Metaphorically, Kim Nayoung has been living through winter and another winter for the last ten years. Or more. Depending on how far her trip down the memory lane and how bitter her morning coffee is, another metaphor to what she’s feeling that day. Or, for the last ten, or more, years. Bitterness. Nayoung relaxes in her office chair, resting the back of her head against the sloping edge of the chair’s top, and she skims through pages of mental personal journal.

Not-metaphorically, Kim Nayoung is just a week away from May. Midway through the spring season, Nayoung shivers like per winter. Brrr. Metaphorically, because last time she checked, her air conditioner was set to the usual temperature. Suhyun hasn’t stepped into her office to wreck her life, meaning nobody has tampered with the temp… yet.

Taking the matter from a more spiritual point of view, the cold is the link’s fault.

She’s used to the warmth spreading from the link, swerving through her veins and even the tiniest mini-veins, and she’d be warm all over. Kim Sejeong seems to live off love. What a lovey-dovey marriage she has with Hongbin… had. With her object of affection six feet under the ground, Sejeong lost her sun, Nayoung lost her moon, and time froze over at some stormy night in December.

Nayoung runs a hand through her hair. Where’s that damn idiot?! Ten minutes past the time he promised and my desk is still devoid of his report! An hour away from the presentation meeting! And no Q&A and Technical division report in sight!

A flurry of soft knocks slip through her ears. She corrects her sitting position and pushes the bridge of her glasses. “Come in.”

The idiot in question is a man whose name Nayoung couldn’t really remember. Some Lee. Some typical name like Dong… something. His movement is erratic, almost panicked, and he closes the door not in a way someone who’s been working for five years or more would.

He stands, tired, two meters away from Nayoung’s desk. Nayoung jerks one quizzical brow, motioning him to speak up.

“I’d like to apologize. My incompetency is at fault, for not being able to finish the report on time, but – “

Classic. “Cut it short, since after I’m done listening to your complete, utter horse dung of badly-fabricated fictional happenings,” Nayoung pauses to inhale, “I’d need some time to get someone else to finish the job. Someone capable.”

“No, ma’am, I mean, the report is halfway done…”

“Finish it?”

“I’m unable to, now, I mean,” the way his hands, on the side, reflexively claws on his pants, tells Nayoung a lot about how much of a wimp this Lee-something Dong-something is, “I… I came here to ask for a… a permission to pass the job to someone else, s-since I have to go for the rest of the day—“

“What?”

“It’s my wife. My wife is sick and no one’s available to watch my kid. She’s too small to take care of herself—”

What is this guy’s problem? “And I have no time to spare for your sob story. Save it for the winter season when all the local channels do re-runs of Home Alone’s. Go home.”

“Why – I – yes, th-thank you, ma’am.”

“And by ‘go home’, I mean, ‘go home so I can pluck someone from your division to take over your position’.” Nayoung studies his shocked complexion, pulls her glasses carefully, and wipes the dust at the top-left corner. “You’re fired.”

“Wh, wha—“

“Now shoo.”

It takes a strenuous amount of shooing for the man to finally limply quit trying to weave stories into a semblance of a proper sob story, but she manages to fire the man once and for all by the time she finishes wiping her glasses clean, the rimless round glasses now spotless clean. Nayoung admires her handiwork. The glasses give out a small glint under the too-lit lamps.

It feels almost too peaceful, but that too comes to an end when Suhyun strolls into her office without knocking beforehand. Much to her intense disappointment, and she makes sure Suhyun could see it.

“Harsh, boss-nim.”

She graces Suhyun a glare. Her friend crosses her arms above her chest. “Eavesdropping. Classic. How much more 7 PM K-Drama can this day be?”

Suhyun shrugs and strolls to the empty sofas designed for guests and meddling friends. Scratch the plural into a singular. “I mean, you’re an . That much is a fact… but you’re going to use up your quota fast. He’s the third guy you fired today and it’s still 1 PM. 1 PM!”

