- 007 -

Jisoo’s days during the next two weeks were filled with preparations for her marriage. Yeonseok's mother was so enthusiastic that she hired a top wedding agent to help them prepare everything, one of the discussions was about the wedding venues. After having several choices, they agreed to carry out the wedding at a house wedding venue at The Raum in Gangnam, because of its easily accessible location and their estimation of spreading a thousand invitations with the RSVP, including the president of the Republic of Korea.

Her activity was kind of too much flexible, sometimes the future mother-in-law would let her spend the day at the hospital accompanying her dad with no interruption, but most of the time she called and asked her for a meeting at once, a driver was sent to pick her up at the hospital when it happened. Sometimes Jisoo would bring Jongdae with her when they needed more people’s inputs, because Yeonseok's mother was that indecisive type when she was given choices which she loved all—like what flowers they wanted to adorn the wedding hall, or what menu they wished to have on the reception, or what entertainment they would love to have, and Jisoo was less likely to be interested and let her future mother-in-law choose. So their discussions would usually lead to uncertainty, or they would make video calls to some people for more feedbacks.

Some speculation began to circulate around the brief time of their marriage about her. Although generally people didn’t take long to prepare for their marriage after the engagement, it seemed that three weeks somehow was quite unnatural time span without any suspicion. People were starting to think this might be some kind of shotgun wedding, that the Shinsegae new Chief of Surgery had knocked her up. Even some of the guests who visited her dad deliberately asked 'are you with a child, Dear?' with a pity look as if they were concerned of how young she was to be carrying a baby. It once got her dad relentless coughs that he needed oxygen’s tube to breathe easily.

Jongdae kept telling her to close her ears, not to listen to what people said or those stupid rumors. Sometimes it’s Jongdae who deliberately exposed his displeasure with people's persistence, confronting them with a defense while Jisoo said nothing, she even couldn’t care less.

Wednesday morning went like usual. She woke up by the sound of the cleaning lady mopping the floor, who kept apologizing for being too loud and startling her. Jisoo waved her hand on her and proceeded to the bathroom to wash her face. She checked on her dad who was still soundly sleeping, his face looked a little pale but at least his skin had been more colorful, a good sign that his Hb level was probably had come back to normal. The family had asked her to go home for few days to take a rest and got her aunt or Jongdae to company her dad but she politely refused the offer, so Yeonseok had the hospital staff to crash a small bed for her at her dad’s room since she’d been crashing the couch during her stay and it wasn’t so comfortable for a temporary mattress.

Jongdae came to visit after breakfast time, a little bit surprised to see Jisoo was too lenient with a shirt and pajamas pants while chatting with her dad.

“Aren’t you supposed to leave by now?” he asked.

“Um, where to?”

“Check your phone, it’s a dress fitting day. Geez, I’m not your secretary, Jee, please try to be more aware at your own schedule. Sometimes I was wondering who’s getting married here.” And he kept blabbering about how careless she was, and told her dad all the bad things she did (like when she forgot to do or showed too less interest at something) even when she didn’t do them on purpose like they were shameful sins—at least it made her dad laughed.

Jisoo abruptly off to check her phone, which was dead when she charged it. She turned it on to find the alarm start ringing as she unlocked it, and some unread texts. So she supposed to go to this bridal salon at Cheongdam to try some dresses she would wear at the ceremony. She had been spending some time to assure the elders not to waste money at the dress since Yeonseok’s mother originally wished her to design and made a new dress for her so-called sacred day. But a new dress would cost a dramatic budget especially in a very short time, and she’d been too overwhelmed with all the luxuries that Yeonseok’s famiy had pampered, so she asked him to talk to his mother so she could just rent the dress instead.

Her mother-in-law texted her that she wouldn’t be able to company her to the bridal salon, and she tried to call her to pass this news herself but apparently her phone was not active. She then shared the location of the salon and gave her the name Han Seojung to assist her later. Yeonseok also texted her to say that he'd caught up with her later at the salon because he had an emergency surgery to do right now. Apparently, this morning he came to visit, but she was still asleep.

So she asked Jongdae to her. It’s somewhat a little different as before, when previously she wasn’t much interested in the preparation of her wedding, Jisoo got a little enthusiastic when Jongdae parked his car in front of a bridal salon. She always had a thing with wedding gown, it made her feel like a beautiful princess—that thing you always said when you were five—when she wore one. She had once worn a Cinderella dress as a child when her parents took her attending the wedding of one of her mom's cousins, it was a long sky-blueball gown that expanded at the bottom to cover her ankles. She remembered how happy she was when her parents gave her that dress as her fifth birthday gift, she even wore it for three consecutive days after being washed and dried.

From the front etalase the salon already looked luxurious, its window bay filled with several mannequins lining up, showing off the exquisite white wedding dresses behind a large glass wall. Two rather over-friendly receptionists greeted them, and Jisoo told them that her future mother-in-law sent her here to look for Han Seojung. The woman in question met them shortly afterwards.

