The twinkle in Seo Tae-joon’s eyes seemed to light up the night. Ji-woo stared at him, momentarily speechless, before a blush crept up her cheeks. She bit her lip, a nervous habit.
“I’m not a gold-digger…” she mumbled.
“A shame,” he said, his voice laced with amusement. “I wouldn’t mind if you were coming after me.”
“You’re broke,” Ji-woo pointed out, a small smile playing on her lips.
“But didn’t you say my family was rich?”
“They’re also very scary.”
Ji-woo sighed, the brief levity fading. “My own family was a complete mess.” It was always better to keep a safe distance from people. She felt a familiar pull in two directions—the desire to confide in him warring with the instinct to keep her walls firmly in place.
“We were related by blood,” she said, her voice quiet. “But we never managed to be a family.”
Seo Tae-joon listened, his attention unwavering. “At home,” she continued, “they called me Song-yeon.”
“Song-yeon?”
She nodded. “It was a sort of nickname.” She explained that when the characters for Han Ji-woo were written vertically, they could be read that way, and the name had stuck. “Song-yeon means the soot from burning pine trees.” Ji-woo paused, the weight of the memory pressing down. “I was considered a dirty stain on my family’s image.”
Just then, a series of booming reports echoed from the distance, and the sky erupted in a cascade of fireworks. She could hear the faint cheers and applause of a crowd. Ji-woo couldn’t tear her gaze from the dazzling, colorful shower of light painting the darkness.
If only that warmth could fill the emptiness in her heart, she thought. She would do anything to not feel the ache of missing a family she never truly had.
“Is that how you’ve seen yourself all this time?” His voice was calm, drawing her back. “As a stain? As soot?”
His gentle eyes made her heart ache. They seemed to urge her for an answer, yet they were like mirrors, and in them, she saw no stain. For the first time, she saw herself not as the family reject, but as the woman who had survived in spite of them. An independent, resilient woman. A Tree Doctor. A caregiver. She had overcome the cruelty of her cousins and coworkers. She had found a way to thrive.
“Do you know that after a forest fire, the surviving trees live on to make the forest anew?”
“Hm… and?” he prompted softly.
“I might have been Song-yeon back then, but now… I’m a Tree Doctor.”
He smiled at her. “I’ve built myself up anew,” she said, her voice cracking on the last word. She managed a watery smile of her own, not bothering to hide the tears welling in her eyes.
A barren childhood had left her with no place to put down roots. At an age when she should have been growing strong, she had felt herself withering inside. She’d grown thorns to keep others away, to protect herself from the painful memories. She had tried her best. Maybe a flower could never bloom in such soil, but maybe… someone…
All she had ever wanted was for someone to tell her that she had done her best. That it was enough. That she was enough.
“It might not be pretty, but it’s me.”
Another volley of fireworks burst across the sky. Seo Tae-joon’s smile was so bright, so warm, it felt like it could melt the ice around her heart. He closed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into a firm embrace.
“I knew it!” he said against her hair.
“What?”
“I didn’t think a person who picks up fallen petals from the ground with so much care could ever truly think of herself as a dirty stain.”
One after another, the fireworks exploded, their percussive booms drowned out by the thunder of her own heart. The cheering crowds, the city noise, all of it faded into nothing. The world seemed to shrink until it contained only the two of them, his arms a circle of warmth around her. It was a world away from their first meeting in the mountains months ago.
Ji-woo clenched her sweaty hands. A part of her screamed to run, to retreat to the safety of solitude. But she stayed. “I wanted to live a quiet life, away from people. I was afraid of them, of how they saw me. So I chose trees instead,” she blurted out. “They accepted me. Trees don’t have prejudices. The forest was the only place I ever felt safe, but…”
He was still looking at her, his patience a steady, silent presence. “But you…”
She looked up at him. “You constantly…” The words caught in her throat.
“Go on,” he urged.
“You’re poisonous,” she said in a rush, the declaration startling even herself. “I think so. I think you’re poisonous.” She had panicked, skipping over everything she had meant to say.
He didn’t react, didn’t pull away. He simply waited, his stillness giving her space. He seemed to know she was dancing around the real words, and he was willing to let her find her footing.
“So?” he asked.
His calm, steady voice was the anchor she needed. “So… I…”
Another brilliant firework illuminated the sky, casting his face in fleeting colors.
“I think I really do have a second husband. A new man.”
“What?” he asked, his patient expression finally dissolving into pure confusion.
“I no longer see the old Seo Tae-joon,” Ji-woo declared, the words tumbling out. A hot blush of embarrassment flooded her face, and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at her own absurd confession.