psst psst last chapter woot woot

part the fifth | in a parallel universe we could have been something

Most relationships, whether familial, friendly or romantic, are built on shared passions or a sense of connection, but the relationship lasts because of an understanding of limits - the implicit understanding that no matter how close, there are boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed. At times, this reasoning extends to the belief that every individual has personal land mines, and it is not until we are covered in cinders, splinters and snow-like ashes, that we recognize the propensity for that person to explode catastrophically.

It has never occurred to Haewon that there could be such a line to be crossed between her and Johnny, until he presses her up against the sink and covers her lips with his own.

Almost as quickly as he kisses her, Johnny pulls apart, his eyes wide.

She takes in his striking brown eyes, the strong line of his jaw that sets, an uneasy laugh escaping from her lips.

“You know, no one really appreciates pity kisses.”

Johnny relaxes, taking a deep breath. His eyes softens, never leaving her face.

“This isn’t pity.”

“Johnny, what are you doing?” She stops him before he leans in again, panic arresting her chest as she watches his face fall.

“I’m sorry.” He averts his eyes, the warmth of his arms retracted as he steps away from her.

“W-What… Why…”

“I don’t know! I mean… Look, I know you and Doyoung are like, great…”

Her mind is whirling at a mile a minute. “Isn’t that what you were rooting for just yesterday?”

“I know, I know, I just!” He rakes his fingers through his hair, refusing to look at her as he keeps talking, “I can’t help but think, I mean, I… Won’t we be good together?”

Her heart sinks. “Johnny, you just broke up days ago. You’re not thinking straight.”

“No,” he shakes his head, still not looking at her as he swallows, “This isn’t what you’re thinking of. I have been thinking about it for a while-”

“Stop,” her voice straddles the line between a whisper and a shout as she turns away from him, her hands gripping the countertop even tighter this time, but for a completely different reason. “Please, don’t. Please.”

She hears him take a step closer, his finger gently meeting the back of her arm and trailing downwards, almost nostalgically. At his touch, she finds the knot in her stomach letting, and she doesn’t have enough energy left in her to pull away.

She doesn’t want to pull away. This is her friend, this is what they are, have always been. This wasn’t the way the story should’ve been written.

“Is it Doyoung?”

God, Doyoung.

She shakes her head, affixing her gaze on a small stain on the countertop that had never been really cleaned off properly through the years.

If you leave a stain uncleaned for too long, her mother used to tell her, someday it’ll become permanent. And then the more you wipe at it, the more it stares right back at you.

“It’s not Doyoung,” she forces herself to speak again, turning around to face him.

“It’s us.”

She watches his face as he bites his trembling lip, his eyes two abysses she could not fall into.

“You’re the closest friend I have-”

“You mean to say,” his voice is wobbly as he speaks, “you’ve never considered this before? Ever?”

This time, it’s her jaw that quavers.

To say yes would be misleading, but to say no and shut that down completely would be untruthful. Once, many years ago, when she’d just arrived in Seoul, there was a time where Haewon contemplated pursuing something that could bloom between them. But as quickly as that thought had come, it had been just as quickly displaced with another thought - louder and more fervent than the first - ‘he’s all you have here’. The circumstances that had made her move had been less than ideal, and to repeat the same mistake with another man - a man as brilliant as Johnny - would be unthinkable.

As even more time had passed, when notions of “type” and “meant to be” had entered their conversations, the vast differences in their approach to dating and relationships had made anything potentially happening between them simply unimaginable, and she had gently scoffed at her earlier consideration, burying it in the deepest recesses of her mind.

Until now.

“If you can’t answer that… Maybe the absence of an answer is an answer in itself.”

She shakes her head even harder, taking his hands in hers and urging him to look at her, her gaze chasing after his, “Johnny, I can’t lose you. Not you. You know I love you-”

Johnny finally looks up, tears shining in his eyes but the look on his face is defiant, almost angry. “Don’t do that.”

“I can’t lose you, Johnny, you’re all I have here. Could you possibly understand?”

He drops her hands as if he has just been burned, stepping away from her completely as he walks away wordlessly, his tall body growing smaller and smaller as he walks down the bedroom corridor, the gravity of their situation reverberating even after he had shut the door and she could no longer see him.

