19 — Pretend

**JASMINE POV**

We spent our last full day wandering the small market at the base of the hill, and somewhere between the vegetable stalls and a woman selling hand-carved wooden combs, Japheth decided we should pretend to be newlyweds.

"Why newlyweds?" I asked, threading my fingers through his as he pulled me toward a stall selling dried persimmons.

"Because this area's fairly traditional, and an unmarried couple wandering around holding hands raises more questions than a married one." He grinned, clearly enjoying himself far more than the logistics required. "Also, it's fun."

"You just want an excuse to kiss me in public."

"That too." He didn't even try to deny it.

It turned out to be genuinely fun, in a way I hadn't expected an elderly woman selling embroidered handkerchiefs spent a solid ten minutes talking to Japheth in rapid Korean, occasionally glancing at me and beaming, while he nodded along and answered whatever she was asking with an ease that made me deeply curious.

"What was that about?" I asked once we'd walked away, my curiosity finally winning out.

"She wanted to know how long we'd been married and whether we planned on having children soon."

"And you said?"

"I said we're newlyweds and still figuring that part out." He glanced at me sideways, something teasing in it. "You've been dying to ask that for the last ten minutes, haven't you?"

"A little."

"Why so curious? It's not that interesting."

"I don't know, maybe because my fake husband was having an entire conversation I couldn't understand a word of." I bumped his shoulder with mine. "Feels only fair I get the recap."

"Duly noted for next time." He squeezed my hand, and we kept walking, the gravel road winding gently up toward the hanok, autumn leaves scattered across it in gold and rust.

We reached the gate just as the afternoon light started turning that particular soft amber it only seemed to manage this late in the year, and I stopped for a moment, just taking it in  the quiet, the hills, the whole strange, beautiful week that had somehow rearranged everything I thought I knew about my own life.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Japheth asked, watching me.

"Just thinking about how much can change in a week." I looked at him. "A month ago I would've laughed if you'd told me I'd be standing here, holding your hand, actually happy about it."

"I think about that too. More than I probably should, given how much time we still have to make up for."

We settled onto the porch as the light faded, tea going cold between us, and I found myself turning something over that I hadn't quite worked up the courage to say yet.

"Can I tell you something? It might sound insecure."

"You can tell me anything."

I took a breath. "I'm scared that once we're back in New York, in real life, with Voss and my dad and everyone watching that this will start feeling like something I have to earn all over again. That the version of me you like right now, easy and happy and unguarded, will start feeling like too much to ask for once real pressure comes back."

He was quiet for a moment, considering, not rushing to reassure me the way I half expected.

"I can't promise you real life won't be harder than this week," he said finally. "It probably will be. Voss isn't going anywhere. Your dad isn't going anywhere. Neither of us gets to just live in a hanok in the Korean countryside forever, as tempting as that sounds some days." He turned to face me fully. "What I can promise is that I'm not going anywhere either. Not when things get hard. Not when your dad sends another one of those texts. Not when Voss finds some new angle to come at me from."

"You say that now."

"I know it's fair that you'd need more than words to believe it. I'm not asking you to just take my word for it. I'm asking for the chance to actually show you, over time, that I mean it." He reached over, not pulling me toward him, just resting his hand open on the space between us, the same gesture from Seoul. "There's no deadline on that. I'm not in a hurry for you to trust me completely. I just want the chance to keep earning it."

I looked at his open hand for a long moment before I took it.

"When did you get so patient?" I asked, genuinely curious. "The Japheth I grew up with wanted everything immediately and sulked when he didn't get it."

"Four years of missing you taught me that patience is apparently one of the few things I'm actually capable of learning the hard way." He laced our fingers together. "Also, my mother made me read a book about emotional intelligence once. It helped more than I want to admit."

I laughed, surprised, the tension in my chest easing at the absurdity of it. "Your mother is a national treasure."

"She really is."

We sat like that for a long while, the stars coming out slowly overhead, neither of us in any rush to fill the silence with anything more than exactly what it already held.

"I love this place," I said eventually. "I love this week. I don't want it to be the only time I feel like this."

"It doesn't have to be." He brought my hand up, pressing a soft kiss to my knuckles. "We just have to keep choosing it. Both of us. Every day, even the hard ones."

"Even the hard ones," I agreed.

We went inside not long after, and that night, when I finally reached for him instead of the other way around, it felt like exactly what it was a choice, made clearly, made gladly, with nothing hanging over either of us except the quiet, growing certainty that whatever waited for us back in New York, we were choosing to face it together.