“Watch your step.” Jyeon reaches out for me as we walk down a dark shadowy staircase, and I pull my arm away, so he doesn’t get a chance to touch. I walk faster and skip ahead two steps at a time, knowing exactly where this is but acting dumb.
If I thought I had seen everything so far and could suss him out, then the barefaced audacity of where he’s brought me has blown my mind. He’s going the whole hog, trying to paint us as something we never were. Wading full steam into sentimentality by bringing us to a place I have stepped foot only once.
The lights come on as I step into the vast, spacious banquet hall that belongs to OLO. A private function room under one of our buildings that held our wedding ceremony for family, friends, and business partners. The so-called happiest and most important day of our life. He’s going in with the big guns, and I have to curb my instant attitude and urge to laugh at this ridiculousness.
“What is this… a party hall?” I try to sound normal while I wander away from him. Pained by the memories of this room but refusing to allow myself to feel it, I let my eyes wander to the endless tables with their satin-draped chairs and white linens. It’s always ready for events, has soft lighting and fake foliage artistically draped all around. It’s upmarket, well-styled, and oozes luxury.
“We got married here. Everyone we knew and cared about all came to celebrate with us. We stood over there, where they set up an altar and said our vows.” He points over my shoulder and ahead to a spot in the corner with a raised stage, something I remember clearly and stupidly had so much hope in my heart on that day.
“I see.” I move away from his arm, which lingers close to resting on me. “You said our relationship sucked…. that you didn’t marry me for love. Was this actually a happy day? Would I remember it as such? It doesn’t seem familiar or spark any joy…unlike the gut feeling of dislike I get for you.” I turn with a frosty tone and pin my gaze on him, waiting for the lies, hitting him with veiled insults.
Jyeon exhales slowly and heavily and drops his arm by his side, and he doesn’t answer but motions to the nearest table as though suggesting we sit. Ignoring my ever-present defensive dislike and doesn’t seem to bite at all.
“There’s a lot we should talk about…. maybe this is the perfect place to do it. It was a start for us. Clear the air, address why you may feel you shouldn’t give me the time of day. I guess subconsciously, you remember things your mind doesn’t.” He walks past me and pulls out the nearest high-back chair, waiting patiently for me with a strained expression. I hesitate a moment before moving to slide into it, sitting while he pushes me in and then comes around to sit at the other side, so we face one another directly. Tensing up because I knew the confrontation had to happen sooner or later.
“Was it? A happy day?” I repeat calmly to keep the subject on track and sit back, trying to remain blank and curious rather than riled and affected by this building and what it symbolizes. Jyeon relaxes to mirror my pose.
“Was it happy? It’s not that clear-cut. I never wanted it, and neither did you. We caved because we were obedient children raised to do so….. but it wasn’t unhappy either. We have a complicated dynamic, Sohla. I knew it was inevitable once we got to this point, so I tried to embrace what was a new start for us and accept you would be my future. I let go of regrets and thoughts of getting out of it and focused on having a happy event. Focused on being a husband and President of our company.” Jyeon frowns off into the ample space and looks around as though he is reliving flashes of the past as I am. The dress I wore, the way this place filled with glamorous people, and the ambiance of chatter and happy laughter. We fooled everyone into believing we were in love that day… and he fooled me.
“I did so many things that I regret. I wronged you on many levels through our childhood and marriage…… I’m ashamed of it all. I hate looking back and seeing my mistakes, especially when I couldn’t make them up to you anymore.” Jyeon’s face loses all hints of that icy and controlled man I know, and sadness and a soft shadowy warmth appear under it all. Reminiscent of the boy who would wipe away my tears and chase away his friends when they were being too rough and tumble with a more petite feminine me. I hate that my feelings for him are tied together in so many complex ways, and he confuses me so that I never know how to feel or whether I should believe him.
I remember that day so well. The switch in him once we could no longer fight it and refuse. Our parents got us to the aisle, and it was game over. It’s like he was resigned to the fact his parents would never change their mind, and for a while, that boy I loved showed face. He let down his wall, took off his armor, and we seemed pretty joyful about our vows that day. It was our first kiss for both of us, and it was not an awful memory or even an awkward one. Jyeon kissed me like he meant it, committed to what was now a done deal, and gave me stupid hope that we would be okay from then on.
“So what happened? You said you hurt me? That I did what I did because of you.” I cut into my thoughts with a harsh reminder of reality. I want to remind myself that Sohla died at his hands. I want to hear him say it and admit it to justify my anger and hostility towards him.
My heart’s hammering in my chest at what this trip is turning into, but I feel like he owes me some of his inner thoughts from the last decade of my life. Even if he embellishes and twists them, he never shared anything with me, ever. We only ever had conversations about work or family, never about us. I never really knew what was going on inside his head.
