Note: I should say that this is another very disatisfying fic. It's sad in a way that there's no resolution. I am so heartbroken, rn. Haha. This is short story split in 12-drabble episodes. I know I am cheating. I might try this theme out again in the future.

Seung hyun came home around dusk, where everything was stained pale pink and bright orange.

Home. He wondered if he had any right to call this town that. Sure, everything was the same, the houses, the street lamps… the dog barking… he remembers, that dog’s name is Squire. Everything here he knew, at one point, personally.

Now, though, after five years wandering Korea. This place was both familiar and alien. He takes out his camera, watch Squire bare his fangs, his mouth foaming as it snarls. The gate was the only thing that was keeping him safe.

Home?

Click.

Taeyang came out to his snarling dog with a man crouched closely to a gate holding a bulky camera, taking pictures.

“Hey!”

The man raises his head, his hair nightfall, his face drenched in the lights of the sunset.

“Seung hyun?”

The man smiles in acknowledgement. “Hey.”

Seung hyun found himself inside a house he grew up going to. It was the same but different. Perhaps, it staying the same made all the different things stick out. The gate still made that sad squeak. But Taeyang’s TV was a thin, sleek machine… not his vintage dial knob one he kept as his grandpa’s keepsake. Where was that? Did it finally die?

There was a good period of time catching up. Seeing hyun’s sabbatical around Korea, and the only news the town ever received where the photos he sent to his publisher. Faces of Korea.

He refused a phone. He didn’t want to call anyone anyway.

She probably didn’t want to talk to him either.

She… “How is she?”

Taeyang’s smile droops to a frown, and purse in disapproval. “Don’t.”

Seung hyun bows his head. On his hand, wrapped around his left ring finger… still… their wedding ring.

“She is doing great, hyung!” Jiyong whispered to him. Of course, there would be someone willing to talk about his wife. Ex-wife.

They were in a the encasement of a pojangmacha. The person serving… this ahjussi… he doesn’t know.

Seung hyun downs a glass of soju. It trails a smooth path of heat down his throat.

“Dara” Jiyong breathes her name into his ear, “has been running your restaurant… I guess it’s hers now… but anyway, yeah, hyung she’s good.”

“That’s great.”

He takes another shot.

He came home to his parents house. His room stacked with his things… his things that he left with her.

Books.

CDs.

Clothes.

His things he left with her.

Maybe when he left his things with her, he thought he was telling her that she would always have a large part of him.

She returned them to his parents.

Maybe she was saying she didn’t need any part of him, if she can’t have him whole.

There were albums from long ago. He sat by his musty bed, flipping through them, looking for her.

But she was no longer in them.

Maybe, she was telling him, he had lost her.

He sighs, slams the album in his hand, Why am I even here?

They run across each other, and he felt his heart skip, his face tingle. She looks well. She had her hair up in a bun, a gentle wave ran along the stands of her rich brown hair. A perm. She got a perm.

Her lips were a beautiful peach and in an a very cute small ‘o’. Her eyes. Her eyes were the same. The same beautiful, expressive windows of her similarly beautiful soul.

She was wearing his shirt, a black faded Espirit shirt, over a crisp white A-line skirt. She looked beautiful. Just like he remembered.

“Seung hyun.”

“Sandara.”

They were happy, but that was in the