It's true when they said 'life begins outside your comfort zone'. When Jisoo broke up with Sehun to marry Yeonseok, all she had in mind was that it was the end of her life. She was very pessimistic in moving on since Sehun used to be her world, and without him in her life, it didn't feel like she could stand above the ground anymore. But she began to see that her thoughts were not completely right in seeing how hard Yeonseok was trying to win over her. It wasn't an easy job, but he had proved himself to be a better arm to lean on as he once promised her. As she boarded on this new ship called marriage with him, she started to see a new light in a new day. And eventually she realized, in the course of her inconvenience over this new life, Yeonseok became her new comfort zone. And he did a great job in putting their relationship into a more steady pace the more days.
And as time passed, he became her blessing in disguise. He made her happy.
Jisoo never had a wild imagination nor a high standard when it comes to falling in love. She never expected a bucket of roses for any-versaries, she prefered Peonies though, or imagined romantic surprises her significant other would throw just to make her happy. She only wanted to love and to be loved genuinely, and uncoditionally. In fact, what more could a girl ask for?
He was the main reason who played the big part in her moving-on. Because forgeting was a great challenge, and there was really no shortcut to do it in easy way.  He helped her deal with this devastated breakup very sensibly and patiently.
Days passed along with the melting ice through the winter. It was the end of February when Jisoo found herself sitting at the theatre hall after attending her seniors' graduation ceremony. This was where she met Sehun the first time in their first year. She took the exact chair where she sat at the first meeting of the Personal Psychology class, glanced to her right was where he sat when they got paired for their first project in the university.
The classes were over by the end of the semester, Jisoo found the theater was quiet and decided to enter and spent some time alone, recalling every detail about him and the memories they shared in here. Here was where they stole each other's glances, and exchanged smiles secretly when they sat far apart. Here was the place where Sehun always made her hold back the laughter when he commented on what Professor Hong said quietly. Here was where they whispered to each other, where Sehun played with her fingers when he was bored, when he fell asleep because he was too tired after the boys night with his friends.
Every word, smile and laugh, Jisoo then caught them with her clutching hand in the air, then she erased all that memories by rubbing them with her other hand in circular motion. And again, it was true when they said that 'the new beginnings often disguised as painful endings', because lately enduring the pain of missing him was more effective rather than resisting the feeling. It helped her to realize that to let him go didn't mean that she had to forget him. It would never easy to forget someone who had given you so much to remember, and she had learned the best just to let the time do all the jobs. It's been two months after he left, and for some reason, the absence of communication between them had been a big help to fill the blank space in her heart for a new hope to build a new happiness.
A ring of notification tone in her phone broke into her reverie, Jisoo fished it out from her coat pocket and found Jongdae's message, telling her that he had been waiting at the student lounge with Lisa. She replied him with a short 'OTW' before she tucked it back to her pocket and took a deep breath. It's the last memory of him she had to let go. And after this, she's ready to move on, wholeheartedly, irrevocably.
"Jisoo! here! here!" Lisa called her out as she walked into the main door of the student lounge. She plumped herself down onto the couch right next to her cousin's beloved girlfriend, then leaned herself to her right as the girl stretched her arms into the air to take a selfie with her phone.
"Did you submit your application for the professional practice next semester?" Jongdae asked as Lisa was done with the selfie session.
"Yeah, I just did. They approved my internship report in the States so I have my professional practice complete. It saves me four months to graduate in advance."
"That's good to hear."
"Hey, look." Lisa circled her arms on hers, "Jongdae and I are going to karaoke. Come with us, we'll be having dinner with steak tonight."
Jisoo pursed her lips. Jongdae had told her about their plan this morning, and Jisoo also had given him her answer about the offer. As much as her longing to hang out with them, she needed to skip it today since she had had another plan to do. It's unfortunate though, since she always loved to listen to Jongdae's singing voice. She could say that her cousin's voice was one of the most beautiful ones she had ever heard in her life. He had a naturally high tenor voice and had the best sense of pitch in adlibing the song he sang. He was very talented, it's just a pity that he never had any interest to show it off on stage.
