They’ve been in the doomed city for two days, yet Cha Eungi hasn’t left their room at all. They rent an apartment on the outskirt of the city center, since Eungi avoid being too close to the main attractions just in case anything bad happen again in Paris. Both of them have been relying on take outs that’s available one block away from the apartment and they spent most of their days just by watching TV and talking to each other.

She never thought it’ll be easy to conquer her own trauma, but she didn’t think it’ll be this hard either. They didn’t really have a well mapped out plan on what to do once they arrived and now Kyuhyun is relying all progress to Eungi since he doesn’t want to be the pusher that force her to get her done immediately. It’s the second afternoon they spend in Paris, and the day spent as if they’re in their safe homes back in Seoul. Eungi still doing her daily routine such as reading books and write in her laptops and Kyuhyun is fighting all kinds of annoyance he feels deep inside from the ignorance she has towards the situation. If it’s up to him, he’d want her to go through her business of facing her old trauma soom enough so they can move on and get back to South Korea immediately. He doesn’t mind the idea of a vacation in Europe with his girlfriend, but a vacation with this kind of agenda is certainly not a dream gateway for anyone.

Instead of going around to the city, Cha Eungi is now sitting on the floor staring blankly ahead with heaven only knows what’s occupying her mind. Eungi’s aware that Kyuhyun has starting to be a bit impatient by the second day when he asked if they’re going to do something and she only replied with a shrugs of her shoulders. If she were in his position, she’d probably had snap long before this and she appreciates his patience over her needs—she appreciates it more than he might think.

*Pict belongs to Park Seul

The dusk is taking over as the brightness of day begins to disappear when Kyuhyun silently takes a seat on the floor next to her, hugging his knees while following her gaze to the distance as he’s trying to get comfortable in the awkward atmosphere created ever since they got here. She snaps out of her daydream as their shoulders brushes against each other and her first reaction is to leans her head on top of his broad shoulder then takes in his masculine aroma to calm herself down.

“I’m sorry.” She whispers. “I thought I had a plan but I got cold feet the moment we landed here.”

“It’s okay..”

“It’s not okay, Kyu. Just because I don’t say it to your face doesn’t mean I didn’t notice how my behavior had annoyed you.” She slides closer to him so she can hug him closer.

“I.. well it’s just a little bit awkward honestly.” Kyuhyun takes his arms away from his knees to caress her hair.

“I don’t know where to start.” She admits. “How can I begin this healing process if I don’t even know where to start—I don’t even have enough courage to step out of this apartment.”

“Noona, it’s a very traumatic event for you. Of course you’ll need some time to deal with it.”

Eungi takes a deep breath and finds a comfortable position to leans completely onto his body, Kyuhyun is now spreading his legs so Eungi can sit in between them and he cradles her like a child.

“I tried to write down a draft for my book and I got goosebumps just by replaying it in my head.”

“Maybe saying it out loud before you write it down will help more? What’s your progress so far, noona?”

She chuckles, “Just the big draft plan of how the book will go and early chapters.”

“Can I read it?”

She shakes her head immediately.

She’s not even sure if that’s the decent way to begin her book and she’s certain that Kyuhyun won’t like the early chapters at all since she uses those early chapters to introduce her reader about Siwon and what kind of decent man he really was. She uses the next chapter after that to explain how it all started between them and how much they were in love before all the goodness are taken away from her.

No, she can’t let Khyuhyun read that. she knows it’ll hurt him and that’s the least she wants to do to the man that’s now trying his best to catch up with her pace, to the man that’s now holding her close to comfort her, to a man that’s now occupying every spaces of her heart and her mind. He will read the final book eventually but she’s sure that she’d be able to express her feelings for him by then so he won’t feel belittled when he learns her history with Siwon—but now is not the right time for that, she hasn’t tell him how she feels and letting him read the early chapters will ruin everything they try to build right now.

“You can read the book once I finished it, now it’s still too messed up.” She comes up with a bad lie. “And actually I kinda lost courage as I continue to the important chapter.”

“Which was?”

