Ri In went straight home after her night shift ended. She still couldn’t get Henry’s offer out of her mind. She was heartbroken throughout her bus ride back home, she had tried to cast the thought aside for thousandths time but it just won’t leave. She tried to phone Junsu but couldn’t get a hold of him even after few trials. She must have all the bad lucks sided her today. Ri In opened the gate to her home and sigh followed suit. She was broken down into pieces.

“You’re home already,” her mother uttered startled to see her daughter. But it seemed to be the other way around.  Her daughter was more stunned to see her outside and she looked like she was just weeping evidenced by the red watery eyes. “Umma are you okay?  Why aren’t you sleeping yet and…crying?”

“It’s nothing. You don’t need to worry. ”

“I was just remembering your grandparents,” she told another lie as her first one didn’t appear to convince Ri In quite enough.

“Umma, you can tell me if something’s wrong. You were behaving very strangely these past few weeks and… I saw you’re looking through your bank accounts. Are we short of money?” she hesitated to bring up the scene she saw last week.

Her mother didn’t budge and upon not getting any response from her, Ri In kept begging for an answer.

“Lower your voice already. You’ll wake your father.” She sighed heavily before continuing “To be frank we don’t have enough money. It may not last until next month. Umma doesn’t know what to do anymore. We have a lot on our plate to pay. Your father’s business is not doing very well and I..I..I can’t do much to help.”

“and your sister…” she trailed off and began to cry.

Ri In knew this day would come but she didn’t expect it would be this soon. She did save some money – fractions of her salary from the part time jobs she did throughout the year but it won’t add up that much. She was at loss for word and hope that silence is all what they need at the moment and each other. She hugged her mother from the side who was now crying even harder in her daughter’s embrace.

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4 missed calls.

Junsu had been staring at those words displayed on his mobile phone whilst lying down on his bed. He knew they were from Ri In and he intentionally missed them, all four. He didn’t quite get what was going on with him. He didn’t dare to answer the calls as he thought he should stay away from her, for a while. As long as the ‘feelings’ hadn’t go away, he afraid he would continue to behave this way but he couldn’t hide his guilt towards Ri In. He felt so bad for her and even thought this was childish. Lee Kwan advised not to dwell on this but she was the only thing that occupied his mind right now. She wasn’t at fault here. She didn’t do anything except for being…beautiful.

“Could I really be in love with Ri In?” No it can’t be. She’s my friend for God’s sake. What’s wrong with me? I can’t possibly fall for her. It’s ridiculous, nonsense, wrong and… and.. she’s so pretty”

He slowly sat on his bed after rambling around in circle with a blank expression on his face and looked like he finally sorted out his feelings.

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 Ri In were cleaning tables when the café manager approached her from behind. A cold hand patted her shoulder which made her to jump a bit and turned around to see the owner.

“Is there something that matter, manager?”

“No everything’s fine. You have worked hard since day one and I think you deserve a break. Take a day off and treat yourself. Maybe… I don’t know, you could go to a violin concert. I heard Jenny Kim is holding one today.”

Ri In had a hard time registering of what her manager just said. She was left flabbergasted and tried to get the facts straight. Her manager asked her to take a day off and go to Jenny Kim’s concert. How did he know about the concert?

“Take a day off and enjoy your date with your boyfriend,” he winked before setting off to the kitchen.

She knew it by then Henry must have been behind all this. The sudden generosity, the concert and the date. It didn’t take a fool to figure it out. Just like a movie, her phone rang,

“This is Henry. Did you manager talk to you yet?”

“Yes, he had.”

“So I’ll pick you up soon. I’m on y way to your café actually. You are there right?”

“Yes, I’m still at the café. But Henry-shi, are we going straight to the concert? Because I don’t think I have an appropriate outfit for it,”

“You can just wear anything you have right now. I’m sure t would be just fine. Trust me. I’ll pick you in around 10 minutes. Okay?”

Ri in told him she would be waiting at the café. She wasn’t very sure about this whole thing and she was still in shock state. Everything happened so fast and the outfit. She only had her casual clothes but she thought what she had in her locker might just be alright; a blouse and a sleeveless top would do it. Just as he promised he arrived on time. Henry winded down the car’s window to show her his face. “Get in.”

