Work Text:
Summer 2024
Gyeong Seok doesn't think of himself as a soldier. He isn't brave, or strong. He does not have the skill to save people, and protect himself. Whenever he hears his dad’s stories from war, his body gets overtaken by fear. He's certain he would die because of his own foolishness.
So while he doesn't recognise these qualities in himself, he does find them in a stranger. First, when they played Red Light, Green Light and Player 120 sprinted from the finish line to help a shot man, risking her own life. Then in the Pentathlon, when Player 120 managed to lead her team to the very end, and assure they all survive. The very first team to do so.
He's scared, and battles panic attacks every time he flirts with death. He is terrified. Terrified of dying, of leaving his daughter by herself, and being a bad dad. The one thing he swore he’d never become.
But whenever Player 120 catches his eye, he sees the fearlessness he wishes he had. He sees someone who is brave enough to make it to the end no matter what happens.
She is everything he never was, and so he simply admires her from afar. He is convinced she would never be interested in talking to someone like him . She is too good for a fool like himself.
But then the game of Mingle came along, and everything changes.
His senses are overwhelmed by everything. All he registers is the voice saying they have to form a group of 2.
He looks around, hoping the motion sickness would go away. He turned to his left, and notices a player standing motionless.
Why the hell is she standing?
Everyone is running everywhere, trying to make it out alive in the final round. But the woman just stands there, completely resigned. Like her life already left her body.
Maybe he wasn’t born to be a soldier, but he could try.
He runs in her direction, and grabs her. His eyes only register the empty orange door in front of him. Gyeong Seok isn't a religious man, but he prays . He prays to everyone who can hear him to keep the door open.
Not for him. But for the woman he decided to help, and for his daughter.
He sees a pair running quickly to the same room, so he drags the woman inside. Not the most gentlemanly gesture, but he hopes she would forgive him if his mission to save them is successful.
He pushes his entire weight onto the door. Someone's trying to make it in but the buzzer sound of the time running out suddenly eases his worries.
The door locks, and he finally takes a deep breath in. Then he glances up, and sees Player 120 in front of him.
Her face is pale, and her hands are shaking.
“Are you alright?” is all he manages to ask.
She nods.
He doesn’t know what else to say, and maybe it’s for the better.
It takes him 12 hours to gain the courage to talk to her. He could do better, but he’s aware that he’s not the most charming person – it took him 2 years to ask out the late mother of his daughter.
But now Player 120 is clearly going through something and he wants to help. Nothing more.
He’s doing it because he’s a good person, or he so badly wants to be one.
He comes up to her and points at the empty seat next to her. “May I?”
Player 120 nods quietly. She seems shy, which is quite unexpected. In the first two games she seemed everything but shy.
“I’m sorry for the last game, if I hurt you. I’m sorry.”
Player 120 glances at him in confusion. She’s trying to read his expression, but all he can focus on is her face. He really wanted to keep his cool and focus on what’s important in this deadly Game, but now all he can think about is how beautiful she actually is.
He swallows dry at the realization. He needs to chill.
“I should probably thank you for saving me,” she says. “I don’t know why you’re apologizing.”
He looks down at his hands, knowing that longer eye contact with the player would make him go insane.
“Sorry,” he clears his throat. “I was scared I overstepped when I paired up with you without asking. That’s all.”
“You saved my life, is what you did. I don’t think we had time for consent.”
He chuckles. He wasn’t even sure if this was supposed to be funny, but for him it was. The bar for anything remotely humorous was extremely low in a place like this.
“You’re really brave, I noticed you playing before. You were amazing.”
“Oh.”
She seems surprised by the sudden compliment. But he knew she had to hear it.
“Listen, I don’t know what happened in the last game and why you stood there by yourself, but I hope you’re alright.”
She nods. No response..
And so he starts to ramble. “And I know you don’t need saving, you’re a lovely lady who seems to do well enough on her own, but if anything happens we could maybe team up again? Or help each other?”
He knows he’s already making it worse, he should have left after their first exchange and let her exist. She doesn’t need to suffer the burden of his extensive yapping.