Johnny has not left his room since this morning, and Haewon has not stopped worrying. It isn’t like Johnny to hide himself away when things happen, because he is the kind of person who wants to talk about everything. She remembers how their three-hour heartfelt conversation had gone when Aoi had broken up with him, the way he had tirelessly listed every single part of her he would miss.

Squatting in front of his room door, she slips a note under the door, seconds before the door is flung open and there he stands, in his six-feet tall glory towering over her crouched figure, looking sort of judgmental.

The ink on the paper that reads “I made all your favorites for lunch!!!” suddenly seems gaudier than usual, and she has half a mind to snatch it back and shred it.

He looks at the paper. “What are we, fifth graders?”

She pulls her lips into a straight line, shaking her head without looking at him.

“Don’t be weird.” Johnny says petulantly, pulling her up from her position on the floor.

“You’re weird.”

“You cried.” His voice remains almost factual, but still slightly hoarse.

“So? You cried too.”

“Yeah but I cry suitably, like a healthy, emotionally-thriving person. You never cry.” He says, but he doesn’t argue further. This is the first time he has seen her with bloodshot eyes, and he is lying if he says it does not clench his heart. Further, to be the cause of that expression has never been a fantasy of his, but he holds these thoughts in his head, taking a seat at the dining table and starting to eat like nothing has happened.

Haewon wipes her eyes with the back of her hand quickly and takes her seat.

“For the record, I’m not hurt.” He pipes, gesturing with his chopsticks, “I expected it. And I’m thirty-two years old, so don’t treat me like glass.”

She nods, her bottom lip into . Her mind flashes back to the sight of a teary-eyed Johnny when the girl from Haewon’s gym had told him that she just wanted to be friends after two dates, but she lets it slide.

He his lips, “I was just being dramatic… You know, the usual.”

There are so many girls out there, Johnny will start dating again in no time, she thinks. Then all of this would be forgotten and he would feel much better. Despite knowing Johnny would be fine, that it is not likely that his feelings had become that deep over such a short period of time, she finds herself reaching forward to hold his fingers in her hand.

Johnny’s eyes land on their entwined fingers for a moment, before he balances his chopsticks on his bowl and holds her hand in a tighter grasp.

He sighs emphatically. “Hey, it’s fine. I’m okay. It’s not the end of the world. I’ve been rejected before, it’s nothing new. And just so you know, I didn’t cry because I was rejected, I just… I felt like I screwed up what we had.”

She starts to shake her head, but Johnny continues, “Just know that, it’s all good. By tomorrow I’ll be completely fine, okay?”

Her bottom lip is still under her teeth when she nods, so Johnny ruffles her hair comfortingly.

“Anyway, since you rejected me and made me all cry-ey…”

Haewon’s eyes widen.

But Johnny’s expression is sheepish, “can I exploit your pity and make you cook dinner too?”

This draws a laugh from her, “of course.”

True to his word, the next morning and then for the next two months, Johnny does not raise the subject anymore. Everything slows down back into a routine again, and Haewon is relieved to know that the rapport between them remains more or less the same. Johnny still goes on dates, still works hard on everyday except Friday, and tries to be okay around her. Haewon focuses on preparing for her move to the states, continues to feel things for her former boss, and tries to show Johnny that everything is okay.

As for Doyoung, conversations with him are few and far less, with most of them skirting around the same issues; their work, him being a workaholic and her hardly planned departure. They don’t talk feelings, don’t talk about the unspoken agreement that had latched another perforated layer to their relationship.

There is no need for deeper conversation, not when Haewon is leaving in two months, and especially not when there is more to be risked and lost.

So Haewon finds herself dreading the possibility of running into Doyoung as the ‘ding’ sound of the lift is heard at the twelfth floor, the papers in her hand slightly crinkled from her tight grip. DAM-IL PUBLISHING CO. flashes in her periphery as she scans her temporary access card from the guard house, making a beeline for Jeno’s desk.

It’s nine o’clock, so no one with any semblance of a life would be caught dead in the office, but Haewon cannot say she is surprised when she catches the faint glow of Doyoung’s desk lamp beyond the translucent glass, allowing her gaze to fall on the silhouette on the chair.

