AOA 138

I didn’t need to gather courage. I spoke out what I thought and I turned around.

“Jeong Minchae-ssi!”

Baek Mugyeong blocked my way in an instant. I kicked his shin with all my strength. I wore indoors shoes here, so my toes didn’t hurt. I only wished I had worn sneakers instead of dress shoes.

I ran out of the reception room, leaving Baek Mugyeong frowning behind me. Rob, who stood guard at the entrance, stopped him.

I heard the two of them talking behind me, but I ignored it.

I didn’t want to see Baek Mugyeong ever again.

***

People live through many situations of misunderstanding.

For example, when the ice cream in the freezer went missing, I guessed that my younger brother, my mother, or my father had eaten it. I acted like Sherlock Holmes and tried to find the culprit, but the ice cream had only been pushed to the very back of the freezer.

I once made a plan to meet a friend at school, but one of us waited at the front gate and the other at the back gate, and we exchanged angry messages asking why the other hadn’t come.

After my mother died, I thought my uncle would be the adult who would protect me and my brother, but that was also a misunderstanding. I had never imagined that my uncle would squander all of my mother’s insurance money and the rest of her savings.

That was why I could understand Baek Mugyeong’s reaction. Since he died in a truck accident before we cleared the misunderstanding, his resentment must have grown even stronger.

But understanding ended there.

No matter how deep the misunderstanding had been, we could have fixed everything quickly if we had just talked and checked the situation together. Even so, Baek Mugyeong created the worst outcome.

The anger and frustration that had crushed my heart wouldn’t go away. I had woken up several times at night because of rage.

Whenever that happened, I whispered curses filled with resentment.

But even that didn’t last long. Hating someone required too much energy. Holding onto anger all the time exhausted me.

I forgot Baek Mugyeong and continued my daily life. With my aunts, I looked for schools for my younger brother, and with Choi Jaeha, who visited America, and my bored brother, I went around Los Angeles tourist spots.

We visited Universal Studios, Disneyland, Griffith Observatory, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Dodger Stadium, the Automobile Museum, the Natural History Museum, and other places that existed only there.

The midsummer sunlight of Los Angeles was intense. Our faces turned completely dark, but no one cared.

After Choi Jaeha went back to Korea with the new semester approaching in September, I still went outside with my younger brother.

One day, after surfing in the ocean and returning to my grandmother’s house, I found something Baek Mugyeong had sent.

It wasn’t by mail or parcel but through a person. It was a silver braided bracelet. I checked the bracelet inside the familiar leather case and I lost my words.

Why did he send this?

Baek Mugyeong didn’t only send the bracelet. Next to the leather case was a card.

The message on the card was simple.

[This is the bracelet I gave as a gift.]

There was nothing else. So I couldn’t understand the meaning.

“What…”

I looked back and forth between the shiny bracelet and the card several times. Then I realized suddenly. The expensive item wasn’t from some foreign buyer, but a gift from Baek Mugyeong himself.

“Wow…”

I exclaimed, but I couldn’t tell was admiration or shock. I remembered when Baek Mugyeong had fastened the bracelet around my wrist that day.

Since that time, the man had shown kindness toward me. When I realized that, a prickly and ticklish feeling spread in my chest, and I felt better.

When I felt myself smiling, I grew embarrassed.

“I’m such an easy fool.”

Feeling exited by a single bracelet felt stupid, but I couldn’t deny that I really was.

“Why did he send this?”

To shake off my embarrassment, I muttered toward the absent Baek Mugyeong.

Around half a month ago, Baek Mugyeong had visited suddenly and left quietly. There had been no contact since. I wanted to complain about how he suddenly sent a bracelet like this.

“Jerk.”

Even though my mood had brightened, I still couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell whether this meant he wanted to end things, or whether he still had feelings left.

While I sat on the bed and looked down at the bracelet, I felt restless. While I wondered what to do for a long time, my younger brother appeared.

“Hyung. Let’s go eat.”

Dinner time at my grandmother’s house was six in the evening. At first, I ate separately in the annex with my aunts and my brother. Then a while ago, we started to gather together in the main building’s dining room for dinner.

