Forty, Thirty-Six

Waiting

The buzz of the phone on the table startled Baek Yi-jin from the course material he was perusing in preparation for his first semester as a lecturer. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, surprised at how much time had passed when he checked his watch.

The message read: 'Seonbaenim. You asked me to contact you if any news re: Na Hee-do seonsu.'

Baek Yi-jin sat up and checked the sender name again. It was from one of his contacts who worked at a celebrity gossip outlet.

'Yes, thank you,' he typed back quickly. 'What's going on?'

'Nothing scandalous but we are sending paparazzi on site. Finalised divorce, not mutual. Inside info is NHD's infertility is to blame.'

'Where are you sending your pap?'

'NHD's woodwork shop.'

'Thanks. I owe you dinner.'

---

Hee-do loved being in her workshop in the hours between dinner and bedtime. There was a different quality to the quietness, almost like time didn't exist and she was in a peaceful bubble where she could take as long as she liked to work on shaving a piece of wood.

Today, however, her peaceful bubble had been popped by the presence of one Kim Jung-hoon. He had slipped through the front door of her workshop as she was examining a piece of wood which was to be her chair leg.

"I'm sorry to intrude on you like this, but I got wind of a leak to the press," he started without further preamble. Her soon-to-be ex-husband was as smartly dressed as always, speaking as crisply and confidently as always. "We should corroborate our stories so that there's no he-said-she-said sort of thing out there."

"Mwo, ne. That sounds good to me," Hee-do shrugged and took her tool apron off. "What's our story? Are we just confirming that we're finalising the divorce?" she asked, walking to lean on the bench in front of where Jung-hoon stood so that she faced him.

Their final agreement, after months of debate, had been that Jung-hoon would file for judicial divorce on the grounds of infertility. Although Hee-do didn't want that information laid out so bare on a legal document, mutual consent was off the table if Jung-hoon wanted to stay in his parents' good graces. He had assured her that with his media contacts this information would stay between them, and so Hee-do had agreed, wanting to be over and done with this long process.

"I'm afraid it's not so simple," Jung-hoon's mouth was in a troubled pucker and he was avoiding her gaze. That's when Hee-do knew that something was wrong.

"What?" she asked, swallowing her rising unease and standing from the bench. "What do you mean?"

"They've gotten hold of the grounds for our divorce –"

"They... how? You said it wouldn't be public knowledge!"

"Yes. I'm sorry about that. But better that we focus on how to face the problem at hand so that there isn't any further trouble," Jung-hoon said in his let's-be-calm-and-logical voice. The one he had used throughout their marriage when he had perceived her to be 'too emotional' to talk to. The voice he had used when he had come home to find her devastated from her gynaecologist visit, after learning that her chances for conceiving were extremely slim. The voice he had used when she had felt distraught and exhausted from the hormonal treatments, the doctor's visits, being let down from her expectations over and over and over again.

Hee-do gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to tell him to stop using that voice. "Okay. So. What is your suggestion on how to face the problem at hand?" she made herself say calmly instead. She had learned that parroting his last sentence was the best way for herself to stay calm.