THREE YEARS LATER

“Ms.Kim?”

Dahyun tore her attention away from the paperwork spread out across her desk, looking up at her secretary, Hyunjin, standing in the doorway. The woman was holding a file between her arms, holding it to her chest as she stood waiting for Dahyun’s attention. “Yeah?”

“It’s almost three, you should leave now if you want to catch your train home.” The secretary advised, letting out a light chuckle as Dahyun took a panicked look over to the small clock resting on her glass. Her office was modern, pristine, and entirely too cold for Dahyun’s liking. A large glass desk with silver nick nacks resting on top, black shelves holding black boxes of files and papers, and floor to ceiling windows overlooking the entirety of Busan giving the lawyer a great view from her place on the 35th floor. Dahyun haphazardly tried to pile together her paperwork, grabbing her coat from where it rested on the back of her chair and shrugged it on. 

“Can you just-”

“Forward the file to Mr.Lee? Yup, now go.” Hyujin handed over Dahyun’s briefcase and a small wrapped present that Dahyun had left lying on a chair earlier in the day, the older accepting it with a grateful smile. 

Offering her a small bow, she excused herself, slipping from her office into the mail bullpen of the operation. Newly hired lawyers worked in small cubbies, all too eager to please and work. Dahyun forlornly wishes for those days once again. It only takes her fifteen minutes to get to the station, and another ten to get in her seat, the train taking off only five minutes after. 

Two hours. That’s all it would take before she was back in Seoul for the first time since she left. Would the city still be the same? Probably not, everything always moved so fast and she could never keep up no matter how hard she tried. Tzuyu and Chaeyoung came down one weekend a month and slept over her house, filling her in on what she was missing up north. It helped but still left her feeling hollow and empty when they left. The move to Busan had probably been the best decision Dahyun had ever made, quickly running the biggest firm in the city, and that was nice and all, but sometimes she wonders what life could’ve been like if she had stayed. 

One could imagine the shock Dahyun felt when she got a text from Sana two weeks prior, asking if she wanted to spend Christmas eve at their place. A new tradition that was formed without her, from what she heard from Tzuyu, Jihyo had forced them all to get along and start spending holidays together again. She guessed it had worked because Dahyun hadn’t heard anything bad about the Japanese trio in a while. Chaeyoung and Tzuyu were always cautious of bringing them up, she understood why- afraid that it would trigger her and they would be two hours away if she were to relapse. She never told them about the texts and voicemails Mina had left her, begging for her to come back and cursing her for leaving like she did. They stopped nearly two years ago, but sometimes when Dahyun was alone in her apartment that was too big for just her she would listen to them before swiping through tinder for some random girl to hook up with. 

She got off the train, walking down the platform and out of the station. It was cold, frost forming whenever she took a breath, snowflakes threatening to start falling from the sky. She walked down familiar streets, first passing 3mix’s coffee shop, it looked exactly the same. The slight chip in the paint outside had never been fixed, along with the crushed g