Chapter 5: A Cruel Destiny

 

1. Night Jazz, and a Provocative Confession

A round ice sphere collided against the wall of the crystal glass, emitting a cold, translucent metallic clink. The air inside the bar, drifting aimlessly toward the deep hours of the dawn, hung heavy and thick, matching the dimly subdued lighting. The surroundings were deathly quiet; the only thing barely patching up the invisible silence stretched between the two was the mournful jazz melody that occasionally pierced the stillness.

Dong-hyun drained yet another glass, losing count of how many he had already downed. Hyun-ji quietly observed his trembling glass before refilling it with clear alcohol with her usual practiced, sophisticated touch. As the liquid courage flowed, their shadows stretched and overlapped long across the bar counter.

"Hyun-ji."

Dong-hyun finally broke the heavy framework of silence, calling her name in a low, hushed whisper. There was an undeniable shyness and unrefined hesitation in his touch as his fingers aimlessly traced the cold water droplets forming and trickling down the surface of the glass.

"Yeah? What’s wrong, Sunbae? Why are you hesitating so much today?"

As Hyun-ji rested her chin on her hand, setting her glass down and staring straight at him, Dong-hyun forced his lips open, as if unsealing a massive secret buried deep within his chest.

"I think…… someone truly wonderful is entering my life."

Hyun-ji’s fingers, which had been playing with her glass, froze in an instant, as if a lie had suddenly been exposed. Caught entirely off guard by the sudden appearance of those words, her large eyes locked tightly onto Dong-hyun’s profile. After analyzing his face for a moment to catch any micro-expressions, Hyun-ji let out a short, airy chuckle, as if shaking off the tension.

"Someone wonderful? Don't tell me, Sunbae. Did you hide a secret lover somewhere while I was away overseas?"

Dong-hyun could not bring himself to meet Hyun-ji’s eyes, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of embarrassment. Like a bashful child, he merely gave a mischievous, silent nod. His pale ears were flushing a deep crimson under the amber bar lights.

"For now…… it’s just a heartbreaking, one-sided crush. But it’s a strange thing. Whenever I look at her, the sacred word 'Destiny' echoes from the deepest corners of my heart without me even realizing it. Suddenly, the overwhelming thought that she might be the missing piece of my soul—my soulmate—rushes over me, completely consuming me."

"Oh, please."

Hyun-ji let out a clear, amused laugh, finding it utterly absurd.

"How old are you, Sunbae, to still be clinging to such a childish notion of destiny? A soulmate? Even middle schoolers passing by would burst out laughing if they heard you."

"I’ve always been stubborn and foolish, you know," Dong-hyun muttered with a lonely, self-deprecating smile. "That’s why I’ve never managed to experience a real, proper love in my life, always just drifting along the outermost fringes of it……."

"Sunbae, failing to have a single proper relationship at your age isn't romance, and it’s certainly nothing to brag about. That just makes you a hopeless fool."

At Hyun-ji’s blunt, sharp tongue, Dong-hyun offered a hollow laugh, feeling thoroughly embarrassed, and drained his glass once more.

"I suppose so……."

It was then that Hyun-ji brought her glass to her red lips, a sly smile wrinkling the corners of her eyes. A strange sense of leisure and an undeniable streak of mischief flashed across her translucent eyes.

"If that's the case, Sunbae, why don't you just date me? I can promise you a genuinely fun time."

Dong-hyun’s head snapped toward Hyun-ji like a tightly coiled spring bursting loose.

"What? What did you just say……? What on earth are you talking about?"

"Come on, I’m a pretty great catch as a dating partner, aren't I?" Hyun-ji continued with a relaxed smile, riding the smooth rhythm of the drifting jazz music. "So don't even dream about complicating your life by getting married again. Why not just casually date me and enjoy the rest of your life?"

A heavy thud dropped in Dong-hyun’s chest. Stricken by utter bewilderment, his hand froze in midair just as he was about to pour alcohol into his glass. His mischievous eyes sank into an icy, profound seriousness.

"Hyun-ji, I’m not joking with you right now. I am completely serious."

"I’m serious too," Hyun-ji countered, curling the corners of her lips slightly into a deliberately provocative smile that shook his composure. "Who knows? If our sexual chemistry in bed turns out to be absolutely flawless, I might just have a sudden change of heart and impulsively marry you."

"Cough! Hack, hack!"

Dong-hyun, who had been swallowing the high-proof alcohol, choked violently at her unexpectedly high-octane statement. Watching Dong-hyun turn a suffocating shade of scarlet as he coughed, Hyun-ji burst into a bright, innocent peal of laughter, thoroughly amused. Her clear laughter vibrated through the heavy air of the bar like the chime of a silver bell.

"Sunbae, it’s a joke! A joke!"

Hyun-ji slapped Dong-hyun’s back lightly as tears welled in his eyes, smoothly shifting the subject.