Jyeon says nothing for a long moment and stares at the table between us, running his thumb over the cotton as he thinks through his words before answering. A trait born of working in OLO. Always think about what you say before incriminating yourself. I, too, used to be this way.
“I didn’t keep my vows. I didn’t think about you as a woman…… or what you did for all of us. I saw you as a burden and someone to take half the responsibility for our family’s legacy. I didn’t think of you as a wife or someone I should cherish and protect, and I let you carry much more than I should. I guess I saw you as someone to rival me in my role.” Jyeon lifts his chin and looks straight at me, his brow furrowed, and there’s genuine regret in his eyes.
I swallow hard and look to the table instead, trying not to show him any hint of how his words just sucker-punched me in the gut. I thought he would tell me he cheated, and that would be it. It's the last confession I expected. I wasn’t expecting something deeper.
“You don’t remember, but I do. So many things, so many times…… where I misunderstood you and your intentions. You were a force like no other, Sohla, and you intimidated me. You made me feel inadequate. You were an impenetrable cold fortress, and you didn’t seem human after a while. You took the incoming and made it all disappear effortlessly, so it never touched any of us…. Something I didn’t learn until my shield was gone…. I threw away your love and care, and I betrayed you with another woman….. because I thought I hated you. Something I regret, even now.” Jyeon’s voice breaks after getting raspier with every word and seemingly having to force them out. His posture slumps and I can tell he’s finding this hard to share this way. He was never a talker. Especially not with me. And I’m struck dumb that he’s seemingly opening up.
I’m stunned like he gripped my heart and tugged it tight, and tears hit the back of my eyes. I try so hard to swallow them down and tell myself he’s learned to manipulate people in two years, and that’s all this is. It’s not real, and I shouldn’t soften over this bullshit. It’s a way to bring my guard down and convince the version of me he sees that he’s a good guy now.
“You cheated on your wife? And you threw her away….. admirable. So she drove off a cliff?” I raise my brows as though I find it a disgusting point and avoid locking focus on his again, brushing imaginary lint from the table. Hoping my accusations hit a note. My hands start to tremble, so I move them to my lap out of sight and focus on slow even breaths to cloak my emotional response.
“The night you left…….” Jyeon swallows hard so that I hear it, and he blows out air and places his hands on the table, flat and downwards, and I see now he’s trembling too. He seems overly anxious about talking. His nerves are on show, seemingly a vast amount, and I don’t think this is an act unless he’s mastered Oscar-worthy performing in my absence.
“You broke me. Never in a million years did I think that you would devastate me so much, no longer exiting my life. I know I was a shitty husband, and I never once made you feel like I cared…. I told myself I loathed everything about you and showed you that too, but my world stopped when you left it. You have to believe that. Everything came crashing down on top of me, and it’s why I had to bring you home, why I’m doing this. Why I couldn’t leave you on that island and forget all about you…. because……. everything has been empty and lifeless without Sohla Park.” Jyeon’s words filter off so quietly and low and breathy; I have to strain to hear him, rendering me completely mute. Shocked. My emotions tumble inwards like a giant hole opened up inside me, and everything is sucked down to leave me in stunned silence. Staring at the hands on the table and unsure what else to do except breathe. Never in my life did I ever expect him to say anything close to that.
“I hate that you don’t remember me, but I’m also glad. Because you don’t remember anything about the past and how much it hurt you… how much I hurt you. But it also means you forgot that you once loved me, and I know you did. As much as I denied it and avoided it, you loved me…. and I miss it. I miss you. Sohla. Two years have felt like twenty.” Jyeon’s voice breaks again, and this time it’s obvious upset. He sniffs, and my eyes snap up to see how he bites on his bottom lip to curb his emotions, and his eyes are damp. His jaw tense, his brows dipped as he fights to remain neutral. I’ve only seen Jyeon cry once, and that was over Tia…. the day we laid that tiny coffin in the ground, and he fell to pieces while I stood like a blank, emotionless zombie and stared straight ahead. Jyeon doesn’t cry. In this family, it was always a no.
“What about your woman? Your affair? Did you miss me so much that she’s no longer someone you’re with? Or is she your enduring love? Does she know you don’t hate the woman you threw away for her? That you’re practically confessing to her.” I shouldn’t ask because I know it will still wound me, but I can’t stop the need to know. The bitterness is unconcealed, yet he doesn’t seem to pick up that a memoryless woman shouldn’t feel so strongly.
“That ended the second I knew that you were missing. She was a Band-Aid for problems neither of us ever tried to fix between us. Do you think I would come and bring you home, refuse to allow you to divorce me if there was someone else in the picture? I’m an asshole, but I’m not that kind of low. She was a mistake….. that led to me losing you in ways I never prepared for.”
