The place we headed to was the restaurant where we had broken up last time. A dining room on the top floor of a high-rise. Walls of floor-to-ceiling glass where the night view turned beautiful after dark. The very place where Kwon Yido and I had our last meal and ended our engagement.

I had already booked this place before the ceremony began for a meal with Kwon Yido. Because I’d been sure he would attend the commemoration and talk with me. I hadn’t imagined he wouldn’t show his face at all and then cry his eyes out in the parking lot.

“......”

“......”

We didn’t say a word the whole meal. We were quiet when the waiter poured wine, and quiet when the chef came to explain the dishes. While I silently ate my food, Kwon Yido only went through the motions with his cutlery. As if he had never cried, his face was neat and composed, but his eyes had settled into a calm stillness.

“The chef was watching for a reaction.”

I spoke to him lightly. Because I’d clearly seen the chef fret when he left every dish untouched. We had even sent the waiter away, so they were probably worried his feelings had been hurt.

“Eat a little. You probably didn’t even have dinner.”

“...I don’t have an appetite.”

If he did after crying like that, that would have been what was strange. Besides, he was still wound tight.

“......”

I set my cutlery down and stared blankly out the window. At the window tables, all you had to do was turn your head slightly and the beautifully unfurled night view filled your eyes. The lights glittering like stars stitched into the night sky were, at least compared to the last time we came, more beautiful.

“Then... do you want to talk a bit?”

I said it gently to Kwon Yido. We still had a lot to say, and that was why we’d come here. Since we had emptied out the entire hall, there was no need to worry about anyone overhearing.

“I have a lot of questions for you, Kwon Yido.”

“......”

“There’s still a lot we don’t know.”

I didn’t look at him. Even knowing he was looking at me, I didn’t send him even a flicker of my gaze. I only counted the twinkling lights with my eyes and spoke slowly.

“Where should we start. We broke up, and... no, we already covered that.”

Tsk, I clicked my tongue and closed my mouth. I was pretending to be fine, but I wasn’t actually fine. The sudden change, and the feelings lingering from earlier, and the tension I’d felt from him—they’d all tangled my thoughts into a mess.

“Sorry, my head’s a mess right now too.”

Even as I asked for his understanding, he said nothing. He only gazed at me, blankly. Fine, better to start from the beginning. Thinking so, I slowly turned my eyes to him.

“What was the contract you made with my father?”

That was the origin of everything. Our arranged marriage. The contract struck between Haesin and Seonho that I didn’t know.

“I really didn’t hear a single thing.”

Because I had looked away from all of it, I didn’t know what had happened. At this point, it wasn’t strictly necessary, but I needed to retrace things one by one to sort out my feelings. To do that, I had to start with the facts I’d skipped over.

“Earlier this year...”

He began slowly and lowered his gaze. His neatly lowered lashes still looked wet with tears. After a brief hesitation, he started to talk.

“Chairman Jung came to me.”

He said my father had apparently heard that Seonho Card was looking for a bank to partner with. He didn’t know where the rumor had come from, but it wasn’t unrelated to the truth, he said. My father offered an omega from his own company, and Kwon Yido accepted the negotiation.

“I guess he thought what I needed was an heir, but what I needed was an excuse to block the endless matches. An heir... wasn’t exactly urgent.”

There must have been more minor terms, but he didn’t go into them. I didn’t pry because I didn’t think I needed to know. What mattered wasn’t the content but the process.

“Of course, the terms Chairman Jung proposed weren’t that bad either.”

“...They weren’t that bad?”

Not that bad. To anyone’s eyes they were bad. All Kwon Yido got was me, and my father would have taken countless advantages.

But he answered without so much as a blink.

“I thought it was a chance to swallow Haesin whole.”

I hadn’t expected that at all. Perhaps thinking an explanation was needed, he added slowly.

“Anyone could see operations were unstable, the higher-ups didn’t seem particularly savvy, and even Chairman Jung, who came to negotiate, looked impatient.”

“......”

“I hadn’t planned to form a partnership, but I did think I should make a link and then absorb them later. For that, it would be more natural if we were husband and husband.”

So he’d planned from the start to eat Haesin. I shut my mouth, stunned. When he’d said it would have happened anyway, I didn’t think he meant he’d planned to absorb Haesin anyway. If he was at the stage of negotiating with my father, the signs of collapse probably weren’t outward yet. He’d been looking several moves ahead.

“With a group like Haesin, there’d be no blowback if I dumped them. I had nothing to lose.”

I understood what he meant. With another major conglomerate it might be different, but how he treated a collapsing company was up to him. Sweet, he’d swallow; bitter, he’d spit out—he’d skim off the cream. And even if he divorced, it wouldn’t leave a scratch on his career.

“And?”

He looked at me and asked. A beat later I realized he was asking if I had anything more I wanted to know. Was he really ready to tell me everything I asked? His eyes, now calm, rested quietly on me.

“...When did you learn the materials I stole were faulty?”

That was all that came to mind at once. I’d thought there was a lot I didn’t know, but when I was actually looking at him, all the clutter that used to rise up vanished without a trace. Part of me wanted to scrap it all and just... pretend I didn’t know. But there were still things I needed to confirm.