But her silence makes him keep going, “And I know in future games you would probably be saving me, I’m not much of a fighter, but I thought–”
“I lost a friend,” she says finally. “She died in the round before.”
He meets her eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“No, it’s okay,” she assures him, but he can see her eyes getting watery. “I was just shocked. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep playing after that.”
Confession like this hit him like a truck. Everyone’s thinking about death in a situation like this. But saying it out loud makes it real. He fights the urge to hug her and tell her it’s going to be okay. Mostly because he knows nothing will be okay here.
“But I’m glad you saved me. I’m glad I’m here.” She straightens her back and dries her eyes.
“I’m glad you’re here too.”
Maybe it was too much, but he couldn’t care.
“What’s your name? If you don’t mind me asking.”
She smiles, and this time it seems earnest. He finally sees in front of him a human and not a number from the crowd. “I’m Hyun Ju, Cho Hyun Ju.”
It fits her, he thinks. And maybe he ponders on the name for too long because then she asks him: “And will you tell me your name?”
“Oh, sorry!” he laughed awkwardly. “I’m Gyeong Seok.”
“ Gyeong Seok ,” she repeats. He wishes she could say his name again. “Nice to meet you.”
She holds out her hand for him to shake, and he takes it. Carefully like she’s made out of porcelain and could break, even though he knows she’s far from that.
“If you don’t mind - why are you here?”
He’s aware of the weight of the question. Everyone had to reach a low bottom to end up in a place like this but he has a feeling she’s not a gambler or scammer like the other people here.
She hesitates for a second, and he fights the urge to take the question back but the need to know is stronger. She’s a mystery he wants to solve.
“I got in debt because of my surgeries,” she admits. “I lost my job, and the debt kept piling up. I got really lonely and just lost my sense of self and this seemed like a good opportunity, but looking at it now,” she points at the huge room around them, “it wasn’t the best decision.”
He processes the information, and tries to unpack her story between the lines. He assumed she was a trans woman but didn’t want to ask. It seemed disrespectful. And despite his assumptions, all he could think about was her . Not who she was. She seemed like a solid woman to him already.
“I think you could win this,” he says.
“I don’t want to win this,” she shakes her head. “I want us to vote to leave and go home. I don’t want to see more dead bodies.”
He silently agrees.
“And you?”
“Huh?”
“Why are you here?”
“Oh!” he understands finally. “I have a daughter who is very sick, blood cancer. There’s a treatment that could work but I can’t pay for it myself. So into battle I went, and look how it turned out for us.”
“I’m sure you’ll bring the money home,” she says in a reassuring tone. “To your daughter and your wife.”
His body stills. “I– I don’t have a wife.”
She looks at him, confused. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to assume.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I’m a single dad. Uhm… my wife died when Na Yeon, my daughter, was born. She had some complications. So it’s just the two of us now.”
There was a lot to unpack, trying to share their life stories in such a short span of time, but the smile Hyun Ju gave him was enough to make his insides melt. “I’m sure you’ll come back to Na Yeon with the money.”
“We’ll make it out together,” he says and he means it.
He hasn’t left her side ever since their conversation. Losing her friend, whoever it was, seemed to take a toll on her and so he promised himself that he would protect her, or at least attempt to do so.
When the uprising happens and he gets shot in his hip, he panics but tries to keep his head calm. He pretends he’s dead and lets the soldiers pass him. He thinks of his daughter and Hyun Ju, because he promised both of them he would be brave enough to make it out.
When the last soldier lowers down to scan his number, he kicks his feet and grabs the gun. Quickly remembering the How-To instructions Hyun Ju gave him, he shoots. And doesn’t look back.
While the sharp pain in his hip overwhelms everything in his body, he runs. He follows the shot down cameras, and eventually finds the entrance to the main room.
He crunches in pain and falls on the stairs, hoping the pain is going to go away. His vision gets blurry, and his ears are ringing, but then he sees Hyun Ju above him. She looks panicked, just like she did in the Orange Room during Mingle.
This time, her face is wet with tears, and for a second he wonders if it’s because she assumed he died.