"I've told Jongdae this morning that I had a plan to visit my dad today. Can you guys reschedule? I really want to go with you guys." she pleaded.
"We've booked a room in Kkaebsong for two hours already." Lisa replied her with a regretting tone, "But we can always have another session if you like it, just let us know when you're available." Jisoo raised her thumb happily as the response.
Glancing at her watch, Jisoo decided it was her time to leave. So she excused herself and rose from the couch.
"Are you sure you don't want me to drop you off?" Jongdae asked her again to make sure. He had offered her a ride when she told him about her plan this morning, but as she felt like to be alone today, she turned down the offer. After promising them that she would give them a call later on, she then made her way to leave. The long corridor was quiet, few students were wandering around to clear their locker or merely having some chats with the others when she took a glance into a certain compartment which was used to belong to him. Some sticky notes were taped on its door, written on them were supporting messages like how his friends would miss him when he's away or how they wished he would stay healthy during his duty in the military and everything.
Jisoo decided to stop by. She fished out a sticky note and a pen from her pencil case, wrote a message and sticked it on top of the others before she made her move to leave.
Written on her sticky notes was,
'the universe supports you in every way.'
It was an hour ride to the graveyard sites. She stopped by to a supermarket on the way there to buy some pears and wine, then bought two buckets of white lilies and white chrysanthemum for her parents each. The taxi driver helped her to bring her stuffs seeing that she had too many things in her hands, and Jisoo paid him a double charge for being so grateful, especially because her parents sites were quite uphill. After arranging the pears on each grave and pouring two glasses of wine, she stood at the middle of her parents graves, gave them a deep bow to the ground three times before she seated herself on the grass ground. It was her dad's wish to be buried next to her mom, and even if it felt so sad, for some reason she was kind of relieved that her dad was finally reunited with the love of his life.
Being there with her parents suddenly made her emotional, and before she knew it she had sobbed miserably for missing them so much. Luckily she was alone at the time, if Jongdae or Yeonseok was with her there like those man had offered her earlier, she would make a very unsightly scene. It took her about ten or twenty minutes until she managed to control herself and wiped away her tears before she chuckled to herself.
"I'm sorry for only making the time to visit you both today. I have no excuse." she sniffed as inisiating the monologue. "So, as you, Mom, can see that I am married now." she said to her mom's grave. "And I have the feeling that you might have been part of the inisiator with this old man." 
She brushed her hair from her forehead backwards, now that she sat there she realized that the winter breeze was hideously freezing that she pulled her scarf upward to hide her chin. She then smiled as she turned to her dad's grave.
"I used to think that I wished you had told me much earlier about Yeonseok oppa, so I could avoid all the messy dramas that came with it. Four months ago I still thought that if you had told me much earlier about him, I wouldn't have dated Sehun or perhaps just kept away from him at all. But these days when I think about it again, I don't have any regret that I've met Sehun, because he is one of the best things that have happened in my life. And now I have Yoo Yeonseok, and he's just, like what you said, Dad, a very very good man and I'm lucky that I have been a part of his life. So thank you, for all the things you guys have done to me. I am blessed to be a daughter of yours, and I will always be proud to have you both as my parents." she sniffed again as the tears started to run down to her cheek the second time. "It's a pity that you're not here because I could use some of your magic words in this situation. I was told that love grows, so I am confident that I can love the man you've chosen sincerely, so don't worry. I am happy now, and I believe he will make me happier every day."
She then fell silence. The meeting she had with her mother in law two months ago was back into her mind and she couldn't help herself to smile at their deep heart-to-heart conversation. It was about three days after Sehun came for a visit to say goodbye, she found her mother in law standing in front of her door. Yeonseok didn't say anything about her visit, so she was quite surprised to see her there. She didn't see her often since her mother in law mostly spent her days at their family's villa in Jeju, but Jisoo did have some good talks with her over the phone. Since she was there, she then took her out  to have a ladies' date to a beauty salon where she was one of the VIP customers in Cheongdam. Apparently they had themselves a reservation of a full-body treatment for two which meant a day of relaxing massage and warm-water bath.
