“Elder brother, when I marry you, I want to have many children.”

“……Ha Yeon……”

When they went to the ski resort, the moonlight gently brushed past the white snow field outside the window, and the candlelight on the bedside table watched over their first love.

That day, Ha Yeon clearly told him the meaning of her first kiss and first love, and after spending their first night together, many changes made her feel the significance of Hyun Woo’s existence to her.

She began to take extreme care of Hyun Woo’s health and started paying more attention to his every move.

After the ski trip, Ha Yeon seemed to have thought concretely about marriage as well.

“Don’t you like children, elder brother?”

“I like them, but I’ve never thought specifically about marriage or plans after marriage.”

It was Hyun Woo’s honest thought.

He had just completed two semesters of his doctoral program, and including his postdoctoral research life, it would take at least 4-5 more years of investment for Hyun Woo to produce the results he aimed for.

The scholarship he received from his advisor was barely enough to survive in Boston’s expensive cost of living, so he couldn’t even think about marriage.

Hyun Woo was a bit flustered when Ha Yeon blurted out words with the condition “When I marry you…”

Hyun Woo had opened Pandora’s box and accepted Ha Yeon’s reset button at the ski resort, sharing love with her, but as a student, he had never imagined marriage.

Sensing that Hyun Woo was flustered, Ha Yeon smiled and said to him,

“I’m not pressuring you to marry me right away, so don’t feel too burdened.”

Hyun Woo responded to Ha Yeon’s words with a shy smile.

Ha Yeon said that during summer vacation, her parents would come and spend a few days at their villa in Cape Cod, so they should go together.

She said that her younger sibling Do Yeon would also come for this summer vacation, and it would be nice to swim together in the Atlantic Ocean and go fishing.

Ha Yeon told him that she had already talked to her mother, so if her father approved, they could spend the summer vacation together.

Ha Yeon explained that S Group has villas in various places in the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia for the welfare of employees dispatched overseas and overseas subsidiary families.

Cape Cod, which protrudes like a boot on the east coast of the US, has many beautiful villas boasting the beautiful scenery of the Atlantic, and many famous artists’ galleries, so it was a place he really wanted to visit.

During the last visit of Ha Yeon’s parents to Boston, they had dinner together, and Hyun Woo noticed what Ha Yeon’s efforts to include him in the family summer vacation meant.

He was prepared for the fact that the fantasy of an unknown world he had never walked in might not necessarily be glamorous and beautiful.

However, Hyun Woo wanted to believe in the class of Ha Yeon’s family that he had vaguely felt.

Until the summer vacation, Hyun Woo was determined to do his best in research and create research results that he could show to Ha Yeon’s father, while enjoying weekend dates with Ha Yeon.

*****

When I gave birth, all the adults told me.

That I should know it’s more comfortable when you’re carrying the child inside you…

After actually giving birth, I immediately understood why adults, including my mother, told me it was more comfortable when I was pregnant.

The first few months after birth were a war with sleep.

The child was an angel when drinking breast milk and sleeping.

When he woke up, he cried as if the whole neighborhood would fly away. The main reasons were hunger for breast milk and dissatisfaction with wet diapers after urinating or defecating.

As I was breastfeeding, it was not easy to find nursing rooms when I went out with Han Byeol, and Han Byeol, who was used to breastfeeding, didn’t want to take the pacifier.

Han Byeol grew rapidly, but as I was raising him only with breast milk, I felt like my flesh and blood were draining away, and muscle pain and fatigue made me struggle all day.

However, I was truly happy watching Han Byeol’s appearance and behavior grow day by day.

Around the time we visited Rainbow Pediatrics at 4 months, Han Byeol started trying to roll over, and in April, when he was 5 months old, he skillfully rolled over.

As if knowing that ‘Han Byeol’ was his name, he started responding with a bright smile when called “Han Byeol~”, and he even tried to pull my hand with his little fingers to bring it to his mouth.

At the end of April, we finally moved into a two-room rental apartment, and I was so happy that I could give my mother a whole room to herself.

Whether he felt that he had a larger space for himself, or whether he wanted to congratulate us on moving into the new rental apartment, Han Byeol succeeded in crawling when May came.

As the child grew and his facial features became more distinct, I saw the father’s face in Han Byeol’s face.

From the black eyebrows, impressive eyes, clear nose bridge, reddish lips like a woman’s, to the white skin, the child seemed to have perfectly inherited his father’s genes.

