Chapter 11   magic

Only after we grabbed a taxi did I breathe a sigh of relief. My whole body was drenched in sweat, so I fanned my face with the wedding invitations.

"Are you insane? Why the hell are you acting like this?" Lee JiHan frowned at me.

"I don’t know, I, uh....I can’t really think of what to say right now." I admitted.

"Don’t tell me what you think, tell me the truth," Lee JiHan blurted out in anger.

Ah...what do I do...

Put in a difficult situation, I squeezed my eyes closed and increased the speed of my fanning.

How can I explain this? What excuse should I give?

After a lot of thought, I placed the wedding invitation on my lap and took a deep breath. Let’s just tell him what type of person Lim DaeChul is. I’ll let him know how horrible a person he is and tell him I don’t want to invite him to the wedding.

Looking down at the invitation, I was strengthened my resolve and nodded my head. Suddenly, I got an inkling that something was off. Why...am I only holding two invitations? I’m sure I had grabbed three from before... The sudden irksome intuition made me pull at my hair with my hands. No, no it can’t be. I couldn’t have left it there. I probably just dro...dropped it. I had to have. Please!

Not just desperate but mortified, I took out my cell phone. With shaking hands I called HeeKyung.

"Uh, HeeKyung, I think I dropped one of the invitations before I left, did you perhaps see it?"

[I did see it. It had fallen on the cafe floor.]

"What?! Really?"

[Yea. DaeChul sunbae picked it up...]

"He picked it up and threw it away right? He didn’t look inside and just threw it away right?"

[No. He read the inside...]

"No!" I uttered a throat wrenching scream that was so loud the taxi driver almost stopped the car.

***

Upon returning home, I lay sprawled on the living room floor, my mind a blurry mess.

[DaeChul sunbae saw the invitation and said he had something to say to you and to please give him a call.]

HeeKyung’s words spun continuously through my head, and I couldn’t register anything that Lee JiHan was saying.

Something to tell me? Tell me what? Why? No, why? If I’m marrying Lee JiKyung, why does he have something to say to me? With my chest resting on the neatly folded blanket, I chewed the fingernail off my thumb. Suddenly, Lee JiHan pulled the blanket hard away from me and yelled.

"Do my words not sound like words to you?!"

My body rolled. "Oof!"

Thanks to him, I woke up from my trance and saw Lee JiHan in front of me.

"How many times are you going to ignore what I say! Am I a joke to you? No, is my family a joke to you?"

Staring at Lee JiHan’s face, which looked as if he was about to eat me, I hung my head.

"No...."

"What do you mean ‘no’! Look at the evidence!"

Lee JiHan shot up and lifted his shirt to show his side. The sudden removal of clothes shocked me and my eyes grew wide. He pointed at his side while shoving himself near me.

"Here, where you pinched me! Do you see how it’s red?"

Lee JiHan was pointing at his side. I should look...but why do my eyes keep wandering to his abs. My eyes were glued to his milky skin and toned abs.

"Even after this are you going to say you don’t think of me as a joke?"

"Yes...no!" Unable to take my eyes off his abs, I answered him in a trance.

"Then what do you see me as? Trivial?"

"It’s good to see you...it’s nice to look at." It was an instinctive response.

Only after I had said it did I realize what I had actually said. So although I regretted it, there was no way to take it back.

"What?" Lee JiHan narrowed his eyes and pulled his shirt down.

As a consequence, my mind which had been entranced by the abs came back into my head.

"You! I showed you so you will reflect on it but what? It’s nice to look at? Are you saying it’s a good thing I got hurt?"

"What? Uh, of course not. It’s just your side was so beautiful...I was surprised."

"You call that an excuse? Ugh, forget it. I’m not letting you off the hook for this. I’m going to tell my brother. You better prepare yourself."

At Lee JiHan’s warning I kneeled and hung my head.

"It’s no use. I’m going to tell him everything as it happened," he threatened.

"Do what you must. Of course you should. It was my fault," I said.

I looked up forlornly at Lee JiHan. He stared back in confusion.

"It’s just, I wanted to apologize for stepping over my boundaries and hurting you. I’m sorry. You can tell everything to JiKyung. Even if I had 10 mouths I would have nothing to say." My humble attitude seemed to diffuse Lee JiHan’s anger.

"Well, that is that. But what is up with you and that guy? Why were you making such a racket?"

"That’s..."

I looked down at my knees and quickly tried to think. Slowly, in defeat, I started telling him the story of the past.

"It was three years ago from today.." I pulled the memory of three years ago from the back of my mind and told him the story.

"DaeChul sunbae was our director for the play, and the theatre people didn’t like him. That goes for me too. He would burst out in anger, and he stole from the younger actors and took our membership fees. If anyone criticized him, he was so sensitive about it. He was an all around horrible person."

Lost in my past memories, I stared out into space.

"Are you saying that the reason you hid the wedding invitation is for something as trivial as that? That’s what warranted your craziness and violence? You could have just told him to not come to the wedding. What–"

"That is only where it starts," I interrupted. "DaeChul sunbae’s scum habits became worse after he broke up with his boy...no, I mean his significant other."

"He was able to have a lover with that personality. That’s a surprise," Lee JiHan scoffed.

