The next morning Inhye wakes up with the feeling of having done a huge, huge mistake. She can’t explain it, and the whole night is a blackout for her.

As if it that wasn’t already bad enough, she woke up in Hansol’s bed. No one other than her is in the room and she sees no signs of another individual sleeping in the room, so ”that” can she check off her list. But how did she get into his bed? Like, the house is quite a walk away from the barn. Did she walk all the way? Don’t tell her Johnny drove her here. Although her memory of the night isn’t too great, she at least remembers Johnny being drunk as and certainly too drunk to drive.

After lying in bed for about 15 minutes, mourning over her headache, she throws off the blanket and hauls herself so that she’s sitting on the bed. A little too fast, since the world is suddenly spinning more than before. When the world is still again, she starts walking towards the kitchen. On her way, she walks past a mirror and almost gasps. She doesn’t look good. At all. And is that a ing hickey?

”Oh,” Hansol exclaims as he notices Inhye on his way up the stairs, with a basket of laundry in his arms. ”So you’re up?”

Inhye nods, slowly since her mind is telling her not to make any fast moves if she doesn’t want the world to start spinning faster again. ”Yeah... Sorry I couldn’t help with the farm today.”

Hansol waves it off. ”Don’t worry about it, I let everyone sleep in today. I don’t get a hangover, ever, which is fortunate. But the fact that I’m doing Johnny’s laundry is not okay, and that Ten puked all over his clothes is even less okay. Tell me, why am I doing this every, single year?”

”Because you’re the best,” Inhye laughs and challenges the stairs.

”Tell me something I don’t know already.”

”Who’s cooking? It smells nice,” Inhye takes a sniff into the air and the smell of pancakes fills her system. God, she’s so hungry. And is so dry. And she is in a desperate need of an aspirin.

”Jaehyun, who else?”

”Where are the others? Still sleeping?”

”Yeah, they’re probably in the barn.”

Inhye nods and then lets Hansol walk past her as she manages to get down the stairs without falling down face first.  

When she gets inside the kitchen, it’s indeed Jaehyun cooking; professionally flipping some pancakes.

”You’re such wife material,” Inhye sighs and clumsily sit down in one of the chairs.

Jaehyun, who had obviously heard her entrance, laughs at her statement. ”Wish I could say the same to you.”

Inhye grins, then she groans. ”My head is throbbing... Do you think Hansol owns some aspirin?”

Jaehyun doesn’t answer, instead he opens one of the higher cabinets and then passes her  a box with some shady Busan-aspirin.

”This is a little too shady to me,” Inhye says after examining the package.

Jaehyun laughs. ”I agree. Fortunately for you, I have some normal aspirin in my bag that’s in the barn. Do you think you can stay alive for another five, maybe ten minutes?”

”Probably not.”

”Well, to be you.”

Inhye holds down the urge to throw the Busan-aspirin at his head.

”Do you remember what happened yesterday, by the way?” Jaehyun asks, sending her a look over his shoulder.

Inhye thinks. She remembers the beer pong, but only the first two rounds. After all, yesterday included a little too much alcohol for it to be healthy.

”Not much, do you?”

”Of course I do.”

”And you’re not gonna’ tell me?”

”Nah.”

This time she actually threw the box at him, but missed his head. Well, at least it hit his back. She’s satisfied with that.

”This is the last pancake,” he informs her. ”Let’s take them to the barn.”

They have the pancakes on two plates (hella lotta’ pancakes, for the sake of it) and starts walking towards the barn. Hansol said that he’d join them after he had finished doing the laundry.

The farm was cheerful today, the weather so great that Inhye and Jaehyun actually considered dumping the others and eat the pancakes at a beach for themselves. The birds were singing, the sky was clear blue, without a single cloud to see. Hansol’s neighbours could be seen either riding their horses or farming. Inhye loved this. As someone who has grown up in the city, she had never experienced the farm-life before.

After a long walk, they’re barely half way to the barn. Inhye can’t understand how her drunken self managed to walk all the way here without getting lost or falling down a pit and breaking her neck.

