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Though Yi-joo didn't want to admit it at the time, she remembers how Se-hyuk reacted to her in her wedding dress.
It didn't mean she hadn't seen, hadn't known.
Se-hyuk had been on his phone.
At the time, she'd excused it because it was probably work. Now she knows, it was probably Yoo-ra.
Embarrassingly for both Yi-joo and Se-hyuk, Yoo-ra probably didn't even have him on the hook for anything. It was likelier that he was simply staring at his chat with her, waiting for her to notice him or need him, or staring at her pictures like a lovesick fool. How pathetic that Yi-joo had been in love with such a man. Se-hyuk couldn't even cheat properly.
A bitter smile touches her lips at the thought, but as she's turned to face the mirror, the poisonous edge of her anger bleeds out.
Her wedding dress in this timeline is different to her first. The material is richer, plusher, finer. With the accompanying price tag to go with it. Only the best for the fiancée of Seo Do-guk.
They assist her with the veil, a train that goes with a tiara -- "Picked out specifically," one of them gushes -- and the effect is...
Her dress in that first wretched timeline had been pretty. She'd felt pretty.
The assistants at the shop had told her that her wedding was one of the occasions where she had to be the centre of attention, modest as they could tell she was.
For her wedding, she was allowed to be the one people paid attention to. She was meant to be the prettiest and the brightest and the most important person, all things Yi-joo had never experienced before, and never would again in the months after her marriage to Se-hyuk. She hadn't known it at the time, of course, but for a fleeting moment, Yi-joo believed her wedding to Se-hyuk would be exactly that.
And she'd blushed and glowed and --
Se-hyuk hadn't even looked up from his phone.
Yi-joo isn't excited for a repeat.
After all, while she doesn't prescribe to the belief that Se-hyuk was lower than Do-guk in the ways that matter (both just people who wanted to marry her for reasons entirely their own) what she had with Do-guk was -- a business deal -- a stepping stone in her revenge. They weren't going into this union in love. Not even her broken understanding of it.
"Let's let your groom see!" one of the assistants says with a bright smile as she gestures for someone to open the curtains that separate her from Do-guk.
She took a breath, kept her eyes low.
With Do-guk, she didn't see her pathetic self in him as she did with Se-hyuk: Do-guk was confident, self-assured. He knew his place in the world and didn't believe in making himself small to fit in it, and he wanted the same for her. That alone would make this marriage better than her first. That alone made Do-guk better than Se-hyuk.
But Do-guk also had more.
The dress. The tiara. The veil. The personal greeting by the owner, the barrage of assistants that came to wait on them hand-and-foot. All because of who he was, who he knew, the money he had. Do-guk had more reason than Se-hyuk ever did not to give Yi-joo any attention, and he didn't even need to be cheating on her emotionally to do it.
But at the sharp intake of breath, the oohs-and-ahhs of the assistants fall away.
Yi-joo peeks through her lashes.
Do-guk looks struck; mouth agape, cheeks red. He doesn't seem to register the owner of the shop clapping him on the shoulders in congratulations, or the stream of assistants that have filtered in through the front room to marvel at her.
She focuses on Do-guk who's stood from the sofa to stand in front of her, staring at her like she's the only thing in the room.
Like she's something beautiful, someone important.
With borrowed confidence she isn't sure the origin of, Yi-joo smiles at him. "What do you think?"
"You're perfect," Do-guk decides, and his gaze doesn't leave hers, warm with affection and something more heated.
Huffing an embarrassed laugh, she dips her chin, an action he catches. His hand is warm against her face, and almost absently his thumb traces her cheek, her lips. Her breath hitches, her toes curl.
She couldn't look away if she tried.
"Now, now Seo Do-guk," the owner clucks in interruption, throwing them a wink while his various assistants swoon, "save it for the honeymoon suite."