<1>

When he starts talking about his past love (not a particular one, but more like a story of whom he refers as someone else, but she knows), Jieun scratches her fingers against each other, because she never expects this to happen. Two people, from different worlds, in different love stories, feel different infatuations, have different minds, now end up being here talking about their things. And as she is listening to his words, her mind keeps telling her to stop comprehending it, and translating it into her words; but she did. And while she is translating, she finds the assimilation. She hates that she relates her own things to his, but she already did.

Jiyong notices that her eyes become teary, all of a sudden he stops. Jieun is still looking at him, and when their eyes meet for more than five seconds, Jiyong feels something in his heart that he wants to deny, or delete.

“So he gave up.” Jiyong ended his words abruptly, as how his stupid dreamy relationship ended.

Jieun gasps her breath and moves her body back to the wall. She knows that he would not give up, but she supposes he had to.

The winds are still hitting their faces while they are sitting facing a garden of white daisies, and when the winds are too strong, Jieun wants to protect those little flowers which are likely blown out by the strength of the rude breezes. But she has no strength, so what is the point of wanting to protect something that she even doesn’t have power to do it. That’s when she realizes that all human are just weak creatures; they’re so powerless that they are always driven by the flow of nature. He is, and so is she.

“But he didn’t want to.”

Jiyong turns to his right side, looking at the side profile of whom he never expects to hear from. Her eyes are still bright looking straight, but he sees no light in it. He wonders if she is experiencing the same thing, and maybe she does, because she said it.

Maybe she didn’t want to, but she had to.

“Sometimes, it just happened.”

“Why?”

Jiyong glares again to his right side, just to meet her eyes. She’s broken, as how he was (or maybe he still is).

“Why did it have to happen?”

“Just because.” He grins, no, laughs, and that’s how sarcastic he is about his life, she knows.

The winds are still freezing her legs, though she is wearing jeans today. So she covers her leg with her arms, and that makes her look even smaller (Jiyong knows he cannot stop noticing her size when she’s with him).

“Why you’re always cold?”

Jieun startles; when she looks at him and grins, she looks a bit flustered. Jiyong suddenly scratches his hair, looks over her shoulder (that it still looks small) and sniffs his nose, hoping it doesn’t ruin what they are having right now (he means the conversation).

“I mean… you’re always freezing, aren’t you?”

Jiyong notices that she uncovers her arms, and her hands are a bit shaking, and her eyes are shimmered by the light. When she grazes her palms on her own arms though she is wearing a long sleeve T-shirt and he knows that she is still freezing. He wonders, why does she have to prove him the opposite way it is, and that actually creates the distance between them. Is she trying to push him away, and by that he is actually trying to come closer. Are they playing push and pull, but is it supposed to be one player who pushes and pulls; but in fact, she pushes and he’s pulled. What a contradictory.

Jiyong again takes off his jacket, then wraps around her legs, when she’s looking at him. She wants to deny it, but she also wants to accept it. She’s cold, not just in her leg and her body, but also, in her mind and her heart. And he wraps it up, with a skimpy warmth from a thin jacket, with a broken heart, with an unusual effort, and she receives it. At the same time, she’s scared.

<2>

“Do you like flower?”

Jiyong stares at her shoes, when she moves her feet forward to the ground while still keeping the legs warm in his shirt. From that, he sees the daisies are waving their petals at him (or them), and he suddenly grins. He has always loved flowers, because they’re the prettiest. But they will die actually, just as how his infatuation will die. He supposes his infatuation is the prettiest.

“I do. Do you?”

Jieun nods softly with a smile while she’s looking away from him, and instead is observing the scene. She looks peaceful, and Jiyong somehow feels a gleam in his heart. He tries to control it, compress it, and destroy it, because he supposes that everything blooming right now is so wrong. (But honestly, he wants it to be right, at least for this time).

The winds never stop flowing and scratching their faces with rude frigidity, just as how their hearts keep beating in a motionless sunset.

<3>

When Jieun glares at her left side, she finds him humming along the song he plays on the radio. The road becomes darker, and the glow from the streetlights sparkles on his face. She sees his smile with his nodding head, and she supposes it’s a beautiful smile on his face. She unconsciously smiles, when he looks at her.

Another five seconds are breathless. Their eyes are stuck, and something is invented. Is it fear or just some other feelings? Maybe it’s both.

“Thank you.” Jieun murmurs into space.

When she almost opens the door to get out of the car, get out of the conversation, get out of the situation, (and somehow get out of his life, he supposes), he stops her just by saying her name. And she really stops. Maybe she wants to hear her name in his voice, maybe she also wants to stop getting out.

“You…” Jiyong scratches his hair again, probably thinking of what to say. “You still own me your story, Jieun.”