“Because it is 1 PM. In my defense, we have an agenda. The division presentation. He will be there.” She stretches an arm, aligns her thumb, index, and middle fingers together to form a finger-gun and aims it at Suhyun’s deep-etching frown. “He could kill me. He could kill you. Death sounds tempting, but I’d rather die of natural causes than his hands. Less dirty.”

“Your dad ain’t Al Capone, what the .”

“Not for you.” The finger-gun is jabbed at her own temples now. “Yes for me. What Al Capone? He’s the devil child of Richard Kuklinski, product of some damned fragmentation. I don’t believe in reincarnation.”

“Don’t you have even a fiver of humanity?” Suhyun isn’t even looking at her anymore now, preferring to thumb through old fashion magazine some sponsor brought for sample, months ago. “Were you always this pissy?”

“Not until Hongbin kicked the bucket.”

“Well, yeah, suppoooosedly, you don’t give a hoot about him.”

“It’s not Hongbin, okay,” she slaps an arm to her shirted chest, for emphasis, aside from her gritted teeth, “it’s her. The wife. K… Kim Sejeong. The link is driving me crazy and my mind is a mess.”

“She’s grieving.”

“I’m grieving over my situation.”

“You’re not the one losing your life partner.”

“I’m losing my sanity.”

“Is it that bad—“

Her phone’s ringtone – her personal phone, made for personal calls, last time someone dialed it, it was some light years ago – cut through Suhyun’s frustration-induced question (or statement, since it’s cut prematurely). Nayoung holds up a hand for Suhyun’s taut eyebrows and graces an answer to the call. A number. Unknown as of yet. Could it be? “K, Kim Nayoung speaking.”

“Hey—it’s Kim Sejeong.” A pause. Nayoung hears a sharp intake of breath over the shaky line. “Hongbin’s wife.”

Her stuttering is almost something of a reflex. She attributes it to her jumbled mind. “I, I see. I do remember. What, what is it?”

“It’s… I need your help. Something happened to my phone the other day and I lost all my contacts and I have no idea who to call… so I dialed the number you gave me. The business card, remember? And… and Mina. She’s missing.”

“What?” Nayoung tries to picture Mina. The kid with the wife’s eyes, the white reddened with exhaustion, and Hongbin’s nose, the tip pink from sniffling too hard.

“Her teacher contacted me… said that she’s nowhere to be found since an hour ago. I need your help – I can’t leave right now.”

Nayoung could barely make out her words. Her reception is top-notch; her father had set up routers and the company picked the most strategic of lots possible. The question is, where in the world is Kim Sejeong? “Y-y-you want me to find your kid?!”

“Yes… if it isn’t too much to ask for. I—I have no one else I could turn to…”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“…please,”

It’s the one word. That one word that could thaw any hailstorm into a harmless drizzle. Nayoung, herself, is in a spasm over the thought of pulling a mansearch over a kid, not of her relevance. Some random kid her dead not-brother spawned after one fateful ion that left her the only Kim available to go down Kuklinski Kim’s path. Nayoung loathes mansearches, loathes her Director Seat, loathes the fact that she couldn’t say ‘no’ to Kim Sejeong’s one-word plea. Not even the cheap reception could muffle the ‘please’ enough for it not to affect her this lots.

“I… I’ll try.”

“Thank you. I must go now – “ Nayoung hears a lot of shuffling. It sounds like Kim Sejeong pulls the phone some distance away from her as she speaks to another person. “I, I’m really sorry. I really, really need to go now… also, thank you very much. I’ll find a way to repay you.”

“No need…”

“If you find her please contact me as soon as possible… oh. I’ll send you a pic of Mina and her preschool’s address.”

“Y, you got it. You got me. And, um. Yeah. J, just send them through my personal Ka... KakaoTalk account.”

The click rings like a finality. Somehow, Director Kim has a “mansearch” added into her agenda, an hour away from the lethal division report meeting and her father will be there to witness her empty seat as she roams through streets of Seoul. To quench Suhyun’s confused stare, she tries to explain the situation in a way that won’t paint her as a whipped buffoon, but alas, Suhyun is the better people-person.

“Well, well,” Suhyun walks to her desk, hips swaying, truly taunting.

