Chapter 90

Chapter 90: Chapter 90

As if he were pressured by her sharp look, Hojoon avoided her eyes.

This time Arum asked further, “So, what will happen to us?”

“I’ve no idea. Let me ask the tarot cards.”

Kajong mixed the cards again and opened them on the table.

Arum picked one and gave it to him.

“Now, let me check out your guys’ fate.”

As if he were curious, Hojoon, who was looking elsewhere, turned his eyes to the card.

Hojoon and Arum focused on the card as he turned it over.

This time Kajong kept them waiting on purpose.

“Hey, turn the card over already!”

“Are you curious?” Hojoon nodded. “Okay, then. Let me take a look.”

It was a card with a man and a woman blessed under four pillars. They looked happy as if they were dancing.

Looking at them alternately, Kajong smiled.

“What is it?” demanded Hojoon.

“Figure out what it means.”

“Don’t play with me, man. What is it?”

“Actually, you’re playing the tarot cards for fun. Arum, does anything come to your mind when you see this card?”

“Not really,” she lied.

She thought of marriage. The man and the woman on the card looked like a couple holding an outdoor marriage ceremony. She didn’t say so because she alone felt that way.

“If you see that card, only one thing comes to your mind: marriage.” Kajong made an expression suggestion both Arum and Hojoon pretended not to know on purpose. “I think both of you could make a nice match. So, good luck!”

“Marriage? Am I getting married to Hojoon? That’s nonsense!”

Arum shook her head.

This time Hojoon cut in, “Hey, aren’t you busy? Just go back to the kitchen. Your tarot card reading doesn’t look correct. We’re here to split up today.”

Kajong felt awkward at his mention of ‘split up, ‘ “What the heck are you talking about?”

“You don’t have to know it now,” Hojoon answered.

Hojoon sent him back to the counter. Kajong kept turning back to look at them and murmured, “What the heck? What happened?.”

Arum poked the pasta with a fork and tried to resume eating. She looked at Hojoon slightly. It seemed he was shocked at the result of Kajong’s tarot reading.

“Would it make any sense if we get married?” she said jokingly to change the heavy atmosphere, but his expression grew stiff.

Hojoon had never thought of marriage. Having heard Kajong’s explanation, he felt ashamed of himself who also hadn’t married yet.

“Won’t you marry me?”

At his sudden proposal, she choked on her pasta. It was a preposterous proposal. Come to think of it, though, his proposal also made sense, but she couldn’t accept his proposal as if she had been waiting for it.

“Marriage is not a joke, you know,” she said, trying to laugh it off.

“I don’t care if marriage is a joke. Can’t I say whatever I want to say to a woman that I’m breaking up with?”

Her heart clenched, “Do you think marriage is a hard thing to do? It’s also difficult for us to meet like this, but didn’t you talk about breaking up easily? Do you think breaking up is a joke?”

“Oh, that’s not what I mean. Do you think you can get married easily?” she said in a tense voice.

Hojoon rebuked, “Marriage doesn’t necessarily have to be hard, right?”

She had no choice but to make a fake smile at that.

What a strange thought.

Of course, he had a point. There were couples who got married a couple of months after they met. Marriage was not necessarily a difficult thing to do, but she took marriage seriously as if it was a big question that she could not solve all her life.

Besides, once one got married, one couldn’t change their spouse like one would change a boyfriend.

“Let me pretend that I didn’t hear what you told me,” she said and continued eating.

Rolling the pasta noodles with a fork, she looked at his face.

She already got lots of things after she met him.

Marriage? Do I need to be greedy? But she gave up the thought quickly. See! That’s your greed, after all. Marriage is an act of greed for you. Wake up, Arum Yang!

Hojoon was a good man. There was no question about it, but getting married to him was a different matter. No one got married because they hated each other, but people got divorced because they loved each other too much and ended up hating each other much more.

Marriage was a reality.

Living in the same house meant sharing each other’s daily routines without any space to hide. There was no way to prepare for the ways they might clash. Looking back at her parents’ married life, she knew that marriage was a difficult thing. Her mother cried in the restroom as she had no other space in the house. Sometimes, her mother cried at the sink while preparing breakfast. Her mother probably cried a lot more than that in other spaces of the house. After her mother got married, she never had her own room.

And even now there seemed to be no change in the state of a woman’s married life.

Who the hell dares to claim her own room these days? If you really want it, you can use that small room.

According to her friend who got married two years ago, her husband snapped like that when she asked for her own room. When they had a baby a year ago, that small room was filled with all the stuff for the baby.

Her friend told her sadly, Arum, I’ve no place to have a rest, though it’s my house. My house without my own room.

Arum was old enough to understand her mother’s complaint that marriage was a jail without windows to a woman. She recalled her junior’s remarks who wrote a review of the ‘Book of the Month’ in the previous issue of her magazine.

“Arum, this expression really hits the nail on the head. What’s more dangerous than a business is a sweet home.”

“What the heck is that?”

“You don’t know it because you’re single now. When you get married, you come to view the world around you differently. Before marriage, you just did what you wanted to and took it for granted, but after you get married, you can only get it after a great struggle. You know, I can’t stay outside overnight after I got married.”

“It can’t be true!”

“I’m serious. Except for my business trips, I never slept outside my house. Funny, isn’t it? Even my mother allowed me to sleep out, but my husband wouldn’t. I didn’t want to argue with him, so I’m listening to him without objection. If I had listened to my mother when I was in school, I think I would have been a devoted daughter,” said she with a hearty laugh.

Arum took her junior’s complaint at that time as a joke.

Why did she suddenly recall it now?

Yeah, marriage is not for me.

In some respects, she didn’t want to get married from the beginning.

Though she wanted to stay with Hojoon, she didn’t want marriage.

“What are you doing?” Hojoon asked suddenly.

“No, nothing.”

She suddenly shook her head as if she were caught being lost in such complicated thoughts.

“Aren’t you going to answer your phone?” he asked.

Come to think of it, her smartphone on the table was buzzing quietly.

It was a call from her mother.

“Hello?”

“Where are you now? When are you coming back?”

“I’ll be late.”

“Are you far from here?”

“Not that far. Why? Is it urgent?”

“Well…I can’t talk over the phone. Can I wait for you?”

She smelled a rat when she heard her mother’s voice.

It was pretty unusual that she called late at night and said she was waiting for Arum.

“Can’t I see you tomorrow, mom?”

“Yeah, you can, but I really….”

Obviously, something strange happened to her.

“Got it. If I leave now, I think I can get back home after 1 PM.”

“Just come. It’s a morning flight.”

“Mom? Are you going somewhere?”

“Just come and talk. Take care until then.”

Arum was put on the spot when her mother hung up the phone. She drank a cup of cool water as she was thirsty.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“My mother says she’s boarding a morning flight.”

“Looks like she is traveling.”

“You think so? Travel, right?”

But she felt something strange about her sudden confession that she was boarding a morning flight tomorrow.

“Can I take the last train to Seoul?”

“I guess so. Is it so urgent?”

“Yeah, I feel there’s something strange about my mother’s behavior.”

“You should go now. Wait a minute.”

Hojoon asked Kajong to call a taxi.

“Let’s go together in an hour. I am going to drive to Seoul after my shop hours are closed.”

Thanks to his hospitality she could go back to Seoul comfortably.

Kajong drove them back to Arum’s villa.

“Thanks for the ride. I arrived more quickly than expected.”

When she got out of his car, Hojoon also got out.

“Goodbye, man!”

“Got it. Take care!”