Chapter 11: “I realize your laugh is the best sound I have ever heard- Taylor Swift”

-o0o-

While cleaning the counter with some old medicines, Seohyun felt the need to check her cell phone. She approached her bag, not at all expecting his message at once. She smiled happily. If it was truly remedial for him to be able to own the house again, she guessed, that she should also be glad for him. At least he was happy despite the divorce and all that loss. She quickly hid her cell phone back to her pockets when Yonghwa entered her office; wearing the white coat those other doctors wore when they were in the hospital. Seohyun smiled, fixing her hair as Yonghwa sat on one of the chairs across her.

“What brings you here, Yong-oppa?” Seohyun asked sweetly, sitting next to him at once.

“I’ve got two patients waiting on me for their diagnosis before lunch,” Yonghwa told her, sighing. “As I checked the records, one was hereditary while the other was because of cholesterol. Aigoo, I’m so hungry. Let’s go have lunch, please.”

“Do you think the patients can wait for you?” she inquired.

He nodded despairingly, his mind totally wiped out. “I’m so tired and it’s barely twelve. I need food. Shall we go now?”

She nodded. “Okay, sure. Your load’s stressing you. Maybe you should stay home for the rest of the afternoon. Have the other nurses take over whatever it is that’s been bothering you.”

He laughed just as lightly. “It can’t be that easy, though. Yeah, I’ll ask those new graduates to take over for the mean time. I think I’m growing old.”

“Aish, don’t say that because that would mean I am too,” Seohyun stated, giving him a hand as the two walked out of the office. “Where do you think we should go today?”

Yonghwa shrugged. “I’ll eat anywhere as long as you’re with me.”

She linked her arm around his. He enthusiastically seized it closer, so that they were now shoulder to shoulder.

“Kyuhyun-oppa got the house back,” Seohyun muttered to him who was listening intently before she opened the subject.

He was at doubt, but then, just nodding. “Is that so? Would...it be a good thing? Or a bad one?”

“Absolutely the best thing for him,” Seohyun answered. “He wanted it back so badly just yesterday.”

Yonghwa gripped her arm stiffly, before sighing. “I meant for you, Hyun. Would it be a good thing or a bad one?”

She beamed in confusion, snickering afterwards. “I don’t get it. Well, for me...I guess it’d be something good as well.”

“Wasn’t it the main reason why you auctioned it for sale?” Yonghwa wondered. “You said you want to forget. That’s why you never want to return there. Why would it be a good thing for you that he got it back?”

Seohyun exhaled knowingly. “Because someone’s going to take care of it, and there is no one better than the owner himself who knows all the nook and crannies at every crack and squeak. It’s his, so I should be happy that someone found happiness. It’s like...charity work. You become happy when you see someone enjoying the things you’ve never been happy about.”

“You’ve never been happy with the house at all?” Yonghwa questioned.

She tilted her head to the side as if thinking, but truth was, she was merely uncovering her emotions about selling it in the first place. “Omo, maybe so. But I love the house, and everything in it. I just am happy that someone’s going to take care of it. It costs around a hundred million won; it’d be a shame if you just leave it abandoned. Such a pretty house...”

“I heard there’s going to be a reunion in SMEU,” Yonghwa declared suddenly after she was saddened by what she just said. She appeared as she was regretting everything she did to and for the house. Somehow, every time he would see another frowning Seohyun-face, Yonghwa felt the need to cheer her up.

She grinned. “Really? Then, it means I get to see my other friends again! But...where did you get such an idea? I haven’t heard of it before.”

“My professor informed me about it,” he said. “Around a month from now or so. We should go together. And I heard...if there would a big chance, some students would be presenting what they are capable on stage, either by group or individually. They’re giving a great amount of cash price for whoever is the best. Are you...excited?”

Hastily she nodded, energetically clapping her hands. “Then we must go earlier than the reunion party, so that the girls in my dorm could go practice.”

“Which batch of girls? The one in your senior year?”

She shook her head. “No, no. That means I’ll be the unnie. I was talking about when Taeyeon-unnie was still attending there. My first year was beautiful. We were exceptionally active when it came to singing and dancing during parties. And what about your band? You should contact them as well.”

Yonghwa liked the idea. “That’s pretty good. Can we...sing a duet, too?”

“Banmal song?” chorused the two, laughing after they’ve realized they were thinking the same thing.

“It’d be wonderful,” Seohyun imagined it already. “We’ll surely win!”

As she said this and slipped into his car, Yonghwa’s memory did not fail him on the first time they had actually met and got acquainted, that early fall when she was in new to Seoul Marshall Elite University. They were but classmates who both experienced insecurities where you barely knew anyone, where she you had no friends at all.

“Excuse me,” she greeted him, the person the blocked the doorway to her first subject. He stared at the lovely figure, her hair falling down her uniform. Her eyes were set on him, unwavering and calm as the ocean on a sunny day. He was holding his guitar while being played by a few of his new classmates.

He bowed his head apologetically at her, looking up with a smile. “Sorry.” He moved for her to enter, who too was enthralled and attracted to Yonghwa’s liveliness that morning.