"Yeonseok told me that you're kind of stressed out these days, so he reserved this for us so we can be the queen for a day." she remarked as the attendant took them to their private chamber. Knowing that her husband had inisiated the spa for both of them had touched her again for the umpteenth times. Of course he knew, it was just his typical treatment she could almost never get used to. It took them two hours of relaxing body massage. There was only silence when Jisoo slowly fell asleep as the masseuse stretched her tense muscles over her legs.
"You know, I was just like you." her mother in law said when they sat inside the sauna room after the massage session. "I married Yeonseok's father when I was nineteen, and he wasn't the man I loved when the wedding took place." 
It was a new story for her, and from all people, she had never expected that her mother in law actually the one she shared the same story with. Jisoo turned her head around to face her and listened to her attentively, waiting for what happened next impatiently.
"I knew immidiately that it wasn't your choice to marry my son. And even my husband and your father had this idea to marry you both off someday in the future, I was never really agree nor decline it because I knew how it felt to marry someone you don't love."
"What made you let me do it back then?" she dared herself to ask, hoping that the question would not offend her.
She wasn't though, because she smiled at her. "Because Yeonseok inherits his father's tenacity. His father was not my type, really. I only met him twice when outr parents married us off, and it was really, really awkward first week between us. Since I wasn't comfortable being together with just the two of us, we slept in different rooms for the first three months. But as the time passed, he started as a stranger to become someone I admired, because Yeonseok's father is nothing but a lover. He treated me like a queen, even though I was being adamant to the new situation." she paused for two seconds to pour more water into the coals then returned to her a few moment later. "Love grows, Jisoo. You might feel that an arrange marriage is a murder of the right to fall in love, but believe this. This arranged marriage can turn  into love marriage when the space between you is replaced by a tiny toothless smile."
Jisoo expressed her agreement as she nodded her head with a smile upon her face. Yeonseok was indeed just like his father, or perhaps even better. There had never been a time since they got married that he deliberately upsetted her or made her sad, if anything it was always the other way around.
"You've raised a very decent man, Mother. Thank you." that was the only response she could say, and the woman next to her smiled wider as if she could see what was beyond the words she said. She tapped her hand softly with tears brimming on her eyes.
And now that she thought about it again, she would also like to thank her mother in law for believing her. She had a reason not to decline her son's marriage even though she knew that her future daughter in law didn't loved her son. Jisoo had to thank her because she had believed in her that she would open her heart to accept the genuine love of her son, and to give him a chance to make her fall for him.
When she reached home, she sat on her desk to write something. She thought about this on the way home, and decided that she would start this all with a small effort to make him feel fully accepted. She then went to her closet, at first she intended to take some clothes to change when her eyes landed to a box of a night gown Yeonseok had bought her few months ago. And she remembered Yeonseok had mentioned this gala function where he was invited as the guest of honor for bringing the project he once had in the States to the hospital, and it apparently had attracted the attention of both UNICEF and WHO for the hospital's concern to the health of poor children in the South and Southeast Asia. He invited her as his plus one to receive the award, but Jisoo said nothing about it. When her husband asked her to attend the function with him, she still insisted that the crowd was not her forte.
She took out the box from the closet chest and put it on the bed to take out the gown inside it. Jisoo immediately loved the gown when she hung it up on her hands. It was a simple sleeveless black lace V neck long dress with black beads along its low-cut neck line. The back was open in oval shape, and it had a slim-fitted silhouette that stretched down to her feet and a high cut at its side up to, Jisoo guessed if she wore it, her thigh.
Life begins outside your comfort zone. If she wanted to be the wife of the Chief of Surgery of Shinsegae General Hospital, she had to work on overcoming her  restlessness with the crowd. And after a few moments, she decided to give it a try. She took her phone on the couch table, then made a call to Lisa.
"Hey, what's up?!" Lisa answered her at the third ring. "You're home already?"
"Yeah, umm, look, are you busy? I kinda need your help." 
"Well, Jongdae and I are heading to Hongdae now. What is it you need?" she asked interestedly. 
