The Amusement Park
The moment the three of them stepped into the amusement park, the camera crew close on their heels, a crowd began to surge.
"What are they filming?"
"Yongjun oppa! Look over here!"
Fortunately the staff nearby kept order and opened a path, so they were able to press on.
A moment later, a message arrived on Areum's phone.
Areum held the screen out for Yongjun.
"Oppa, a mission came in. They want us to take pictures."
"A film camera?"
Just then a crew member placed a camera in their hands.
"How many shots can this take?"
"About twenty."
Yongjun asked about the roll, then nodded.
"Yujin, what do you want to ride?"
Areum crouched until she was level with the girl's eyes.
"Um... I don't really know. Mommy, you pick."
Areum thought for a moment.
"How about the carousel? Do you know what that is?"
Yujin nodded.
A short while later the three of them lined up for the carousel. The wait was mercifully short, and their turn came quickly.
Yongjun stood outside with the camera, ready to frame the two of them, while Areum settled Yujin in front of her and helped the girl lock both hands around the handles.
"Yujin, you have to hold on tight."
At the warning, Yujin nodded as if nervous and tightened her grip. A ride like this was a first in her life.
Then, to a burst of cheerful music, the carousel began to turn, slow and easy.
"It's moving!"
Yujin cried out in delight and stamped her feet. Areum watched the small back in front of her as if it were the most precious thing in the world, and braced it firmly with her own.
Through the lens of the disposable camera, Yongjun was watching. He looked at the two of them with a full, quiet warmth, every nerve bent on the single best frame, and when the horses finally began to rise and fall as they spun, the moment he had been waiting for arrived.
Click.
The shutter caught Yujin with her eyes shining, breaking into a peal of laughter, and Areum behind her, smiling bright enough to light the ride. The two smiles inside that camera outshone any view the park had to offer.
Framing the shot, Yongjun felt something flutter low in his chest. They had only met today, and yet standing there with the camera he had the strange sense that he himself had become one piece of something much larger.
He was not the only one stirred by the sight.
PD Park Minseok, who had followed them all the way out to the shoot, bit his lip and let a quiet exclamation slip before he knew it.
"This is it."
The shoot had barely begun, and already his instincts were singing. We Are Married drew its core audience from women in their teens through their thirties, but once today's footage aired, that would be yesterday's news. A picture like this, as he saw it, would not sort itself by age or gender. If anything, it was bound to set off a buzz that ran clean across every generation.
Minseok fixed the three of them with a gaze full of certainty.
But there was one person there who could not smile at the scene.
Watching the three of them light up over a single ride, Hyejin found herself back in the days behind them. Yujin was the child who had drawn her for a mother and never once been taken to an amusement park—who owned barely a handful of toys, and had spent her time drawing pictures or reading fairy tales borrowed from the library. To see that same child happy here now, and only because of a shoot, felt as if it might tear her chest open. She had not been there for that first. She was a mother without the means to give it.
Hyejin ducked her head to hide her blurring vision and bit down hard on her lip.
"Aigoo, you're eating so well. Mommy bought this, so give me a kiss on the cheek."
"Nom nom..."
Mouth full of cotton candy, Yujin pressed a kiss to Areum's cheek. Delighted, Areum gathered her in and gave her a happy shake.
"You like it that much?"
Watching them, Yongjun wore a look he couldn't quite settle.
"Yujin, Daddy's jealous. Will you give Daddy a cheek kiss too?"
Areum grinned, wicked and fond, scooped Yujin up, and held her to his face. Without a moment's hesitation Yujin kissed his cheek and left a sticky print of sugar behind.
"Ugh, you got it all over me."
He turned his face away in protest, but a smile he couldn't hide sat at the corner of his mouth. Deep down, he envied how quickly Areum had grown close to Yujin.
When the camera caught the moment, Minseok cheered in silence.
Yes! That's the scene the viewers want!
He nodded, thoroughly pleased.
"Oppa, let's take a picture like this."
With her usual easy warmth, Areum sat Yujin on Yongjun's lap, pressed herself snug against his side, and pointed at the camera in his hand.
"Huh? Yeah."
Caught off guard, he turned the disposable camera back on the three of them and pressed the shutter.
"Hahaha! Oppa, you've got a pink mark on your cheek!"
"Ah! What is this?"
The sugar had been there since Yujin's kiss, and Areum had known it full well when she asked for the photo.
Next they headed for the bumper cars.
This time, unlike before, Yujin sat between Yongjun's legs.
"Yujin, ram Mommy's car."
As if to avenge the earlier humiliation, he subtly twisted the wheel in her hands and took aim at Areum's bumper car.
"Yeah! Hehehe."
The two of them had grown much closer in the meantime, and Yujin—speaking now as easily as she did with Hyejin—beamed and rear-ended Areum's car from behind, just as he had told her.