It’s selfish, but it made him feel better as his body tensed up in pain. She puts pressure on his wound and he notices her hands shaking.
“It’s okay,” she exhales. “It’s just a hip bone.”
He sees outlines of other people around him, and then his vision goes blank.
The last thing he hears is Hyun Ju telling him he’ll be alright, and her voice cracking as she repeats the sentence over and over again like a mantra. Maybe she thought repeating it would make it true.
2 days later, they finally keep their promise. They make it out alive.
Gyeong Seok can’t keep her eyes off her as they load the boat to take them back to the city. He doesn’t know what to say, how to deal with any of it.
He hopes he’s special and that she’ll remember him. Maybe find him in the real life.
Maybe they could grab a drink.
After the last game, she tells him she’s tired and wants to forget everything that happened in the Game. He understands, and also realizes what it means for him. For them. For the bond they created in the middle of this bloodbath.
As he held her during their last night of sleep, he stayed up. He wanted to cherish every single second of having her, knowing that she’s gonna disappear from his life.
Maybe she forgets everything from the Games, and lives a good life. She mentioned Thailand to him, maybe that works out for her.
He also hopes she forgets him, if it makes the pain go away. She deserves it.
And so he doesn’t say a thing. Instead, he watches as she looks at the horizon of the ocean. She looks tired, but beautiful.
He makes a mental note to draw her when he gets home. He wants to remember how she looked like. He’s certain he’s never going to witness anyone as special as her.
As they reach the land and say they final goodbyes, he attempts to say “goodbye” in Thai. She doesn’t understand, and he has to explain what he meant.
She says she’s certain it’s not pronounced like that and laughs at him.
Deep down he’s grateful that the last memory of Hyun Ju he has is making her laugh.
Summer 2025
Hyun Ju leaves his life, but the impact she had on him stays.
He promises himself he will be a better man, someone Hyun Ju would appreciate. He pays for his daughter’s treatment, and spends more time with her. He reads her a lot, stories about princesses who are brave enough to save themselves.
“But what if she wants a prince?” Na Yeon asks him one evening.
“She can have him, being brave doesn’t mean she has to be alone,” he says, as the memories of saving Hyun Ju during Mingle return. He sometimes thinks it was the best thing he’s ever done.
She was a woman he admired, and who he thought could be a great Mother figure for Na Yeon. He hopes he can at least give her the part of Hyun Ju he got to know, wishing his daughter would grow up to be a strong woman just like her.
He quits his job in the park and when Na Yeon recovers enough to go to kindergarten, he starts teaching art at the same facility to be close to her.
The stable job gives him confidence to get better, and so he finally decides to complete the final step to give Na Yeon a better life.
He goes on a few dates with very lovely women, but nothing really comes up from it. He knows they don’t need anyone. Him and Na Yeon do well enough as a pair but when he sees her return a “family drawing” with just the two of them, an odd feeling fills up his chest.
She deserves a female figure in his life, and he’s going to find one for her.
And so he goes on more dates, and tries really hard, but doesn’t find anyone who would make him feel anything remotely close to romantic feelings.
In his loneliest moments he looks at the ceiling before going to sleep, and wonders what Hyun Ju is doing. He knows it’s a pathetic and a desperate attempt to cling onto the past.
She probably has a new, better life. She doesn’t need anyone like him who would just burden her with brutal memories of what they experienced in the Games.
She moved on. He should do the same.
But the truth is, he feels lonely. And is selfish enough to think if she would want him if he just found her and told her everything.
In September, they travel to the Jeju Island. He promised himself they’d spend more of the prize money to travel the world.
In the busy crowds of the Seoul Airport, he loses Na Yeon for a second and panics. Of course , he would be stupid enough to not take care of his own child. The feeling of anxiety spreads through his body but then he notices her tangerine bagpack in the crowd, and runs to her.
A normal parent would give her a talk to not run away in crowded places, but he felt guilty for not looking out for her. It’s her first time travelling, she must be confused.
“There you are,” he holds out his hands and grabs her. She settles her hands on his shoulders and then points in front of him. “This lady saved me!”
