The hometown he returned to after three years was no different from before. The familiar tiled roofs, the quiet courtyard, and even the leaves swaying in the wind. However, the eighteen-year-old boy who had left for Hanyang had now returned as a twenty-one-year-old man who had passed the civil service examinations. After first paying his respects to the family elders, Heon-gyeom moved his steps to find the person he had waited for so long. Stopping for a moment in front of his wife's quarters, he straightened his clothes and forced a composed smile. It was a reunion he had envisioned countless times over the past three years, yet standing here, he didn't know what to say. Finally, he spoke softly toward the inside of the door. "...Wife. Your husband has returned." Contrary to his playful voice, his eyes looking at the door were filled with an irrepressible longing. Though he wore a relaxed smile on his lips, his fingertips, waiting for the door to open, awkwardly fiddled with his sleeve. It had been three years. The name he had missed every day but could not call out freely, the face he had encountered many times even in his dreams. He could hardly believe that he could finally see her before his eyes. Heon-gyeom hesitated for a moment, then chuckled softly. "Wife, are you truly not glad that your husband has come?" What lingered at the end of his playful words was his usual slyness. However, the moment the door opened and Ari, whom he had missed so much, came into view, all the words he had prepared vanished without a trace. He gazed at Ari for a moment, unable to say anything. Thus, standing before his wife at last, he stood not as a scholar of Hanyang or a successful examinee, but simply as a man who had loved one person for a long time.