When Jiyong asked her the first time about her story, she never intended to talk about her story. When Jiyong told her about his story, she never intended to continue with her story either. And even when Jiyong said that he was good at keeping secret, she never intended to spit a word. But right now, she’s at his place (not the café, but the place he’s staying) with half-regretful-half-empty mind waiting for him to make some champagne.

Jieun half wants just to get out of here, and get back to her place (and her normal mind, and her normal life), but she also half wants to stay here; she excuses that is because she just wants to share her story with someone. Friends, what kind of friends are they anyway? Jieun throws away that thought, she wishes she could rest from thinking, until he comes closer and put the glass down in front of her. He is smiling, and Jieun suddenly feels warm. She could ask herself what is this all about, but she doesn’t want any answer to that question, for now.

Maybe she starts to like things left unsaid, questions left unanswered, and feelings left unresolved. (She did hate that before.)

<4>

They sit near the window, and all she could see is a sky with bright spots of star blinking to her eyes, and the further movement of the waves she wishes she could zoom in, though they are almost at the highest height of the building. His condo is cozy, yet frigid that she could sense it is from him. When she steals a glance at him, she notices that his glass is already empty, while hers is still the same. It’s not that she doesn’t drink though (she supposes she should not drink in this situation, and that’s how she’s putting her guard on so far).

“So?”

Jiyong put a hand under his pointy chin, she realizes that he looks skinnier than he used to look in the past. He is looking straight to her with possessed eyes and a smile, as if she needs to tell him. But the thing is, she knows she’s ready to spill. She wants to.

But when she talks, his eyes becomes clear and boiled. With his hand still resting under his chin, Jiyong never opens his mouth when she talks. There is no sound in the room, except for her sounds, and for the first time, Jiyong finds that comfortable; he used to hate a single sound in an empty space. That explains why he likes crowded place anyway.

She keeps talking that she doesn’t even realize that she has told him things in her past, past of past, things that she still sometimes thinks of (or unconsciously thinks of), things that she still finds it regretful, things that she wished she could change it, things that happened in a blink of her eyes, things that she wished she could hold onto it, things that she had lost. And he still listens, and says nothing. Jiyong wants to hear every single word she says, because he could feel that if he ever says something in between, she will never say anything more.

“Did I…” Jieun suddenly stops. “talk too much?”

Jiyong, with his hands still put under his chin, grins loudly. Jieun feels reluctant to say anything, when he moves closer to her (but she doesn’t realize.)

“No, you didn’t.”

“Because you didn’t say anything so…”

“I’ll listen until you don’t want to talk anymore.”

Jieun stares at his eyes, which are still clear and bubbly as they are. They’re sincere, they’re telling Jieun to believe in it, they’re pulling her into it, and they’re looking for something; that touches Jieun’s heart. She doesn’t want to believe, or she doesn’t allow herself to believe; she doesn’t want to start anything; she wishes her heart won’t too. (But, she never knows that she does want to.)

“Why do you…” Jieun looks out the window.  “…care about me?”

“Why can I not?” Jiyong is still looking at her, when she slowly turns her head to his side is when she realizes that their distance is getting smaller.

“I’m just wondering… if I’ve bothered you.”

Jiyong bends his head.

“Cause maybe you’re just being polite by asking me to join you, but you never meant it, but I just said yes because I wasn’t on the right mind at that time, when I should know that you’re resting and you want to be alone, and now you have to endure me, and even you have to…”

He hates this. He hates all of the ideas that she talks about. Because she was right, she was right about him, about his resentful when someone agrees to join him just because he’s being polite, about his preference to be alone.

But she was the only one who broke it; she was the only person whom he never wanted to just politely ask to go with him; when he was with her, he never thought of resentment; she was the only one who made him forget about the idea of being alone; still, he hates that she changes him because he doesn’t want anyone to change him.

She was the one who’s trying to push him away, and he also wishes that he will be pushed, but now he’s the one who’s being pulled by that pushing force. So when he is out of his control, and when he comes back to his mind, their lips had already touched and parted away. Why didn’t she push him away this time, when he was being pulled this time? Jiyong wishes that she didn’t say anything, because her face told him that she already deleted what just had happened (or tried to.)

“I should go. It’s late.”

Jieun never touches the champagne. When she steps out of the door, he thinks the last thing she would do is to do the ninety-degree bow that he hates again, and then get out of his life. Great, he knows that he always gets involved in this kind of cycle. That they will leave, and he let them. But this time, he doesn’t know why (maybe he does), but his heart wrenches.

But no.

When she turns her face to his face at the door, Jiyong sees again, a beautiful smile that he had seen in that sunset near the stream, and that crystal clear eyes in the darkness of his life. And when he sees the little red glossy liquid on her lips, he wishes he could remember how her lips were. But that happened too fast for him to process his mind, too fast for him to turn it back, and too fast for him to try to forget it.

That night, Jiyong could not sleep. All he could think of is that dark sky with sparkling marks of star, her scents and the red hue on her face.