“What are you saying? You have to remember all this is confusing. I’m hearing a man say he loathed his wife and cheated and did many things to make her sad… to the point I supposedly killed myself, but then you what? Missed her, and now you’re trying to what? What exactly? I don’t get what you want from me. The shares? A divorce? It doesn’t sound like it.” My head’s a mess, his words confusing me, and I do not know how to feel or think about what he’s saying—swirling around one another and colliding in chaos because it doesn’t add up.
“I’m saying we sucked together. Because of me! … It was always me. I took what could have been something real and poisoned it. I never once stopped and thought about my actual feelings for you, examined them, or figured out why I could hate you venomously for things that were not your fault. Until you were gone… I’m saying everything was my fault, all of it.”
My insides clench at the words ‘not your fault,’ and for the first time since it happened, it’s like Jyeon slides out the dagger in my heart that he put there six years ago. He never once let me away with the blame for Tia. He often reminded me that I did it and I was at fault. His hatred, venom, and reasons to despise me day after day were always laid at my feet, and now he’s retracting it all. So that alone makes me want to sob. I clench my body to hold it all in, and my face goes numb with the effort of keeping it blank.
“You said we had a kid…who died. Was that what you meant by not my fault? Was that part of why I died?” My words shake, and I can’t conceal the apparent distress caused by what he said, but I hope he takes it as my reaction to the death of my child. Bringing that subject up as though I mulled it over since the last time. Any human would be upset even if they don’t remember.
Jyeon watches me, his face unreadable, and he nods slowly. Killing me all over again and making me realize how much I had yearned for this from him for so long. It’s so stupid, given everything, but it’s like lifting a weight from my body and having him acknowledge what Greta had drummed into my head repeatedly. That Tia left, but it was not all on me.
“You were trying to protect me. My father died, you were shouldering the weight of OLO, and you couldn’t take it easy. My mother pushed you to do more, and I failed to protect my wife while heavily pregnant. I was so absorbed in my own grief and emotionally immature because we were still kids. You gave birth prematurely in a traumatic place far from home, and our daughter died in the ICU only days later. I saw you as something cold and hateful for letting her go without once looking at her, so I blamed you over and over and never let you close again. Later…. I realized it was because you couldn’t watch her die. You were in pain too. That the Sohla I knew hid from heartbreak, brushed it aside, and tried to run from it so she wouldn’t break, and I had forgotten it… I blamed you for years over something that did as much damage to you, maybe more, than it did to me because I ignored everything I knew about you as a person and saw only what I wanted to see. Even though it happened because I didn’t take care of you. I blamed you and pushed you away when I was the one who failed us.”
The air becomes heavy between us, and tears roll down my face. Sniffing loudly and finding it hard to swallow or breathe as the sobs start to wrack me, and I can’t stop. It comes from somewhere deep. It's like a door being opened to a dark place full of pain and somehow let out to be free. I cover my face and crumble into snotty hysterical crying, and I know it’s probably an extreme reaction, but I can’t stop it. He’s pushed the nerve button and released my damn. Found the one tender spot that Greta could never help shift and did it in a few minutes of talking.
Warm arms slide around my shoulders, tugging me against Jyeon’s chest as he cuddles me close and smooths my hair down my back, soothing me by rocking me side to side. Familiar and safe, and I hate that he can still do this. His scent, his aftershave, his touch, and I’m transported back to a time when I longed for this every day.
“Tee…..ahhhh……I’m sorry.” I sob it out, losing control and my senses, words falling out of their own accord, and I feel him stiffen. His body tightens around me, and he seems surprised to hear me.
“Tia? You said that once before, two years ago……you remember Tia? Was that what you called her? Is that what you thought I was punishing you for when I ……. I’m sorry, Sohla. I’m really sorry. I never knew you named her.” Jyeon crushes me in; his voice is soft and tinged with his tears.
I curse my stupidity at letting it slip, but I realize it’s maybe a blessing. I can act like this whole thing has rekindled something, cry it out because I cannot willingly stop it, and this won’t be a weird overdramatic response. I cry over Tia a lot for random reasons and stupid things when I least expect it, and every year I put flowers out and light candles for my baby girl. I can stop denying her existence even when he’s around.
“I remember Tia… I remember my baby. I remember holding her just one time. I remember what it felt like to know she died…….”
Jyeon slides his fingers into my hair and pulls my face to his neck, resting my temple in his throat and leaning his chin on top of my head. I’m pulled down a little as he’s kneeling beside my chair, and I submit to his full-body hug as he tries to console me. His chest moving rapidly, in time to shallow breaths and stifled cries, and I realize this is the first time we ever cried together over her loss. The first time we hugged since then, and the first time we brought her up without him directing his hatred my way.
“Cry it out. It’s okay…. Let it out, Sohla. It’s okay for us to cry over this.”
This is probably our first sincere moment since I was eleven years old.