still can't get over them, i know it's supposed to be a one-shot, but the inspirations keep coming everytime i look into Park Sora's pictures

***

She’s been waiting outside of his office for almost half an hour and the one she’s waiting for hasn’t get off work just yet even though his working hour has ended. This is typical Kyuhyun, whenever he gets attach to a case, he’ll devoted most of his life for that and sometimes forgotten some little things along the way—today’s case is he’s forgetting his dinner date with his own wife.

She can enter and interrupts him of course, but she hates the annoyed look in his face whenever his focus distracted and she doesn’t want to worsen her mood by looking at his frowning face. Han Sera leans on the edge of a vegetation wall in front of his office building and decided to waste more of her time by playing silly games in her phone.

Cho Kyuhyun steps out of his office and he slams his own temple after seeing his wife sitting outside the building, busies herself with her phone and wearing not thick enough clothing to protect her from the chill autumn wind. He feels like an lately to Sera since he’s not really able to spend much time with her and now he’s forgetting their planned date and let his wife waiting outside for him.

“Sera-ya.” He puts down his brief case then takes off his own coat to cover her, “How long have you been here? Why don’t you call or come inside, huh?”

Sera lifts her head, staring into the man she loves with a look that silently breaks his heart in the inside. Kyuhyun knows he messed up one more time and Han Sera still manage to smile sweetly for him. “I didn’t want to interrupt, I had fun anyway.” She lifts her hand phone and show off her level-up progress to him, “I jumped five stages already!” She grins and tries to hide her sadness.

He exhales, how could this woman think she can fool him by pretending not to be bothered by his rudeness. “I don’t even have any excuse for you.” He smiles bitterly, “Let’s go grab dinner, you must be starving waiting in this cold weather.”

“I want to eat good barbeque and I want a lot of first grade beef!!” She gets up and links her hand in the crook of his elbow.

“Sure, let’s go the usual place then. Shall we get your favorite apple pie afterwards also?”

“Ng. I deserve that after I waited that long.”

Kyuhyun rounds his arm on her shoulder and give her a peck on the cheek, “I let you down again, didn’t I?”

She scoffs and turns it into an awkward laugh, “What are you saying, I came too early. Don’t worry about me, I told you I had a great time leveling up in the game.” She avoids his stare, “Let’s just go now, I’m famished.”

She’s enjoying every little time they both can spend intimately together since it’s now become a rare occasion. His own practice turned out to be a great idea and he got a lot of business from many divorce-seeking people in the past year. He started it all alone and now his little agency has two apprentice that’s ready to help him to take on mild cases. The problem about his job, however, is the fact that he needed to get involves in investigating his clients background and it usually takes his off-work time.

Sera doesn’t complain much but she’s honestly really bothered by the loneliness created without him around. She doesn’t like to say it, but she admits to herself that she liked it better when Kyuhyun still worked to someone else, when all the burden of his job doesn’t rely on his shoulders alone. He was always beside her when she was sick and now it’s almost hard to casually have dinner in the proper time with him.

It’s not like Kyuhyun do it on purpose, he hates his own working time and he hates his perfectionist self that force him to excel in every case. He hates leaving her behind in the house, he always blames himself whenever he comes home late and find her already asleep without even manage to say goodnight to her, he hates how her effort in cooking dinner for him now mostly turns into their breakfast the next day, and don’t even get him started on their life—he can’t remember the last time they were intimate enough to proceed further.

As a divorce lawyer, he knows this condition is the early stage for a crack in the marriage and he’s been trying to fix this up by decreasing his working schedule, but his clients grow and he need to bring food to the table so he doesn’t really have much choice.

“How was your day?” He breaks the silent between them as soon as they get themselves into their favorite BBQ restaurant.

She lifts her shoulders, “As usual. I clean up, cooked lunch for myself, watch TV, read a book, just the boring everyday stuff. How’s yours?”

“I got one more applicant for the intern position, I think I have to train him.” He pours water to their glasses and offers that to Sera. “Thankfully my clients have grown and I really need some more help.”

“Will that mean you’ll work less?” She lifts her eyebrow. The sarcasm in her tone is unavoidable.

He looks down to the table and shakes his head, “I’ll get some free time soon but I really have to train the new guy and I must investigate my client’s property in Incheon tomorrow.”

“Ahh, so you’ll come home late again?”

“I think I’ll spend the night there.”

Sera slams her glass to the table and gets his full attention.

“Ya Cho Kyuhyun! How far is Incheon from here anyway? You can go back and forth within two hours by car for God’s sake.”

“I know, but it’s about a shipping container and the assets is being delivered at night time..”

“You know what you should hire? A detective, not a lawyer.” She lowers her voice when the ahjumma delivers their meat onto the table. She takes the brisket they ordered and begin cooking it on top of the stove in the middle of the table.

“I’m considering that, Sera-ya. But for now I can’t really trust anyone to do that for me.”

She doesn’t answer but release her anger to the meat that’s now starting to get brown on the stove.

“Are you mad?” He asks stupidly.

