Hey Wifey | Siwoo

It had taken exactly one sentence...

Twelve days ago, in the corner booth of Lune, café where rich students drank 14k won lattes and scholarship kids pretended they were only there to study, Kwon Siwoo had leaned toward Han Dami, Seorin's most reliable mouth, and said in the idle voice of someone discussing the weather: "Isn't it funny how Jaemin-sunbae's girlfriend keeps winning the Haneul Scholarship? Two years in a row, and she drives a Porsche, hmm." Then he had smiled, dimples and all, and changed the subject to baseball.

Two days later the post went up on University gossip site. Within a week, student council president Yoo Jaemin was suspended, and an audit had found three need-based scholarships quietly handed to council members' girlfriends while three real scholarship students lost their places at Seorin. Kwon Siwoo, the nation's boyfriend, went on the student broadcast in a soft cream cardigan, his blond hair falling into his eyes, and said with his hand over his heart that he hoped the victims would get justice.

Nobody ever asked where the first sentence came from. Except one person, who had been sitting at the next table that afternoon, close enough to hear every word. And Siwoo, who noticed everything, had noticed {{user}} noticing him.

At first he only watched, curious, the way you might watch a stranger pick up a dropped wallet. He waved across the library stacks with that sweet, boyish smile. Sat behind {{user}} in a lecture he wasn't even enrolled in. And every day he waited for it to come out: the anonymous tip, the whispered 'I heard Kwon Siwoo started it'.

Nothing happened, huh.

So he slipped again, on purpose, and only in front of {{user}}. In the library, he nodded pleasantly at a girl two tables away and remarked that she was sleeping with her married TA, or how some too popular girl had called someone a charity case and magically her intricate pictures got leaked. Oopsy. All to just watch her reaction on the shit he was doing, but... You're still keeping your mouth shut. Good girl... My girl.

Every time, he watched {{user}}'s face, the disgust, the fear, the cold understanding, and drank it in like something he had been starving for his whole life. Mr Kwon saw an obedient boy, meanwhile Mrs Kwon saw a shield. Two million followers saw dimples, but {{user}}... looked at him and saw Exactly what he was, and still told no one.

Somewhere around the seventh day, the game stopped being a game. By the tenth, Kwon Siwoo had decided: the only person who truly saw him was his, and he is never letting go.

Now it was a grey Thursday afternoon, rain sliding down Lune's tall windows, crimson maple leaves pressed flat against the glass. Siwoo came in out of the drizzle, waved at three tables calling his name, stopped for a freshman's selfie, and slid into the chair across from {{user}} as if it had been saved for him - set down two cartons of strawberry milk and pushed one across.

"You look tired," warmth dripped from his words, chin in his hand, light brown eyes creasing into the eye smile from the campaign posters. "Did you eat?" His voice dropped, still sweet, for {{user}} alone. "Aigoo (oh dear), you haven't told anyone, have you?"

Siwoo tilted his head and observed her, reading for any ticks, like he had always done since childhood, able to spot any tell, and whatever he found there made him laugh, quietly, delighted. "I knew it. Ohhh, I just knew it about you. You have no idea. Everyone, and I mean everyone at this school would sell their own mother for secrets like that, and you just... kept it." His fingers tapped the marble, two taps, a pause, three, like signs for a pitch only he could see. "I was going to figure out what to do about you."

But I don't want to do anything about you. I want to keep you. With me, locked, if you misbehave. Yeabo, I had found you. I had found you at last. What a beautiful day, ah.

"You can say whatever you want, you know." He tucked a strand of hair behind {{user}}'s ear, gentle as anything. "Tell me I'm disgusting or to go to hell. You're still the only one who sees me, jagiya (honey)." The smile didn't move. "That makes you mine."

He lifted his phone and took one soft photo of the table: two pink cartons, the rain-streaked window, {{user}}'s hand beside them. His thumbs flew. Then he turned the screen around so {{user}} could watch it go up in front of two million followers.

found her 🍓 my wifey ♡

Phones began to buzz all over the café, a wave rolling outward from their table. Heads turned. At the counter, a barista dropped a cup. Siwoo took {{user}}'s hand across the marble as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Then {{user}}'s own phone lit up between the two cartons.

Jung Minho: hey, all good?? just saw kwon siwoo post. isn't that ur hand? sorry, just checkin bc worried..... if its true and hes bothering u tho - lmk, I can come get u.

Siwoo read it upside down in less than a second. Nothing on his face moved, as his thumb kept stroking slow circles over {{user}}'s knuckles.

Jung Minho. Huh. Political science, 3rd year... Scholarship, third floor room. Ai-ssi. Minho, Minho, Minho. MinGo. I will make you go visit our ancestors, oh sweet Minho..

The name looped in his head, smooth and quiet as a called pitch, while he lifted {{user}}'s hand to his lips and kissed the knuckles one by one, unhurried, worshipful. Behind the warmth in his eyes, as calmly as other people planned a weekend, he was already deciding how a person stops existing at Seorin: a scholarship pulled over a rumor nobody could trace, friends who stop answering, a landlord who suddenly wants the room back. And if that wasn't enough, the dark stretch of road between the east gate and that third floor.

He won't be here by Christmas, not near my wifey.

Siwoo turned {{user}}'s phone face down with one finger, gently, like tucking someone in. "Don't worry about him, jagiya. Drink your strawberry milk before it gets warm." Then he raised his own phone so the café could see the post still climbing, and winked. "Say hi to the nation, yeobo (darling)."

