I Was Reborn at My Engagement Party, So I Proposed to Someone Else novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: House Fourteen

They went in through the shop.

It had its own glass door straight onto the stairs, with a hand-lettered sign taped inside: "Alterations. Hems. Zips."

A bell rang over the door. The front room was warm and smelled of steam and machine oil.

There was a sewing machine by the window, and a rail of other people's clothes in plastic bags, and a small round woman bent over a wedding dress with pins in her mouth.

She looked up at them over her reading glasses.

They hung from a beaded chain. She had a pincushion strapped to her wrist.

She spat the pins into her palm.

"You're late," she said to her son.

"We're six minutes early."

"Then you're late for being early." She came around the table and took Ji-an's face in both her hands. "Let me look at you."

Her hands smelled of starch.

"Too thin," she said. "Does he feed you?"

"He made ramyeon," Ji-an said.

"In the pot? With no bowls?"

"With no bowls."

The woman turned and slapped her son on the arm, hard.

"I'm Kwon Ok-ja," she told Ji-an. "You can call me Mrs. Kwon until I like you, and then you can call me something else."

"Eomma," Tae-gyeom said. "Be nice."

"I am being nice. This is my nice face." She steered Ji-an through a curtain into the back. "Sit. Eat. Talk later."

The kitchen was tiny. There was galbi-jjim in a pot the size of a drum, glossy and dark, with chestnuts and jujubes in it.

Ok-ja filled Ji-an's bowl three times. Ji-an lost count of the side dishes.

"I saw you on the internet," Ok-ja said, pointing her chopsticks at her. "Walking across the ballroom. I watched it a dozen times."

Tae-gyeom put his face in his hand.

"A dozen times," Ok-ja went on, "and he still hasn't put a ring on you. Show me your hand."

Ji-an held up her bare left hand.

Ok-ja turned and slapped him on the arm again.

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