“I found out after we bonded.”

“......”

“After I... brought you to my house.”

He answered meekly. If it was after we bonded, that was around the time he stopped appearing before me. When he was shocked to realize I was afraid of him and threw himself into other work.

“That was when Haesin collapsed.”

“......”

My eyes flew wide. What he said was more shocking than anything I’d heard so far. So in the past too, Haesin had fallen? Despite all the flailing, they hadn’t managed to right the ship.

“A critical error occurred in the unfinished security program. Customers fled en masse for repeating the same mistake twice... and at that timing, I exposed Chairman Jung’s corruption.”

“......”

“That’s how Haesin went under.”

It was something I hadn’t known. I’d had no way to communicate with the world while I was shut in his house. Not because he cut me off—I locked myself in.

“...Then.”

Haltingly, I opened my mouth. Because I realized something new.

“By the second time, you would have known. That the data was faulty.”

The materials he pressed into my hand. The USB he readily handed over. That had also been a key that would destroy Haesin. He’d said he hadn’t known at first that it was faulty. There was a reason his words had felt dubious.

“Even if that system had been complete, I would have given it to you.”

But he spoke in a voice that had sunk to the bottom. I knew the calm answer wasn’t a lie from the bitter curl of his words.

“If you’d asked for Seonho, I would have given you that too.”

“......”

He really did say frightening things. Nothing sounded like a joke when it came from him.

“Anything else you’re curious about?”

Maybe my disposition really is nasty. I’ve been steadily going to therapy and maybe it hasn’t done a thing. Seeing how I’m hoping that blank face of his will crumple again.

“...Kwon Ijeong said something.”

Ridiculously, his face hardened the instant he heard that. What was even more ridiculous was me, who regretted it immediately after seeing him fall apart again. Maybe I should have waited until we were more ready. But if not today, I felt I’d never be able to ask.

“He said he didn’t know this was the ‘gift’ you were talking about.”

“......”

“And that gift... it wasn’t me, was it.”

I had known long ago that it was a misunderstanding. I just didn’t know how that misunderstanding had formed. Why he had gone to Yido’s house, why he called me a “gift.”

“What were you going to give him?”

This time, he couldn’t answer easily. After talking so smoothly up until now, he even averted his eyes and shut his mouth. Then, moving his lips, he finally answered in a small voice.

“...Materials for a lawsuit.”

Materials? When I echoed it back, he grimaced. I could even hear the faint grind of his teeth.

“Evidence collected from the victims he touched.”

There was no need to ask which victims. I thought of the men’s restroom tucked in a corner of the Myeongseong Hotel lobby. The place they said was used “for that.”

“I’d talked with my sister. Once Grandfather passed, we’d dump the evidence we’d gathered and bury him. The corporate image would take a hit for a while, but it’d be better than letting that bastard strut around.”

His displeasure came through my skin. For «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» reasons unknown to me, he and Kwon Ikyung had planned to get rid of Kwon Ijeong completely. Whether that reason was control of management or punishment for crimes, I didn’t know.

“I overlooked something. I figured you’d be in your room, so you wouldn’t run into him. And I was overwhelmed with the funeral and...”

Drawling slowly, he let his words trail off. Then, as if he swallowed dryly, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

“No, that’s all just excuses.”

“......”

He didn’t say he was sorry. But I could read the countless layers of guilt in his expression. It was clear he felt too guilty to put it into words.

“...I just have one last thing I want to ask.”

There wasn’t anything else I needed to know. I wasn’t here to interrogate him, so it felt awkward to keep asking. So when I heard about Kwon Ijeong, something rose naturally to my lips.

“Did you know I was pregnant?”

He didn’t answer, but I could tell from his reaction that it was yes. Even without asking, I could tell from how he had been all this time. That was probably why he always thought he didn’t deserve to be a father.

“Do you know... whose child?”

It was just simple curiosity. Things that hadn’t mattered to me when I died suddenly mattered now. I thought it didn’t make a difference, but I wondered if knowing the truth would feel different. I wanted what could never be recovered to remain at least as a memory.

“......”

Of course, he couldn’t answer right away. After a long hesitation, he squeezed his eyes shut and opened them. Regret, starting with self-reproach, flashed through those dark pupils.

“...It was ours.”

“......”

“Yours and mine.”

The emotion carried by his calm voice couldn’t be put into words. I didn’t know whether the surge choking me was relief or something else. The feelings reaching me from him were not so different from my own.

“......”

By then the food had already gone cold. Dessert had been prepared for the end, but neither of us had much intention of eating it. The dishes left untouched felt like our emotions, which we hadn’t yet managed to clear away.

What was I supposed to say. I’d thought it over all night, but even now the order felt uncertain. This was my first time with something like this too, and it left me with countless hesitations.

“...Here.”

So first, I picked up the box I’d left at the edge of the table and held it out to him. The thing I’d taken from my coat pocket earlier and set down. The gift for him that held my last few months, something I’d brought from home and fidgeted with all day—meant for Kwon Yido.

