Sam Sook had planned to meet Yeo Wool in the gardens that were hidden behind his grandmother’s home. The same garden in which she had first met him. Jung Sook had offered to play with Se Yeon while Se Ri visited with Bo A at the home of Lord and Lady Kim Seub.
“You go have some time to yourself,” Jung Sook had gazed at her knowingly.
Sam Sook had laughed. “You know very well that I’m not going to be by myself. I’m going to chat with Kim Yeo Wool.”
“Is that all that you’re going to do with Yeo Wool?” her friend had asked her mischievously.
The young mother had gasped in embarrassment. “Jung Sook!”
“What?” The teacher’s eyes had widened in amusement. “Yeo Wool is quite handsome. And he’s very sweet. And you deserve someone wonderful.”
At which comment, Sam Sook was certain that she had turned crimson.
“Just…take your time to…thoroughly enjoy…his company,” Jung Sook finished with an impish grin lighting up her friendly face.
Sam Sook just shook her head. “It’s not like that. We’re just friends.”
“Hmm. Are you sure? You turned awfully red for someone who’s interested in merely friendship.”
Her friend remained silent and wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“And I’ve seen the way that man looks at you.”
Sam Sook’s eyes flew to her face now. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, surely you’ve noticed too.”
The older girl’s forehead crumpled. “I haven’t noticed anything noteworthy about the way that Kim Yeo Wool looks at me.”
“Hmm. Maybe it was just my imagination.”
“What was just your imagination?” she pressed the younger woman.
Jung Sook’s lips instantly spread into a wide grin. “That man looks at you like you are the only sun shining in his sky.” She paused. “After a lifetime of gloomy, rainy days.”
Sam Sook just stared at her. Her friend must be delusional. Yeo Wool had never looked at her like that.
––
But a few minutes later, all her concerns about Jung Sook’s intuition evaporated as Sam Sook was met by a stricken Yeo Wool. He was waiting outside for her. He led her into the garden behind the house.
She turned towards him. “Yeo Wool. What’s wrong?”
“My grandmother just passed away. She lay down for a nap a couple of hours ago. But she never woke up.”
“Oh, Yeo Wool! I am so sorry!” Without even thinking, she threw her arms around him and pulled him close.
His arms came up around her, and he buried his face in her shoulder. Inhaling her scent as he fought against his grief. And lost. After a few trembling moments in her arms, he drew away from her. Reluctantly releasing her.
Tears slid down his face. “I always returned home to see my grandmother. Because I have forever felt safe here. In her presence. Her home was my one true shelter in life. I was always perfectly accepted with her. She never stopped believing the best of me.”
Yeo Wool stared at Sam Sook. For a few fleeting weeks, those same words had been true of her too. But then she had faded from his life. To live with the man who had one day come to be her husband.
“Was he good to you?” Yeo Wool asked abruptly.
Startled, Sam Sook furrowed her brow. “Who?”
“Your husband.”
Her face cleared. “Ah. Yes,” she responded firmly, “he was very good to me.”
“What was it like to be married to an old man?”
She sobered. “Well, I never knew anything different. He was kind to me. And my experience of younger men,” she shuddered suddenly, “hasn’t always been good.”
Yeo Wool frowned as his eyes slid over her countenance. “What does that mean?” he whispered.
Her eyes collided with his then. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” he breathed.
She was trapped in his sympathetic gaze. And she didn’t respond to his words.
“It seemed to me that you were very good at putting the older boys in their place,” he finally uttered, his eyes still delving the depths of hers.
She wrinkled her brow. “What made you think so? Oh! You mean because I stood up to those boys at your birthday party?”
He nodded.
She shrugged. “I was good at taking on bullies back then.” Her face instantly fell as a tremor passed over it. “It was the adults who made me nervous,” she muttered under her breath.
“The adults?” he asked, startled. “Which adults?”
But she didn’t respond. And her eyes slid away from his.
What secrets was she hiding? He could clearly discern that she was covering something up. Something devastating?
“Sam Sook,” he intoned in a voice deeper than was his usual wont. “Don’t hide from me. Please.”
She recognized his informal use of her name, and her eyes crossed the distance between them to find his again. Was it possible that this boy still had a soft spot for her?
He continued to probe those wide, obsidian eyes. Eyes which he had always loved. “Do you miss him?”
“Who?” she breathed.
“Your husband.”