When I held the child, I was often startled as if I was seeing his face.

Like in the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, Han Byeol resembled his father so much that it felt like Hyun Woo was getting younger as time passed and was cradled in my arms.

My determination to give birth without an epidural was to let him go from my heart in the pain of childbirth worse than death, but ironically, the child kept reminding me of him.

Fourteen months had passed since he left for America.

As much as I loved him, I never regretted the trip to Baengnyeong Island with him, and I thought it was a very good decision to give birth to Han Byeol, who was like a gift from God, alone.

I once jokingly, half-seriously, told my mother, “Should I raise Han Byeol alone and live alone forever?” and got scolded heavily while being hit on the back.

She even made a scary threat that if I said such a thing again, she would run away with Han Byeol and never let me find them.

Seeing my mother’s scary eyes, it felt like she was serious.

As I looked at Han Byeol’s face, which was a spitting image of Hyun Woo, every day, I wondered if I could ever love another man, but I didn’t provoke my mother any further.

It was another homework of mine that time would solve.

When he left for America, it was painfully difficult, but time passed, and I safely gave birth to Han Byeol, and the child who resembled him was growing well.

The debt my father left behind seemed like it would be eternal, but with my mother’s day and night efforts, the debt disappeared, and we moved to a space twice as large.

When I couldn’t find an answer no matter how much I worried, often waiting quietly allowed time to solve it.

The saying I saw at a temple, “It’s not that I abandon my worries, but that my worries abandon me!” felt like the truth.

I might not fully understand the deep meaning of those words, but in many cases, it was wise to wait for time to answer rather than worrying excessively, and worrying intensely day and night only exhausted my body and mind.

I decided not to worry about my new love or marriage, but to leave it to the power of time.

*****

He hoped for three chance encounters, and after two meetings, only one chance encounter remained, but Han Byeol, who had made a New Year’s wish, didn’t have that ‘chance’ even by May.

Although he only went between the hospital and home, he started taking more frequent walks around the neighborhood and going to the supermarket more often for the third chance encounter with So Hee.

Doo Byeol, Se Byeol, and Ha Neul understood Han Byeol’s frequent outings.

Han Byeol had declared loudly in front of his family for his New Year’s wish, “If I happen to meet a woman three times by chance, I’ll try to love her like fate.”

“Elder brother Han Byeol, how many times a day do you go to the supermarket? If you wander around like that, there would be countless women you’d run into three times by chance.”

“It’s not just running into them, I have to meet her specifically.”

The younger siblings, unable to understand Han Byeol’s impatient heart, teased him every time he went out.

Han Byeol went out so much and kept an eye on the essential survival courses of the neighborhood, including supermarkets, playgrounds, and cafes, but there was no trace of So Hee.

Han Byeol, who had been waiting and waiting for the third chance encounter with her, was on the verge of lovesickness as days of continued duds repeated.

And he started to get anxious.

The human heart was truly mysterious.

After he had determined three repeated chances as necessity and fate, his daily radar was entirely focused on So Hee.

As his interest focused on one person, he became indifferent to other aspects of life and didn’t care about them.

Even his father in Baengnyeong Island checked on the progress of his eldest son when he called once in a while.

“Han Byeol, I was the first to fulfill my New Year’s wish, so next you should fulfill your dream.”

“Yes, father.”

“Have you met any young lady once or twice like fate?”

He could give a half-positive answer to his father’s question, but if he answered like that, it could provoke his father’s curiosity and make him come up to Seoul, so he just answered ‘No!’ for now.

He had already met So Hee twice like fate, but she wasn’t just single, she was a single mother with a son.

Han Byeol was a bachelor who had only dated once, but the fact that So Hee was a “married woman” wasn’t a big obstacle to his choice.

He believed that if you truly love, humans can overcome everything, and the power of love can exert superpowers to overcome difficulties.

Han Byeol thought that the reason he was waiting for So Hee so eagerly seemed to be partly fateful, and it was the result of complex emotions adding sympathy felt from So Hee herself and her life form to the charm felt from So Hee.

Han Byeol, who was desperately looking for So Hee, stopped by a bookstore in the city to buy books to place in the hospital on the weekend.

Perhaps because it was the weekend, the bookstore was very crowded with people looking at books or waiting for someone.

Even among all those people, Han Byeol looked around expecting to meet her.

Then he was startled to see a woman with long straight hair in one corner of the bookstore.

“……No……!”