Chapter 5: The Bracelet

I did not wear the green hanbok.

I wore my mother's, a deep blue one with a plain white collar, taken in at the waist by my father's tailor on Thursday.

Seung-hwan looked at it in the hall of the restaurant and said nothing.

Madam Ahn looked at it for much longer.

"You did not wear what I chose, dear."

"It was too lovely to risk, Madam," I said. "I thought I'd spill something."

"How careful of you."

The private hall in Gangnam had a long low table of black lacquer, set for forty.

Relatives sat on the cushions in tea-colored and plum silks.

Business partners and their wives talked in the careful voices of people who were counting each other's rings.

The Chairman sat at the head.

He was seventy and broad, with a gray crew cut.

His face had decided long ago that no one's opinion mattered but his own.

I had been terrified of him in the first life.

I found, now, that I mostly wished him to eat his soup and go away.

Da-eun sat three seats from me, with her father.

She smiled whenever I looked her way.

Beside her, Madam Ahn's niece, who ran the Haneul Foundation, laughed behind a manicured hand at something the man across from her said.

"To the bride," the Chairman said at last, raising a cup. "May she bring the house good fortune."

"To the bride," forty voices answered.

I bowed and drank.

Then Madam Ahn rose.

She had planned this part for days, I knew.

She crossed the room with a small lacquered box in both hands, and the rest of the room went quiet for her.

"I have waited for this evening," she said. "A family treasure should go to the right wrist."

She opened the box.

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