"Kya! Oppa, you did that on purpose!"
"Wasn't me. Yujin's the one holding the wheel."
He answered with a perfectly straight face and charged Areum's car once more.
"Waaah! You think I won't hit you just because Yujin's in there?"
The three of them were having such a good time that the camera crew scrambled to film every second, terrified of missing even one.
A little later Areum was pushing an empty stroller while Yongjun walked with Yujin riding on his shoulders. They had come to look around the zoo inside the amusement park.
Perched on his neck, Yujin kept swiveling her head, wide-eyed. These were creatures she had only ever seen in videos and photographs in her previous life; meeting them in the flesh, she could hardly help being amazed.
"Wow, Oppa, let's buy that."
Areum had spotted a souvenir shop inside the zoo and was tugging at his sleeve. Thrown by how naturally she touched him, he let out a flustered sound and was pulled along.
Where she pointed, adorable animal-ear headbands were lined up in every color.
"Oh! Oppa, I think this would look so good on you!"
She set a sheep-ear headband on his head. Her fingers brushed his ear as if it were nothing, and before he knew it his ears had gone red.
"Well? It suits you better than I expected, doesn't it? Pick one for me too."
"Mommy, me too."
Still up on his shoulders, Yujin fiddled with his headband as she spoke.
"Then should Mommy pick one for you?"
Yongjun was turning a rabbit headband over in his hands and stepping toward Areum, but she didn't notice. She had already started choosing one for Yujin.
"Mommy, Mommy. Daddy picked a headband."
"Hm?"
"Ah—this one. I thought it would suit you."
He held the rabbit-ear headband, turning it in his fingers.
"Come on, you have to put it on me yourself, Oppa."
Areum laughed, playful, and tucked her hair behind her ear. With careful hands he settled the white rabbit ears onto her head.
"...It suits you."
"Thank you. Then... shall we pick Yujin's together now?"
She smiled brightly, caught his sleeve, and turned toward the display. Against that sunny energy he was helpless, and simply let himself be led.
"Mommy, that one, that one."
A moment later Yujin's headband was settled too. A little yellow chick bobbed adorably atop her small head.
"Shall we take a picture like this?"
This time Yongjun was the one to suggest it. The three of them stood side by side before a mirror, showing off their headbands as they faced the camera, and the disposable shutter went.
Click.
Among the staff filming them, Minseok was barely holding himself back from jumping on the spot.
Aaaaaah!
Look at that. Absolutely lovey-dovey—and faithful to the show's whole concept while they're at it.
He wanted to kiss the cast right then and there for generating footage all on their own. He swore that the moment he got back he would order more screen time for the couple, and he moved off after the camera crew.
Before they knew it the sky had begun to dim, and the amusement park's lights came on one by one.
Areum was stroking the cheek of Yujin, dead asleep in the stroller, when a text arrived.
"Oppa, we've got a mission."
Worn thin from looking after Yujin and Areum all day, Yongjun leaned against the stroller and checked her phone.
"Fireworks? Wow... they really pulled out all the stops."
"I'm so excited. Aren't you?"
She had been on her feet all day and still seemed to have energy to spare, eyes shining as she looked to him for agreement. At that lively face he gave a faint smile and nodded.
"Shall we go, then?"
He resettled his hands on the stroller handle and started slowly forward.
When they reached the Ferris wheel, the area was already under control, as if the crew had arranged it in advance, and a camera was mounted in the cabin the three of them were meant to ride. Following a staffer's guidance, they stepped carefully inside.
"Should we wake Yujin?"
"Should we? I think she'd love the fireworks."
Yongjun gently shook her shoulder.
"Mmm..."
"Yujin, want to watch the fireworks?"
She rubbed her not-quite-awake eyes and gave a small nod.
The wheel started up and climbed, higher and higher. Beyond the window the night sky opened little by little, and far off a stillness settled, as if the first firework had finished preparing to launch. The cabin stopped at the very top.
"I think it's about to start."
Just in case, Yongjun already had the camera out and ready. By then Yujin was nestled in Areum's arms, gazing out the window.
A brief quiet—and then the fireworks began to rise. Fwoosh. Boom! Across a sky like black drawing paper, clusters of colored light stitched themselves in brilliant threads, and in that glow Areum's profile and Yujin's were dyed one color after another.
Yongjun was not watching the fireworks. He was watching them. Quietly, he lifted the camera.
Click.
He caught the two faces, rapt and unguarded, inside the little camera. In that fleeting instant he thought he understood why people got married. Wasn't it for the sake of seeing something like this?
On the drive back he watched the two of them sleeping in the rear seat through the rearview mirror, and tired as he was, the corner of his mouth would not come down. The camera inside the car was recording all of it.