Heart of Ice

Happy

If there was one thing that Yewon had learned from her experience of being married to Seungcheol, it was that the romance in her novels was not true-to-life. Nothing was ever as glamorous or as wonderful as novels made them out to be. Men are not heroic or loyal like they are in the novels. White horses are very rare. Kissing wasn't all that exhilarating, and sex was definitely over-glorified.

But there was just one thing that novels did get right. Actually, they didn't get it right, because it was so much better than what novels told her: when the person you love tells you that he loves you back– that moment really was as magical as novels say it was.

When Yewon heard those words, her heart filled with a naïve kind of bliss that led her bitter realism to kick in immediately. It was too good to be true, she thought.

She asked him if he was sure about what he was saying. If he was seeing her as Jeonghan. If he was joking or just saying it to shut her up, but he just shook his head and affirmed that it was nothing like that.

She has a lot of questions for him that night, but he left very little chance for her to ask him. Whenever she opened her mouth to ask, he would kiss her, and she could not find it in herself to stop him.

-

Seungcheol was a very shy man, and Yewon only really caught on to that after he admitted that he loved her. Ever since that night, he was unable to even catch her eye for more than a second, and whenever she tried to talk about feelings with him, he always tried to change the subject.

In the end, it didn't really bother Yewon so much, because although he rarely talked about it, she still felt his affection for her in the way he treated her. She noticed the way that his face would brighten whenever he saw her. She felt the care with which he treated her, and the tenderness in the way he touched her.

Yewon decided not to go to the hospital anymore, for his sake. When she told him that she decided not to go, she could almost physically see a burden fall of his back. He looked so relieved to hear it, and so thankful to her for deciding to not to go.

He was afraid she would die, and that fear became more and more obvious to her as time went by. It wasn't just the illness at the hospital that he was afraid of. He also asked for two more guards outside of her room. When she tripped and fell on the stairs once, he ordered to for carpets to be placed on the stairs in case it happened again. Once she caught a small fever, and he appointed three different physicians, one priest, and even an alchemist to heal her.

It's strange how the value of her life suddenly transformed completely after Seungcheol's confession. After feeling so inadequate for so long, she suddenly wanted to stay alive for as long as possible. She suddenly was content with her life after all the suffering she had undergone. Suddenly, her life was precious, and not only to herself, but to him as well.

She imagined how it would feel to lose him, but it was unbearable to even just imagine it. To think that Seungcheol had experienced this pain twice. She was determined to not be the third. She was determined to be the one that remained with him forever, until they were old and wrinkly. Maybe they would be lucky and die at the exact same time, so neither would ever have to bear losing the other.

She told him these thoughts, and it made him smile.

He smiled a lot more often now, to the point she had lost count of the amount of time she had seen him smile. She was now keeping count of the times she heard him laugh.

And so, for the many months that followed, the two of them embraced their relationship. They grew closer and more comfortable with one another physically. Although Seungcheol never stopped being shy about his feelings for her, he did open up to her about other things, like his fear that maybe he really was sterile.