Episode 109: Anniversary (1)
The matter with Jooyul had been settled for the time being.
“I wrapped things up well with CEO Jo. Don’t ask what we talked about—I’m not going to tell you. Peeking into every little detail takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it? Let’s save that enjoyment for when the time comes. No matter what the outcome is, it’ll be good for both sides.”
Seo Yoonje simply said that much and refused to elaborate any further.
I had no intention of prying either.
‘He must have handled it well, as expected.’
When it comes to matters between companies, no one could argue that Seo Yoonje was more of an expert and the right person for the job than I was.
And hadn’t he said he had wrapped it up “well”?
‘It’s not like I can’t guess.’
Whether intentional or a slip, there had been a subtle hint tucked into Seo Yoonje’s words.
There was no way Jo Dae-hwan would come all the way to MyWay just to boast about whose kids were doing better.
And there was no chance Seo Yoonje had forgotten the promise he’d made—to help if a rescue request came.
The premise that MyWay’s funds would flow in to cover the amount withdrawn from Jooyul remained solid.
‘Then there’s only one possibility left.’
Judging from Seo Yoonje’s personality, which I’d watched closely up to now,
‘If Orion performs better, Jooyul comes under MyWay as a sub-label. If E-GIS performs better, MyWay keeps the investment money as is and Jooyul continues independently.’
It probably ended at something like that.
‘Or maybe not.’
Even if it wasn’t, it didn’t really matter.
To be honest, there was a small part of me that hoped my prediction would be wrong.
For a regressor like Han Yujin, the one cheat code more powerful than anything else—more than events exceeding expectations—was the sheer joy of being surprised.
‘There’s no way that Seo Yoonje would settle for something so tame, right?’
Of course not—he’s Seo Yoonje, after all.
He wouldn’t have wrapped things up with an ending that had less impact than I expected and then so confidently mentioned “enjoyment for later.”
‘Well, at this point, my role in this matter is pretty much done, isn’t it?’
Now that the conversation between the two CEOs was finished, the rest fell to the working-level staff.
Whether Jooyul would be merged under MyWay or remain in a cooperative relationship with funds moving back and forth—
Unlike producing an album, these were things I couldn’t—and shouldn’t—get involved in.
That was the biggest reason I hadn’t asked Seo Yoonje about his conversation with Jo Dae-hwan or what would happen next.
And probably the biggest reason Seo Yoonje hadn’t told me either was simple consideration.
“Now that this side is settled, stop worrying about it and focus on what you need to do, Yujin-ssi.”
That had to be it, right?
‘In that sense, it’s actually fortunate.’
I could only say that because things had worked out smoothly, but I couldn’t help saying it.
Thanks to everything resolving so easily, I could now face “that day” without any discomfort.
With May almost over now,
The 3,000th day since I met Zia was right around the corner.
***
A rich, savory aroma filled the entire kitchen.
The source was the white-fleshed fish sizzling golden-brown on the pan.
This morning’s main dish was grilled Spanish mackerel—Zia’s absolute favorite fish.
Zia wasn’t particularly picky about food, but Spanish mackerel was one of the few dishes she genuinely adored more than others.
Back when we lived in the rooftop room, it was a frequent side dish, but unfortunately, since moving here, the frequency had dropped a little.
The reason was our upstairs neighbors.
Considering there were six of them and the level of activity that implied, it was almost unbelievable how little floor noise we heard.
And in terms of filling the gaps in Zia’s limited human relationships and shining brightly in her life,
Our upstairs neighbors were practically the perfect neighbors straight out of a manhwa.
The one and only downside—if there had to be one—was that they created a slight complication when it came to choosing meal menus.
‘Can’t be helped. I just have to understand.’
For anyone in the world, holding back from eating what you want isn’t pleasant.
And for girls in that line of work—Hylliy—who have to treat such unpleasant restraint as naturally as breathing, strong-smelling foods like grilled fish, grilled meat, or doenjang jjigae were bound to be trigger buttons.
I understood that feeling well.
Because I’d experienced it myself.
