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After four years of marriage, Kim Mina had learned how to tell her husband’s mood from the subtlest of indicators, even if he was trying his absolute best to hide his emotions.
She knew by a twitch of his lips if he was either pissed off or pleased. She knew by the sparkle in his eyes whether he was amused or annoyed. She could tell by his voice, the set of his jaw, the slight intonations in his “fuck you”s.
This meant that Mina could tell just by the way her husband opened the front door that he was beyond irritated.
She turned off the sink, wiping the water off of her hands on her shorts. Padding to the front door, she took out the clip in her hair and let her brown curls fall freely.
The tall, lithe figure of her husband came into view as she entered the foyer. His back was to her, hunched and taut.
“You’re home early,” Mina called out.
Seungmin turned around, the relief blooming on his face as her voice reached his ears. His eyebrows fell out of their scowl, lips softening from their stiff frown.
He straightened up, holding his arms out, and Mina went without hesitation, grabbing and setting aside his bag before wrapping her arms around his torso.
Seungmin hummed, pleased. The sound rumbled through his chest and against her cheek.
“Can a guy not miss his wife?” He murmured into her shoulder. His breath was warm, tickling her skin, but his words were warmer, making her beam.
Mina pulled Seungmin to the living room, sitting him down on the couch, and settled on his lap as though it was the most natural place in the world for her to be. She unbuttoned his vest, removed his cuff links, and removed his tie as he leaned back.
“Yongbok?” He asked quietly. His hands rested on her hips, thumbs rubbing circles into the flesh and feeling it dimple.
“Nap,” She replied. She set the tie and cuff links neatly on the couch’s armrest. Seungmin’s shoulders were still stiff, so Mina brought her hands up to rub the knots out of them. Seungmin’s lip twitched. He knew that the massage was hardly out of pure good will—she just wanted an excuse to touch him.
“She’s usually up by now, isn’t she?” Seungmin let his head fall forward, sighing deeply as his forehead rested against Mina’s. Mina watched his chest rise and fall, his eyes flutter shut.
“We hung out with Ina and Hyunjin today,” Mina reminded him. Upon hearing his little “ah”, she continued. “We got home a little bit earlier.”
Mina’s hands stilled on his shoulders. She let the silence take over for a beat before murmuring. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Seungmin shook his head, but his grip on her hips tightened almost imperceptibly. Yes, but not yet.
She shifted, swinging her legs to the side and curling into his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin. He smelled like rain and printer ink, a combination that meant he’d been stuck in meetings all day. His arms came around her automatically, one hand splaying across her back, the other threading into her loose curls.
“Yongbok asked about you at lunch,” Mina said softly, her fingers tracing idle patterns on his chest. “She wanted to know if you’d be home for dinner.”
Seungmin pressed his lips against the crown of her head. Mina tilted her head up, catching his gaze. His eyes were flat, but carried a thread of disappointment. He was regretful. He hardly ever came home this early, always forced to stay at work until one or both of his girls were asleep.
“She fell asleep before she could miss you too much. You’re here now. That’s what matters.”
He exhaled, long and slow, and the tension in his shoulders finally began to seep out under her steady gaze. “My boss is an idiot.”
“I know.”
“He undid all of the work I had done over two weeks. Didn’t even read my notes.”
“That’s a bitchy move,” Mina scowled.
“He also had the audacity to ask why I looked so tired this morning.”
“What did you say?”
Seungmin’s eyes twitched, pissed off, but also amused. “I said I have a four-year-old who drags me around in the mornings and a wife who keeps me up at night.”
Mina’s eyebrows shot up.
His hand found her waist, tugging her closer. “I gave him the most corporate-appropriate ‘fuck you’ I could manage and told him I was clocking off early.”
Mina grinned, bright and unguarded, and Seungmin’s face softened completely, the scowl replaced by something tender. She reached up, cupping his cheek, and he leaned into her palm like a puppy starved for affection.
She pressed a kiss to his temple. Salty. He’d been sweating. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And yet you married me.”
“Four years ago, yes. I was young and foolish.”
Seungmin’s eyes cracked open, flat and unamused, but the corner of his mouth betrayed him with a downward twitch. Pleased. He was so easy.
Before she could tease him further, a small shuffle sounded from the hallway. Both their heads turned.
Yongbok stood there, clutching a stuffed quokka with one hand and rubbing her eye with the other. Her freshly blue curls were a chaotic halo around her sleepy face.
Mina felt Seungmin tense beneath her, and turned to look at him. A minuscule furrow of his brow, a little twitch of his lips. He was extremely confused.
“Appa?” she mumbled, blinking at Seungmin.
Seungmin’s entire posture melted. The rigid line of his spine dissolved into something soft, something his. He shifted Mina aside just enough to pat his knee.