He looks around, confused at who she means. Then he sees the person.
Sees her .
All the memories of the short time they spent together rush back as the woman he so fondly remembers appears in front of him.
“Hyun Ju?!” he practically shouts.
The woman’s eyes go wide, she looks like she’s just seen a ghost. “You?!”
No one really knows how to act. Meeting anyone outside of the Games is simply odd. There’s this disconnect between what happened out there and what happens in the real world that no one seems to understand.
The sudden clash of both doesn’t feel real.
“Is this Na Yeon?” she asks as she points at the child in his hands. He feels rush of warmth in his cheeks. How the hell does she remember his daughter’s name?!
“That’s her, Princess Na Yeon herself,” he says proudly.
“Princess?” Hyun Ju responds with a chuckle.
“We got a bit of a princess phase going on,” he admits as he rolls his eyes.
“Well,” Hyun Ju laughed and he swears it’s the best sound he’s ever heard. He’s so not used to her being happy that he feels like his body might explode. “Princess Na Yeon was exploring the airport and then she told me she couldn't find her dad, so we waited.”
“Thank you for this, really,” he exhales with relief. He wishes he could tell her everything but he has to hold himself back to not scare her.
Instead, he starts with a small talk, “Where are you off to? Thailand?”
She smiles at the mention of her dream destination. “Well, yes. But just to fill up some paperwork. I still live here. I plan to move when I get everything sorted.”
“And are you happy?” he asks. He wishes she would say yes. She deserves it.
“Happier,” she responds instead. And he takes it.
“And where are you two going?”
“Jeju!” Na Yeon yells. Hyun Ju looks at her so proudly that Gyeong Seok feels like he might explode from experiencing every single emotion at the same time. He never thought his daughter would ever meet Hyun Ju but here he is.
This could be the best day of his life.
“We can maybe head out to your terminal together?” Hyun Ju suggests. “My flight got delayed anyway.”
This is be the best day of his life.
And so they spend the remaining hours at the airport together catching up. He learns Hyun Ju has one surgery left and then she plans to submit for a gender change in her documents. Then she’s free to move to Thailand.
She now works as a data analyst but it works for her – gives her enough stability that she deeply lacked after she got laid off from the army.
He tells her about her new job, about Na Yeon's remission. He eventually even tells her about his attempts to date. She laughs at his failures in his love life but he couldn’t care less.
He finally had Hyun Ju back in his life, and she didn’t seem to mind his presence.
She even offered to stop by the Airport playground and play with Na Yeon as they debriefed their lives after the Game.
He observes Hyun Ju and Na Yeon playing, as his daughter tries to set up an impromptu tea party. She’s a perfectionist so tea parties with her can get stressful but Hyun Ju seems to be coping well.
Hyun Ju takes one of the plastic cups and pretends to drink it. She laughs as her eyes meet with Gyeong Seok’s and suddenly he realises that the last missing piece of his life is sitting right there in front of him.
When they have to say goodbye, he immediately asks for her number. He’s not making the same mistake again. He doesn’t care if he makes a fool of himself. He would rather throw himself off a cliff if he let her go ever again.
He seems maybe too eager to check the number, and makes sure he wrote it down correctly. He’s anxious about it and overthinking but he’s on a mission and he aims to succeed.
Before they get their call to board, Hyun Ju hugs him. She presses her face into the crook of his neck and he holds her tight, like he’s scared she would leave him again.
She smells like tangerines.
“I’m really glad I met you again,” she says. The sincerity in her voice sends a shiver down his spine.
Maybe he can make this work. Maybe she feels the same, he thinks.
He pulls away, and they share one last look. There’s a relief on her face that he barely noticed in the Games.
He’s never been more sure he'd just reunited with the love of his life.
Summer 2026
He’s an absolute loser. An absolute spineless loser that can never do anything right.
With Hyun Ju back in his life, he’s never felt so happy and solid with the life he built. Hyun Ju is visiting often, offering to babysit Na Yeon in her spare time. They spend a lot of time together. He helps her set up her move to Thailand, to take some stress off of her.