For more than three years, walking into the office to be greeted with this sight… Perhaps this is one of the things she would miss most about being here, the simultaneous rush of excitement and sense of comfort she would feel when their eyes met through the glass.

“Haewon?” She hears his voice and freezes, before giving up and walking into his inner office.

Doyoung’s tie is lying on his desk next to a pile of papers, his dress shirt is slightly ed and his head is against the headrest of the chair as he looks up at her when she enters, exhaustion making his eyelids seem heavier than usual.

“Boss, it’s late, what’re you doing here?”

“Just looking through some stuff.”

Haewon’s eyes gloss over the papers, immediately recognizing the familiar scrawl on the yellow post-it stuck at the top.

“These are… This is my work.” She frowns. “I thought I handed it over to Jeno.”

Doyoung’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, I thought I should look over it too. I… I didn’t realise how reliant I had become, on you.”

Their eyes meet for a moment, before Haewon coughs and looks away.

“Do you need anything?”

She gestures vaguely towards the outside of his office. “I just came to get some things I left here, on Jeno’s desk.”

“How’s the preparation coming along?”

“Logistically? All good. Saying goodbye?” She shrugs, “pretty damn hard.”

Doyoung laughs heartily, his short, breathy laughs faintly reminiscent of arpeggios in staccato.

“I understand, leaving is the hardest thing.”

Haewon smiles, but she cannot concur. She had spent her teen years in four different states due to various reasons until her family finally settled back in Chicago again. She has found a familiarity in disappearing, the safety in belonging to nothing and nowhere, never being comfortable to stay for long. And with all the traveling she’s done her whole life, even state lines blur. Roads meander similarly and street signs just read differently but in the same font. Sunset views start to converge with each other and in the end, they are all the same.

That’s why moving halfway across the world - a decision that would have taken someone else an indefinite amount of time to decide - had not fazed her. Given a job and a life open for her in Seoul, why wouldn’t she be open to it, when she had pretty much been living her life the same way, taking any opportunity to pull the brakes and reverse out of the situation once she has hit the end of the road?

Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was just so damned hard.

“Anyway,” Doyoung says after a while, drawing her out of her reverie, “take your time, I’ll be here for a while.”

Nodding, she returns to the desk, pulling a manila envelope and some congratulatory cards she had received from past clients from the bottom drawer, where Jeno said he would leave them.

Flipping through the documents in the envelope, Haewon misses the way his gaze lingers on her shoulders from inside his office, misses the way he gets out of his seat after a minute, misses the way he strides quietly but resolutely towards her turned back, but doesn’t miss the way he wraps his arms around her, his lips just behind her ear.

Whether he knows this well or not, Doyoung has an unquestionable talent for rendering Haewon speechless.

“Boss—”

“Don’t say anything. Please.” Doyoung’s voice is soft and sounds even lower than it usually is, as he holds her even more tightly in his arms.

She feels the familiar prick of tears in her eyes, but swallows them back with the knot in . It’s not that she doesn’t know that on some level, she has an effect on him. But that effect — and the extent of it — remains unaddressed, and Haewon has taught herself not to cling on to any shred of hope.

Her fingers find their grasp on his forearms as she relaxes and listens to his soft breathing, letting her heartbeat slow down into the same rhythm as his now. Save for the sympathetic whirring of the air-conditioner, the room is completely quiet, and it is only now that Haewon allows herself to revel in the silence, in the arms of the man she is held by. With the press of his arms around his waist and his heartbeat against her back, it feels like they can almost believe that the impending dates and unyielding timeline of their relationship momentarily cease to exist.

But as he nuzzles his face into the place where her shoulder and neck meet, Haewon realizes that even the best show comes to an end, and the curtains will fall eventually. Because no matter how big a step this is for Doyoung, it would never be enough for her.

There’s a familiarity in disappearing, and maybe the silence is what Doyoung needs right now, but Haewon can’t wait forever if there isn’t an end in sight. For a few months after her confession, she had thought that she would be fine with letting her questions find a space in the vast proverbial grey area, but she knows now that it is no longer an answer she can accept.

And if Doyoung had said something, anything, Haewon wouldn’t think twice about hanging up her running shoes to build a home in his arms.

“I told you people would come,” Johnny smirks, taking the marinated meat out of the freezer. “Free food, free booze - anyone would come.”

