but she doesn’t ask which was somewhat surprising but I guess she knows it’s useless to ask because I won’t answer anyway. Her eyes stare at the porch in admiration and I’m completely relieved that she seems to like them. When I lead her inside the house, she looks at me confusedly, asking whose house is it and if she knows them. I tell her that she knows them very well, probably a little bit too well even. 

The inside is painted light gray and white. I focused the most on our living room because that’d be where we’ll be spending our times in the most. There’s a television here along with a home theater and a white couch. If we walk toward the back of the living room, to the side of it is the kitchen and the breakfast bar. The dining table is set in another room next to it and I’m pretty sure we won’t be using it as much if it’s only the two of us. 

The kitchen is entirely designed in white marble like how Yongsun likes it, two ovens in the bottom and cupboards on the top. I had the fridge built-in with transparent glasses so it’s visible to see what’s on the inside and so it won’t take too much space and looks out of place. On the counter of the breakfast bar sits varieties of uncooked pasta in huge mason jars. 

    “Will you tell me whose house is it now?” She asks and there’s a slight bewilderment in her tone. 

    “Soon.” I said and pulled her up the stairs. “I need to show you this first.” 

I pushed the handle to our master room and it’s probably the third biggest space after our living room and the kitchen. I installed a couch here, a small coffee table, a television. As we both walk inside, there is our bed designed almost as simple as I can because I remembered her saying she doesn’t like fancy beds because they seem too fancy and too unnecessary and that she likes the cozy-looking one. On our right side is a wall replaced entirely by glass but I have a white curtain over it and through that door, it leads us to our own balcony. The balcony shows us the view of our garden and I’ve seen this for the nth times but it’s still the most beautiful sight to me. I hope she loves that too.

On the other side of the wall, there are three doors, one to the bathroom, the second one to her walk-in closet and another one to mine. On top of our bed though, there is a picture from one of our pre-wedding photoshoot where she’s dressed in this long beautiful flowy dress and I'm in a white button down with my sleeves rolled up and I'm holding her by her waist in the middle of this enchatedly beautiful forest and we're only an inch away from each other's lip but she's smiling the biggest grin I've ever seen. Yongsun finally sees the picture and she gasps then she looks at me and she freezes. 

    I laugh nervously. “Happy wedding, baby.”

She stares at me and stays completely silent. I feel heat climbing up the back of my neck and I almost panic right away. , does she not like it? Is this too big of surprise? 

    “Look, I know I have a lot of explanation to do but,” I took a breath. “Remember when I was in the States for longer than I told you and you got mad at me for staying too long? I know a really close friend there who is both an architecture and an engineer and he said he’d makes your dream house work. Actually, he wanted to give this to us as a wedding gift but I insisted that it’s too big of a gift so he agreed to let me pay for it at only half price of it. All those times I said I was busy with my schedules, it wasn’t exactly those schedules on stage but I had to come and check on this so it would went well as I intended and all those time I flew to the States, I had to meet up with him to discuss about this.” I motion my hand at the room. 

    “I know you didn’t say you wanted this but I thought it would be easier for us to move in from the beginning than move in after we decided to have a family. And this way, you’ll be a lot more at ease when we finally decide to have a family. And for the ddongie's house, you can keep it or sell it, it's up to you. It holds a lot of memories for us and I don't want to do anything to it without your consent as well.” 

    “But…” She said, and stared at her surrounding. “These are probably very expensive.” 

    I laughed a little. “Do you think I made plan to marry you without saving?” 

She’s lost at words and suddenly she wraps her arms around my neck and buries her face in my neck and just sob. Usually, Yongsun’s crying always breaks my heart but today, somehow it makes me relieved. At least I know she loves it even when she doesn’t say it yet. I wrap my arm around her waist and kiss the side of her head and for ten whole minutes, she doesn’t stop sobbing. 

    “Thank you for marrying me.” I mumble and she sniffs a little, head now on my shoulder and I smile, inhaling her usual sweet scent. 

    “Thank you.” She said after a while, amidst her crying and all and I pull her away so I could take a look at her. 

Her face is all red and she still has a few drops of tears running down her cheeks. I smile and wipe them away with my thumb then gives her a soft peck on her cheek. 

    “Stay here, I’ll get you a glass of cold water before I bring you back home.” I said then gently make her sits on the bed. “Your dad might chop my head off if you go home with red and swollen eyes.” 

    She smiles and wipes her tears with the tissues she gets from the desk. “Do they know? Does anyone know?” 

    “Our families and your members. That’s pretty much.” I said. “I need their help to make this work. Although your members said Wheein almost spilled it a few times.”

    “If they already knew about it, let’s just move in tonight.” 

Geez, surprising as ever.