“It’s a present. What I promised you before.”

He still looked at the box with puzzled eyes. Even when I said “promise,” nothing seemed to come to mind. I slid the box toward him with a soft push and lowered my eyes.

“I’d like you... to name the perfume.”

Inside the paper wrapping was a perfume I had made myself. The design wasn’t done since it was still a sample, but the contents were complete. To keep the promise with him—who had asked me to make a perfume modeled after my pheromones.

Only, the scent I’d actually made was a little different.

“I made it modeled after your pheromones.”

“......”

He looked at me blankly. The whole time I was apart from him, I made perfume whenever I thought of him. I combined every sort of material to mimic his pheromones as closely as possible. It felt like madness, but once a day—or all day. I blended every single day without fail.

“Sorry, but I don’t sense my own pheromones very well.”

It was a trace of how much I missed him. And proof, unconsciously, that I couldn’t forget him. Through trial and error, even with my dulled sense of smell, I couldn’t forget his pheromones.

“......”

But even after hearing me out, he kept his mouth shut for a long time. He didn’t take the perfume, but he didn’t push it away either. Maybe it bothered him because it wasn’t what he had asked for. I was about to speak again when—

“...You’re quite a cruel person, Jung Sejin.”

A small, mirthless laugh escaped him. When he lifted his gaze slowly, I saw his face begin to crumple. And that one low line from his flushed lips:

“You won’t even let a broken-off fiancé have a chance to remember your pheromones?”

“...What is that supposed to—”

I didn’t have time to answer. I blinked and a droplet fell. Not from the sky, but from his eyes. Those elegant eye lines began to tremble again.

“Sejin.”

He called my name in a voice damp with tears. Big drops hung from his long lashes. His lips trembled pitifully, and his voice sounded so wretched it hurt.

“I still haven’t been able to clean your room.”

God knows what crossed his mind, but the tears began to flow again. He didn’t twist his face like earlier, but somehow it looked even more sorrowful.

“Your things... they’re still with me just as they were.”

How much had I even left behind. I’d probably thrown out almost everything. I’d left even the savoring of memories to him, believing he’d dispose of it all on his own.

“But what am I supposed to do if you give me something like this again.”

Ah... I thought I knew what he was misunderstanding. He must have thought that with this perfume, I really was leaving him. That now that we’d cleared up all the questions and I’d kept my promise—now, truly, we would part.

“...Kwon Yido.”

Maybe the choice had been mine from the beginning. To reach out my hand to him, to forgive him—all of that was my role.

“Give me your hand.”

Even with tears dropping steadily, he offered his hand without a word. When I closed my hand around his, he gripped back, tight. Keeping my gaze lowered, I spoke quietly.

“I like you.”

I felt his breath stop. I didn’t know what expression he made, but even the pheromone that had been reaching me cut off, clean. I curled my fingers lightly around his, and his fingertips twitched.

“...Do you want to date?”

I’d actually rolled this line around in my head for quite a while. I just hadn’t found the courage. I’d imagined it over and over. If I said this, how would Kwon Yido respond. I’d pictured that more times than I could count.

“We’ve already tried marriage, and we’ve already tried an engagement...”

“......”

“I think... it would be good if we dated.”

I probably will never be able to forget him. The kindness he showed me, the warmth I felt from him, the feelings I held for the first time in my life were all undeniably real. Erasing him, going back to strangers, shutting him out completely—none of that would be possible.

“Instead of a perfume that resembles my pheromones... I can let you feel my pheromones.”

Would words like that be any comfort. The doubt lasted only a moment. If I weighed this and that and ended up making him cry more, I knew I’d feel guilty. He’d cried enough for a lifetime today—wasn’t it about time to soothe him.

“Or I can help you make one...”

But when I got that far, I closed my mouth without finishing. Because the hands we were holding—he suddenly clutched mine hard. Wondering what that reaction meant, I lifted my head, and a laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

“...Why are you crying again.”

Covering his face with one hand, he was crying with all his breath held down. His exposed lips were bitten tight, and with the other hand he clung to me desperately. He opened his mouth as if to answer, then shut it again, unable to hold back the tears, and repeated it.

“Stop crying.”

It was a good thing we’d emptied the restaurant. My awkward attempt at comfort didn’t help much. The moment I said it, he ducked his head even more. Maybe not breaking down into sobs was the best he could do.

“......”

He couldn’t stop for a long time. He didn’t remove the hand covering his face, and he didn’t release the hand we were holding either. He only let out sorrowful breaths now and then and let the surging emotion show.

Then, from barely parted lips, an answer came out that was hardly different from a sob.

“...I’ll do better.”

I hadn’t known that such a clichéd line could hold such sincere feeling. It wasn’t romantic at all, and that alone was enough. So I just let out a thin laugh and held his hand tight.

“Okay. I’ll trust you.”

The autumn when we broke up. The time we’d entered the threshold of winter. After a long detour, we arrived at the same season again. The chill would last until spring came, but this winter wouldn’t be so lonely.

In a season that had returned to us like that, we were welcoming a new one.