"I have a function to attend this evening, and I could use your hands for a makeover. Can you do it for me?"
There were some background chat after that, Lisa was talking to Jongdae to let him know about her request. She then back at her after about five seconds later. "All right, Princess. We'll get there in a half of an hour. Get yourself ready."
"Cool, I'll let the security know you guys are coming. Thanks by the way." After she hang up, she made a call to the security office to let them know that her cousin and his girlfriend are coming in a half an hour and asked the security to lend them the master card so they could access the elevator. She took a shower after that, and was compressing her swollen eyes with the frozen eye mask when her guests arrived.
"What's the dresscode?" Lisa asked her when as she prepared her makeup case at the vanity. Jisoo then showed her the dress which she gawked at its beauty. Jisoo told her that it was given to her several months ago but she never got the chance to wear it until tonight.
"What made you change your mind?" Lisa asked her again as she started to roll her front hairs with the rollers, before she worked on her face.
Jisoo tilted her head, thinking about the answer to the question. She replied her few seconds later, "I want to do it the right way, to be his wife. What I'm doing right now is the least I can do for him."
There was a beam on Lisa's face when she told her that, as if she wanted to say that she was proud of her for finally trying, or something. "I don't think it's the least you can do. You're getting out of your comfort zone. It's a big leap."
Jisoo couldn't help but smile and nodded in agreement. That's the end of their serious conversation that day, as she sat still and obediently while Lisa put some makeup on her face. It took them about two hours when Lisa finally had done styling her hair in an effortless up-do style then helped her to wear the gown, which surprisingly fitted her body perfectly, she was happy to see her look in front of the full-body mirror.
Jongdae, who had been spending his time watching TV while waiting for them at the living room, couldn't close his mouth in astonishment while assessing her look as they came out from her room. 
"Whoa, you're beautiful. Isn't the thigh too much?" he commented while pointing her bare thigh which was shown due to the gown shape.
"I can't help it." she shrugged, now that Jongdae mentioned itm, she did feel that her thigh was too showing. "But it's still acceptable, right?" 
"Yeah." Jongdae nodded his head several times. "You just need to put some confidence to pull it through, then you're good." he then helped up his two thumbs in acknowledgment.
When everything's ready, Jisoo took a matching clutch with her and some new ties for Yeonseok in case he forgot to bring one to the office. She saw a new box of shoes when she opened the shoe cupboard and found a brand new heels that match with the gown. She couldn't help to hide the beam on her face when she found out it was just her size, Yeonseok might have bought it for her when he gave her the gown, only perhaps forgot to tell her about it. She then took the shoes with her and followed the couple to their car so they could drop her at the hospital.
She thought about Lisa's words on the way to the hospital. While the couple was busy conversing, she kept her silence at the back seat and had her eyes thrown to the outside of the window. It was indeed a big leap for her to deal with her awkwardness with the crowd. She wasn't a people person, she tended to be alone or being in a small group if she had to interact with them. But they said loving someone is about putting aside your ego to complement your partner's happiness, and even though it was at the end of her comfort zone, Jisoo was willing to try. She wanted to see how much she could endure all this at the end of the day.
The hospital security offered their his hand when he saw her getting off of the car and saw the paper back she had on her hand. She refused the offer politely and gave him a light nod before she rushed herself to her husband's office, hoping that he hadn't left for the function venue yet. She couldn't run or walk faster because of the heels though. But she was relieved knowing that he was inside when she entered his office. He wasn't aware of her presence as she took off her coat, since he was busy doing his cufflink with his back facing her. It was when she cleared her throat that he turned and gave her a double take before spinning around to face her.
What she got was the same look Jongdae threw her earlier, with mouth opened in awe like he's lost for words. For some reason it brought the satisfaction feeling in Jisoo to see his reaction. He never looked at her that way, not even at the wedding. And to see that, she knew she must have done something right.
"Excuse me, I don't mean to be rude, but who are you? I believe you're not my wife, because she's just not this beautiful." he said after a moment of silence, his smile grew on his face teasing her.
