The day of the publication of the article was here. As soon as she woke up that morning, she ran towards the nearest bookstore and bought the latest issue of WM Magazine. All she saw of the magazine was the cover when she bought it, which was her posing seductively.

When she finally got back into the apartment, she took the time to read the headlines on the cover.

Kim Hyuna seduces a journalist into giving her a contract.

Her heart fell. She read it again. And again. And again. And again. There was no mistaking it. That was the title of the article about her on WM Magazine. She opened to the page of the article.

By: Jung Jinyoung.

She dropped the magazine and shook her head. This is wrong. Something is wrong. She read the name again. She stood up and paced around her apartment.

I’m just having a bad dream, she thought. Just a bad dream.

She picked up the magazine again, her fingers trembling. She opened the page and carefully skimmed through the article.

Everyone in Korea knows Kim Hyuna, the y seductress of Seoul. The sly beauty of Korea... A woman who would open her legs to anyone she wants something from... Korea’s “,” as she is named, and for good reason… Her dress, her occupation, her facial expressions, her body language... After her many scandals, she has not been able to secure a modeling contract by any agency because of the bad publicity associated with her name… She seduced me. She used her body and my weakness as a man in order to get something out of me that she wants…

Hyuna could bear it no longer. She threw the magazine across the room and began to sob.

Jinyoung had lied to her. He took advantage of her. She took out her phone and, with trembling fingers, dialed his number.

“Hey babe,” he said in all naturalness, as if he didn’t just tear her heart into a million pieces.

She didn’t know what to say to him. Not only that, but she couldn’t say anything. She hyperventilated and no words could come out of .

“Yeah one or two things are inaccurate about the article. But this is journalism honey. In journalism, you gotta twist the facts a little to get people more interested in the article.”

“B… but…” she stuttered.

“Okay, fine, most of it isn’t true.”

“Why did you do this?” she asked through her tears.

“It’s more interesting that way,” he responded idly.

Hyuna was speechless. He was just acting like it was the most normal thing in the world. Did he not know how much it hurt her? Did he not understand what he had done to her? Was he really this heartless?

“Hey babe, don’t cry,” he said. “It’s not like the article changed much of your reputation. Everyone knows this about you. Everyone knows you’re a . It’s nothing new.”

Those words struck her more than anything in the article ever had. So he believed she was like that too. He, the person she was in love with, belittles her too. She thought he was different, that he understood her. She loved him for it. She fell in love with him for it.

“I’m guessing you hate me now,” he said with so much indifference, and that was nothing but another knife to her already shredded heart.

She said nothing. She didn’t hate him. One can’t go from loving someone to hating them in less than an hour.

“I think you wanna break up. Let’s do it then,” he said, with indifference and what seemed to be enthusiasm.

“Was it all a lie?” she asked weakly, referring to the time they spent together. Referring to his promise to love her forever, referring to his kisses and his hugs and his tender touches.

“Kind of, I guess,” he said matter-of-factly. There wasn’t a shred of guilt in his voice. “I don’t love people, honey. I like , and you gave it to me. I think is best when girls give themselves fully to you. So I made you fall in love with me and bara-boom you submitted yourself to me with like zero resistance. It was cool, really enjoyed that night.”

“Stop it! Just stop and leave me alone!” she screeched. She hung up the call. She couldn’t stand hearing his voice anymore. It rung in her heart with so much force, she felt like she would lose her breath any moment.

-

She didn’t eat for days. She didn’t move for days. Her depression had taken its toll on her. She stayed locked up in her apartment for a week. She was too weak to answer her phone when it rung. Or to get up and answer her door at the sound of the doorbell.

Maybe this was suicide. She didn’t make the conscious decision that she was going to starve herself to death, but it seemed like her body wanted it. Her body didn’t ask her for food. She didn’t feel hungry. She didn’t feel like she needed to eat. Her body made it easy to starve herself.

She didn’t reject the idea of dying. She didn’t reject it at all. There was nothing left for her in this world. Nothing. The faster death comes, the sooner she can liberate herself from the pain in her heart.

She lost consciousness three days after the publication of the article from lack of food and hydration. She woke up again in a hospital room, wires connecting her body to bags of liquid and machines.