“Come here, Bokkie.”
The toddler padded over, climbed up with the graceless determination of a tiny mountain goat, and flopped against his chest. Seungmin wrapped an arm around her, and Mina felt the last of his tension evaporate through his skin.
“You’re like a lollipop now, cupcake,” Seungmin muffled, looking down at Mina inquisitively.
“She went with Auntie Ina and Auntie Hyunjin to the salon today,” Mina explained, watching the furrow between his brows soften. His lips quirked upwards, as if to ask Mina, really?
Mina shrugged, smiling, and watched as Seungmin’s gaze dropped back to their daughter. His expression shifted through several stages in quick succession—bemusement, resignation, and finally a soft, helpless sort of wonder that he reserved exclusively for Yongbok.
“Blue,” he said, as though testing the word.
“Blue,” Yongbok confirmed, patting her own head with the gravitas she’d acquired from Mina. “Auntie Hyunjin said I looked like a fairy.”
“A fairy,” Seungmin echoed. His voice was flat, but his eyes crinkled at the corners. Mina bit her lip to keep from laughing.
“A very pretty fairy,” Mina added, and Yongbok beamed, snuggling deeper into Seungmin’s chest. He adjusted his hold automatically, one large hand spanning the entirety of her small back.
“Your aunties,” Seungmin murmured, directing the words more at Mina than the child, “are a threat to my blood pressure.”
“You love them.”
“I tolerate them. There’s a difference.”
Mina raised an eyebrow. His shoulders slumped.
Yongbok, oblivious to the silent marital warfare unfolding above her head, tilted her chin up to look at her father. “Appa, do you like it? Auntie Ina said boys don’t know fashion but I told her you’re the handsomest boy so you pob—pro—hold. Probuhbly. Probuhbly know.”
Seungmin crumbled at his daughter’s praise. He shot Mina a look that clearly said help me, but Mina only propped her chin on her hand and watched, utterly unhelpful.
“That was a big word, cupcake, good job,” Seungmin began, placing a kiss on the toddler’s forehead. “And I think you look very pretty. Like the ocean.”
Yongbok considered this for a moment. “The ocean is scary.”
“The ocean is majestic,” Seungmin corrected, sounding vaguely offended on behalf of large bodies of water. “And very, very blue. The prettiest blue. Just like you.”
Yongbok seemed to accept this logic. She patted his cheek with a small, sticky hand, then promptly closed her eyes as though the emotional exchange had exhausted her.
“Appa does know fashion,” She bumbled, and Mina cooed.
Within thirty seconds, she was asleep again, her breath evening out into soft puffs against Seungmin’s shirt. The stuffed quokka dangled precariously from her loosening grip.
Mina reached over and gently extracted the toy before it could fall, setting it on the armrest beside Seungmin’s discarded cuff links.
“You’re good at that,” she said quietly.
“At what? Being emotionally blackmailed by a four-year-old?” But the jab had no heat behind it. Seungmin’s hand was still rubbing slow circles on Yongbok’s back, curved around her like a shield.
“At making her feel safe.” Mina tucked her legs up onto the couch, leaning her head against Seungmin’s shoulder. “At making me feel safe.”
Seungmin was quiet for a moment. She felt him press another kiss to her hair, lingering this time. “You make it easy,” he murmured. “Both of you.”
The clock on the wall ticked softly. Outside, the late afternoon sun had begun its lazy descent, spilling golden light across the living room floor. Mina traced the line of Seungmin’s jaw with her fingertip, feeling the residual tension there melt away under her touch.
“Do you want dinner?” she asked.
“In a bit.” His voice had gone drowsy, the earlier irritation faded to something distant and unimportant. “Just... a few more minutes.”
Mina hummed her agreement, letting her own eyes drift shut. Seungmin’s heartbeat was steady beneath her ear, Yongbok’s tiny snores a soft counterpoint. The house settled around them, quiet and warm.
When Mina managed to shove food down Seungmin’s mouth and drag him to bed, she sighed. What a handful her husband was.
Now, with dishes abandoned in the sink, Yongbok back in her bed, and the house gone still, Mina slipped into bed beside him. The sheets were cool, the room dark save for the faint glow of the moon through the curtains.
She’d barely settled before Seungmin’s hands found her waist, warm and certain, tugging her across the mattress until she was tucked flush against his side.
The touch was commonplace between them; after four years, his hands knew the geography of her body like a worn and memorized map. But the butterflies that erupted in her stomach made every time feel like the first.
“You like when I do this, don’t you?” Seungmin mumbled, voice already thick with oncoming sleep. He pulled her closer, legs tangling with hers, the bare skin of their calves brushing beneath the covers.