It’s the night before Haewon’s departure, and Johnny had organized a small farewell party with her closer co-workers at the last minute. They had made a bet that very few people would turn up given the eleventh hour invitations, but somehow Johnny had managed to convince most of them.

“They’re too nice to say no,” Haewon says, bringing the food to the barbecue grill at the balcony, smiling at Kim Jungwoo and Lee Donghyuck entering the apartment with a bottle of wine.

There’s tipsy chatter from her former colleagues all around her, as Lauv sings about getting what you give and giving what you get in the background. A smiling Jeno offers to start the barbeque, and Haewon’s about to thank him when she hears someone shouting from across the apartment jokingly, “Hey! Who invited the boss to the party?”

Doyoung’s still in his usual work suit, but somehow looks softer than usual, his fringe sweeping across his forehead, looking all sorts of handsome. His eyes are tired but amused as he lifts his eyebrows comically upon seeing Haewon’s slightly agape mouth.

“Doyoung!”

From the corner of her eye, she finds Johnny standing right next to her with a wide smile on his face, Jeno suddenly nowhere to be found.

Haewon turns towards him, “you invited Doyoung?”

“You were planning to have a farewell party without Doyoung?” Johnny frowns, replying in an equally hushed tone.

Haewon lets her eyes fall on the sizzling fire beneath the wire grill silently, the flames lapping excitedly at the charcoal, until the marinated slices of beef sits on it.

“I know stuff happened between you guys, but don’t you feel you owe each other a decent goodbye?”

“We have said our goodbyes.”

“On text? He wasn’t even there on your last week.”

Haewon hasn’t told Johnny about her encounter with Doyoung in the office a few nights ago, the way his jaw had settled on her shoulder, her skin still tingling from the warmth of his hug. It’s less about Johnny’s non-judgmental friendship compared to how there’s no express need to externalize her hopeful thoughts on an embrace that fell short of a promise.

It feels more like a scene in a movie than real life when Doyoung walks towards her in dramatic slow-motion and envelopes her in a hug, everyone at the party clapping and whopping. Haewon’s about to push away, when she realizes she has become so paranoid to the extent of not being able to recognize this simple greeting for what it is - a farewell, well-intentioned professional hug from a former supervisor to a former employee.

“Speech, boss, speech!” Lee Donghyuck’s voice is almost booming, closely followed by echoes of the same request.

Doyoung laughs, taking the glass of white wine Johnny offers timely.

“Okay, okay! So… Well, I’d like to start by saying that this farewell is, to me as I’m sure it is to all of you, bittersweet. Haewon has been with us for more than three years now, a huge testament to her patience given how ‘easy’ I am to work with,” he chuckles when he hears a joking ‘who let the cat out of the bag’ in the small crowd.

“I first met Haewon through a recommendation from a mutual friend - yes, Johnny, everyone knows it’s you - and I can’t be more thankful that I could make this decision for her to join us. She is a great asset to the team, an amazing creative artist and writer, and I can’t wait to see what life has in store for her.”

His eyes meet Haewon’s, and she doesn’t dare to look away.

“Haewon, I hope that nothing ever stands in the way of your dreams. I hope you’ll always have the courage and strength to do whatever you’re called to.”

The atmosphere now is almost still, and she can’t tell if her eyes are lying to her, or if his eyes are getting a little misty.

“So… Let’s raise our glasses to Haewon!”

There’s cheering and polite applause, but Haewon can’t concentrate on anything else as she watches Doyoung down all the contents of his glass and then smile as he exits her line of vision. Perhaps it’s now more clear than ever, Doyoung’s personal intentions behind those words, but as Haewon bites down the lump rising in , raw and throbbing, she finds it difficult to continue believing in the power of believing, unsure of how much is real and how much has been conjured by the blindness of a scaffold, the scaffold of rose-tinted glasses.

“When the timing isn’t right, neither is the man.”

Haewon swivels around, meeting Yuta’s piteous gaze. It feels like something’s lodged in again, and her voice cracks as she says, “y-you knew?”

“I’ve been sitting behind you for three years, Haewon. I could tell you loved writing more than all our work at the office, how could I not know you’re in love with him?”