“Well, well, well, someone needs to get outta my office quick before I backhand somebody. Somebody in this room that isn’t me.”

“You need me.”

Nayoung’s eyes scan Suhyun from her hips up to her smug face as the latter settles herself comfortably leaning against the edge of her desk… and the most bile thing to swallow is the fact that Suhyun has a point. She needs a substitute. Someone to represent her for the meeting she’s going to ditch all due to a preschooler’s delinquency (or, an act of abduction, but she’s trying remain positive). And who’s better suited than Lee Suhyun, her personal secretary, and Bullting Extraordinaire? Suhyun wins.

Her phone, rested on her desk, buzzes a small tremor and pings a low-volume notification as the screen lights up. Hurriedly, she opens Sejeong’s KKT messages and finds an address (the preschool) and a photo attached to it. Not a portrait of just Kim Mina, the photo has Kim Sejeong and the child smiling (brightly?) at the camera. The Sun is sitting on a swing in some park she’s been to before but couldn’t name, and Mini-Sun is just beside her, also on a swing. The photo was taken by a third person, it seems.

Judging from the (bright) smiles, Nayoung has an idea who this “third person” might be.

(She doesn’t like this itching feeling of considering herself inferior…)

Well, Hongbin is (was?) their sun.

“Fine.”

“Say the words,”

Nayoung swallows and her spit tastes bitter and it shouldn’t be. “I neeeeeed you, Suhyun. Though, I’ll try to make it. Emphasis on try. I won’t not make it.”

Suhyun pets her cheek and explodes in smiles and squeals. Nayoung would never understand why. “Okay. ‘Cause it’s you, my favorite awkward E.T who has no idea how to function in society. It even rhymes.”

Nayoung leaves Suhyun to her own device and takes out her other phone, one that’s down for business matters, and dials someone who can help her cut down the amount of time she has to spent in the kid-search. Im Nayoung is a “friend” from back then, a private detective.

“Hello?”

She doesn’t waste much time in explaining the situation. The detective is a simple woman living a not-so-simple life, so she cuts things down to simplicity. She doesn’t ask much. “Send me her photo and her last known location; I’ll ring you when I’ve tracked her down.” This kind of work ethic is a nice break from Nayoung’s… Suhyunful days.

Exhibit one, the preschool’s address. Exhibit two, a photo of the Sun and her Mini-Sun. All sent.

With that taken care of, she bids Suhyun a farewell (“Don’t play with the temp. Don’t touch my desk. Or, better yet, kick yourself outta my office.”) and marches to the parking lot with a frown etching deeper than the trenchest of trench. Hopefully, scouring through streets and even the most desolate alleys will distract her mind enough. Or, at the very least, the sewer rats will.
 

The whole abduction plot was just her overactive daydream, all along.

Ten meters after she took off from her office (trying to ignore the confused stare from others, because, Director Kim doesn’t leave this early!), the detective pinged her a coordinate which, when punched into her GPS, showed a park just a few meters away from the preschool. Right now, she’s a few meters away from the park, but she isn’t sure whether she’s mentally prepared to take on a kid. A grieving kid.

Way, way worse than a grieving woman, because at the very least adults know how to deal with socially awkward ‘E.T’s. Not kids.

Until her phone, the personal, rarely-used one, blares its ringtone, a default set of high-pitched bell rings. She slips the phone between her ear and her shoulder, both hands still on the wheel. “It’s Kim Nayoung.”

“I’m sorry but have y— um. This is Kim Sejeong. Hongbin’s wife.”

I don’t have a goldfish memory! And there’s no way in hell I could forget the reason behind my migraines! “K… Kim Nayoung.”

“Okay. Umm… about Mina.”

“Yes…?”

“No, I mean, I. You didn’t reply my texts, so I thought you haven’t worked on it— or, maybe it was too much… you have works, right?”

“No. Ummm… I. I’m on the way there. I’ll text you the place she should be in. I have her tracked down already.”

“Oh my god, thank you. Wait, tracked down…? Meaning, you hired—“

“Yes.” She kills the engine off, done parking, just beside the park. “Gotta go now.”