“The massacre.” She buries her face even deeper in the curve of his neck, “somehow it went blurry to me in some scenes and I can’t fight my own fear to reveal what really happened.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” He doesn’t know why he suggested it. If Eungi wants a blow-by-blow scenery of her own tragedy, Kyuhyun has the recorded CCTV video that he watched back then but that’s the last option he will offer her—and he wishes he’ll never have to show her that.

“Will you be okay if I talk about it?”

“Try me.”

She moves away from him to turns her position to face him then crosses her legs so she still sits in between his spread legs. “Stop me whenever you feel like it, okay?”

He nods before he mirrors her position to crosses his own legs before he listen carefully to what she has to say.

Eungi takes a deep breath then closes her eyes. “I remember we were having dessert when it occurred. The silent of the night was broken by the screech of tires on the asphalt and I remember we both looked to the source of the sound.” She begins to dig her own memory.

Kyuhyun takes her hand and play with her finger as he listens to her.

“I remember I saw the firearms taken away from the back of the masked men and that’s the last scene I could remember before I was pushed onto the floor. Moments later I heard the continuous blaring sound as the glass shattered all around me and I remember that I heard screaming from the family next to me. At the time, the ground felt like shaking and I could feel his heavy body is pressing against mine while he framed my whole upper body with his arms.” She’s still closing her eyes as she tries to squeezes the bad memory out of her brain.

Kyuhyun isn’t sure of his own feelings right now. He likes the fact that Eungi is now being completely open to him yet he feels like crap at the same time—he knows Eungi is not comparing both of them but the more he knows about Siwon, the more insecure he gets whenever he’s around her.

“People said it was only three minutes before it stopped, but it felt like eternity to me.” Eungi continues. “I thought when they stopped shooting everything will be fine again and I was wrong. When the gunshot stopped, the silent of the night took over again and it was a terrifying silence, I turned my head to look around me and saw these puddles of blood everywhere. The screaming family next to me didn’t scream anymore since they’ve lost their lives and the one that covered me from those bullets are fighting for his last breath.” She can feel her eyes gets hotter as she begins to retell the painful part of her story.

Eungi takes her hair up and hold it in her right shoulder before she leans in closer to Kyuhyun to shows her left shoulder then points a vague scar that runs from her shoulder to the upper back of her skin.

“This scar is all I got in my body from that horrible event.” Her tears fall in the end. “He was sheltering me and all I got was this scar that penetrated from the shattered glass. He drew his last breath not long after, those bullets pierced through his lungs on several places and the fact that he still able to say his last words to me was already a miracle. But still, that’s not the worst part. The worst part is having the paramedic came over to check on everyone, they took the survivors out of the restaurant for vital check in the ambulance—and the dead, they all immediately put in the body bags.”

She bites her lips to fight her emotion while taking some deep breath before she continues.

“Body bags, Kyu.” She tries to chuckles but failed to do so, “Those people are honorable people, they deserved a decent parting, they deserved to be treated politely even though their souls are no longer intact on their bodies—but body bags?! The man just saved my life and the best treatment he got was the orange zippered tarpaulin with a name tag on his toe.”

“All the wounded were taken to the hospital and that day was the day when I wished I could just shut out myself from the world. It was crowded and noisy, the phone keeps on ringing and even the survivors begin to lose their life in the hospital. That was also the time that I learned that the massacre didn’t just happened in the restaurant but throughout several crowded spots in Paris. I can’t even remember how I got myself back to Seoul the next day, I think some people from the embassy helped me with it but I can’t really remember since I was heavily sedated also.”

Her body begins to shake from the pieces of memories she managed to gather. Months have passed yet she still feel the fear creeping into her veins whenever she picture the chaos happened around her that time. it was already hard enough for her to witness her own fiance’s death, but being in the hospital that day she also saw many people lost their lives and many raltives of the dead are wailing their heart out when they learned about the news.

To her, the moment after the massacre was actually the worst part.

Kyuhyun notice that Eungi has been quiet for more than five minutes while she’s trying to collects herself. “Noona, have you tried counseling?” He’s been dying to ask this question since he learned about what happened to her.

Eun