Tears rush to her eyes, but even as she blinks them away it’s like there are seven Yuta’s looking indulgently at her.

“But you’re still so young, you need to experience the world…” He smiles, “‘so many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be.’”

She chuckles tearfully, “Tennyson.”

“I’ve never been a fan, but he was the one who said, ‘’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’, which I think is fair.”

“I know you want him – enough that you’re even thinking of rescinding on the Brown offer. But you can’t put life on hold, Haewon, especially not for boss.”

Johnny would say he’s not the least surprised, but it’s unexpected to her that Doyoung outstays everyone - even Yuta, after a long conversation with him at the corner of their balcony. Haewon keeps herself busy, smiling as her ex-colleagues give her their last handshake and shoulder squeeze before they bid their final goodbyes with best wishes and promises to stay in touch.

It’s close to midnight and she’s almost done washing the dishes when she feels Doyoung’s fingers against her elbow.

His gaze is still on her elbow as she turns to face him.

“Can we go somewhere else to talk?”

It would be much later, before Haewon can bring herself to admit that she was entirely aware of what the outcome would be upon stepping into Doyoung’s car.

It’s not that she doesn’t know that on some level, she has a place in Doyoung’s head, if not his heart. The suppressed emotions all these years have better equipped her in presenting herself differently from how she feels, but the ability to pitch and hold two different sets of emotions doesn’t help her anymore now than it did pre-confession. Instead, in a self-induced, partially aware stupor, Haewon recognizes that she is less in a state of oscillation than she is in the state of desiring a reconciliation between two duelling thoughts - the voice that cries, “what if he wants to be with you?” and that which protests, “what if he does not?”

As for now, she just sits in the passenger seat, her hands and lap empty this time. It’s been almost ten minutes since Doyoung has reached their destination, the same place he had confessed to her about what had happened with Inhee. This time, the atmosphere is thicker than before, unexpressed implications heavy on their skin. The air has become a tad cooler than many nights before, and the lights on the bridge and over the water still remain. But this time, the road is a lot quieter, with no other headlights, not many streetlights - nothing that could have been mistaken for constellations.

This time, they do not leave the car. There’s no need for alcohol, for cigarettes, for anything that could be blamed for foolishness.

“Oh! Here,” Doyoung exclaims lightly, reaching to the backseat to grab something, which Haewon only recognizes as a book when it’s in her hands.

CHANCE ENCOUNTERS by CHO YOUNG-JUN, the book reads, with a picture of a cat on a ledge looking at the biggest moon Haewon has ever seen, a style so characteristic of Nakamoto Yuta that it brings a smile to Haewon’s face. She remembers how Cho Young Jun had insisted on the details of the visual, and how it had to look like a pencil sketch, a metaphor for how a life is never really finished even when someone else’s role in that life has, how everyone is a guest star on another person’s stage.

“He wanted you to have one of the first published copies,” Doyoung explains, “he said it was a pity that you couldn’t see it to the end, and that it would be a bigger pity if he couldn’t give one to you himself.”

“He’s a good kid,” she nods, “thank you. But... How did you know I’d get into the car with you?”

Doyoung’s expression is abashed, “let’s just say I got lucky.”

She smiles, tucking her hair behind her ears.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Doyoung says finally, “truthfully, I couldn’t decide whether I should come or not.”

She laughs again, but it sounds more resigned than amused. “You didn’t wanna say goodbye to me?”

Doyoung falls completely silent, so silent that it forces Haewon to look at him as he speaks, “I can’t say goodbye to you.”

“Not you.”

She feels the tell-tale warmness in her eyes, but swallows and manages to collect herself as she turns away.

“Well you made it,” she says lamely.

“I had to,” she can feel his eyes on her face as his voice grows quieter but more insistent, “I had to see you one last time before you leave, or I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

“Because… You were wrong.”

“What?”

“You were wrong.”  His eyes are twinkling as he speaks again, “when you said that my engagement wasn’t the only thing standing in the way of something happening between us.”