“No, I positively hate it.” Despite her snark, Mina purred happily, the sound rumbling low in her throat. She burrowed into his chest, inhaling the clean scent of soap and something deeper that was undeniably Seungmin. “Every time you touch me, I’m afraid I’ll get rabies.”
“Mm, you’ll only get it if I bite you.” True to his word, he ducked his head and nipped at her collarbone, a gentle scrape of teeth followed by the soft press of smiling lips.
Mina cupped his cheeks in both hands, tilting his face up to meet her gaze. In the dim light, his eyes were dark and drowsy, the earlier flatness replaced by a quiet contentment that made her chest ache. She kissed the bridge of his nose, the delicate slope she’d traced a thousand times. then his forehead, where stress liked to burrow and she liked to smooth it away. Finally, she pressed her lips to his, soft and unhurried.
His breath left him in a weak exhale, warm against her mouth. He smiled, that rare, unguarded smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look younger, lighter, like the boy she’d fallen in love with before the world had taught him to become a stone cold pillar.
“Rabid dog,” she whispered, thumb brushing over his cheekbone.
Seungmin huffed a laugh, the sound barely more than a catch of breath in his throat. “Your rabid dog.”
“My rabid dog,” she agreed. “Tell me about today.”
The request was gentle, an open door rather than a demand. She felt his grip on her waist tighten slightly, the telltale sign that he was deciding how much to share, how much of the day’s ugliness to bring into the quiet sanctuary of their bed.
“He called a meeting at seven in the morning,” Seungmin said finally, voice low and measured. “Seven. On a Wednesday. I had to leave before you and Bokkie woke up.”
Mina made a sympathetic noise, her fingers carding through the hair at his nape. She knew how much he hated missing their chaotic little morning routine. She had felt the sting herself, walking their daughter to the bus stop instead of helping her into the car seat so that Seungmin could drive her to school himself.
“Then he scrapped the entire project timeline I’d spent two weeks building. Said he’d ‘had a vision over the weekend.’” Seungmin’s voice flattened into a mockery of corporate cheer. “Vision, my ass. He reeked of prosecco.”
Mina snorted. “Did you tell him where he could shove his vision?”
“I told him I’d have the revised timeline on his desk by Friday.” A beat. “With my resignation letter attached if he changed his mind again.”
“Seungmin.” Mina murmured, voice tensing.
“I didn’t send it. Yet.” He sighed, the sound heavy with exhaustion. “I just... stared at it for a while. The draft. Thought about you and Bokkie, how much I wanted to be home for dinner. How I couldn’t even manage that.”
There it was. The real wound, buried beneath the layers of workplace frustration. Mina shifted, propping herself up on one elbow to look down at him. His eyes were closed now, brow furrowed with that familiar thread of disappointment. It was his guilt, the guilt of a man who held himself to impossible standards, who loved his family so fiercely that any perceived failure cut deep.
“Kim Seungmin,” she said, and her voice was firm enough that his eyes fluttered open. “You’re working hard to provide for this family. We’ll always wait for you, and we don’t care how long it takes for you to come home so long as you do. You’ve been looking for an opportunity like this for years. you’re not allowed to consider quitting.”
He stared at her for a long moment, expression unreadable. “You’re very bossy.”
“You married me.”
“Four years ago.” The words were familiar, a script they returned to again and again, but this time his voice cracked just slightly on the last syllable. “I was young and foolish.”
“And very, very lucky,” Mina added, settling back down against his chest.
He didn’t argue. His arms tightened around her, pulling her impossibly closer, and she felt his lips press against the crown of her head in a kiss that lingered.
“The blue hair,” he murmured after a while, voice gone sleepy again. “We’re going to have to talk to Hyunjin about asking permission first.”
“I’ll handle Hyunjin.”
“And your sister. She enables Yongbok too much.”
“I’ll handle Ina too.”
“And Yongbok. She’s going to want to match now. I’ll have to go to work with electric blue hair.”
Mina grinned against his chest. “I’m handling nothing about that. I’m looking forward to seeing your hair dyed again.”
Seungmin groaned, long and suffering, but the sound melted into something softer. It was a hum of contentment, a wordless acknowledgment that he would, in fact, do absolutely anything for his girls.
“Go to sleep,” Mina whispered.
“I’ll still be here in the morning.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” He said as firmly as he could with his sleep-heavy voice. “I’ll tell him where he can shove his vision if he tries waking me up before eight thirty.”
Mina smiled, pulling Seungmin against her chest. His breathing evened out quickly, but Mina stayed awake for just a bit longer, admiring her exhausted husband.
After four years of marriage, Kim Mina had learned how to tell her husband’s mood from the subtlest of indicators. This meant that she could tell just by the way he slept that Kim Seungmin was in pure, relaxed bliss.