When she was a teenager Mrs. Park was everything good and sweet; she was among the nicest girl in the school, always putting others' needs before hers, always smiled and laughed.  She was loved by many because she was unselfish and had a big heart.  She was pretty as well, not the prettiest, nevertheless gorgeous.  She had won many boys' heart and one of them was Mr. Park, who was a timid teenage boy head over heels in love with her.  Back then she loved nobody in her school because she wanted to date boys older than her for she considered the ones in school too "schoolboy"; she wanted her first date to be someone mature.  Lee Nu Ri came from an average family before she became Mrs. Park; she did not have high expectations of her first date and when she did find a boyfriend at last, she was over the moon.  She was 22 when she first dated; her first date was a man of 25, whose father was in the top 10 richest in the country and the founder of a well-funded company.  She did not know that, except the fact that she and her boyfriend were absolutely infatuated with one another.  They dated for a few years and they were becoming serious about one another to the point of thinking about marriage when all of a sudden, her boyfriend invited her to a very expensive restaurant.  Lee Nu Ri thought that was it, that was the moment when she would become the happiest woman on the planet.
"Lee Nu Ri," he cupped her hands in his, "I think it's time to talk about us."
A slow nod, she could feel her heart beating so fast he might have heard it.  Lee Nu Ri remembered a bottle of red wine was placed in a bucket of ice on their table, unopened, thinking that they would have champagne as means of celebration.
"We need to be serious about this."
She nodded.
The only thing that etched in her memory was his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

"Come to bed, dear," Mr. Park is in PJ's, his eyelids are heavy from fatigue, "I'm going to switch off the lights."
"I'm going to stay here for a little longer, I'm not sleepy."  Mrs. Park is standing beside the window in her light nightgown, looking out into the garden.  
"Okay, goodnight."
Their bedroom darkens.
As Mr. Park falls asleep, his heavy breathing turns into audible snores, he never realised what Mrs. Park was looking at.  The old woman is looking out the window and in the garden where her daughter and her best friend are sitting; the moon produces a dim glow on the couple, who are sitting far apart from each other, when her daughter stands up with her back facing Kim Jonghyun.  Trying to make as minimal noise as possible, Mrs. Park clicks open her window so she may hear whatever goes on between those two.
"You seem distant today," Kim Jonghyun's voice is clear but low in the silence, "a penny for your thoughts."
"There's nothing to say, just tired that's all," comes her daughter's slow reply, "it's been a long day."
"I know you're hiding something from me," her best friend's voice is steady and firm, "I can feel it."  Getting up, he walks over behind her and places his hands on her shoulders.  
Men are either stupid or blind, Mrs. Park observes from above in her bedroom, even if the clue I'm-in-love-with-you is plastered across her forehead he still won't understand the situation.
That's fine though, Jae Hee will cut all contacts with him after Monday.  She'll understand; I know what's best for my girl, I've brought her up well.
"Do you feel anything else?"  Her voice is barely a whisper.
"There is something else?"
Silence.
"No," she sighs, "there is nothing else."
"Let's go back in, it's getting cold.  Besides," Jonghyun folds his arms around Jae Hee's waist, "you and I are going somewhere tomorrow."
"Where?"
"You'll see."
"I'm going to stay here a bit longer, you go back in."  She turns to Jonghyun.
"Are you sure?  Well," he pecks her cheeks and before turning away, he bids her goodnight, "sweet dreams."
She watches him go inside, etching the memory of his backside in her mind before he disappears.  Although she and Jonghyun were alone in the garden, she knows they were being watched by her mother.  Her eyes flicker towards her parents' window and, surely, her mother is standing there in her nightgown studying them from above.  Her eagle eyes are narrowed and she raises her eyebrows, her lips pursed, before swiftly turning her back.
Life is cruel; life doesn't go the way she wants it to lead her.  Yes; Park Jae Hee can accept she is imperfect: a poor girl who wears hand-me-downs, who is average-looking and nowhere as pretty as her mum was, who isn't clever or witty, who is a nobody- weed among the grass.  She can accept all that, truly she can; what she cannot accept is not having the courage to express her feelings to the person she loved all her life, to let him know the truth before it's too late.
Before she becomes the wife of another man.