Hansu had gone to Japan for business. He promised there would be a surprise for her when he returned. Sunja thought it would only be a matter of time before he would speak to her of marrigge. She belonged to him, and she wanted to be his wife. she didn't want to leave her mother, but if she had to move to Osaka to be with him, she would go. Throughout the day, she wondered what he was doing at that moment. When she imagined his life away hrom her, she felt like hs was part of something else, something outside of Yeongdo, outside of Busan, and now outside of Korea even. Hoe was it possibe that she had liived without knowing anything else beyond her father and mother? Yet that was all she had known. It was right for a girl to marry and bear children, and when she didn't menstruate, Sunja was pleased that she would give him a child.
She counted theh days until his return, and if there had been a clock in the house, she would have measured the houirs and minutes. On the morning of his return, Sunja hurried to the market.
She walked by the brokers' offices until he spotted her, and in his discreet way, he set a meeting time at the cove for the following morning.
As soon as the lodgers left for work, Sunja gathered the laundry and ran to the beach, unable to wait any longer. whe she saw her sweetheart waiting beside the rocks, wearing a handsome overcoat his suit, she felt proud that a man like this had chosen her.
Unlike the other times, when she would approach him in careful, ladylike steps, today she rushed to him impatiently with the bundle of laundry clutched in her arms.
"Oppa! You're back!"
"I told you-I always return." He embraced her tightly.