The cameras snapped like a relentless hail of ticking bombs, each flash a small explosion ringing the violence that smoldered underneath. Beyond the massive gates of the concert hall—now hastily renovated for show, its rotting grandeur concealed by a facade of spotless elegance—journalists pushed for position, their cameras eager for the ideal snap of the woman they had believed married into a fairy tale.
The identical iron gates over which Seo-yeon's nervous fingers had protested so recently, their weight crushing under her sorrow, now welcomed with an ostentatious profusion of ivory and blood-red: the hues Joon-woo had selected: purity tainted by the sweet stench of something decomposing beneath, a festive garland dripping with deliberate cruelty.
