Thorn Year (가시연) (ENG)

(여우의 요람 ) Fox's Cradle: Sequel - CHAPTER 1

I've been discharged from the hospital. It's been 5 years since that incident. I spent 2 years in the hospital, and then I underwent 3 years of therapy, and now I've finally finished the hospital discharge procedures. Conversing with my therapist was rather enjoyable actually, and it helped to relief me of the boredom of staying in the hospital. It's like getting a regular visitor, and to any patient, that's the happiest thing.

That day, after encountering him in the misty corridors, I still couldn't utter a single sound. But a year after that, a while before I was due to be discharged, I was listening to the radio and it played a song that I liked. So I started humming, and it didn't feel strange at all, nor was it difficult. I hummed very naturally to the tune, and only when the song ended did I realize that I had regained my voice. It surprised me a little. But from then on, my body started showing signs of recovery.

The first time we talked, I said a lot of things. Talking suddenly became a very enjoyable activity to me, so I just kept yammering on and on. After I'd finished my nonsensical blabber, I felt so much better and energized.

I formally accepted his proposal 3 years ago and we got married. We got dressed in the hospital and married in a small church on the outskirts of town. It was a simply affair, with just the 2 of us, but a holy one nonetheless. It was no fairy-tale wedding, no priests, no guests, and pretty cheap actually. But I didn't care about that at all, because as long as we swear to stand by each other forever, I'd feel blessed and happy.

When we went to our families for permission to get married, no one was surprised. Even my father asked Yunho if he wanted to play a game of Go (*a type of board game) with him, and he said it cheerfully. Everyone seemed to have resigned themselves to fate: his family, mine, me, and Yunho.

I was very impressed that we obtained permission without Yunho having to go on his knees. I'd cried in my room for a long while, using the pillow to muffle my sobs. He came into my room after he'd finished speaking with my father, and I started lamenting to him about everything that happened to us, starting from the middle of the maelstrom. Why is it that we can only marry now? Why did we have to wait for so long? Why do we have to get married under such circumstances?

He wiped my tears away and said, go back to the Kim Jaejoong 12 years ago, return to the infinitely breathtaking and youth 17-year-old that you once were.

He still sees me as the 17-year-old Kim Jaejoong in his heart. Perhaps that's how he found the strength to pull through all this.

I fingered my wedding ring. In the blink of an eye, we had been married for 3 years now. There's nothing to worry about, I told myself as I rested on his arm in the car on the way home - there's nothing to be afraid of anymore.

In these 3 years, we took our time to slowly renovate the house. Though we were newly-weds, we had our own lives to tend to first so we didn't move in together even though we'd already bought a house. It's not too late to start living together after we've become more perfect, because getting married, to us, is an absolute promise. Over the 3 years, we'd buy 2 or 3 pieces of furniture together in a good month, or maybe just 1 piece in 3 months. We were very passionate about decoration the house right, because that's where we are going to spend the rest of our days together. So by putting in that extra bit of effort, by decorating it earnestly, we're investing in our future.

With my discharge from the hospital, the renovations are almost complete as well. There's our living room, from which you could see the ceiling of the second floor; we had an antique-styled dressing room, filled with suits and such, and not forgetting the wide platform in our house too. Our room on the second floor would be where we would spend the most of our time. We even had a small argument when we were choosing the sofa for the room. When couples fight, one of them would always end up on the couch, so I thought it would be good to choose a spacious and comfortable sofa. Yunho, however, considered the situation where he had work to do but I wanted to watch the television, so he wanted to buy a few armchairs instead. But in the end, both of us remembered that we needed enough space to make love too, so we chose a reasonably-sized one.