Chapter 23: Hana Notices
Hana was the one who finally noticed.
Not the sleepless nights—those had been a constant since the regression. Not the encrypted partition—she respected his privacy. What she noticed was the fear.
“You flinch when Junior touches the laptop,” she said one evening, after their son had been put to bed. “Every time. Like you’re afraid the computer is going to hurt him.”
“I don’t flinch.”
“You flinch. I’m a neuroscientist, Dojun. I study micro-expressions professionally. You flinch.”
He sat down. The kitchen was quiet. The house was quiet. The world was quiet in the way that it’s quiet before storms.
“There are things I haven’t told you,” he said.
“I know.”
“Big things.”
“I know that too.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since our first date at that restaurant in Ikseon-dong. When you ordered for both of us without looking at the menu and cried when the food came.” She took his hand. “I didn’t need an explanation, Dojun. I needed you. The explanation could wait.”
“It can’t wait anymore.”
“Then tell me.”
He looked at her—this woman who had married him without knowing the truth, who had built a life with him on a foundation of love and the unspoken understanding that some things would be revealed when they needed to be.
“Not tonight,” he said. “But soon. I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
She would. And when the time came, she would say two words that changed everything: “Show me.”
But not tonight. Tonight was for holding hands in a quiet kitchen and trusting that love was strong enough to survive the truth.