Boss Complex

46. 18 Months

Park Baekhee pulls her silver brush through her long dark hair, seated before her crystal vanity table. She watches the bristles as they pull through slight tangles and feels the pin-point pulls of hairs snapping under the strain. She's pulled from her ritual by the presence at her door and watches her tall husband round the corner with a knock to her bedroom door.

"Good morning Mrs. Park." He sings happily and walks towards her with a stack of mail in hand. "I come bearing gifts."

She rolls her eyes at his bad humor and extends her hand for the letters. It doesn't take long to see why he's in such a good mood. Sandwiched between a makeup catalog and one of her credit card bills is a post card. Baekhee and her husband are... for lack of a better word, civil. They exchange and sync their schedules on the iCloud and make sure that they only show their best faces to the public. They're featured in magazines as a couple, and they boast their romantic lives there to promote domestic bliss. But when the two are at home, surrounded by their help, they're living quiet lives as nothing more than roommates with separate bedrooms. They keep promises to meet for dinner with Korean ambassadors and they take trips together when he can find small pockets of time off. But they've long given up their marital bed. They've long given up those fancy delusions that they could make it work romantically.

He gives her a parting kiss to the top of the head, a tradition that held more sibling love than it ever would any other kind of feeling, and leaves the room with a whistled song on his lips. She pulls the card free and smiles down at the picture on the front of a cartoon bull drinking wine.

Hola~

You'll never believe what kind of travesties I've committed on this euro vacation! Bullfighting in France and Wine tasting in Spain! It's like the world has gone mad! But I'm having so much fun. Forgive me, I want to much of life. I demand that my countries strip their identities for me. How are you and the hubs? Any sign of life in that dusty uterus of yours? I'm getting older by the day still I have no neice or nephew. You're slacking, Sis. I love it. I can imagine Mom absolutely losing her mind over it and that brings me so much joy! Seriously, I hope you're well. I miss you so much it hurts sometimes. I should come visit more often. Forgive me, I'm a terrible twin... But at least that has never changed. I can be the troublemaker forever, by comparison you'll always look great! Off to drink more and shop more and take pictures more and try to find a date more and miss you more. More more more! Never enough!

Byun Baekhyun

Her ruby red nail swipes the handwriting of his name and thinks that it hasn't changed since he scrawled it out on test papers in high school. She will always miss him. Even when they're fighting, even when they're not far apart. It's not just a twin thing. He's always been there for her. Strict or supportive, always there in the end. She would always need that in her life and she misses him dearly. She rises from the vanity to make her way to her bulletin board. Her pearl white and pink walls are accented with frames fabrics in french prints and a white bulletin board covered in photos and postcards from around the world. Baekhyun seems to be in a new place each month. She's started calling it "that time of the month" when his postcard comes in the mail because it brings her husband so much more joy than anyone could understand. He's more delightful in those days following, as if he's imagining what it would be like to be on these adventures with him. But each adventurous day dream ends with the realization that he's still married to someone else, and with that realization comes a dimming of the light once more.

Baekhee remembers what it was like to be free and unchained in the world, travelling with the wind and tasting each new country with growing thirst. She remembers the gazes of men who adored her, breathing in her skin and sinking their teeth into her like they were ravenous for nourishment only her sweat could offer. Sometimes she lies awake in these long evenings alone in her King sized bed and stares at the postcards with longing. She won't ever say it to him, but her biggest regret in life is marrying him, and she can't find words to write Baekhyun about it. She hasn't told him yet that they've been living in separate bedrooms for over a year, or that she doesn't love him the way she should as a woman. She doesn't tell him that they're not even trying to have a baby because they don't even sleep in the same room, let alone bed. She keeps these secrets tucked in with her to keep herself company at night. And while she pleasures herself to the thought of exotic men, she cries alone when the climax passes and she finds the coolness of the sheets all around make her feel pathetic and alone.