can't believe i'm doing this but. queen of tears post sad ending vignette:
Hyunwoo doesn't know how it happens, or why he cannot simply walk way and live life differently, now that everything is different. Maybe it's just the way he is, the same way he fell in love with Haein without knowing all the important details —or anything at all, to be honest. He is not a stupid man but he is a fool in the way he loves: he is lucky to have found Haein the way he did, and not a placid intern that could never become the love of his life. He just did not expect to keep seeing her brother so often, long after Haein is gone.
During Haein's last month, the one that went by syrupy slow but also way too fast, slipping through his fingers like the warm seasons of his sunny childhood in the fields, Haein sometimes forgot her age, mixed up faces and places and lived in a world that made sense only in her head. She was happy, she said one evening where it was just the two of them watching an old drama, that they had met so young, because this way he could be a good influence on her brother. After a few beats of silence –his heart breaking, splintering, while his hands remained steady as he held her–, he asked her to elaborate, in a roundabout lawyer-like way she would have seen through if she weren't sick.
"Imagine if I'd found you later, after school," she explained. Even when her voice faltered from exhaustion, the tone remained the assured one he knew, the one she'd use to explain why she was actually always right in their playful first year of marriage. "Soocheol needs a good role model."
She mentioned her brother almost as often as Hyunwoo, while others in the family (her mother, her long lost brother) were not forgotten, but perennially out of focus. Hyunwoo was happy that wherever she ended up in her head, he always seemed to be included.
The truth is that a tiny part of him hates seeing Soocheol. It's that side of him capable of hate, of deep-bone exhaustion that buries every good thing deep inside of him until he forgets why he loved in the first place. He hates Soocheol's happiness, his lockscreen showing the last picture his ex sent of Geonu, now less chubby and nothing like his father, he hates the rare moments where, maybe out of desperation, Soocheol says something that makes him think of Haein alive, and not Haein as she was at the end, as she is now. A shadow who loved him.
In Soocheol's eyes, they both made up with Haein before the end, and that's a good thing. He said as much over soju, one rare evening where it was him to witness Hyunwoo getting drunk and not his best friend. But Soocheol speaks of Haein dying happy, of resting in peace, and while Hyunwoo was raised catholic he cannot stand the thought. Haein should be angry at him. She should be alive and blazing brighter than everyone else and he should be trying to win her back. To make it work better the second time around.
(He dreams of surprising her with flowers, of running after her in the rain, of doing it all again from the beginning. Of marrying each other a second time without Haein too weak to walk down the aisle.)
He cannot stop thinking that the Haein he forgave, who forgave him in return, did it all for his sake. She loved him too much to end things differently. The one factor that would make her choose a losing hand was always Baek Hyunwoo, after all.
Today, he meets Soocheol with the intention of it being the last time for a while. They'll have the anniversaries to meet again, after all, and he can always see Soocheol's face on the news while the other fixes the Hongs family reputation one donation at a time (they don't trust him with much else, but Soocheol surprisingly does well when it comes to delivering teary speeches at every charity gala involving kids, or cute seal cubs).
He doesn't expect to see Geonu. Soocheol probably texted him a million times to tell him his son was visiting, but Hyunwoo is working late and sleeping little. The kid hangs from Soocheol's hand and kicks the pebbles as he walks, and he has his mother's eyes. Mother and son have started to look at Soocheol in the same way, a puzzled, pleased blink that betrays fondness.
"Look who's here!!" Soocheol laughs. He doesn't call Hyunwoo uncle to his face, but that's how Geonu refers to him, and Hyunwoo's heart can take it. Mostly.
(If they'd had their baby, would he remember different years before the end? Would she have Haein's face?)
Geonu tries to bow, or maybe crouches down to pick up a good rock. His big head is so close to the ground that Soocheol panics, but just for a moment.
A thought: what if he talks to Geonu about his aunt who lives far away. She's in Germany. She has a big company and works all the time but if he behaves, she will bring him the best present ever. She's Hyunwoo's wife but they don't live together because sometimes love is hard and complicated. By the time he'll finish trying to make sense of who they were, Geonu will have moved on to a more interesting game.
He walks towards the entrance of the Hongs mansion and is betrayed by habit, his feet finding the path before his brain. His heart skipping a beat at the promise of memories of her, the house brimming with them until it becomes bearable to enter.