Han Seojung was an, according to Jisoo, exceptionally gorgeous woman. She was tall; her long wavy hair fell down to her back. She’s also slim—that kind of slim that made people thought she's doing liposuction on a regular basis, and the short dress she wore didn’t fail to show the perfect curve of her body. She had to shut Jongdae's mouth because he couldn’t stop gawking as she introduced herself.

"Staring is rude," she whispered teasingly, Jongdae elbowed her waist.

Seojung led them into a large room surrounded by a row of dresses that hang neatly by color. She was invited to sit on the couch on one side of the room, one without the dresses line and backing the window, while two shopkeepers helped Seojung picking out some recommended dress that would suit her figure. But after about seven times back and forth to give it a recommendation, nothing matched her liking—or actually, it’s rather Jongdae’s liking.

It's either 'too short', or 'too bulgy in the shoulder it will make your chest look small', or 'too glamorous it doesn’t match your face' for him. Alright, now Jisoo started to think exactly who was going to get married between them.

Jisoo told Seojung that she would love something simple, long-sleeve was preferable, something without too much layers or flower embellishment.

There was actually a particular gown that had caught her attention from the beginning as they passed a row of mannequins along the entrance. And Seojung seemed to be able to see her preference, because Jisoo had stopped at a certain mannequin when they were preparing the room. The woman whispered to one of her assistants before she left the room.

"I think I have something you'll like." She then tried to make a conversation while waiting for the assistant to come back. She asked her a few things about her wedding preparations; whether she loved the menu they chose, what flowers they chose to decorate the wedding venue, to how she met her future groom.

Seojung told her that the news about their engagement had gone viral on the internet, even it was published on the celebrity magazine. Yeonseok was apparently quite popular among the public since his promotion as Chief of Surgery came at a rather young age, Sejeong mentioned a number of his achievements while he’s still in the US—it turned out that he was the originator of a pro-bono action program for poor children with poor health in Nigeria and Kenya. They flied the chosen children with the worst illness from their home country to the US to be operated on and treated without paying a single dime. The American Surgical Association took interest on the program and eventually helped them to finance it when it’s earned a commendable award by WHO at the Children’s Day. And supposedly Yeonseok intended to promote the same program at his hospital. Jongdae couldn’t help himself to applaud proudly after the spontaneous disclosure.

“He’s actually not bad, now I start to like him.” He whispered on her ear.

Much to her chagrined, Seojung didn’t miss the chance to pass her the news that the Times Seoul almost put him on the list of 10 Most Eligible Bachelors in South Korea just before they announced their engagement, and that they then eventually changed the article about him discussing his plans to improve the public health system in the capital city.

Truth be told, Jisoo wasn’t really interested in listening to Seojung's enthusiastic blabbering, but really, she's starting to lose her respect for her right now to see how her words obliquely said that Yeonseok deserved better, someone better to be exact, especially when she didn’t—even for the sake of courtesy—make any effort to hide her obscure obsession over her future husband. That’s really annoying.

She stopped answering her questions as the lady shifted the conversation about other things. Fortunately, her assistant came back at the same time, so they could finish the brief conversation and refocused on the dress. Apparently, the assistant had brought her a dress she observed at the beginning of her arrival. She indeed really liked the dress the first time she spotted it. The dress was an off-shoulder gown of tulle fabric with floral embroidery and pearls embellishment on the neck line, chest and upper skirt, and it's covered with folded satin from the waist down. The design was perfect since it was long sleeve too with a nice cut of fanback skirt.

An assistant styled up her hair to suit the model of her gown. Jisoo really loved how it looked as soon as she put it on, she couldn’t take her eyes off her reflection by the large wall mirror and admire her appearance—they even gave her a bouquet of fake flowers so this looked more real—while Seojung made some adjustments in few places to fit her body.

When they opened the curtain, Jongdae let out a whistling sound of admiration. He immediately rose from his seat and took her photos from various angles.

"Whoa, I don’t know you can be pretty, Jisoo. Look here and smile." he said as he stood beside her.

But Jisoo ignored him, as for now her gaze laid on the reflection through the mirror, of Yeonseok who stood not far from the door behind her back. She had no idea since when he was there, and why there wasn’t any warning from Jongdae for his arrival.

Yeonseok had changed into a black tuxedo, and with a genuine smile he folded his arms across his chest and threw her a fixed gaze. His hair was pushed back on his head, and for a second she was awed of how that look brought out his best attractiveness. By all means, he was simply drop-dead gorgeous, and it was the first time Jisoo looked at him that way.

Jisoo’s smile slowly disappeared, for suddenly this certain thought came to her mind. In her alternate universe, she saw Sehun so strikingly debonair in that tuxedo and tie, stood dashingly looking at her with the same loving and warm smile, instead of Yeonseok.

* * *

They say if you don’t fight for what you want, don’t cry on what you lose. Jisoo had knocked herself out not to cry when she thought of Sehun for these past t