The anger of friend's

The traffic on the way to Chelsea in Manhattan was terrible. A friend from back in school, who now lives in Seoul, was holding a solo exhibition in Chelsea—New York’s gallery district.
They’d been saying he was finally making it big in Korea, and now here he was, in New York!
It felt great and made me proud to know that even a poor artist could succeed and live well. I was excited to see his work and couldn’t wait to get there.

When I arrived, he was surrounded by visitors, and he looked so polished that I barely recognized him. Watching him from a distance, my mind went back to our college days.

Back in art school, most of the male students were poor—especially compared to the female students. He was even poorer than most, having come from a rural area. Whenever tuition was due, the other guys would worry as if it were their own problem. Even after class, he would sit silently in the studio—not drawing, but simply with nowhere else to go because he had no money.

Wanting to catch up, I invited him over to my place. The quiet, gloomy guy I remembered from school turned out to be so funny—we ended up talking and laughing all night. We kept saying, “Hey, remember that guy? You know, that guy…” as we searched our memories and brought the past back to life. Eventually, with a little alcohol, the story we all knew came out—his old heartbreak.

He had dated a classmate a year below us for a long time. But her parents strongly opposed their relationship because he was a poor artist. How painful it must’ve been to hear them belittle him, even though he studied the same thing as their daughter. In the end, she couldn’t go against her family and married a wealthy man instead.

On her wedding day, he showed up but was dragged out by her brothers-in-law.
She got married and moved overseas. That left a deep wound, and he spent his young adult years in heartbreak and sadness. Though it happened long ago, as he told the story, the room went silent.

But life rarely stays on one path. When her husband’s business failed, she quietly returned to Korea. After he became a successful and well-known artist, she began showing up at his exhibitions. And recently, she even started calling him, asking to meet. He said he refused in an annoyed voice.

He didn’t want to meet her—not because of bitterness over lost love—but because he felt it wasn’t right to his wife, the woman who had believed in him when he had nothing. His voice was filled not with nostalgia, but with anger—anger from old wounds caused by poverty, not love.

“She made a huge mistake not choosing you. She threw away her luck.”

We all chimed in, comforting him in unison, though it didn’t quite feel like comfort.

“No matter what, we must never oppose our own children’s marriages. Got it? You hear me? Do you really hear me?”

Drunk, our friend finally poured out the pain that had stayed in his heart for years.