The flickering of the small note rested in between Myungsoo's neck and collar tickled him slightly as he fluttered his eyes awake to realise he was outside of his "home", lying on the doorstep outside in the cold alone. Half awake, he looked around to see that Soojung was nowhere to be seen. He furrowed his eyebrows at the note as he read it:

You slept on the bus back from Cheongdam-dong. I didn't know where you lived but I took your phone and there wasn’t any father or mother so I just called the "Uncle J" in your contact list and he told me to just leave you by the door step at this address and he'll come for you soon. Thanks for the beef and all. See you at school. - Soojung.

"Aish," He cursed, scratching the back of his head and he stood up, brushing the dust on his thighs. "The old man is going to kill me when he confronts me about how I skipped school for a girl." Deciding it was no use staying outside his house without a key and that his uncle wouldn't be back from his work at the company until late at night, he decided to go to Mapo via a bus.

Upon arriving, it was only 5 o'clock in the evening but the sky was already turning dim with a chilly breeze in the air. He sighed and he hopped off the vehicle and breathed out to look at the white smoke that came out shortly afterwards. Myungsoo grabbed the two ends of his tartan scarf and pulled them, making his neck warmer and cosier. It was only a short walk from the bus stop to the bridge but the thirty seconds seemed longer with every slow step he dragged along. Something about the bridge allured Myungsoo at the same time as it scared him.

Coming to a halt and gripping the bridge's edges, he looked up to the red sunset gleaming in his eyes as he reminisced about his parents who were once there to watch the sunset with him long ago. Chuckling he got the handy pen he always kept in a pocket of every item of clothing he wore (just in case) and jabbed the bridge with it, making a faint black mark along with another few hundred beside it. "Has it already been this long?" He asked himself, briefly scanning through the markings. "It's been seven years since you guys left. Seven multiplied by 365 is somewhere around 2500 days right? I don't know. I've never been good at math. 2500 days I've been coming to this bridge non-stop whether it was at night or day and still, I can't find you." He muttered, remembering what happened.

January 22nd, 2008. Mapo Bridge.

Fiddling with his toy car in the backseat of his parent's shiny black car, the young boy smiled as put the toy up to his mother's face, bragging about all of its controls. For the past week, his parents seemed to have been spending a grand amount of money on him for whatever he had desired with an emotionless face with their wrinkles showing all over their face. Kim Myungsoo had always dismissed it; he knew that they were getting old and elderly people always had wrinkles. He surely thought it was because of age and not stress at all despite hearing the words 'bankruptcy' and 'hopeless' occasionally when he'd play outside of his father's office.

It wasn't an understatement to say that Myungsoo was born into a very well-known family throughout South Korea. His parents owned a travel agent firm and made lots of money. Nevertheless, they were always stingy with it and 10 year old Kim Myungsoo never received any special treatment. He and his brother, Kim Sunggyu, were one of a kind and that was more of a reason to treat them both in the same way: neglectfully. The two adults were always outside of the house sorting business firms and checking their nationwide stores. Myungsoo and Sunggyu came to terms with the fact that the company was doing rather not-so-satisfactory from the arguing of their parents at 2 o'clock in the morning almost every day.

"Eomma, look, isn't this car so cool?" Myungsoo beamed at her, ignoring his brother rolling his eyes at him. Kim Sunggyu was already in his final grade of middle school and was educated enough to know that his little brother shouldn't be speaking up with the squeaky, obnoxious voice of his. "Look, eomma." He continued to whine as his mother's eyes twitched and his father's grip on the steering wheel tightened. They both had blood shot eyes from having no sleep at all.

Reluctantly, the lonely boy sat back down and began annoying his elder brother instead, ignoring his complaints for him to stop saying anything in the tense car. Nevertheless, he drove his toy car across the leather seats and hit Sunggyu's thighs, making him flinch.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Their mother suddenly burst out, going crazy over the sound of the wheels against leather. "For the love of God, Myungsoo just shut the hell up!" He felt his eyes swell and he dropped his toy and looked to his thighs, trying to restrain any major reaction towards her scolding him. Almost as if on cue, their father suddenly came up to a stop outside a convenience store not that far from Mapo Bridge and ordered the two boys at the back to get out and buy two cups of coffee for them both.

"You go and we'll be here waiting, if we're not here, you'll find us down there." He pointed to the bridge with a dreadful expression.

"Okay." Sunggyu muttered, opening the car door and getting out after receiving change from his father and guiding Myungsoo out the car. 

After successfully buying the two cold cans, the two sons walked towards the car to see that their parents weren't there. Signalling that they should find them by the bridge, Sunggyu started walking towards there. Turning around a corner, they couldn't find their parents. They only saw two silhouettes drastically falling off the bridge leaving nothing behind. Father's briefcase was stood upright on the pavement and Mother's coat has been left on the floor.

It took a few seconds for the young boys to realise what they had just witnessed. It was only the splash of the river that alerted them and triggered a sense of horror and a rush of tears. The eldest son knew exactly what had happened leaving the Myungsoo clueless. Perhaps it was him copying his brother's actions but at the same time as the cans of coffee dropped onto the floor with a metallic sound, so did Myungsoo's toy car. It was safe to assume that that was his 'eureka' moment.

Modern day:

As the hours passed, the high school student stood there, ignoring everyone walking by and staring at him. The temperature must have been below zero but he was numb to all coldness after thinking of the past event. Moving on from the subject of his parents, he began thinking of his brother and where he was. His memory was blurry but he was sure it happened just a couple of years after the suicide of his parents. The shock of coming into the kitchen of their one room flat and finding him with a plastic bag over his head with the ends strangling this neck traumatized him. Murder? Suicide? Myungsoo never thought about it although he was sure that suicide would never even come across his dead brother's mind. However, murder seemed plausible yet highly unlikely.

Police weren't made to investigate on the orders of their uncle seeming as it would only bring more grief to all of their relatives.

"When that boy was going to turn 18, he would have gotten the left over scraps of whatever their damned parents didn't lose."

"I feel so bad for the remaining son. What a pity."

"It's a shame; what goes up must come down."

Not a day of the two week period after Sunggyu’s death was complete without any remarks from relatives. Secretly, Myungsoo hated them all; there wasn't any sincerity in their words, instead they were only laced with pity and shame. Myungsoo wished that he could have stayed in his own home but social services came knocking down their door after he had lived alone for another 6 years, dragging him away to leave with his uncle on his father's side of the family. And that's how I'm here now. Stuck with my uncle and cousin in modern day Seoul. Myungsoo concluded his daily trip to the bridge for today with the last thought. If God has a special way of making things work, then I haven't seen it yet.

His phone received a message shortly from his uncle telling him to come home. Breathing out, he turned his body away from the edge and began walking home instead of taking the bus.