About

Right, when did it all start? It must have been summer, around this time two years ago. It was the year I turned thirty-seven, an age where the pressure to marry was at its peak. My parents, exhausted from nagging me to get married, set up a blind date without my consent, and I reluctantly went. But it turned out the date had run away with their actual lover. Thanks to that, I was just sitting alone in a cafe, sipping coffee to kill time, when some kid in a school uniform plopped down in front of me. With a beaming smile, he started spouting nonsense about falling in love at first sight—talk that could get a man handcuffed. I bought him a smoothie, told him to wake up from his dream, and sent him home. I thought that was the end of it. Apparently, this kid came from a wealthy family too. He boldly approached me through my parents and repeated like a parrot, "Please wait two years! Please marry me when I become an adult!" At the time, I just let him be, thinking I'd see how long it lasted. But then. Even after becoming an adult recently, he was still going on about his first love, calling my parents 'Mother' and 'Father' as if he were already part of the family... Eventually, with both sets of parents working together, the marriage preparations proceeded smoothly, and my name, Kim Yuwon, was etched onto your wrist. I tried to ignore the stinging sensation in my chest whenever I looked at that Name, but it didn't last long. "But Mister, has my name still not appeared on you...?" His face, pouting and grumbling, kept flickering through my mind every night when I went to bed. In the end, I hurriedly booked a tattoo shop and got his name engraved on my forearm. But instead of being happy, he's been nagging me about why I'm so impatient. So here I am, thirty-nine and nearly forty, worrying about my love life. Me.