She has a final appointment set in Korea. Her final, and most important, surgery is set on June 20th.
He does everything to make her feel better, to support her. He read numerous articles about the procedure, to make sure he does everything right and helps when it’s needed.
She doesn’t seem stressed at all about it but he is. He loses his sleep over Hyun Ju not waking up, or some complications arising. He already lost one woman in his life, and he doesn’t want to lose another one.
Especially because he hasn’t told her about his feelings.
It’s been more than a year since their reunion and he still couldn’t admit that he’s utterly devoted to her.
At the end of the day, he was a fool and he was destined to remain one. In the fear of losing her forever, he decides to take his time and let her complete her transition without any distractions.
Having her back in his life is enough for now.
He got to see her laugh almost everyday, he got to come back from work and share gossip he heard from other teachers, he watched evening news with her and then told her goodnight as she walked down the street to her own apartment.
When they both returned from work, she played with Na Yeon and he made dinner. When they went to work, she stopped by their place to walk them to Na Yeon’s kindergarten.
He didn’t find it odd, living in this domestic routine. His co-workers assumed they’re dating but he never confirmed anything. He also hasn’t denied anything either.
Without a doubt, 2026 was the happiest he’s ever been. Watching his daughter grow along the most brilliant woman he’s ever known – it was everything he’s ever wanted and he wasn’t aiming to sabotage that.
That was until Hyun Ju’s scheduled surgery. He was feeling slightly anxious about it all but he was doing fine until he was driving her to the hospital for the procedure. He was scared to death, irrational fear trying to get the best of him.
Next to him in the passenger seat was Hyun Ju, who felt the lightest she’s ever been.
He tried to hide it and push away all his fears – Hyun Ju was going to make it out fine. He checked the survival rate was practically 100%.
But then it’s time to say goodbye in the hospital room and he just crumbles in front of her.
“It’s going to be fine,” she says as she holds his hand. He wants to believe her.
“You promise?” he asks. Their household operates on assumptions that Hyun Ju is usually the one who is right, so he is conditioned to believe her promise.
“I promise,” she says.
In the final stage of his humiliating admission he adds, “I wouldn’t know what to do if I lost you.”
And Hyun Ju knows the weight of his words, they both do. The loss of his first wife. The constant fear of losing each other in the Games. They both dealt with more loss than others.
“You’re not losing me, never,” she says and then she finally brings his face closer to hers to give him a quick kiss on the cheek.
For the first time in weeks, Gyeong Seok relaxes and melts into her touch.
After all, Hyun Ju is always right.
24 hours after the procedure, he returns to the hospital with a bouquet of flowers and a drawing from Na Yeon.
He waits by her hospital bed as she wakes up, and immediately asks her if everything is okay.
It seems to be.
She’s too worn off from the anesthesia so he does most of the talking. Mainly it was the adrenaline wearing off now that he was sure she was alright, but he just couldn’t stop talking.
He gives her the drawing Na Yeon made. She was told Hyun Ju is going to have a “happy surgery” to not stress her out so she wanted to show her own support as she missed her presence at home.
Over the past year, she accepted Hyun Ju as someone she met on a daily basis. She absolutely adored her. While Gyeong Seok had his own reasons to love the woman that came into their family, Na Yeon managed to fall for her in her own way.
Seeing Hyun Ju help her with the simple tasks from kindergarten made his heart beat stronger. Hyun Ju was someone who was born to be a mom, and selfishly he was glad Na Yeon could be the person to make motherhood partially possible for her.
And so while he talks a lot, he intentionally misses out that in the morning Na Yeon asked him “Where’s mommy?”
It would be too much to handle, and so he plans to deal with it in his own way.
On day 3 of her post-op stay, he instead decides to drop another major question at her. He doesn’t even think about it twice, the words just sort of find their way to his mouth as he says: “Please stay with us.”
It’s a simple question, mainly because he doesn’t want her to be alone in her apartment during her recovery. But the weight of his words hits him when she responds with “Why?”
“So we can keep an eye on you. I don’t want you to be alone.”
