thirty-five

  “Okay, so let me get this straight,” Jessica made an attempt to organize all the contents from the little squeals that her sister had produced. “You’re marrying Oh Sehun, but he hasn’t actually proposed to you yet.”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Krystal clapped her hands ecstatically, bouncing up and down on the couch. “I mean, just because he hasn’t found the right ring doesn’t mean that he’s not serious, you know. A ring will take hours and hours to search for, and I’m sure, I’m so sure that he’ll-“

  “Sehun doesn’t really seem like the type, though,” Jonghyun purposefully butted in, stating his opinion. “He’s the sort that won’t want to settle down.”

  Krystal narrowed her eyes at him. “Excuse me, but Jjong-oppa, you seemed like the type who’d be fooling around with provocative bar girls for the rest of your life. But look at you now, you married my stubborn and snobbish sister, and had two equally demanding kids. One can’t really predict one’s life,” She added on, a-matter-of-factly.

  “You could’ve cut out the ‘stubborn’ and ‘snobbish’ part,” Jessica frowned at her sister distastefully, as Jonghyun turned bright pink. “And my husband has never fooled around with bar girls.”

  “…Then you don’t know anything, unnie,” Krystal enunciated on her words, and Jonghyun’s cheeks turned pinker. “Anyway, let’s leave the topic about Jjong-oppa’s Casanova days to the past. About the present – I’m going to marry Sehun and I don’t care what y’all say about it.”

  Jessica settled a hand on Krystal’s shoulder. “’Stal, we’re not objecting the marriage. It’s just that I think it’s best for you to reconsider it. Is Sehun the guy you want to spend the rest of your life with?”

  “Yes,” Krystal nodded her head vigorously. “And I’m sure about that.”

  “Then…” Jessica paused, hesitating for a moment. “Are you sure that he wants to spend the rest of his life with you?”

  Just as she was about to open to rebutt her sister, Krystal contemplated the thought in her mind. Sehun’s method of proposal had not been especially romantic, and then there was the evident fact that he was yet to buy him a ring. She knew that such a gesture showed his obvious reluctance, and that there was a probability that he was considering a billion of other thoughts in her mind.

  The usually unreliable Jonghyun was doubtlessly right, in a sense that Sehun had never been the sort of person who appreciated stability. Sehun himself had told her several times that he didn’t desire to marry her, and that she could leave any moment she wanted if she wanted to. Despite that, she had stayed. And for him to mention the topic of marriage, as much as she desired it, she couldn’t help but feel rather suspicious of his true intentions.

  “…If he doesn’t want to, then he wouldn’t propose, would he?” Krystal’s tone had become soft, quivering and stuttering as she spoke. “I mean, to propose, it would take some guts! You’d need to practice in front of the mirror, and you’d need to be sincere and…”

  “And?” Jessica prompted.

  “…And you’d need to have bought the ring. You’d need to be so sure that you even planned the exact time and place that you’d want to propose. You’d be nervous. You’d be fidgety. And you’d need to…” She stopped, the tears rising to . “…You’d need to whole-heartedly love the person you’re proposing to.”

  Jessica slung an arm around her sister. “You’re right.”

  With tears b her eyes, Krystal blubbered, “Oh gawd, unnie, what should I do? Should I reconfirm things with him? Should I yell at him and settle it all once and for all? Or should I let him go… But I don’t want to let him go, unnie, I don’t! I want to wear a pretty white wedding dress and I want Sehun to be standing at the end of the aisle, waiting for me! No one else, but Oh Sehun! Unnie, what should I do?”

  Jessica heaved a sigh, for she knew that she was dealing with a matter that had almost no proper solution to it. If she could be the one to handle the entire thing, she knew she would probably just pry the both of them apart and build a ten-foot barrier between them. But her sister loved Oh Sehun so much, too much, and Jessica knew that she would have to offer encouragement, whether she liked it or not.

  “…Do what you think is fit,” Jessica advised gently, her sister’s hair. “If you want it, you could make yourself happy. But if you want to take one step further, you could think about what would make the both of you happy.”

  “That’s really mature of you to say, Sica,” Jonghyun complimented, resting a hand on his wife’s shoulder.

  Jessica smiled warmly as she touched her husband’s hand. “Thank you. Now, could you go and feed Mijeom?”

  “Alright,” He nodded compliantly.

  Krystal gazed over at the both of them – they, despite having their imperfections and their petty quarrels, their marriage was everything she wanted her own marriage to turn out to be.

  “You could put him down, you know.”

  “No!” Luhan screeched at his comrade, squeezing his son into a tight hug. “I put Xun down, and he’ll crawl. No, he can’t even crawl, he’ll be lying on the ground! Gawd, Sehun, don’t you even know a thing about kids?”

  Sehun suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “Yeah, I don’t – that’s why I don’t intend to have any.”

  Luhan raised an eyebrow wearily. “And Krystal’s okay with that?  She’s okay with the both of you being a childless couple for the rest of your lives?”

  “I’m pretty sure that if Yoona married Kai, they’d live a happy life without kids,” Sehun snapped back, nudging Luhan to look at Yoona, who was pushing the shopping cart a few meters in front of them. “She looks extremely depressed, hyung; don’t tell me that you can’t feel it.”

  “You should handle your own problems instead of constantly switching the topic and reminding me to worry about mine,” Luhan said defensively, tightening his grip around Xun. “And what do you mean, huh?” He couldn’t stop himself from clarifying his doubts, watching his wife take a bottle of soya sauce from the shelf and dumping it into the shopping cart. “Yoona is perfectly happy.”

  Sehun shook his head, as though it was all hopeless. “You’re practically blind, hyung, blind to your wife’s true feelings. You just see your kids, that’s all.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Well, if you don’t want to heed my warning, that’s your problem,” Sehun shrugged his shoulder furtively. “She’ll be snatched a