”How did I even get to the house? Can you tell me that at least?”

”I helped you,” Jaehyun responds. ”You were drunk, and sleeping between Yuta and Taeyong didn’t sound like too much fun. At least to me. And you actually passed out on top of our beer pong table next to Sicheng, so it wasn’t hard to roll you all the way to the house.”

”You rolled me?! Wow, I knew I couldn’t trust being with 10 random guys,” Inhye jokes. Then she turns towards Jaehyun. ”I’m grateful. Thank you.”

”You won’t be grateful for too long,” Jaehyun grins, thinking about some event that happened during the night. A memory flashes before Inhye, too fast to be able to remember it properly. But it did hit her in the guts, that’s for sure.

As they get to the barn, everyone was still fast asleep.

”Wakey wakey,” Jaehyun says, imitating Johnny’s English catchphrase. ”Breakfast is here.”

The response they get from everyone is impressive. Especially Ten and Johnny, as they groan loudly.

”The world is spinning,” Ten mumbles, his morning voice is raspy but still with the same tint of whininess.

”The universe,” Johnny corrects him, sitting up.

Taeyong stretches, then he sits up and Inhye’s eyes widen. His lips are swollen and there’s a crack in them, his hair is way messier than usual. Then he sees her, his eyes widen as well when he notices the hickey.

”We...” Inhye begins, reaching out to tug at Jaehyun’s sleeve. ”We didn’t, did we?”

”Do you mean you don’t remember?” Johnny says and oh why did he do that. ”You two made out in the grass right in front of us. Not even I forgot that, how the did you?”

Then it all hit Inhye at the same time. How they had fought, and then started kissing each other. She remembers it all. The feelings she had during the kiss, how she felt that those feelings were mutual. How she felt like those feelings were real. How could she forget them? Was it just another prank her mind did, pranks that weren’t unusual when you’re drunk?

”Let’s discuss that later,” Jaehyun kills the tense silence. ”First, let’s eat. We did not walk all the way here for nothing. And if anyone dares telling me what Ten and Johnny did yesterday night, I will seriously throw that person into the sea. No joke.”

Doyoung cries out, runs his hand through his hair. ”This is my last summer here, for God’s sake, I can’t do this anymore.”

”You said that last year too, hyung,” Jaehyun grins. ”Hurry now, or else Inhye and I will eat it all.”

It takes a while, but finally they’re all eating, Hansol included. The silence is killing them in the beginning, but as Ten gets some food into his system, he starts talking non-stop. He confesses that he and Johnny broke Taeil’s fence again while running away from Doyoung, and he also confesses peeing on Hansol’s crops. The horror in both of the victims’ faces is indescribable.

”Okay, next year the midsummer party can’t be at my farm.”

”You said that last year too,” Ten pouts.

”This year I mean it.”

While those two were arguing, both Taeyong and Inhye are discreetly throwing glances at each other. How is this event going to affect them? Can it just be forgotten, or will this ruin it all, their lovely friendship up until now? Can she still be his lawyer? Like, no one has to know about this, right?

”Inhye,” Yuta’s voice suddenly interrupts Inhye’s thoughts, as if he knew that she was thinking of Taeyong.

”Hm..?”

”I need to talk to you,” then he rises from his seat and is out of the barn; Inhye following suit.

Only a few minutes after they’re gone, Jaehyun groans. ”, I forgot my water bottle. Taeyongie hyung, can you get it for me?”

Taeyong has never been so fast to get out of his seat and runs out of the barn as fast as possible.

Yuta takes Inhye to the usual forest, walking on the same path that they did the first time she met him here. Then he stops, at the exact spot where he had stopped a few days ago, telling her that he still loved her. When he awakened the dead fire in her heart, that she’s been trying to turn off ever since he left.

”I’m leaving tomorrow,” Yuta says, waking Inhye up from her thoughts. ”I’m going back to Japan.”

Inhye is so taken aback by those words that she doesn’t know how to react. Similar to the first time she heard Yuta say those words. It’s dead quiet. Even the birds stopped singing.