Someone had saved her. She didn’t even consider for a moment who this savior is. Whoever it was, she didn’t care. All she cared about is why they did it. Why couldn’t they have just left her to die and rot away?

As she took in her new surroundings, she saw a note on the bedside.

“Hey babe. If you die, people will accuse me of driving you into depression and then my career will basically die with you. So don’t die, alright? Later, bye! <3”

That was the most insensitive note he could have possibly left.

But she still couldn’t deny him that request to not die. She didn’t want his career to be hurt because of the people’s accusations. She knew how that felt, and she didn’t want to put him through it no matter how much of an he was.

“I promise that this will be the last thing I’ll ever do for you!” she mumbled, beginning to cry again as she crumpled the note and threw it as far as her weak arms could manage.

-

It’s been a month. She hasn’t heard from him since the phone call.

The new issue of WM Magazine came out.

She didn’t know why she was even curious about it. The release date for this magazine was just marked on her calendar, and she decided that she wanted to see what it’s about.

She bought the magazine from her local bookstore, and as she walked back home, she flipped through the pages. She stopped when she got to an article by Jung Jinyoung.

Command Option Escape.

Curious, she stopped to read it.

“I think Macbooks are annoying. I hate all of their shortcut shenanigans, the complex filing systems, not to mention how we have to update iTunes every like two hours. But Macbooks have also given me a new perspective on life.

I used to live with the philosophy that you simply cannot quit doing something. If you put your head to something, you do it and you live with the pain that comes with it. If you realize it was a mistake to make that decision, too bad. You do it and live with the consequence of making your bad choice.

So once, I made a decision to open a program on a Macbook. The program stopped responding, and it was making the rest of the programs on my computer slower. I asked someone how to “Control Alt Delete” on a Mac, and she told me “Command Option Escape.”

I Command Option Escaped and forced the program that was making everything slower to quit. I realized that I was going against my philosophy by doing this.

I made the decision to open the program. It was a mistake on my part to make the decision. And then I closed the program forcefully. I quit something that I decided to do. If I were being true to my beliefs, I would have fixed the program without forcing it to quit or waited until it started responding again. I didn’t need that Command Option Escape thing.

Then I realized that the problem is not the fact the program was not responding. The problem was that it was impeding the activity of the rest of the programs. It’s a big negative externality. It’s not something I deserve to deal with just because I made that one mistake.

In that case, I think it’s okay to Command Option Escape your way through life. If you made a bad decision, it’s okay to not follow through with that until the end. It’s okay to ‘Force Quit’ some things because they are slowing you down in other areas.

But before you ‘Force Quit’ some of the decisions you made, know this: that program that you ‘Force Quit’ might be hurt. It might be plagued with a virus or two because you forcing it to quit did not give it the time to induct the necessary protection encryptions onto its system. It might be perpetually damaged and it might never recover. This virus onto the program will also affect the Macbook itself, who will have to deal with these viruses within its own system.

When you quit a decision, whether that decision is a person, or an object, or a project, or a religion: know that there are risks. The risks could be incurred onto the decision, and they could be incurred onto you.

Moral of the story: be careful with that Command Option Escape function. It’s useful sometimes, but it will have its costs. And those costs will hurt.

-Jung Jinyoung.

She didn’t know what to make of the article. She suspected that the article could have been about her, but she couldn’t be sure. She kept reading it over and over, trying to make sense of it. She couldn’t. There were things in the article that confused her. Was he analogizing her with a program he forced to quit? Was she “slowing him down”? Was it even her whom he was referring to?

She shook her head dismissively. Of course it’s not me, she said. She was probably fantasizing that he still does think of her, and that he did what he did for a valid reason, that he never wanted to hurt her…

-

It’s been about a year since she had a proper modeling contract that paid. Her parents from abroad had stopped sending her money, and her savings in the bank were running low. She needed to get a job.

After a little bit of research, she was able to secure a job as a make-up counter girl in the mall a few blocks away from her place.

She strolled through the mall after coming back from her job interview at the management office. The manager told her that she was to start tomorrow.

She walked down the walkway, looking at the displays of clothes she wished she could afford, and accessories she wished she could wear. She looked up with awe at the pictures of models that were displayed in front of the stores. She missed the days when she was the one on those posters. She missed smiling for the camera, she missed posing, and she missed exuding the y confidence. She sighed as he recalled those days. Now she was reduced to nothing more but a make-up counter girl.