It feels like all the air has been robbed from her lungs once the words leave his lips, her eyes searching his face desperately for a sign that this is a joke, that he’s about to pull away like he has every time. But Doyoung is here, and under the lights in the car he’s unfamiliarly close, her eyes falling on the beautiful freckles on his cheeks and then the small scar at the corner of his mouth, before resting on his soft pink lips. This sudden and indisputable closeness seems to make all other distance irrelevant, and it is this closeness that she tries to concentrate on - not that it might be fleeting, a feeling she knows only too well - as Doyoung pulls her from across the console onto his lap and presses his lips against hers.

There is a recklessness to the way Doyoung kisses, a sense of abandon that has been concealed for too long. She feels it in the movement of his lips, in the firmness of his fingers against her jaw, in the way he pulls her even more tightly against him when her own fingers card through his hair before slipping down to settle on his nape. A stray tear escapes her eye, finding a place on his thumb and he kisses her even harder. Doyoung kisses the way he lives, sure and intentional and wanting to regret nothing, and even as his lips leave hers they travel across the line of her jaw and down her neck, giving everything he has and asking for nothing back.

But as soon as her arms wrap around his shoulders, Doyoung is pushing away again, his head shaking so vigorously that it brings tears to her eyes instantly.

“W-Why?”

His face contorts painfully as his lips close over the words, “you’re leaving tomorrow, we can’t do this.”

Her eyes are burning with tears, and it no longer fazes her as they slip from her eyes.

“Don’t make it sound like this is about me,” her voice is tight, “you were the one who held me first, at the office. And then those things you said, every single thing you’ve said since I tendered. And now, you kissed me first.”

“I know…” His eyes are sparkling with tears as well as he stills his trembling lip, “I’m sorry, Haewon. It kills me to see you like this.”

“You’re playing with me…”

Even as the words leave her, she knows how unfair they are.

“I’m not!” He shakes his head furiously, “I swear, I’m not. I could never do that to you...”

“It’s not about how you feel!” She isn’t shouting, but she might as well be, “It’s about how you act! You can’t say things like that without thinking, Doyoung, you know that I’m in love with you.”

Doyoung is as much of a mess as she is, his eyes red and his cheeks wet, and his voice has faded into a whisper when his mouth opens again, “but I can’t, Haewon, I can’t.”

At these words, she finds herself unable to speak, unable to do anything except to wait for him to continue.

“I can’t just run from the arms of one person into those of another. I can’t promise you anything or ask anything of you. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

Her eyelids feel heavier with every blink of the eye, distributed almost like a telephone line she can no longer connect. Giving up, she shuts her eyes, trying to hold more tears in and not let them escape.

It is only now that she realizes what would later seem obvious. That it doesn’t matter what she said, how carefully she crafted her arguments, even if she uses every tool of persuasion she has mastered over the years. There is only one thing that really matters, now and always, and this is it.

She’s leaving tomorrow, and he can’t give her anything. It wouldn’t be fair to him, because even if he has feelings for her, there are bigger things at large. And it’s this thought that she wrestles with - the weight of having too much of him, and yet, never enough. She’s leaving tomorrow, and it wouldn’t be fair to put another log on that fire.

For the longest time, her feelings have been hidden away, out of sight, forbidden and shameful. But even now, even when Doyoung is no longer engaged, no longer her superior and they are no longer surrounded by people, his love seems so out of reach.

Perhaps, it will always remain that way.

This is it, she thinks. But even with the heaviness that comes with finality, even as a fresh bout of tears come, she cannot be sure who she is crying for. For her weakness, for Doyoung’s brokenness, or perhaps, just for what they will miss.

“You know what you’re doing, right?”

She is brought out of her daze at once, Johnny’s words only registering seconds later. She looks at him for a moment, wondering how he could have known, belatedly realizing that he’s only talking about travel arrangements. Johnny had been in his room when she had reached home last night, to her relief. She definitely would not have wanted him to see her eyes bloated from crying.

“Yeah, I’m good.” She grins up at him, “I’ve been there before, I think I’ll manage. Besides, my Mom insisted on flying in to spend time with me before I start for real.”

Johnny nods thoughtfully, checking once more that she has her passport and air ticket.

“We’ve checked so many times, John,” she snatches her passport back almost childishly, “I’ll be fine, please don’t worry. Any last words?”

“I would say ‘I’ll miss you’, but you promised to come back every semester break.”

“That’s all?” Her jaw drops in mock betrayal.

Johnny laughs, his hands finding their place on her shoulder. “Is brevity not the soul of wit?”