"You know me—I am a fierce, die-hard bachelorette to my very core. Why would I ever willingly surrender my sweet freedom to be shackled to a single man? These days, a capable, glamorous gold miss is the ultimate trend."

Only then did Dong-hyun exhale a long, ragged breath, soothing his startled chest.

"Seriously…… Hyun-ji, you have a natural-born talent for playing with someone’s heart, tossing it up and down. I am utterly no match for you."

"Alright, Sunbae. Let’s throw away all this tedious, headache-inducing talk and just drink."

Hyun-ji lifted her glass, and Dong-hyun, yielding to her untamable pace, clinked his glass against hers with a helpless smile. The crystal-clear chime resonated long through the silence, and they emptied their glasses simultaneously, as if washing away their thoughts. Hyun-ji fluidly refilled both of their glasses with the clear spirit once more.

As the momentary burst of playful noise dissolved like foam, a deeper, far more viscous silence descended heavily upon the bar. Dong-hyun stared vacantly at his filled glass. The playfulness from moments ago was now completely erased from his face. His gaze, swallowed by deep shadows cast by the lights, sank into a sorrowful melancholy—perhaps mirroring the profound isolation of Hyun-seo, far away in Jeju.

"Hyun-ji."

Dong-hyun whispered in a voice entirely altered from before—low, stark, and dead serious.

"I am going to need…… a lot of your help."

At that single grave sentence, an inexplicable, icy tremor of tension slashed across Hyun-ji’s heart like a whip.

2. Jeju, Tears Along the Chung-hyo Cemetery Path

At that exact moment, the Jeju sunlight was fracturing down, painfully and mockingly warm.

Along the Chung-hyo Cemetery path in Jeju, Hyun-seo was walking up a narrow, secluded forest trail. In one hand, she carried a neatly tied bouquet of white chrysanthemums; in the other, a translucent plastic bag containing a bottle of soju, a few pieces of out-of-season fruit, and a yellowish, dried pollack.

The sunlight filtering through the canopy was gentle, yet her footsteps pressing into the dirt path felt heavy and perilous, as though she were dragging sandbags. The nameless wild grass blooming along the trail swayed in the wind, serving as her only silent, lonely companions.

Simultaneously, a completely different scene was unfolding in the living room of In-wu’s old, long-deserted house. Beneath the golden rays pouring through the window, workers from a cleaning service were moving briskly. Tearing down the heavy curtains, wiping away the layers of dust caked on the furniture, and releasing thick plumes of white disinfectant smoke—with cold, clinical precision, they were forcibly erasing the intimate, radiant fragments of memories that Hyun-seo and In-wu had etched into the space. Where the past was violently purged, only a sterile, modern cleanliness remained.

Back at the Chung-hyo Cemetery.

Hyun-seo walked through the silent cluster of graves and finally stood before her father’s faded tombstone. With a tender, reverent touch, she placed the white chrysanthemums before his name. Setting down the rustling plastic bag, she arranged the soju, the fruits, and the dried pollack one by one in front of the stone, setting up a modest altar. Her fingertips trembled faintly as she drew a small paper cup and filled it to the brim with the clear spirit.

Bowing her head as if offering incense, Hyun-seo dropped to her knees onto the cold earth and bowed deeply toward the tombstone. The damp chill bleeding from the dirt seemed to travel up her knees and strike her very heart.

"Father……."

Her voice fractured with a harrowing sorrow as she caressed the cold stone.

"Do you remember…… what you used to tell me whenever you had a drink back in the day? You told me that love is like the wind, bound to change, and that if a new, utterly irresistible love ever finds me in this life, I should never defy that destiny—that I should embrace it with my entire being. You repeated that story to me every single time you drank, Father. Why…… why did you say those things to me back then? I am…… I am hurting so terribly right now."

The emotions she had fiercely suppressed burst forth like a failing dam. The unshed tears filled her reddened eyes and finally spilled over, tracing down her pale cheeks and staining the dirt where her father lay sleeping.

"I just don't know anymore, I really don't……. At this point, I don't want to pathetically regret the time that has passed, but…… sometimes, it suffocates me with regret. I really have to let him go now, don't I? That’s the only way I can survive, right, Father……?"

Hyun-seo wrapped her arms tightly around the unresponding tombstone, clinging to it as if it were her last lifeline.

"It’s been five years. For five whole years, I have looked only at that one man, waiting for him with my entire soul. Haven't I paid my dues? Haven't I done enough? So, with my mind, with my reason, I have bled trying to scrape his existence out of me thousands, tens of thousands of times. But…… but still, in a foolish corner of my heart, he refuses to leave. His warm breath, his gentle touch—they still hold my heart in a vice grip and refuse to let go, Father……."

In the dead center of the cemetery, where only the solitary chirping of wild birds echoed, Hyun-seo pressed her forehead against the freezing stone and wept in muffled, broken sobs. Trapped between the world's demand to forget and her own heart's relentless sentence to remember, her cruel destiny was slowly beginning to swirl, riding the sorrowful, biting wind of Jeju.