As she walked, she stopped in from of a particular store with the sign: Now Hiring hung there in the front of the store. She looked at the logo carefully as all the nostalgia hit her.

The Apple Store.

She couldn’t seem to stop herself when she went into the store and picked up the application form.

-

She met Gongchan on a bus as she was on her way to work in the Apple Store.

He was an attractive little thing with a bright smile. He had his headphones around his neck as he entered the bus, which was full except for the seat next to her.

“Hello noona. May I sit next to you please?” he asked and she nodded.

He sat there, and she realized he smelled of, ironically, apples.

The smell brought back so many memories of Jinyoung, who would comment about how she smelt like apples every time they were close. It made her shed a few tears, startling the young boy who sat beside her.

“Noona, are you okay?” he asked, looking at her with concern.

“You smell like apples,” she said.

“You don’t like it?”

“No, I love it. Brings back good memories.”

“Really? Like what?”

“I used to wear apple perfume everyday, and I used to wash my hair with apple shampoo.”

“Why don’t you do it anymore if it brings back good memories?”

“Because it also reminds me of a really, really bad memory.”

“Memory of what?”

“A person,” she said.

“Ah,” he nodded in understanding. “My mom likes apples. She has all these superstitions about how apples can like block diseases and stuff. She always washes our clothes with this apple powder thing and my family and me always smell like apples. I’m forced to eat two apples a day too.”

“Do you have an Apple computer?” she asked, wanting to make light conversation with this seemingly pleasant stranger.

“I wish I did,” he laughed. “My name’s Shik Gongchan,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Kim Hyuna,” she said back, shaking his and again.

-

She saw him everyday on the bus when she went to work. He would always sit next to her, even if there were empty seats. They naturally became friends.

She always got off the stop first, and so it took her while to find out where he went every day. Later, after a week of sitting next to each other, she learned that he went to the hospital.

“My dear friend, Shinwoo, is dying,” Gongchan explained to her one day. “I see him everyday because I want to spend as much time as I can with him before he passes. I gave him a kidney hoping it would save him, but it made everything worse. I can’t help but feel guilty about it. It’s my kidney that sped up the process of his death.”

Hyuna didn’t know what to say to that. She took his hand and squeezed it in encouragement. He smiled despite the look of grief etched across his face.

“Thank you noona, for being here,” he said out of nowhere and then he kissed her cheek.

They started dating a little while after that.

On their first date, she opened up to him about Jinyoung, about his strange idiosyncrasies, about his obsession with Macbooks, and finally how he hurt her more than any other person hurt her before.

-

“Hey Hyuna-ssi, there’s a customer complaining about his computer. Go deal with him please. He’s annoying as hell,” her boss told her as she worked.

“Yes sir,” she responded, making her way to the customer whom she had only glanced at. After the image of the glance materialized in her head she abruptly stopped walking and looked at the customer again.

There he was: Jung Jinyoung.

Jinyoung was still to busy to notice her, deeply focused on his computer screen trying to get something to work. He looked exactly the same since the four months she’d seen him. He still had that overstated look of disgust on his face as he worked with the Macbook. He had the computer for more than four months now, and he’s still struggling with it.

Hyuna could not help but find that amusing.

Suddenly, she didn’t feel so scared of him anymore. Whenever she had thought of him the past four months, he would feel sense of sheer terror at the prospect of seeing him again. Seeing him there looking so helpless gave her confidence to walk up to the counter and say, “may I help you sir?”

Hearing her voice, Jinyoung narrowed his eyes and then swiftly turned to look at her. His eyes widened and his body stiffened.

“What’s the problem?” Hyuna asked, looking at his screen and seeing that a program was not responding.

He didn’t say anything. He just stood there staring at her.

“Just Force Quit the program that’s not responding, sir,” Hyuna said, starting to feel a little uneasy as he stared at her. When he didn’t respond, she turned to the computer and clicked command, option, escape.

“Wait no!” he yelled taking her hands and pulling them away from the keyboard. He exited the Force Quit window quickly. “Don’t force anything to quit! Don’t ever do that ever.”

