Letters to Remember

Jan 7: To Se-ri

Jan 7

North Korean Military Outpost, DMZ 

Se-ri

How are you doing these days? I guess by now you'd have settled into your routine.

I'm leaving for the village in an hour. I just got a notice and a two-day furlough to visit the village at the behest of my father. It is pertaining to my wedding with Seo-Dan. I never told you this but my wedding with Dan was fixed for the last Sunday of this month. Please don't think the worst of me. That day in the hospital, I confessed to Dan that I liked you and could not marry her anymore. She did not accept it I think. Maybe she thought of you as a mere fling that would be over once you crossed over to the South, I'll be back with her. She couldn't gauge the intensity of my feelings for you.

Years ago when she was betrothed to me, I assumed I could be a good and dutiful husband to her even if I didn't love her. My parents wished for the alliance and I wanted to respect their sentiments. Down the trail, I tried many times to think of her as my better half, but always failed. No matter what, I couldn't kindle those feelings of affection or attraction for her. It was always a sense of duty. I presumed it was how it was meant to be. Maybe I wasn't capable of it. This is what I believed- until you crossed my path.

I fell in love so quickly, madly and irrevocably that I trembled at the intensity of what I felt for you. Seeing you just prick your thumb made me wild with worry. Protecting you and keeping you happy became the goal that I started to live by. Even when it was meant to be short-lived. Even when keeping you safe meant I'd be miserable, even endangered, I wanted to do it.

But that night at the hospital when I learnt how you'd sabotaged your only chance of returning home for me, I was furious. Not at you, but because I failed you. But when the doctors and the nurse told me how you'd saved my life, how our blood groups matched by a chance of fate, how you'd cried by my bed the whole night praying for me to wake up, I couldn't hold it in anymore Se-ri. I just couldn't. You protected me that night. You chose me over your own happiness. I thought you felt for me more than what I gave you credit for. And that's why I couldn't restrain myself and kissed you.

I regret it heartily, not because it was a mistake. It was one of the best moments of my life- moments that I'd cherish till the end of my days. But I call it a mistake because I gave you hope- hope for us. Though deep down the selfish me wishes you'd never forget me and would pine for me as I yearn for you; the other nobler part hopes that you've forgotten about it all- me, this accidental sojourn into enemy land, these close escapes from death and danger. Which one of these is love I cannot say, but I love you this I'm sure of. I'd realized it that night in the hospital. Right at the moment I kissed you that it was no use fighting back my feelings. I'd fallen for you hard and swift.

The next morning just after you left with Gu-seung, Dan came to visit me in the hospital. She saw the red heart you'd darned onto my uniform, and that's when I admitted to her that I'd developed feelings for you. While I'd once believed I could marry Dan and keep her happy even when I didn't love her, it wasn't possible when my heart beat and yearned for you. I told her we should call off the marriage. But she wouldn't listen.

I know I've been unfair to her- kept delaying the marriage for my own interests. I went to study abroad, and then after my brother passed, I was only focused on getting him justice. To be honest, I did not think anything more of Dan apart from being a moral obligation. I never waited for her or missed her. It is a wretched thing to say, but it is true. And now that I know it, I wish I'd called off the marriage years ago, or perhaps never agreed to the alliance in the first place.

But the past can't be undone. Let's see what Dan has in store for me tonight when she comes over. I think she still wishes to keep up the alliance, but I can't do it anymore Se-ri. Not now, not after loving you. I wish I could help salve her pain, save her from heartbreak, but in the end, both of us would end up miserable.

I wasn't good to Dan, maybe that's why the Gods have kept me away from my love.

Still,

Only yours,

Jeong-hyeok