“Oh,” she released a long breath. Then she bobbed her head. And her gaze grew sorrowful. “I do. We were…close. He talked to me like an equal. Treated me as a friend.” Her lips twitched up into a smile. “He spoilt me. He was forever buying me little trinkets that he thought would delight me.” She grimaced. “Too bad for him that I have never been that sort of girl. Who delights in jewelry and knickknacks.”
He studied her face. “I bet that, to his dying day, he still believed you did.”
Her eyes lightened with shock. Then her smile bounced back into place. “I could never have broken his heart. Not by denying him the pleasure of giving me things anyway.”
She had broken his heart once. Involuntarily. Still, it had happened. It had broken her heart too.
She glanced down at her hands which she had unconsciously clenched together.
His gaze dropped to those hands. Concern written on his countenance, he peered back up into her face. “Did you break his heart some other way?” he queried in a tiny whisper.
Her instantly devastated gaze flew to meet his. He saw agony swirling in the depths of hers.
“Sam Sook?” he breathed, distressed. “What is it?”
She drew a steadying breath and forced a smile. Then she glanced towards his house.
“I should go. You need to be with your family right now.”
“Would you take a walk with me instead?”
Furrowing her brow, she locked eyes with him. “Don’t you want to be with your family right now?”
“I want to be with you.”
Stunned, she stared deep into his beautiful eyes. Those eyes had always seen her the way that she wished to be seen. But what Yeo Wool saw was an illusion. Wasn’t it?
She had the odd feeling that he would have said that what he saw was her best self. Or maybe even her true self. But she had never thought herself resilient. Or brave. Or strong.
She had simply had the persistence to put one foot in front of the other and keep walking. To the next signpost. Into the following day. Picking up the threads of her life wherever she landed. And taking care of those around her.
It had always been easy for her to be strong for her father. And for her mother. And for her sisters. And for those whom she befriended. It was being strong for herself that was not her forte.
The echoes reverberated, and they told her that she didn’t deserve the help which she gave others. She wasn’t worthy of the kind of relationship several of her married friends enjoyed with their husbands. Especially not now. After what had happened with Se Ho.
She had replayed that evening over and over again in her mind. Trying to figure out where she had gone wrong. How she had made that error in judgment. And if she had somehow enticed the man. She must have invited such behavior in some way. But she was clueless as to how. What could she have changed in her outward demeanor to have brought about a different result?
“Sam Sook? Did you hear me? I said that I want to be with you.”
Her reverie shattered, she blinked and looked into Yeo Wool’s eyes. “Why?” she whispered.
And a tremendous tremor troubled his countenance. “How can you ask me that? Don’t you know that you’re my best friend?”
It was the cry of his heart. And she heard it. And it shocked her.
“I am?” she gasped, floored. “But,” she wrinkled her brow, “how can that be? I have been gone for ages, and you and I have only just recently become reacquainted.”
“In my heart, you never left me,” he murmured softly.
And something in her heart shifted.
And Jung Sook’s words came back to her.
“That man looks at you like you are the only sun shining in his sky. After a lifetime of gloomy, rainy days.”
Did Yeo Wool truly love her? Was he attracted to her? As a man to a woman?
Oh, but if he did, if he were, such a truth would be terrifying! For she could never tell him the truth. And she could never be with him if she didn’t tell him the truth. So she was stuck.
But he was gazing at her with such heartfelt devotion burning in his eyes right now. She couldn’t possibly reject him. She couldn’t hurt him.
She closed her eyes. And sighed. What was she to do?
Then, she found the truth falling from her lips. Unbidden, it came.
“You never left me either,” she whispered.
And she knew that she was sunk. So she kept her eyes sealed tightly shut.
Yeo Wool’s gaze devoured her lovely face. He had watched her close her eyes. For some reason, that action had drawn his gaze to her pretty mouth. Lips which he had longed to kiss ever since the morning that he’d first seen her and her girls at the market.
Those pink lips seemed primed for his kiss. Slightly plump, they beckoned to him. To lean in. And claim them. As his own.
But…he didn’t want to trespass where he wasn’t welcome.
And he wasn’t sure why she’d closed her eyes.
“Sam Sook. Are you…hiding…from me?”
Those eyes flew open.
But he was shocked to see tears flooding them. She gazed up at him. And, for the life of him, he could not read her gaze.
She shook her head. Vigorously. And bit her lip.
“Sam Sook. What’s wrong? Please talk to me.”
She just stared at him. Frozen.
“I wasn’t completely honest with you,” he murmured after a few quiet moments.
She blinked. “What?”
“My grandma wasn’t my only refuge.”
Her eyes remained locked with his. Then his voice sounded again.
“So were you.”
