CHAPTER 13

Moonbyul sat at the desk in her office with her phone in hand. It was really cheesy, but she wanted to hear Dahee’s voice so bad right now, it was almost like they were on their honeymoon phase for the second time, and the thought of her wife leaving a secret message, a compliment or whatever may be, on the recording of her performance, made Moonbyul’s heart flutter.

She put her AirPods on and played the video she had already seen a thousand times. Just like the thousand times before, her eyes couldn’t seem to focus on anything that wasn't Yongsun, that wasn’t they two dancing, that wasn’t they two together, that wasn’t they two sharing one of the best moments in Moonbyul’s recent memory. She whiffed those thoughts off as the video was approaching its ending and turned up the volume in the expectation of hearing her wife’s voice.

“Dahee really asked you to record this video?”

Wait… that’s… Hyejin’s voice.

“Yeah, she said she wouldn’t be able to get here in time.”

And Wheein’s.

“But she will come, right?”

“Er… no.”

“Ouch. Poor Moonbyul.”

“Yeah…”

I… I must have heard that wrong.

Moonbyul replayed that last bit of the video, increasing the volume to its max.

Then she replayed it again.

Again.

Again.

And again.

And the words she heard the first time didn’t magically change in the sub-sequential replays.

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Because of her rather unusual amount of work that day, Moonbyul chose to ignore what she had discovered earlier in the morning and just focus on the tasks she had to do. Well, she tried to ignore it, but that subject always found a way to slip into her thoughts, so she found a solution for it: denial.

No, she didn’t heard anything unusual in the video that Dahee recorded; it was just her mind playing tricks on her. Dahee was the one who recorded that video. Dahee was there. She had to be there.

Unfortunately, by the end of her workday, the “denial tactic” was beginning to fail. All the doubts in Moonbyul’s head came back straight at her, despite that, with a lot of self-control, she was able to finish everything planned for that day, and now she finally allowed her mind to go crazy as much as it wanted to.

Between all the crazy theories and ideas that were running through her mind, one idea stood out, the simplest idea: talk to Wheein. If the voice she heard on that video really was from Wheein, all she had to do was talk to her friend. If - Moonbyul really wanted to treat this as an improbable thing - Dahee had asked Wheein to record the performance for her, there was a chance that if Moonbyul was straight to the point, Wheein would simply deny it for Dahee’s sake.

grumpy old lady's wife

hey, i just wanted to thank you for recording my performance for Dahee

that was really sweet of you :)