The fact that his lover was your brother will probably be more of a surprise.

Unable to say those words, I swallowed them, and continued the story, only revealing the parts that I could voice.

"One day, he told the theatre people that we all needed to go on a trip together. No one really wanted to go, but theatre groups are like that, you do what you are told. Direction is really important in a play. This trip was not only to help us for the show, but was also a way of saying thank you for helping him cope with heartbreak, so DaeChul sunbae said he would pay for the whole trip. Everyone got in sunbae’s car and we headed to GangWonDo pension."

"At least he knows some decency."

"You think so?" I sported a bitter smile and looked at Lee JiHan’s eyes as I asked him another question. "Have you ever heard of a pyramid scheme?"

Lee JiHan remained silent.

"We were practically imprisoned at that GangWonDo pension for a week. Sunbae handed us all over to the pyramid scheme worker and left in his car."

Reminiscing about that sad memory brought tears to my eyes.

"Each person had to pay $5000 for auction merchandise. They checked my wallet and bank accounts and when they couldn’t find a speck of dust they made me take out a loan. Those gangsters!"

I

became so disheartened that I dabbed at my tears with my sleeves.

"Oh, thinking of the past is bringing tears to my eyes," I said apologetically.

"That kind of scum is my brother’s friend?" Lee JiHan asked with an expression of disbelief.

"He isn’t now," I assured him.

He wasn’t back then either. Friend shmiend. He was his lover, your brother’s lover. I muttered the word I was unable to say out loud under my breath.

"Of course, my brother would never still be friends with that kind of person." Looking at Lee JiHan’s confident face made me smile sadly.

"Anyways, after that happened, sunbae moved to England. I wonder how much he got for selling us off."

"Wait. You mean even after he did that he can greet your theatre people like he did today?" Lee JiHan asked in disbelief.

"That’s the type of person he is."

Your brother’s ex boyfriend is.

"So neither I nor JiKyung ever want to see him, but if that sunbae finds out about our wedding I am sure about one thing: your brother will be put in a bad predicament. JiKyung is such a nice person, he’s not able to just cut his ties! And that’s why I’m trying to cut it on my end, so I had to act that way back there."

That’s how I wrapped up my story. None of if was a lie, I retold it exactly the way it had happened. Except for the fact that I excluded some parts. But the words I said were all the truth. Lee JiHan must have been mulling over my words, because he continued to look down in silence. Then he opened his mouth.

"Well, if that’s the case then I understand. But you putting your hands on me, and violently no less, I cannot forgive. I will definitely tell my brother about this."

After the warning, he turned and left for his room. After overcoming that hurdle, I sighed in relief and sprawled on the ground. What did Lim DaeChul want to talk to me about?

I was anxious and couldn’t get rid of the irksome feeling. I started to chew my fingernails again.

At that moment, I heard Lee JiHan talking to his brother, tattling about me and what had happened today. Well, now JiKyung will know I met Lim DaeChul.

As of now, let’s wait for JiKyung’s phone call. Until then there’s no point in fretting over it. Let’s just think good thoughts. Good thoughts...a very very bright and energizing good thought...

Ah...his side...and below...

I had forced my head to think of something good, and for some reason I ended up reminiscing about Lee JiHan’s milky abs.

Why is that...Why?

Because you like it...because it’s something to like.

Without my knowledge, my spirits were lifted and with my eyes half closed I muttered blankly.

JiKyung messaged me, Lim Daechul had sent him an email.

"Is it true that you really love Na AhJung, does Na AhJung know you are gay?"

With those questions, Lim DaeChul said he disapproved of the wedding and begged to meet him again.

JiKyung told him that he really had come to love me and that I didn’t know that he was gay. So for good times sake, he asked that Lim DaeChul congratulate us.

JiKyung didn’t know how Lim DaeChul would react to such a response. In this situation, the only thing I could do was to just pray that nothing would happen. Even knowing there was nothing I could do, my mind went into overdrive thinking of all the possible worst case scenarios. I knew this would only make me nervous and uncomfortable but I couldn’t help it. This is why people tell me I worry too much. I’m such a worry wart.

"Phew...." I wiped between each tile diligently but stopped to heave a big sigh.

It’s probably better that Lee JiHan gave me something to do. When my body was at rest, my mind was actively bothering me, although my relief probably wasn’t a result that Lee JiHan had intended. I heard the sound of Lee JiHan’s whistle ring through my ears. I stopped what I was doing immediately and ran outside.

"Yes, I’m coming!"

Lee JiHan was standing by the oven. The moment I arrived, he said in a tone ripe with discontent.

"Are you still cleaning he tiles?"

"Yes, there’s not much left now," I said.

"Can’t you do anything more efficiently? In five minutes this dish will come out of the oven. Do you think you can finish by that time at this speed?"

If I was late, I was afraid it would push back Lee JiHan’s dining time so I suggested that he could eat without me, but Lee JiHan frowned.

"This dish’s main attraction is the melting of the carefully layered three cheeses. If it cools down for even a minute, the taste will be compromised."

He had a weird stubbornness when it came to his food.

"So from now you have exactly five minutes. Finish your cleaning within that time. Go!"

Like an army private, I heeded the command and ran to the bathroom.