“Okay… thank you so much Miss Kim—“

Nayoung’s thumb puts an end to the call prematurely and she realizes her grave mistake. I, I probably came off as rude as hell…? There’s no CPR worthy to save the awkwardness of the situation and she’s not human enough to apologize about it later. So she bounces out of her BMW X1 (all-new, shiny, and parked beside a dingy park that collects dusts more than patrons!), stretches her limbs, then marches on after she realizes she’s in a race with time.

Yeongdeongpu is a fairly not-so-Seoul-like part of Seoul, so it lacks the individualism as much as it lacks the gaudy skyscrapers and million won cars and a not-so-industrialized air. Nayoung remembered passing by the park a few times. Unlike a park she passed by on the way there, this one, much smaller in size and rustier in age, is nearly devoid of any life. The jungle gym isn’t as intricately designed as the newer park. The swings don’t look as exciting with no one around. People flock for the better packaged.

Fickle people!

The park only holds two patrons: an old man feeding pigeons and a downcast-looking marshmallow playing Iskandar of The Macedonia atop the jungle gym. Sitting, lonely at the top. Literally.

Nayoung can feel a migraine incoming.

Her approach is careful. Kim Mina spares her a glance and that’s it, as turns her head back and looks straight. “H, hey. Remember me?”

At first, her answer is silence, but it’s hard to ignore someone who’s dressed for business but is in some deserted park instead of the office. She looks conspicuous, especially compared to the colorful monkey bars and creaky playground equipment.

“You’re from daddy’s—“ she stops, and Nayoung receives a deep crease of frown, “I dunno you. I dunno that day.”

“W-wha? That day happened! And you know me!”

Throwing some sense into a kid is a futility and she should’ve known that from the get-go. Kim Mina puffs her cheeks (can they get any more balloon-y!?) and looks away.

“Umm… Mina, is it? Can you, umm, come down? Your mother is looking for you…”

“I’m looking for something too.”

“No, you aren’t. Come down.”

“No.”

“You little—“ No cussing, Nayoung, that’s someone’s kid you were about to taint, “—anyway. Nice impression of Rapunzel, but I’m not all about that posey life! Come down.”

Mina gives her a quizzical look before she loses her interest on her entirely. And continues to look straight ahead, to what, Nayoung doesn’t know.

One thing for sure… she’s going to fail this whole ordeal.

“Ummmm, Mina?”

Silence.

“Heyyy, come on, please come down.”

Five more attempts at reverse-persuasion, Mina finally utters a sentence: “You come up here first.”

“What.” Nayoung feels her eyes gaping behind her specs. “I’m not dragging you down. You come down.”

“You scared?”

She knows the kid is egging her on. Still, her mind is a jumbled mess of anything and everything right now and her patience is running thin. That, and she detests the feelings of being looked down upon. Literally. Having to crane her neck because Kim Mina is high up there is draining.

I didn’t skip work for this !

Nayoung scoffs, kicks up dirt and dirties her leather shoes, and looks around for help.

Not the old man and his strange predilection with pigeons.

She spots a small ice cream shop beside the park, devoid of any customer and the stand itself looks like it’s barely hanging onto its doleful days.

Kim Mina follows her gaze, to the rickety ice cream stand and the empty small tables scorched under the unrelenting sun. Summer at its finest. No wonder Nayoung is even more bothered than ever.

Kim Mina. Ice cream. Ohhh.
 

Nayoung comes back to the throne of metal bars with two small cups of ice cream, one chocolate flavored and the other vanilla. She looks up and sees Empress Kim Mina looking back at her, the kid’s eyes traveling lower to her right hand, then to the plastic bag carrying the ice cream cups. Hook, line, and sinker!

“I have these,” Nayoung brings the plastic bag up and shakes it tauntingly, “so you, umm… you might want to come down…”

She isn’t good at taunting, but it looks like it’s working, judging from Kim Mina’s parted lips.

“No.”

…or not.