Henry complimented her that she looked good only that she knew the exact reason why he said that. He wanted her to feel good but nonetheless it made part of her anxiety slipped away. He told her that they had to drop by at his place as he forgot to bring the tickets with him. Ri In eventually asked him how did he persuade her manager to let her off. He admitted that it wasn’t an easy task and was begging for his approval for almost half an hour. “What did you say to him?”

“Well. I said this could be the last time I meet and I’m going to leave Korean soon. That really did the trick,” he replied casually with his eyes fixed to the front.

“But that’s not true right? This won’t be the last time I see you, is it?”

Henry was silent and she stared at his side profile and he seemed as if he was gathering his thoughts; trying to find the right words to respond to her. He turned his face to her and said yes with a smile across his lips for assurance and faced back on the road ahead. Ri In somehow could tell that it wasn’t the whole truth. He was certainly hiding something. Ri In couldn’t hold back her amazement when she saw Henry’s house. It was a huge two-story with a slight touch of modernity and at the right side of it, there was a majestic garden decorated with variety of flowers.

“I’ll be right back,” Henry said as he was getting out of the car.

Ri In just nodded, still immersed checking out the house. She inspected every details of it at every angle possible from inside the car. After her inspection, the wallet on the driver’s seat caught her attention next. He must have dropped it when he was getting out. She looked back at the house if there were any signs of Henry before she quickly took a look at his wallet. Just as she expected it had a lot of money inside. This guy must be rich she thought. She also found a picture of a young boy and girl. She looked younger by one or two years than the boy who she assumed to Henry. The girl next to him could be her sister but she didn’t have time to think about it further as Henry had come out and immediately placed the wallet back to where it was before.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I don’t know how I could forget the tickets.”

“It’s okay”

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The concert went well and Ri In gad splendid day off. It won’t be possible if it’s not for Henry. She reminisced over the events occurred on that day whilst waiting for Junsu to come over to the café near their jamming place. She decided to meet there instead of where she worked. She grew tired of that place already. She was all smiles when Junsu took a seat in front of her.

“What’s with the smile, creep?” he jokingly asked.

“You wouldn’t believe what happened yesterday!”

“What happened?”

Ri In told him all about it. How it all started when Henry came over to her workplace with the tickets. How grateful she was to him for taking her to the concert she had always dream about coming to and she didn’t forget to mention about the place he was staying at. He only rented the place suggesting that he must come from a wealthy family.

“You could have told me all this over the phone,” Junsu suggested, feeling annoyed to come over and listened to another ‘Henry-shi’ tale.

“I would but you never picked up. Were you that busy? If it was me who missed the calls, you would be ranting about it at me and asked me for forgiveness.”

Junsu was caught off guard and he couldn’t really say anything. He couldn’t tell her he was avoiding her because he thought he was falling for her. It’s not the right time and he didn’t know why he got all burned up when she told him about Henry.

“I thought you have lost contact with him and now you even go on a date with him to a concert,” he obviously didn’t want to back out.

“It’s not a date and what are you getting so upset about? Can’t you just be happy for me or at least play along with it even if you weren’t? I’m trying to have a bit of happy time now that at home…”

Junsu as if had realized that he had made a mistake immediately apologized if he had said something that saddened her. He explained himself that he was just worried about her; the two of them just met and it seemed like Ri In spent more time with him when they are supposed to chase after their dream. It looked as if she had forgotten about it lately.

“Don’t you want us to be like them?” Junsu pointed to the television attached on the wall of the café. It was showing an idol group, Sweethearts, performing their latest song.

“We  promised to be singers together and be popular together. Don’t you remember?” he asked.

“But they are about to disband soon.”

“What? Disband?”

“My friend at work told me about it. She had someone from the inside.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean Junsu. I remember our promise and I want us to have all that together but I don’t think..”

“You don’t think what?”

“Nevermind”

Both of them fell silent after that.

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Another chapter is done. Hooray! It seems like our story is gettting dragged out a bit. Nana and Sungmo will appear soon. Thanks for your time and feel free to drop your comments. This has been J&D.