Jisoo stepped forward to slap his arm, which he responded with a playful 'ow' and another chuckle. 
"I'll take this as a compliment, meaning that I look pretty?" she asked confidently.
"You're the prettiest woman I've ever seen alive." he said as he he put his right hand on her chin and had his thumb caressing her cheek tenderly.
Jisoo let out a tiny smile. She saw that Yeonseok didn't put any tie on his neck, and fortunately she just brought a match tie for his dark gray shirt. She took it out and showed it to him, before she walked toward him, offering to put it on for him.
"Just about the right time, I brought my suit to the office only to realize that I forgot to have a tie with it." he said as he circled his arms around her waist to lean.
"I knew it." she said with a knowing smile.
"How do I live without you?"
"It would be miserable, I suppose."
As she straightened up his collar upright, Jisoo brushed over his broad shoulder to flatten its crumpled surface. She used to have to look up because of their different height, but with the heels she put on, she was just as tall as his eyes right now. And she felt a little bit nervous of the close proximity between them, especially because Yeonseok decided to keep his eyes on her and Jisoo tried to look at anything and anywhere but his eyes.
"Hear me out." she said after some moments later as she started to put the tie around his neck. "A long time ago, there was darkness in my life. But a light suddenly came. And that light was you." she looked up to glance his eyes, and she found him squinting at her words which came out of nowhere.
But the fact was Jisoo had spent the whole afternoon to write and rehearse it with Lisa, and she even asked for her inputs in case it was too cheesy or cringeworthy. She wanted it to be simple but deep in meaning.
"Your love gave me wings. Your trust gave me a strength to move on, despite the struggles. Our journey has already started when the day you said you pledge your love, devotion, faith and honor for me. So hereby, I pledge to be your wife from this day on. I will love and cherish you unconditionally, without hesitation. I vow to be your biggest fan and partner in crime. I promise to support a family with you in a home filled with patience, love and understanding. I am truly blessed to be a part for your life, which becomes our life together. That's why I vow, to grow old with you."
There was a long paused after she finished reciting her vow. She didn't get to write anything at their wedding because of the mess and ignorance to the whole wedding procession. But she remembered how Yeonseok recited his vow in a truthful way, that she felt like she owed him one. So here it was, she wrote and recited it openly, hoping that he would see her genuine intention.
"it's beautiful. Thank you." he said afterwards.
"I'm the one who should thank you." she reflected as she finished tying the tie and stretched it downward to his button line. "For all the things you did for me."
He nodded, "You're welcome, then. So can I have a kiss as a reward?"
She scoffed and started to chuckle. One of the things that she still couldn't get used to about him up to now was that his cling to physical contact, Heaven only knew how Doctor Yoo Yeonseok really loved to kiss. He's just a man anyway.
But then she shook her head just to tease him, "No, you'll ruin my lipstick."
"What? aren't lipsticks supposed to be color-stay these days?"
She chuckled knowing that he even knew such things.
"Still will ruin my makeup, no."
He then raised his brows, "Not now?" 
She nodded, then she let out another chuckle. "Not now." 
"Okay, point taken." his smile grew wider, and as if it's not the end of their flirting session, he leaned in to whisper on her ear. "I love you to the moon and back." in which Jisoo replied him doubtlessly the same way he did. 
She leaned upward to his ear and said, "I'll love you to the Asgard and back."
"Oh, it's farther. You win."
"Yay!" She couldn't help to laugh again.
This was the time when she realized that it wouldn't be his last amusing remark, and that she expected for more fun interaction ahead between them. It was the time when she realized that turning the page is the best feeling in the world, because there was so much to the book she was expecting to enjoy; nothing excessive, but a simple happy life. Just like what old people said, great relationships aren't great because they have no problems. They're great because both people care enough about the other person to find a way to make it work.
There were so much she would count on it.
After wearing his suite and put on their coats, Yeonseok extended his elbow to which Jisoo circled her arm around the crook of his arm. He then led her to where his car was parked to the function venue downtown the city.
The sky was clear despite the freezing winter breeze. It was beautiful.
-o0o-   THE END   -o0o-