A quick glance at her wrist watch tells her that she’s not going to make it to the meeting. At the same time, she couldn’t just leave Kim Mina alone. She already ‘okay’-ed through Kim Sejeong’s favor, and if taking care of her maybe-suicidal kid could give her a peace of mind for the night (just for this night! She needs a break!) then she’s willing to go down to the very end.

“Uggghhh, fine. Two can play the game.”

Begrudgingly, Nayoung takes her shoes off and sets them inside the jailing bars of the jungle gym. She ties the handles of the plastic bag around her wrist to free her right hand and climbs a step at a time, pulling her weight with her.

At some point, her joints make some popping noises and palms hurt like hell for grasping on the bars too strong (she’s lowkey afraid of height, okay?!) and she tries hard to tune out Kim Mina’s mocking laughs. It’s not her fault she isn’t made of pig iron! Muscles have no place in the world of business.

She carefully climbs over to Kim Mina’s side, eyes anywhere but on the ground below. When she balances her on the sloping bars, perfect for sitting since her back could also rest, Kim Mina’s laugh diminishes. “You made it.”

“I have a name.”

“I dunno your name.”

Nayoung frowns as she unties the plastic bag from her wrist. “It’s Nayoung. Kim Nayoung. I, I guess… you can call me, um, auntie?”

Silence shrouds them. The little girl mulls while Nayoung takes the time to free the cups from the plastic bag. The bag parachutes down to the ground below. “Nayoung.”

“I, it’s Auntie Nayoung, you Schmuck Jr.!”

She eyes Kim Mina’s taut eyebrows. She has Hongbin’s eyes. “No. Nayoung.”

Nayoung grumbles, then hands Kim Mina the chocolate-flavored one along with its small plastic spoon. “For you. Only ‘cause I need your mother to stop being so, so, so mopey. Tell her to get a hobby or something – she’s driving my insane!”

Kim Mina isn’t reluctant at all when she snatches the ice cream. Nayoung shakes her head and mutters a, opportunist!, under her breath. While Kim Mina digs her dessert, Nayoung decides to get to the main course: the persuasion bit of this whole mansearch.

“Kim Mina… why did you run off?”

“No reason,” she says, and she goes back to slurping her ice cream.

“Your mother is worried and—and once you’re done, we’re getting off this jungle gym.” Nayoung tries to sound stern. It sounds stern in her head.

“No.”

“W, why?! I, I mean. Don’t you want to go home?”

“No.” A pause, but Nayoung knows she still has something to say. “Daddy isn’t home.”

“Your dad is dead!” Nayoung turns around and the kid does too, at the same time, and Nayoung begins to panic when she sees water filling up the preschooler’s eyes. “No. No no no no, non, non! Don’t cry! OH MY GOD!”

But Kim Mina doesn’t, perhaps at the embarrassment of crying in front of a stranger. She turns away and spoons a mouthful. “H-he is. But… he used to take me here.”

The Director stays quiet. She waits.

“We used to play here a lot… in this park. Not the other one. Not the cooler one.”

“Yeah, this one looks .”

“This place has dad,” Kim Mina pauses, perhaps, struggling with juggling both conversation and trying to swallow down her sobs, “and I’m gonna be here till night.”

“Why?”

“I wanna see the stars.”

“We can see them in the planetarium. F, for now you need to go home, you know?”

“What’s plan… plante…?”

“You’ve never been there before?” She watches Kim Mina shaking her head slowly. “Hongbin is such a friggin’ tool. You have to go there some time. It’s a place where you can see the stars… or planets… or other space things, through a telescope.” Nayoung uses her free hand (the other is holding her still-sealed vanilla cup) to balls her fist while leaving a hole in the middle and puts the makeshift scope in front of an eye. “The telescope looks cool, too. Makes you feel like it’s 2036.”

“Oh. I don’t need to go to the… pla… platereum,”

“Planetarium.”

“Pla… terium. I just need to see the stars. I told Miss Heo… told her I need to see the stars. She laughed and called me weird. I just need to see the stars.”

“Umm, being weird isn’t necessarily bad.” Nayoung slowly lowers her hand. “W, well, it to be different I guess.”

“They say, when people go out, they become stars.”