”Tomorrow? You’re leaving tomorrow? Are you leaving suddenly again?” she doesn’t know why she’s upset, she should be happy that her douchy ex is finally leaving. Maybe somewhere, she had thought that he had changed and that maybe one day... No, that’s not it. ”This is exactly what happened last time, Yuta! You told me you loved me, and then you left m-”

”No, that’s not going to happen again,” Yuta puts his hands onto Inhye’s shoulders; Inhye too shocked by the sudden news to be able to push his hands off her. ”Come with me, I came to realise that I love you too much to be able to leave you again. If you give me another chance, I’ll never... Hurt you again. I promise.”

Come with him? Follow him to Japan? Some small part in Inhye’s mind is telling her to yes, let’s start over. She suffered so much the past year, she just wants to forget it. Let’s write over their past and just start over. Is this the power of Yuta being her first, real love? But something much bigger is stopping her. She can’t leave with him. If it’s because she knows better than to follow someone that hurt her so thoroughly like him, if it’s because she can’t trust him anymore or if it’s because of some other unknown reason, she doesn’t care. If it’s because she kissed Taeyong, if it’s because for almost four years she had (in denial) unstoppably still loved Yuta until yesterday, when she kissed Taeyong and it felt so right, she doesn’t know. All that she knows is that she can’t follow Yuta to Japan. That’d just be absurd, so out of character and so against her pride. Also, even if they were to start over, she can never forgive him. He ruined her for a whole year, he made her feel worthless. She can’t even describe how ty he made her feel.

She shakes her head and the hurt in Yuta’s eyes are a given.

”I can’t. Yuta, I can’t.” She finally pushes his hands away from her shoulders and oh how much she wants to hug him and tell him that she’s sorry. Why? She hasn’t done anything wrong. ”I don’t love you anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to love you again.”

She doesn’t know if it’s the truth or not. She hates him so much, she knows that no one would go back to someone that treated them the way Yuta treated her. But something in her heart is making her suffer. Because at the moment, when Yuta is about to leave again, her feelings from a year back awakened again and it’s like she’s there; fresh out of law school and wanted to travel the world with the love of her life. Then he tells her that he will leave. Just like now. Damn, the circumstances are so much different now compared to then, when she was so in love with him, but the memories... How hurt she was, how she felt mentally for almost a year. Those memories coming back to her makes her teary.

”I see...” Yuta nods. He laughs, weakly. ”I hurt you really bad, didn’t I?”

There’s tears in Inhye’s eyes, but she’s biting them back. It’s obvious. She nods, since she isn’t sure how her voice would handle the situation. The nod just made her feel weaker. The situation is overwhelming for Inhye, even if she wants to scream and push him and finally be able to tell him all the things she wanted to tell him for the past year, she’s just feeling sad. Sad that when he left the first time, this is how she wanted to react, but instead she tried to be happy for him, encourage him to meet his family after three years.

”Well, at least I told you that I’m leaving. I’ll be gone when you wake up. Don’t tell the others that I’m leaving.”

Inhye nods, even if she didn’t really listen to what he said, and suddenly, Yuta’s lips are pressed against her forehead. She’s taken aback, stepping backwards at the light touch. She was about to slap him, but he speaks again.

”I love you, always. If you ever change your mind, just-”

”I won’t,” Inhye says, her voice cracking. ”I won’t ever. Just... Go, Yuta.”

And so he does. He walks back the same path he came from and that’s when Inhye squats down, buries her face into her hands and cries out.

It’s because she’s my lawyer, it’s because of me; she can’t follow Yuta to Japan because she’d feel guilty for me, that she’s leaving me in the middle of the case, is what Taeyong thinks; who has developed a bad habit of eavesdropping. And an even worse habit of making bad assumptions, worst case scenarios and jumping to conclusions. He’s ashamed of it, but what can he do? There’s one thing he has to do, and that is to hurry up with this case so Inhye won’t be bound to him anymore.

Thank you all for still supporting Inhye and Taeyong although my irregular updates. Please subscribe, up-vote, comment (comment buffed, extra karma for the people!!) and as usual; enjoy~!