In truth, when it came to meal struggles, boy groups couldn’t even hand their business cards to girl groups.
For boy groups, where muscle could become another charming point, the solution was simple: eat and work out.
But unfortunately, girl groups didn’t even have that option—they had no choice but to strictly control their diets.
The image people want from girl groups is ‘flawless skin’ and ‘slender figures’—not ‘healthy, well-defined muscles.’
In that sense, we’ve been considerate toward Hylliy and gradually excluded strong-smelling foods.
‘But today is fine.’
Hylliy left for Boracay yesterday—on a reward vacation combined with a pictorial shoot after Mysty’s successful activities.
They departed yesterday and won’t be back for about a week, so this was literally the perfect timing to cook grilled fish or cheonggukjang—dishes we usually ended up eating outside to avoid bothering them.
‘Well, even if that weren’t the case, I would’ve asked for their understanding today anyway.’
No matter how much Hylliy was born with the girl-group curse of turning into a zombie the moment she smells food like that,
If they knew what ‘today’ was, wouldn’t they have made time for it—even if it meant forcing themselves into early-morning training they hated?
With a small chuckle at the thought, I transferred the grilled Spanish mackerel onto a plate lined with a kitchen towel and set it on the table. Next to it, I placed the perfectly cooled gangdoenjang earthenware pot.
Surrounding them: rolled omelette, stir-fried miyeok stems, perilla leaf pickles, pan-fried tofu, and bite-sized grilled tteokgalbi.
A breakfast made entirely of Zia’s favorite dishes was now complete.
“Time to wake her up, I guess.”
It was time to call the star of the show.
Heading to wake the princess who had fallen into the blissful monster called “sleeping in” for the first time in a while.
Even though this wasn’t the first or second time, my footsteps felt a little heavy.
“Ahem. Hmm.”
I unnecessarily cleared my throat in front of the door—loosening a throat that wasn’t even tight—with that much tension.
Trying my best to act natural, I reached for the door to the bedroom,
Bang.
The door opened from the inside first.
My hard-won composure crumbled as a bonus.
“Oh—you’re already up?”
Of course, the only person who could be inside was Zia.
That was exactly why it wasn’t strange that my composure had shattered like this, or that my voice came out so awkwardly stiff.
“Mmm… Lately I’ve been waking up early every morning out of habit, so my eyes just popped open for no reason…”
Zia was in the same boat.
Just as it had become routine for Zia to wake me, it had also become routine for me to wake her.
That was precisely why it wasn’t strange that Zia’s face was now bright red as she avoided my gaze.
“Let’s eat. I made your favorites.”
“This smell… is it Spanish mackerel? Ah, right—the kids said they went to the Philippines yesterday…”
“Yeah.”
The worst kind of loop: awkwardness breeding more awkwardness. Right now I wanted nothing more than to run to a punching bag and pound it senseless.
If Moon Sook-hee were to see this scene, she’d probably look at us like, “What the hell are you two doing right now?” with that judgmental stare.
And the single reason this situation had come to pass was simple.
Today was exactly the 3,000th day since Zia and I met.
‘Even meat tastes better when you’ve eaten it before, they say…’
Truthfully, we weren’t the type to make a big deal out of anniversaries.
“Huh? It’s already been 100 days?”
100 days.
“What? Last week was our 200 days?”
200 days.
“Are we idiots? How do we both forget our first anniversary?”
And our 1st anniversary, 2nd anniversary…
We’d always only mention them after the date had already passed.
“Every day with you is an anniversary, Zia.”
“Right? Same here.”
We’d say that every single day spent together was precious and no different from an anniversary.
‘That’s how we made excuses…’
But honestly, we both knew.
The 100th day, the 200th day.
The 1st anniversary, the 2nd anniversary.
300 days, 500 days, 777 days, 1004 days, 1234 days, and so on.
To me, those were dates from nearly twenty years ago now, yet I still remembered clearly exactly which year, month, and day each one fell on.
‘Honestly, it was just covering our eyes and going “awoo.”’