“Oh.”

“God is also with the stars.”

“Hmmm…”

“I need to see stars,” and she listens to Kim Mina choking on her sobs, sees Kim Mina’s cheeks rosy as tears stream down, all in side-profile, “I need to ask God for my dad…”

Maybe someone told her all this bullcrap. Or maybe she read that from a book without realizing it was a fantasy fiction, but Kim Nayoung the Terrible doesn’t feel like being her usual Terrible self, so she stays mum instead of laying out facts that dead people are dead, and texts Kim Sejeong their location right now. There’s a gentle tug as her message is marked ‘read’, perhaps from Kim Sejeong’s relief.

“Nayoung. I wanna be alone.”

“I’m alone too.” She sighs. “Can’t we be alone together? It to be alone… alone.” It really . I know about it.

The rest, they spend the time in silence. Kim Nayoung the Busy doesn’t even want to think about the meeting. Right now, at the very least, the least she could do is to slurp on her ice cream and stays beside the grieving kid. Not the stars; at the very least, someone is there beside her to hear her choked sobs.
 

When her mother arrives, the child has been leaning against her right arm for the last a half an hour or so, dozing off. Nayoung sighs in relief as Kim Sejeong’s figure approaches the jungle gym, because, finally, she’ll be able to move her arm again once the kid’s out of the picture.

“Oh my god,” Kim Sejeong gapes, half-amused, “what are you two doing up there?”

“A, ask your kid.”

Kim Sejeong, in the getup of a dress shirt and a pencil skirt, sets her footwear aside and begins to climb the bars. Instead of pulling herself to the very top, she only lets her head past the topmost bars, as she rests her chin on the metal while her grips are on the bars below it. “How long has she been asleep?”

“A half an hour… or a century.”

“Sorry. Mina sleeps after she cries; she acts tough and chick to strangers but now, as you can see, she’s just one small squishy soft inside.”

“S-squishy soft.”

“Yes.” Kim Sejeong looks at her this time. “Thank you for staying with Mina… I, I don’t know how to repay you, really.”

“Um. We… can talk about it later, but first…”

Sejeong the Sun chuckles again. Her eyes look really pretty when she laughs – they resemble half of a moon. “Confession?”

“Y, yeah?”

“I couldn’t monkey climb. Her dad taught her and they tried to teach me… but I knocked some sense into them because I just couldn’t.”

“Ohh. Oh god.”

“Can you wake her up? Just shake her lightly.”

“I… I tried.” She really did. There’s a reason why she hasn’t been able to move her arm for half an hour. “You do it…?”

To aid, Nayoung lets go of the now-empty ice cream cup and stretches the arm to Kim Sejeong as the latter slowly, reluctantly, holds it tight as a support. Kim Sejeong’s movement is slow, unsure, and she’s slightly trembling, so Nayoung tells her to avert her eyes from the ground (“J, j, j- just look at me!”) and it somehow works. Kim Sejeong laughs as she nearly loses her footing. Nayoung pulls her closer and, due to the limited space the jungle gym’s top holds, Kim Sejeong crawls closer and her hair hits Nayoung’s nose.

She smells of citrus. It suits the summer theme. Her soul gets all clammy and shivery even though they’re under the sun of 4 PM. Even though it’s summer. Why so?

Kim Sejeong sets herself beside her daughter. There’s a still slumbering Kim Mina between them.

“Thanks. For the umpteenth time,”

“It’s… okay. I was just – I’d rather not deal with an injured adult… you know?”

“An injury caused by falling from a jungle gym. My students will never let me live.” Kim Sejeong runs a hand through Kim Mina’s shoulder-length hair. “Mina, mina? Wake up…”

After a round of soft shaking, Kim Mina’s eyes flutter open, slowly, and Nayoung heaves her breath in glee when Kim Sejeong pulls Mina’s bobbing head to her side.

Mina stays awake for another three minutes before dozing off, again. At least Nayoung could flex her right arm now.

“I hope Mina didn’t bother you much.”

“Oh. Ohh. N-nope. She’s… nice.”

