The Lord will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.

Deuteronomy 28:20

A small work of art in a glass was served to them. In a swirl, curd cheese, light raspberry sorbet and small biscuit pieces were piled on top of each other. The top layer of the dessert was studded with shortbread and raspberries. Every other Saturday night, Minho and his family had dinner at his parents' house. The other Saturday nights they spent with Sooyoung's parents. Only when they had gone on holiday did they miss these dinners.

The chandelier above them gave only dim light. The sun had set early, so even the high windows offered only darkness. Minho's father did not hesitate and plunged his small silver spoon into the dessert. Neither Minho nor Sooyoung touched the sweet delicacy in front of them.

"Tomorrow Naeun has her first horse-riding lesson." Sooyoung made an effort to sound pleased, as if it was just an incidental sentence. She sat up straight in the black leather-wrapped chair. Her dark fitted dress was elegant and flattering at the same time. The colour of her red nails matched her lipstick perfectly.

Minho tried to concentrate on the classical music that was played.

"Horseback riding? Besides dancing?" asked Minho's father Yunkyeom from the head of the table. He had already lost his first few strands of hair. The many years of work could be seen in his wrinkled face.

Sooyoung looked at her father-in-law the way she always looked at him when she wanted him to talk some sense into Minho. Yunkyeom had been sure that Sooyoung would make the perfect wife for his son. Not only was she from good blood, but she had been Minho's best friend since childhood. Sooyoung carried a wise head on her shoulders. She was foresighted and levelheaded. Something his son could certainly learn from.

On his 45th birthday, Minho had been twenty and Sooyoung eighteen, Yunkyeom and Jungnam, Sooyoung's father, had announced their engagement to friends and family. It was a dream come true for Sooyoung. Minho had agreed, not that he could have objected. His life at that time was limited to studying. He did not have time to get to know anyone. That's why there was no one else he wanted to marry. And marrying his best friend was always better than marrying a stranger.

But this view had also changed for him in the last ten years. They had been engaged for two years until they got married. During that time they promised each other that nothing would change between them. And maybe Sooyoung meant it at the time. They shared their first kiss on their wedding day. It was not a tradition they followed. Sooyoung had sometimes told him they should at least practise. But Minho felt that kissing his best friend was too weird.

He had not intended to sleep with her on their wedding night, but it was the first time he had touched a woman's body. Her skin was soft and warm. And even though he felt things that night that he had never felt before, he had sensed that something had shifted. They had crossed a line and could no longer find their way back to each other.

Soon they both realised that their marriage did not consist of just the two of them. It consisted of their parents expecting grandchildren. It consisted of money to carry the family name with honour. It consisted of expectations to be perfect, to never have a bad day. Always reaching new goals and surpassing them. And the more expectations entered their lives, the less room there was for their childhood friendship.

Yunkyeom lowered his spoon a little and shook his head. "Minho, what are you thinking?" he wanted to know. For he understood that his granddaughter had once again given up a hobby.

Minho recognised Bach's 'Christ lay in bonds of death'. But it wasn't Easter after all, so why was it playing?

"Well, I think horse riding is a whole exquisite way to pass the time." Minho's mother sounded cheerful, but immediately took a spoonful of her dessert.

"Naeun will fall back in life." Yunkyeom's gaze was insistently laying on his son.

At his daughter's name, Minho clicked back in. A new pack of his favourite brand of cigarettes was already waiting for him hidden in the car. Should he smoke the first cigarette in his garden when his wife was in the shower? He wondered when the best moment would be.

"I tried to make him understand that, but he won't listen to me." Sooyoung tried to lower the distress in her voice.

Naeun sat next to Minho eating her dessert, just not as enthusiastically as before. She didn't understand any of this. Her dad had allowed her to learn to horseback ride, after all. So why did her grandfather and mother seem so against it?

Under the table, Minho nudged Naeun lightly with his foot so that she looked at him. He pointed to his ear and she nodded at him. Naeun closed her eyes and tried to listen to the soft music. That was what her father had taught her. When the world got too noisy again, he told her, you are to remember silence. Silence doesn't have to be silence, he said. Just something in the room that calms you down.

"If the little one only starts things, she'll never be good at anything."

"But darling..." but Yunkyeom's wife fell silent again at the look her husband gave her.

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