Seojoon pov)
Minji had been suspicious of me all week, which, in fairness, was the correct instinct.
"You've asked me three separate questions about ring sizes," she said, arms crossed, eyeing me over her coffee like I was a puzzle she was three-quarters solved on. "For a coworker's engagement gift."
"People have different opinions on rings," I said. "I wanted a woman's perspective."
"You've also asked me what kind of restaurant feels 'meaningful but not overwhelming.' For a coworker."
"He's a very particular coworker."
She narrowed her eyes at me, but let it go — mostly, I suspected, because some part of her had already guessed and was choosing to let the surprise play out rather than ruin it for me. Minji had always been sharper than people gave her credit for. It was one of the first things I'd loved about her, back when I still told myself it wasn't love, just recognition — one survivor spotting another.
We were sitting in the same quiet café near the mall where I'd first gotten her to talk to me, years ago now, back when she still flinched at the sound of a phone ringing and I was still angrier than I had any business being. The place hadn't changed. We had.
"So," I said, setting my cup down, my hands suddenly unsteady in a way I hadn't planned for. "About that coworker."
"Seojoon."
"There isn't one."
She went very still.
"I've been planning this for weeks," I continued, before I could lose my nerve. "The ring, the restaurant, all of it. It was never for anyone else. It was always—" My voice caught. I reached into my jacket and pulled out the small box I'd been carrying around for three days straight, terrified I'd lose it or chicken out or both. "It was always you."
Minji's hand came up to cover her mouth, and for a second I couldn't read her expression at all — shock, maybe, or something older and more complicated underneath it.
"Seojoon," she said again, quieter this time.
"You don't have to say yes today," I said quickly. "You don't have to say yes at all, if it's too soon, if the divorce being final for two weeks isn't long enough, if this feels like too much too fast — I need you to know none of that changes anything about how I feel. I just didn't want to keep carrying this around without you knowing it existed."
She was quiet for a long moment, staring at the box, and my heart was doing something violent and uneven in my chest.
Then she laughed — a wet, surprised laugh, nothing like the careful, controlled version of herself she used to show the world.
"You absolute idiot," she said, wiping at her eyes. "I've been waiting for you to say something for a year."
"...What?"
"I thought you'd never bring it up. I thought maybe you only saw me as—" she gestured vaguely, "—someone to protect. A project."
"You were never a project," I said, something fierce rising in my chest. "You were never anything but someone I wanted to know, from the very first day you slapped me in that hallway."
She let out another laugh, and reached across the table, taking my hand — the same hand she'd struck years ago, now held with something entirely different.
"Ask me properly," she said. "Not this stammering half-version. Properly."
So I did. I got up, came around the table, knelt right there on the café floor with people glancing over and not caring one bit, and asked her plainly if she'd marry me.
"Yes," Minji said, before I'd even finished the sentence. "Yes, obviously yes, get up before you embarrass us both further."
I didn't get up right away. I just knelt there, laughing, ring in one hand and her fingers in the other, thinking about the woman who used to stand rigid and alone by a fountain, exhausted in ways nobody around her seemed to notice, and how far both of us had come from people who thought love was just another kind of leash.