If I truly hadn’t remembered that day, it would’ve been impossible to even mention it days after the fact.
Yeah… in the end, it was all because of money.
A high schooler from an orphanage and a high schooler who desperately tried to ignore the bank account full of meager living expenses—how much could a couple like that have celebrated anniversaries anyway?
There was also a bit of an inferiority complex.
‘We’re different from those other kids who make a big fuss over every single day.’
Something like that?
Even after coming up to Seoul because we had to go into bigger waters to become singers as adults.
Even during the military service when we had no choice but to be apart.
The circumstances never really changed, so our couple’s habit of deliberately ignoring anniversaries just continued as it was.
And so the 4th, 5th, 6th anniversaries. And the 1500th, 2000th, 2500th days—we let them all pass as if they were nothing.
Of course I regretted it.
‘It didn’t have to be such a grand thing.’
The excuse that “every day spent together is already an anniversary” was definitely just a cop-out, but it wasn’t completely insincere.
So even without giving each other gifts or anything, we could have fully enjoyed that fluttering feeling.
While I was thinking like that, I came back to the past.
From then on, it was only natural that I tried to celebrate anniversaries somehow.
The problem was that it didn’t go as I wanted.
The first anniversary after regression—the 7th—was right when less than a month had passed since I returned.
To Zia, who was looking for any hole to crawl into after the breakup notice, a 7th anniversary celebration?
No way in hell.
And this year’s 8th anniversary,
‘We both just avoided it…’
Because we knew an atmosphere like this would come up.
I had the perfect excuse with Hylliy, and Zia had the excuse of acting lessons from Lee Ah-jeong, so naturally we could just laugh it off like “Oh, the 8th anniversary passed already, huh.”
But this time, we couldn’t do that.
If we kept putting off the homework forever, it would definitely grow into something we couldn’t handle anymore.
That’s why I even asked Lee Ah-jeong to finish filming as much as possible before today.
The reason I didn’t go watch Zia’s acting was exactly that.
“OK. I’ll try my best to wrap up filming by that day. But condition: Yujin-ssi, you absolutely cannot come to the set. If Zia loses focus, everything goes to hell, got it?”
As promised, Lee Ah-jeong finished filming the music video for Aejeong-un before our 3000th day arrived.
That was just yesterday.
And not only that,
“I have to take my hands off album work for a while, so acting lessons will be tough for the time being. You’ve been pushing hard lately anyway, so take a few days to rest properly.”
She even completely blocked off Zia’s escape route.
‘That’s probably why it feels even more awkward…’
Seo Yoonje, Lee Ah-jeong.
Even Hylliy’s overseas schedule—everything had clearly been arranged with consideration for our 3000th day.
Zia and I both couldn’t possibly not notice.
‘This won’t do. I need to change the mood first.’
Today was the first proper anniversary we were facing.
We couldn’t keep acting this awkward forever.
With that resolve, the words I let out were,
“Congratulations, Zia-ya.”
A magnificent own goal.
“Huh?”
A single thought flashed across Zia’s face as bewilderment beyond awkwardness bloomed.
‘Han Yujin, are you an idiot?’
The person congratulating the other person—what kind of new-concept event was this?
The urge to bury my face in a plate of water poured down like a monsoon,
‘How do I fix this?’
Not figuratively—my head was actually spinning with real dizziness—
When,
“Pfft, puhahahahaha!”
Zia burst out laughing.
“Ah, seriously. Han Yujin. You’re driving me crazy… You congratulating me—what even is that?!”
And she was even tearing up while laughing.
“Aigoo. Who’s going to take this one? Come on, come eat before it gets cold. Come here, gangdoenjang. I’ve been craving this so much lately—it looks delicious.”
Maybe because of the explosive laughter that even squeezed out tears.
The awkwardness that had lingered at the end of Zia’s words and in her fingertips had noticeably melted away.
The same went for me.
Thanks to kicking such a spectacular own goal, the unnecessary tension in my body felt like it had loosened a little.
Should I… call this fortunate…?
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