“Good…” Kim Sejeong brushes her child’s hair, infused with what Nayoung would peg as motherly affection, because of how alien it is to her, “I mean, Mina could be a handful at times. She’s nice, but you know how being ‘nice’ isn’t the ‘in’ thing these days.”

Delinquency is this decade’s black leather jacket. Not surprised that fetuses might even want to follow the trend. “Yeah…”

“I had… something I really needed to attend.” She sounds sorry, Nayoung picks up. “Did you ask her why she snuck out of her school?”

“She… wanted to see the stars.”

“The stars?”

“She wanted to talk to her dad.”

Kim Sejeong laughs, hushed as to not awake her snoring kid, and the laugh gradually melts into something forced. Something more depressing. It almost sounds like a wail. “Mina, Mina. That’s not how reality works.”

“I didn’t tell her that, though… please let her keep on believing.”

“No. At this rate she might climb to the roof every night! I’m not good with height. Our apartment is an old, rusty block with mostly senile people living there, and I couldn’t ask people with frail backs to snatch Mina from the roof. That’d be homicide.”

Conversation dies down between them. There’s not much to talk about except one, and it feels like an elephant in the room. Especially now that they’re pretty much alone, (the old man left some time ago; the pigeons gone with his absence) almost, almost divinely alone, it’s like Fate is nudging them. Talk about it. Now or never.

“Hey,” Kim Sejeong breaks the silence, “you do realize that we are… soulmates, right?”

Very much so! “I do.”

“I’ve always thought Hongbin was mine. He told me so. So… I guess, all the time he said ‘I know what you’re feeling right now’ is just one big lie to keep the marriage at peace, you know? To kill of doubts. We were a runaway couple, after all.”

“Yes…” Hongbin was an extraordinarily people person, then. Or. He’s a mind-reading Silurian. The latter is easier to believe.

“I believed it for years… until he—he died. Even amidst the emotions I felt at the time… I could still feel it. The link was still there. It’s still here, right now, even now. And when we met, you must’ve felt it too. The link. All this time, we are each other’s.”

Nayoung sees Kim Sejeong’s face, sporting an expression she couldn’t read. Like she’s focusing on something she couldn’t see.

“This is just ed up. My ‘soulmate’ is my sister-in-law.” Kim Sejeong’s laugh is humorless. “God surely loves black comedy.”

“True…”

“What to do now?”

Nayoung gazes at her taut fingers, interlaced, all of them mulling alongside her. Her thumb grazes her other thumb repeatedly. Her mind is away. “I, I dunno. I mean, at some point, we have to… g-get together. I mean. We’re ‘destined’, or ‘meant to be’, or whatever… but it’s okay to not follow the fate sometimes. Fate… cheated you. You should… cheat back, I guess.”

“Do you always stutter when you talk?’

“I’m not good with people…”

Kim Sejeong giggles. “I don’t bite.”

“A, anyway. It’s okay to play against the rules sometimes. We don’t have to be… you know…”

“We’ll see. For now, though, I’m so tired I need a warm hot bath… by the way, you’re not afraid of height right? ‘Cause we need to get down and I think I need your helping hand. Again.”

“Um, okay, okay, I’ll be really, really, honest. Height scares me.”

“Oh god.”

But Kim Sejeong is just so bright, too bright, like she’s the sun, so, when Kim Sejeong hoists Mina with her arm while her other reaches out for Nayoung’s, for balance, the link shakes. Nayoung blinks, focus awry, cheeks aflame. She isn’t used to something so pretty.

The whole situation is simply put, ed up, indeed. It’s the kind of mess that all the gods, all the seraphs, all the noble-winged and the fallen, and the rest of the divination, envy. Judging from their equally ed up sense of novelty, Nayoung concludes that, it must be boring high up there in the heaven.

She’s warm all over. Overly warm all over. A side-effect from physical contact with The Sun.

They fall.
 

Note(s): [1] Will be a while till I update this or SHS101 ‘cause it’s D-16 to my college entrance exams ;__; but don’t worry, I’ll still be around. I won’t drop these fics. Already promised myself to keep on writing till Kim debuts D:<