“For how long?”
Forever . “A few weeks perhaps?”
A few weeks turn into months until one day Na Yeon manages to slip up again and call her Mommy . Hyun Ju, rightfully, has a crisis about the whole situation, and Gyeong Seok has to tell her ‘it’s not that big of a deal’ even though he deep down knows it is, pretty much, big of a deal.
Hyun Ju is a smart woman, and she isn’t stupid. She had to understand that she’s substituting a mother figure for their his daughter.
She probably just wasn’t ready to deal with it so soon.
As Hyun Ju is about to confront Gyeong Seok, Na Yeon starts to cry and they both have to take a step back from their adult problems to focus on who really mattered to them.
Hyun Ju tries to calm her down with a short explanation that they’re not fighting but it’s not working so she hugs the child and pulls her close to her chest.
Gyeong Seok freezes, trying to find the right words to deal with the mess he created by not stating what’s obvious and leaving all 3 of them in this domestic limbo of a non complete family.
Hyun Ju hushes her to calm down her cries, and then whispers into her hair, “It’s alright, mommy’s here.”
She looks directly at Gyeong Seok as she says the words. Most likely as a sign of dominance, to make her place in the family clear. Which is something Gyeong Seok hasn’t managed to do ever since she joined their family unit.
It’s a statement. Statement that she’s staying and not going to leave, and for once Gyeong Seok is happy he fell for the bravest woman on the planet because she was brave enough to accept responsibility immediately, while he struggled to even tell her how desperately he’s been in love with her for the past 2 years.
They struggle to talk about it for a week, both of them shy enough to have the conversation that could change everything.
If Gyeong Seok was being honest with himself, it’s probably because she waited on him to make the move and he couldn’t blame her. He was a fool, after all.
And she deserved to know how he’s feeling.
So after a week of Hyun Ju being officially promoted to being the “mommy” of Na Yeon, Gyeong Seok asked her to sit down after they put their daughter to sleep.
He wasn’t sure how to formulate it, how to put all the emotions he’s been feeling for the woman in front of him into words. All he knew is that he had the most wonderful woman and he couldn’t lose her.
Instead of words, he put a piece of paper on the table. Hyun Ju looked at him, confused as ever, but grabbed the paper nevertheless.
“I drew you right after I made it home from the Games,” he starts. “I was losing my mind about forgetting how you look, so once I got a pen and paper from one of the nurses in Na Yeon’s hospital room, I had to draw you to not forget you.”
Hyun Ju looks at the drawing in front of her and recognized her face.
“You were so amazing, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you. How brave you were. How beautiful you were.”
“Why didn’t you tell me anything back then?” she demands.
“I thought it was stupid, to tell you I developed a crush, or whatever, when people around us were dying. And then you said you want to go to Thailand and forget about the Games and I realized I have to let you go to be happy.”
“I never went to Thailand,” she says, leaving the interpretation up to him.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” he replies earnestly. “I don’t know what we would do without you. Na Yeon absolutely adores you, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this happy and–”
“And you?” she asks, commanding tone in her voice. She’s tired, and Gyeong Seok understands why. “You never tell me what you think of me…”
The crack in her voice absolutely crushes him. She seems so defeated, like she’s been staying for the past two years waiting for his confession that never came. Now, he allowed her be a mom of his child but never dared to admit his own feelings.
He stole her dream of Thailand with the promise of motherhood without ever admitting the real reason he kept her so close.
“I love you,” he blurts out almost immediately. “I love everything about you and when I see you sleepy in the morning making coffee I always stop to think how beautiful you are. I’ve been so lost after the Games, doing everything to forget about you but then I met you at the airport and I know it was a lost cause because I couldn’t forget about you and I wanted all of you but I’m a fool, and I thought telling you everything would just make you want to leave so I kept it to myself, kept it away from you, so you don’t run away and I’m sorry about it, it wasn’t fair to either you or Na Yeon.”
Hyun Ju stares at him the whole time with the most intense expression he’s ever caught on her face.