“Yeah.”

“Was that the package you got earlier? A bracelet? Oh, it’s pretty. Did you buy it?”

“No.”

“Then?”

“I got it.”

“Yeah? From who?”

I stopped while putting the bracelet back inside the leather case. I didn’t know how to explain it. I thought about brushing it off, but I opened my mouth.

“It’s from someone I fell out with.”

“That… um, the one you married?”

My brother had good intuition. I didn’t deny it, and I nodded.

He said that while I was unconscious and in the hospital, he met Baek Mugyeong several times. He said they barely talked and only exchanged greetings whenever they ran into each other.

He said the man was really handsome but had an aura that made it hard to approach him. But he seemed to have worried about me a lot. He really came to the hospital every day.

My brother, who said that, didn’t seem to have any particular feelings toward Baek Mugyeong. Even now, he only looked curious in a careful way.

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t it expensive?”

“It is.”

“Why did he send it?”

“I don’t know.”

It was a careless answer, but I really didn’t know. My brother looked at the bracelet and at me, and he tilted his head.

“Weren’t you going to get divorced?”

Before I lost consciousness, I had already told him that I was going to get divorced. When I said there was no reason to keep the arranged marriage, he had asked if I was serious and looked happy.

I wondered why he asked something he already knew.

“I will. Why?”

“Are you going to return it?”

I couldn’t respond right away to the question that hit the point. Return the bracelet? It was strange to receive a gift from a spouse right before divorce, especially when the relationship had already collapsed.

But I didn’t want to return it. It wasn’t because I wanted to keep the expensive jewelry. Well, I did feel a bit reluctant to give it up. But more than that, I thought this belonged to me.

“No. It’s expensive. I’ll sell it later.”

I bluffed because I couldn’t tell the truth in front of my brother. It wasn’t even a lie, since selling it later would actually make money.

“Wouldn’t it be better to return it? If he sent you an expensive gift even though things went bad, it means he’s saying sorry. He’s saying you should get along from now on. If you accept it, doesn’t that mean you should get along?”

“Does it… mean that?”

“It’d be weird if you take an expensive gift and act like nothing happened.”

“Yeah.”

His words woke me up. He was right.

My brother was smarter than me, the fool older brother. But there was nothing I could do right now.

“Let’s just go eat.”

I stopped thinking and stood up from the bed. It was time to eat.

*

I ate a full dinner and got ready for bed quickly. I had spent almost the whole day at the beach, so my body was drained. Normally, I would have fallen asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, but not today. I had too many thoughts, and after tossing and turning several times, I sat up.

I checked my phone and saw that it was eleven. I took the leather case from the back of the bedside drawer. Under the dim light, the bracelet shone brightly. I stared at it for a while and let out a sigh.

“I can only know if he tells me what he wants.”

What my brother said earlier felt right, but after some time passed, I started to wonder if I was assuming too much.

Maybe the bracelet wasn’t an apology but a way of saying to stay away. If that was the case, I would just end up embarrassing myself by making noise alone. For that reason, I couldn’t even ask Baek Mugyeong what he meant.

“What the hell is this?”

My chest felt tight. If I could, I wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him until he explained everything.

When I was in high school, it was easy to make up with a friend after a fight. We could kick a soccer ball together, eat together, or go to a PC room and play a game.

Even after I became an adult, the way to reconcile wasn’t that different. When I worked at a factory, I made up with a coworker I had fallen out with by drinking together.

But when the other person was a spouse in an arranged marriage, and when we were about to get divorced, the situation was very different.

When I kicked Baek Mugyeong’s shin, I thought I’d never see him again. I thought everything would end once we divorced.

But as time passed and the explosive emotions cooled, I started to regret.

Even when I told myself I didn’t like that bastard anymore, I couldn’t let go of my feelings. Even though I didn’t know what the bracelet meant, I tried to see it as a positive sign. Just holding the bracelet made my chest pound.

“Am I an idiot?”

Even when I cursed at myself, I couldn’t calm my heart.