Does the promise to love someone forever really exist?

What is love? Is it simply our desire to give in to our primal urges or is it something deeper? Is it a fool’s dream or is it destiny? As we walk through this difficult and lonely life, we secretly dream of a love that will stand the test of time. Living our lives surrounded by the hardships and disappointments of this world, we softly pray that there is just one person out there worth living for and secretly hope that when the time comes, we will have the insight and courage to recognize it in its true form.  As the world turns, and turns again, we suffer love and loss, hope and disappointment, and ups and downs, all in the attempt to find true happiness. 

For Jung Yunho, life was simply existence.  Son of a poor family, Yunho spent his childhood watching his family struggle with providing day to day necessities. His mother, a seamstress, worked late every night without a day off but always made time for Yunho when he needed her. She spent many nights, working until dawn, mending the clothes for some of the world’s most affluent aristocrats. She worked her fingers to the bone and suffered in silence, simply to make sure that her little Yunho would never go without. His father, a construction worker by day and a taxi driver by night, worked double and triple shifts often, just to make sure that his wife and son wouldn’t starve. As his parents suffered through their harsh and unkind life, they never neglected Yunho or his feelings. Ever supportive, his parents encouraged him to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a singer and spent their lives doing all they could to help him on his journey.

Growing up with such a loving and supportive family, Yunho became a well rounded and highly motivated young man. Spending countless hours and nights perfecting his musical abilities, he quickly became a hot topic among his neighbors. When he was fifteen, he landed his first official performance for the public at a local club. Excited by the opportunity, Yunho would have never imagined how that one moment in time would change his life forever. That’s where he met her, his beloved Min Hee. She was beautiful, kind, fun, loving, and perfect. They instantly fell for one another and were constantly by each other’s side. Yunho knew that she was the one. The one he would love until his dying day. He spent the next year blissfully happy and truly felt that his life would be like this forever. However, that fate would quickly and painfully change the winter of his sixteenth year, when Min Hee suddenly collapsed and died from brain aneurysm at his birthday party.

Haunted by Min Hee’s death, Yunho became cold and distant to everyone around him. Now believing that love was just a fantasy for children, he spent the rest of his life despising the word love and focused solely on his career. Forever closing his heart off to the world, Yunho spent the rest of his days striving to reach his goal of becoming a top star in the Korean music industry. In the summer of his seventeenth year, he signed an exclusive contract with one of Korea’s most influential entertainment companies, instantly gaining worldwide success. To the world, he became a y, suave, and caring man with a heart of gold, but that public persona was just simply his mask.   

Over his fifteen year career as the top Hallyu star in Korea, he had done nothing but play at love. Taking sincere confessions from a myriad of highly attractive and highly influential female stars in the business, he manipulated their feelings and gives false hope of a happy life with them, simply to use their affluence for his own gain. A playboy and womanizer through and through, he was content in the life he had chosen.

 

For Kim Jaejoong, life was bittersweet. He was born and raised by a semi-affluent family in the outskirts of Seoul, and spent most of his life sheltered from the world and its dangers. Son to an overly protective father and distant mother, Jaejoong spent his life craving the affection of his family. His father, CEO to a multi-million dollar corporation, was rarely home and his mother, tormented by the demons of her past, spent the entirety of Jaejoong’s childhood looking at him through the bottom of a liquor bottle.  She treated Jaejoong harshly, never looking at him directly, and constantly rejected any of his affection. That pain and neglect left deep scars on Jaejoong’s heart and he spent the majority of his life desperately seeking the love that he had never received as a child.

His only solace in this world, the only place he could escape to, was the realm of music. Music had been his passion ever since he was a very young child sitting in front of the family piano for the very first time. At the age of eight, Jaejoong had surpassed his instructor’s expectations and was considered to be a musical genius in some circles. He penned his first composition at the tender age of ten and planned to live a life surrounded by music, until his world came crashing down the summer he turned fifteen. The sudden and horrific death of his one and only father plunged Jaejoong into a spiral of depression that took him almost four years to pull himself out of.

By the age of nineteen, Jaejoong had turned from a promising concert pianist with a dream, into a street thug with no will to do anything meaningful. Spending his family fortune as fast as he possibly could, he spent his days surrounded by sinister characters and loose women, until he met Kim Junsu. Meeting him randomly one night at Seoul night club, Jaejoong was instantly intrigued by this handsome young man that seem to draw the eyes of every girl in the room the second he appeared. Jaejoong, curious about this never before seen stranger, spent the night watching him interact with all the patrons and when his curiosity couldn’t be contained any longer, he struck up a conversation with him.

Junsu was an overly suave and cool guy, who took pleasure in making the lives of everyone around him as happy as humanly possible. Junsu’s kind heart and overly supportive personality slowly began to pull Jaejoong out of his life-hating mentality as they became fast friends. Over the next two years, they became very close and in the winter of Jaejoong’s twenty-first year, Junsu offered Jaejoong a position at his public relations firm.  Jaejoong gladly accepted the position, and immediately traveled with Junsu to the company’s main offices in New York City. Although Jaejoong had never once again dreamed of being a concert pianist, his background made him a perfect fit at Junsu’s music-centered PR firm and he quickly became the best in his field, garnering accolades from some of the biggest American artists and celebrities. 

 

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*Disclaimer: This is story is a complete work of FICTION! I do not own anything, save for the plot. Story is written under artistic licensing and in no way is meant to resemble anyone, alive or dead. All situations, subplots, names, relationship pairings, and references that could be construed as based on real life people or events, are completely unintentional. Work can, and does, contain sensitive themes, violence, strong language, and situations not appropriate for all ages. Discretion is advised. "The Five Promises" is copy/paste locked to deter plagiarism or republishing on other sites.*

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