I Was Reborn at My Engagement Party, So I Proposed to Someone Else novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Persimmons
In October the persimmons on the living side of the tree turned the colour of Ji-an's ring.
The burned side had put out a single leafy branch over the summer, thin and stubborn, reaching for the light.
Ok-ja said it was the best-looking thing on the hill.
"After me," she added.
The wedding was on a Saturday, at four in the afternoon, in her yard.
There wasn't room for chairs.
There were cushions instead, on the packed earth and on every step of the alley stairs below, all the way down past the senior centre.
The whole hill came. Every household. The grandmother in the quilted vest wore a hanbok the colour of plums.
Ji-an's grandfather walked her up from the bottom.
It took forty minutes.
He stopped on every landing, at every bench Ji-an had drawn in pencil in May and Hanseong had built in July.
On the last landing, somebody had set out a dented metal folding chair with a bit of tape on one leg.
The old security guard from the fifty-eighth floor stood beside it in a borrowed suit, beaming.
"For the chairman," he said. "In case."
Her grandfather looked at the chair. Then at Ji-an.
"Read the label," he said.
Someone had written on the tape in marker: DIRECTOR SEO'S CHAIR. DO NOT REMOVE.
Her grandfather sat down in it for one minute exactly, by his own watch.
Then he got up and climbed the last flight with his hand on her arm.
Ji-an's dress whispered on the concrete steps. Ivory silk, persimmon blossoms around the hem.
Ok-ja had finished it in her repaired front room, with the new windows open.
At the top of the stairs the blue gate stood open.
Somebody had painted it fresh, a bright clear blue, with no ghost of anything on it.
The yard was full.
Ji-an's mother in pink. Ok-ja in jade green, already crying, with a handkerchief in each hand.
So-hee near the front, guarding the cake with her body. One corner was already missing.
And under the tree, in a black suit and a black shirt with no tie, stood Kwon Tae-gyeom.
He had buttoned the top button.
Her grandfather stopped at the gate.
He was supposed to take Ji-an's hand and put it in her husband-to-be's. They had practised.
Instead he let go of her arm and stepped back.
"Go on," he said. "You know how."
Ji-an walked across the yard on her own.
The cushions went quiet. Even the grandmothers stopped whispering.
She stopped in front of Tae-gyeom under the tree, with orange fruit hanging over them and one green branch reaching out of the black.
She held out her hand.
He didn't look at it.
He didn't ask when.
He took it before she had finished lifting it, and held on.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of I Was Reborn at My Engagement Party, So I Proposed to Someone Else are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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