From then on, he knew, with every possible cell in his body, that he had to have Seohyun, no matter what it takes. If it were wrong to have loved her then, what would life be now? This sad thought scared Yonghwa. If ever Seohyun had strayed down that path, if Kyuhyun had still asked for her hand, would he be able to look back at the past and wished he had been Cho Kyuhyun all his life? Another question popped out of his mind every now and then. He surely was grateful, that even a man like him, even a person who barely had anything, was loved by Seohyun.

-o0o-

Traffic. One of the problems any urban city had to face every now and then. The smoke belched from other vehicles in front of him smothered his screen a bit. Tsk, he complained under a cursing breath. But what to expect, it was the rush hour, so everybody must have been running to manufactured food in restaurants and canned ones in old bars.

He dialed his mother’s number, the other line answering at once. “Where are you? We’ve been waiting for years. What the hell is going on?”

“Stuck in ,” he muttered, sighing and looking outside to see how long the line of cars was on parade. He rolled his eyes and fastened hi seatbelt accordingly. “About 30 minutes would do. Can’t you wait?”

“Just tell me where exactly you’re located,” his mother insisted, listening to some honking cars in the background.

Kyu looked from left to right, and then turned to glance at his back as well. “Around five miles from the office, I’m at the junction of this telephone booth and family-owned-looking restaurant. I think...Maes Avenue.”

“Make the turn around that junction,” she instructed him. “Go straight and turn right. You can avoid traffic since most cars just drive through the main road. You can get there in ten minutes.”

He smirked, closing his phone and throwing it to the passenger seat.

“Okay.”

He wheeled in the acceleration as the green light flashed. His flow to make the turn was tremendously like a professional racecar driver, an exceptional speed through an isolated highway where cars barely passed. In no time at all, he reached the bistro.

He strutted towards the main door, now looking for wherever his mother was seated. Just before his eyes, he saw the woman he was abandoned to poor old Mr. Ma. Her eyes were as pure as before, eyebrows just mere smudges of make-up. Ms. Cho’s hair was tied in a bun, for it had appeared quite neat on her features. As she talked, Kyuhyun noticed streaks by , signs of aging that is. Even her laugh sounded rusty as he neared them, another younger woman covering his mother. He presumed this was his visitor.

 His mother saw Kyuhyun, so hastily she stood up. The other woman, younger and much prettier, sensed his arrival, so she got up, and faced him once more, a gorgeous smile on her face as her hair fell on her eyes.

Kyu stopped at his pace to greet them with a respectful bow, seeing two different countenances that noon. One was with contempt and displeasure, frowning at his tardiness on the meeting. The other of course, was exactly the opposite. She was a slender woman, tall with short black hair and empathetic beam that softened Kyuhyun to smile at her as well. Her eyes were curved perfectly on the edges, seemingly taped to be having a single eyelid effect. Her cheeks were falling deep in red; the more he had observed them. Her presence gravely troubled Kyuhyun.

She ran to him, arms wide open that she hugged him immediately, uncaring if his mother was watching. Kyuhyun’s tongue was tied to a knot, not able to speak words that were supposed to be spoken in occasions like these. She was giggling---closing her eyes as she sadly laid her head on his chest, feeling the hard throbbing of his heart unto his shirt.

“I miss you,” she whispered, moving away.

Again those words were uttered to him; two different women all in the same day. He dreaded ever coming to this get-together. It suddenly reminded him of how he and Seohyun departed just this morning.

His mother interrupted their closeness by clearing loudly, the girl looking at her and still giggling. She lowered her gaze contritely, anticipating that his mother would soon disrupt their relationship.

Ms. Cho looked at her son, who was shocked by the incident. He didn’t even know he could still be a babe-magnet even at his age.

 “Do you recognize her?” she asked him, Kyu staring back at the girl with great concentration. There must be some kind of relation, who was this person? She was indeed awfully familiar, but his mind was already furnished with other memories with another girl. Was she a cousin? But he hadn’t met his cousins. His stepsister? Impossible, they were a bit older than this woman was. A close friend of his mother? But his mother never introduced girls to him.

He felt inferior that he just bowed again, smiling. “I apologize. But I don’t.”

The girl chuckled. “That’s all right. It stings that you don’t, but what can we do? It’s Cho Kyuhyun, after all.”

He just grinned, sitting next to his mother, as a bowl of ramen was prepared before him. “Is this mine?”

“I hope you still like ramen,” the girl said. “I do remember you spilled most of it on me because you hated the flavor. You wanted pork. I ordered seafood. You hated shrimps. Do you still hate them?”

Kyu picked up his chopsticks, swirling the noodles in them. “Yes, I do. I’m allergic to them.”

“This is Kim Haelee,” his mother introduced, waiting for him to show any kind of recognition. Kyuhyun nodded and continued eating, notifying that he still was just as clueless. “Kim Haelee is the daughter of Kim Taejoong and Shin Haseung, one of my closest friends in the law firm.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Haelee,” Kyuhyun said, ignoring the two of them. He was more focused on the food.

“Don’t you remember Haelee?” she started to become impatient with her son’s unawareness. “You two go way back. You two were classmates until middle school. She transferred to America because her parents migrated there. She’s back, after graduating w