Sera lifts her eyes from the meat and glares cynically at her husband. “I think you’ve forgotten what you are, Kyu. You’re a lawyer, not Sherlock Holmes.”

“I know that, but..”

“Dweso.” She takes the medium cooked meat into her own bowl instead of giving it to him as she supposed to. “Cook your own meat, I’m too starving to take care of yours.”

She bites into her food in anger and Kyuhyun knows it’s the perfect time for him to keep his silence and do as she asked.

“By the way, my mom is asking if you can accompany her tomorrow to attend her monthly gathering.” He carefully asks her favor.

“Ng, I know, she called me and I agreed. It’s better to spend time with oemoni than being alone at home anyway.” More cynical answer gets out of her.

He nods and takes her scolding with a calm look that’s always frames his face. “Thank you.”

Sera only shrugs to him.

“I’ll fix my mess.”

“Don’t make a promise you can’t keep, Kyu. I hate those kind of people.” She bites more into her food, “Just eat quietly shall we?”

*

The day she’s spending with Kyuhyun’s mom is actually a day she really enjoys. Her in laws always treat her like she’s their own daughter and she can feel the love from them, especially since she hasn’t get in touch with her own parents for years since her own parents decided to disown her when she left without a trace during her early treatment. It’s not the first time Sera accompany Mrs. Cho in one of her social gathering so she’s not a stranger anymore to the women in the group circle.

Just like any other woman social gathering, they will begin the brunch with a simple talk and some of the rich will try to nonchalantly show-off their new designer handbags or shoes that sometimes doesn’t really fit them—but they bought it anyway for the pride. After the food distributes the talk usually shift to the food on their plate and some of them brags that they can make a better version of it. If the gathering takes place in an international restaurant, some of those who traveled will begin to say things like ‘when I was in.. I had the most authentic food..’ to brag more about their abilities to travel.

After they finish their food, they will start to talk about themselves, how their kids are, how their husbands are and the part Sera avoids the most—how their grandchildren are.

Sera always wanted to be a mother and she almost get the miracle she wanted in her first marriage until she miscarried and thing gone worst from that point. However, Kyuhyun strongly refuse the idea of them having a child. He’d always tells her that he enjoys their life just the two of them and he doesn’t want to add another member into their family. To him, having a kid is a nuisance and he dislike the idea of having a little person messing around their tidy house.

His parents of course informed about this and they still support whatever choice he makes in his life, to them it’s not a big deal if their only son decided not to breed—as long as he’s happy—so they never pressure Kyuhyun and Sera to get them any grandchildren.

Society however, beg to differ. Their marriage was frowned upon at first because of his single status that went against the fact that she’s a divorcee. But after two years of marriage and not a single baby pops out of Sera, the family friends tend to points that matters more these days.

And today is one of those days.

“Sera-ssi, Even Mrs. Lee already got her third grandkids aren’t you going to give one to your lovely mother-in-law?” One of the nosy ahjumma attacks her in between the talk.

All heads turn to her and the silence in the round table clearly show how curious they are with her marriage life.

“Aish, her husband is busy, maybe they haven’t got a time to be intimate.” Another lady responds.

“Ey! That can’t be! They’re both young and hot blooded, I bet they do it every day.” Another lady jumps into the conversation with a erted laugh.

Sera smiles awkwardly.

As if! He hasn’t touched me in weeks! She adds in her heart.

“They’re enjoying the early stages of their marriage, let them be. I don’t see that as a necessary thing anyway.” Mrs. Cho taps on Sera’s back to encourage her. “Having another member in my family is already a blessing, I didn’t even think my son would want to get married.” She adds to divert their attention to her instead of to Sera.

“Mrs. Cho, even my daughter gets it right in the first try on her first night! And now I have three grandchildren already, maybe your son should try harder.”

Sera transfer her anger into her napkin that’s placed on top of her lap, she hates this kind of conversation. When other people are to nosy about another’s business in order to divert their attention from their own miserable life. Today she’s the soft target and she didn’t come prepared, if it wasn’t for her mother-in-law, maybe she would have get up and leave the room altogether.

“Mrs. Lee, maybe your daugther’s vision of life is different from my son and his wife…”

“But you’re not even working, right Sera-ssi?” Mrs. Lee cut off Mrs.cho defend for Sera. “I wonder how dull your everyday life is, just waiting for your husband to go home. No work, no child, nothing, whoa I begin to understand now why you enjoy not having a child around—it’s a luxury to just sit back and relax then spend your husband’s money.”

“That’s enough Mrs. Lee! You should apologized to my daughter-in-law, what you said could’ve hurt her..”

Sera places her hand on top of Kyuhyun’s mom next to her to stop her from defending her daughter-in-law. “Gwenchana oemoni, I’m sure that’s how people see it.” She’s fighting the tears that begins to form on her eyelid—no matter how hurt she is; she won’t show defeat in front of the mean ahjumma. “Kyuhyun and me are trying our best, please pray for us so we can receive heaven’s blessing also.” She politely nods her head.

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