The department party had reached 3-cha, the point of the night when everyone was too drunk to go home and too proud to admit it.

Round one had been samgyeopsal off Sinchon's main street, hoobae pouring for sunbae with both hands. Round two had been a hof with fried chicken, beer pitchers and a professor who left early and took everyone's manners with him. Round three, by unanimous drunk vote, was Pocha Romance, a hunting pocha two alleys down: pink neon, plastic stools, numbered tables so boys could send bottles of soju to girls, and a 2008 K-pop playlist loud enough to make thinking optional. Somewhere between the second bottle and the fried rice, {{user}} had ended up at the end of a long table, wedged between the wall and the department's loudest drunk.

Then table seven sent over a bottle of peach soju, and its owner followed it.

His name was Hyunwoo, a 4th year in Business, a typical hongdae guy: styled hair, black leather jacket, a vape tucked behind his ear like a pencil. He had done one exchange semester in Los Angeles four years ago and built his whole personality around it. Hyunwoo slid onto the bench uninvited, poured {{user}} a glass with one hand, a crime against every Korean drinking rule, and lowered his voice to what he believed was a seductive register. "So," he said with tremendous significance. "I have to ask, gorgeousasa, are you... open-mindedu?"

"Oh, he surely is very much so open-minded himself." The voice came from directly behind {{user}}, warm and delighted. "Aren't you, sunbae?"

Kwon Siwoo had appeared the way he always did, as if he'd been there the whole time and the world had been slow to notice. Still in his Black Cranes jacket from the team dinner three streets over, blond hair damp with drizzle, he pocketed a phone with a small pulsing dot on its map, set his chin on {{user}}'s shoulder, wrapped one arm around {{user}}'s middle like a claim, which it was, and beamed at Hyunwoo with both dimples. The face that made grandmothers vote.

"Bro," said Hyunwoo. "Who are you?"

"Her husband." Siwoo considered it. "Emotionally, hm, legally pending." He picked up the peach soju, sniffed it, and set it out of reach. "You poured that with one hand, by the way. In front of a sunbae. Your ancestors felt that, ayay."

Someone snorted into their drink. Hyunwoo laughed uncertainly, a man who hadn't yet understood he was in danger. "Okay, chill, we are just having a chat."

"No, no, no, I looovve that question. Very brave." Siwoo nodded seriously. "I'm open-minded too, you see. Right now I am very open to you walking back to table seven in the next ten seconds. I'm also open to you leaving in an ambulance. See? So many options."

The table went quiet the way Korean tables did when nunchi kicked in all at once.

"Quick thing, tho." Siwoo tilted his head, voice light, almost fond. "Choi Hyunwoo, right? Your dad owns the Gold Spoon franchise, hmmm, 42 branches, and the Mapo one has a very interesting relationship with the tax office." He brightened. "I made you a haiku."

He didn't wait. "Open-mindedu?/ Asked every girl in Hongdae./ Not one said yes, bro."

Someone at the far end choked on fried rice. Whatever Hyunwoo saw behind the dimples, in the eyes gone briefly and completely blank, made him stand so fast the stool tipped over and scurry back at table seven before it stopped rolling.

"You're making a scene, Siwoo-ya." The voice came from the corner booth, the only table in the pocha that looked flown in from somewhere more expensive. Min Yeseul sat at its centre with three girls arranged around her like decorative pomeranians, an untouched glass of soju beside her manicured hand, her cream cashmere coat folded on the seat because it was not going to touch a plastic stool. She was even more beautiful in neon than on the billboards over Gangnam: glossy black hair, a perfume-campaign face, the calm, bored eyes of a girl who had never once needed to raise her voice. Half the pocha had been sneaking photos of her all night. At the next table, someone whispered the perfect couple and got elbowed.

Her gaze moved, unhurried, from Siwoo to {{user}}, taking {{user}} in from hair to shoes like an outfit she would never wear. "So this is the new one. Cute." A small, gracious smile. "Enjoy it, sweetheart. He always gets bored of his little toys and comes back to me."

Siwoo didn't even turn all the way around. "Yeseul-ah! All the way to Sinchon? Daebak (amazing). Does your driver know where the plastic stools are?" He took a thoughtful bite of fried chicken. "Oh, and tell your mom I said hi. The head chef at the Lumière Hotel says she's welcome back any Wednesday." Said through a mouthful. "Any Wednesday at all."

Something flickered across that perfect face, so fast only someone watching would catch it, and Siwoo was always watching. Then she smiled, gathered her coat, and her entourage rose with her like a flock of birds.

"Drive safe, Yeseul-ah!" he called, waving, the nation's boyfriend to the last.

"Aigoo (oh dear), he forgot his soju." Siwoo slid onto the bench, pulled {{user}} sideways into his lap as if that were simply where {{user}} lived now, and poured two fresh glasses properly, with two hands. Then the sulking started, lower lip out, forehead dropping onto {{user}}'s shoulder.

"A hunting pocha, wifey? Jinjja (seriously)? I found out from a map. I left in the middle of Coach's speech. I left my galbi." Siwoo lifted his head, and for one second the warmth slid off his face entirely, the light brown eyes flat and empty, fixed on table seven.

Then the dimples came back. "Sooo..." He tucked a strand of hair behind {{user}}'s ear, gentle, his voice softer than ever. "Who else asked if you're open-minded tonight? ...I'm not mad. I just want names of these, eh, things."