She rolls her eyes and they smile at each other for a while, but then he catches her hopeful glances around, and his hands on her shoulders squeeze gently, his face turning serious.

“I don’t think he’s coming, Haewon-ah.”

There’s something within her that she cannot find a name for, but she is certain it isn’t just sadness, certain that it isn’t that devoid of regret and self-deprecation. 

“It’s okay,” she releases a smile, unsure if she is comforting herself or Johnny. “Not all seeds were meant to grow into big trees anyway.”

Johnny sighs emphatically, “I’m sorry. I really thought something was going to happen when you left with him last night.”

Her mind flashes to the messes they made of each other last night, their bodies pressed close but their lives and futures already seven thousand miles apart. There is a place in my head that he will always inhabit, she thinks to herself, a place that no longer belongs to me, but I will learn to be okay with that.

She shrugs, “I know. But it’s just… We kept missing each other, you know? It was never the right time.”

He nods sympathetically, and then his expression changes at a certain memory.

“Listen Haewonnie, I wanted to… I wanted to apologize as well, before you go. What I did that morning was… stupid. Would you for-”

“Hey,” she pulls his hands into hers, “you don’t need to apologize for anything, John. You didn’t do anything wrong. And you know I love you, and you mean more to me than anyone else here.”

He nods again, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Too bad for you. I’m somewhat of a catch.”

She laughs adoringly, smiling so wide with her eyes so warm. She knows he’s joking, but she also knows that if they were still in Chicago, if he hadn’t left all those years ago and Haewon hadn’t come to Seoul, it is conceivable that she would eventually fall in love with Johnny. His personality is so similar to the guys she dated back in America - only taller, more handsome and even brighter. And much, much better.

Johnny looks at her dotingly for a moment, before he opens his arms wide for her to step into his warm embrace. His palm closes gently over her ponytail, and she relaxes in his arms. This is Johnny, one of the only people in the world she trusts so wholeheartedly, and she knows how much he cherishes her, and how much she will miss him.

So she pulls him more tightly towards her, dreading the moment she would finally have to let go.

She’s halfway across the Pacific when she remembers the book Doyoung had given her the night before, oddly thankful that she has something to read on the way there. She tries to tune out the parent quietly admonishing their child about kicking people’s chairs on the plane, the rolling of the beverage cart and the old man mumbling behind her, as she flips the book open, eager to start.

Instead, she feels her heart swell impossibly, because written on the first page in penmanship that couldn’t be anyone’s but Doyoung’s, is a short line:

If my answer changes one day, would you still save me a seat?

w/n: andddddddd that's kind of it. hehe. 

there's still one last chapter - but it's just an epilogue, you know, in case... anyone didn't get it. 

also! about the long convo dy had with yuta - basically yuta called dy out on his 'perceived' selfishness. i didn't add the dialogue in 'cause everything that i wrote became too cheesy to publish, so i just... left it at that. ok but please note that yuta is not by any measure of the world in love with haewon - the point of this short story is NOT self-aggrandizing, it's NOT to have every remotely attractive forefront male character to fall in love with the oc. it's about missed opportunities, right time right place, and, you know... chance encounters. fate v. coincidence. so yeet.

as an fyi in the spirit of generosity of mind my first title for this story was 'what's kicking' and the second was 'hellu my dear fren' so if you think 'chance encounters' is a duh title, l m a o

as a second fyi, nakamoto's illustration for the liddol boy's book was inspired by the book cover illustration of kafka on the shore by haruki murakami. murakami is my fav japanese author and nakamoto is my fav........... japanese.............. man. haha oops :-)) so ye.

thank you for leaving a comment! and please talk to me, i love hearing from people!! you can just scream at me whenever, wherever. 

stay tuned! 

EDIT (19/10/21): someone pointed this out to me, so i wanted to address it... at the start, john wasn't pushing himself on her or anything. i'm sorry if it read that way, that's all on me and my lack of writing prowess. he simply was in his feelings and felt that she could feel the same way too. i'm really really sorry if it read that way!! it really wasn't intended to be like that. and i'm sorry if it seemed like i was condoning something. no means no, i agree. it wasn't meant to be pushy, just an emotional exchange. i'm really sorry :<