“I wanted you to focus on your surgery because I knew it would make you happy. And now that you got the surgery and wanted to leave for Thailand, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to bring it up. Instead, I waited until Na Yeon already thought of you as her mom, and made it too complicated because I was so caught up in my fear of losing you.”
He takes a deep breath, feeling the tension leave his body.
“I’m sorry,” he adds finally.
Hyun Ju takes time to respond, clearly thinking through her words as she plays with the drawing in her hands.
“You love me?” she asks, like it’s not the most obvious thing in the world.
“I do.”
“Okay,” she responds. Gyeong Seok doesn’t even feel the need to demand more, he knows he’s the one in the wrong. He gives her the time.
“You’re really stupid, you know that?” she says after a bit, but this time a shy smile spreads on her face.
“I am very well aware.”
“Good.”
They stay in silence.
“I thought you liked me, but then you weren’t saying anything… So I told myself I would stay for Na Yeon and then I stayed for so long I couldn’t bring myself to leave,” she admits. “After the surgery, I thought you would say something. Maybe you were waiting for me to be, I don’t know, a full woman, before you said anything—”
“Don’t ever say that,” Gyeong Seok cuts her off. He can’t even imagine that thought crossed her mind. He always loved her, in her entirety, and couldn’t care less about any surgeries.
“What was I supposed to think?” she exhales. “You never said anything, you asked me to move in and I thought that’s a polite way of you saying you want to date, so I said yes. But then you didn’t say anything again it was just– confusing. I don’t know.”
He hates himself for pushing things this far, now hearing the full side of Hyun Ju’s story. He promised himself he would never hurt her, and then managed to do the exact thing.
“And then Na Yeon called me mom, and I couldn’t even be happy, because I thought I just got myself stuck in a relationship without love.”
She says it with such defeat his heart breaks. It’s the same hopeless tone she had when they talked in the Game all those years ago.
“I would say I should have said something earlier, but you have to accept this is your fault, Gyeong Seok.”
She says it with such sincerity that he can’t help but chuckle at the remark. “Yeah, I fully accept that.”
“Good.”
After a moment of silence, she says: “I don’t want to move to Thailand.”
Gyeong Seok’s head shots up at the sudden confession.
“Not alone,” she says as a smile forms on her face. “Not if you two aren’t going.”
Gyeong Seok nods furiously. He knew how much she dreamt of Thailand, this is her own form of love confession.
“You gotta understand now,” she explains. “I’m a mom now, so I gotta think for all of us.”
The remaining tension leaves his body and he just laughs .
“So I can’t leave you two alone because god knows what would happen.”
He couldn’t agree more.
“Na Yeon told me how you burnt rice when I was in the hospital, don’t ever think she wouldn’t tell on you,” she notes and Gyeong Seok rolls his eyes.
Later that evening he holds her tight and whispers hundreds of I love you’s into her hair, trying to make up for all the I love you’s that were left unsaid.
Only then as he finally allows himself to kiss her, he realizes how much precious time he wasted by waiting and thinking of the worst.
When they finally fall asleep in the same bed that night, he promises that he will love this woman everyday for the rest of his life.
Summer 2027
It’s a stressful week in the Park household when it’s Na Yeon’s first year of school. Hyun Ju tries to cover everything, “She won’t be the only child who forgets something,” she insists.
Over the past year of fully focused co-parenting he realized how much of a perfectionist his fiance is. He still was utterly devoted to her, but if something went wrong, she could be a tiny bit scary.
Especially when they signed up Na Yeon for art lessons and another child threw a box of red paint on her painting, and Na Yeon came home crying. Hyun Ju managed to meet up with the child’s mom and then the incident never happened again.
He sometimes wonders what the hell did Hyun Ju threaten them with.
But the life they built for themselves over the year is something he will cherish for the rest of his life – if it’s Hyun Ju and Na Yeon both sleeping late in their bed on Sundays, or Hyun Ju setting up a trip to Disneyland in Japan after Na Yeon became obsessed with the Tangled movie.
They talk about the Games, sometimes. Despite everything, the most gruesome place helped him meet the most wonderful woman of his life.