“Why not? If you force it to quit everything will run smoother.”

“No it doesn’t. There will be viruses in the system and stuff. Plus, if I force quit this program, I’ll lose extremely valuable information.”

“Well, sir, you really have no other option but to force quit it.”

“I can just leave it open.”

“That would drain from your computer’s memory and it will make everything run slower.”

“But… it’s too valuable to force quit.”

“Sorry about that, sir,” she said, “you should have saved the information beforehand.”

“I couldn’t do that because the system was running too slowly to save even before the program stopped responding.”

“Well then maybe you need another system. Did you think about replacing your Macbook?”

“Unfortunately, I’m stuck with this one,” he shrugged sadly.

“Why? You have warranty on this one don’t you? If it’s really so slow we can replace it for you for free. We just have to take it and test it to make sure it’s really as slow as…”

“I don’t have a warranty on the system I’m talking about. I can’t replace it.”

“Weren’t you talking about your Macbook’s operating system?”

“Not really,” he shrugged. He shut his laptop’s lid. There was a look of regret etched across his face as he grabbed the laptop to his chest hugging it tightly. “Are you sure it can’t be fixed without force quitting?” he asked her once more.

She nodded idly, still wondering about what he meant.

“Thank you for your help babe,” he said, smiling at her before starting to walk away.

“What ‘system’ were you talking about?” Hyuna called out to him.

He turned and made eye contact with her, staring at her for a long while, “I was talking about my respiratory system.”

“Huh?”

“Bye babe,” he said as he walked away, leaving Hyuna thinking for a bit.

“Wait!” she yelled after him. “Are you sick?” she asked.

He shrugged and walked away.

-

The first time she met Shinwoo was a week after she and Gongchan had started dating. He was an unfortunate little thing, so weak in his bed. He was pale and skinny, and there were bags under his eyes. His breathing was heavy and he talked slowly.

Gongchan came inside the room, Hyuna following closely behind him. Gongchan leaned over Shinwoo’s body and kissed his forehead. Shinwoo’s face suddenly brightened, and he smiled so vividly as he looked up at Gongchan. Hyuna didn’t think that someone like that had the ability to smile. She found it so beautiful, a smile filled with hope when really there was no hope for Shinwoo.

“Hyung, I'd like you to meet the girl I’ve been telling you about,” Gongchan said to Shinwoo, as he gestured to Hyuna.

Hyuna bowed to Shinwoo and he took a moment to inspect her. “Hello Kim Hyuna. You’re really as pretty as Gongchan claims.”

“Thank you very much.”

“When I pass, I need you to take care of my dongseng for me, okay? Don’t let him cry over me. Don’t let him mourn over me at all. Let him just move on. Help him move on. I don’t want my death to slow him down.”

Slow him down.

She remember what Jinyoung said in his Command Option Escape article about quitting things that are slowing you down all of the sudden. She shook the thought away as soon it came. It felt so insensitive to think about Jinyoung now.

“What are you saying, hyung?” Gongchan said, beginning to cry. “You won’t die. I pray every day. God won’t kill you. You drank my mother’s apple medicine. The doctors are saving you. My kidney is saving you. You won’t die.”

“See what I mean?” Shinwoo said to Hyuna. “He loves me too much. Sometimes I wish I could just make him hate me, make him not love me so much so he never has to go through the pain of me dying.”

She found herself thinking of Jinyoung again for some reason.

“Hyung, stop saying things like this,” Gongchan said with a sniffle.

“Stop loving me so much then,” Shinwoo reaching out to wipe Gongchan’s tears. “Channie, you come see me everyday for many hours. You waste so much time with me. For crying out loud you even gave me a kidney. It’s too much! Even my family has stopped seeing me everyday and you still come. Stop it. Really, just stop burdening yourself with me. Spend time with your beautiful girlfriend. Get a job. Get a life, Channie. Let me to live my last days in solitude. I would like it if you did.”

Gongchan’s lower lip quivered as he opened it to say something. More tears fell from his eyes. Hyuna knew he was hurt by what Shinwoo was saying. “Do you find my frequent visits annoying?” Gongchan asked finally.

“Sometimes,” Shinwoo responded, and Hyuna saw Gongchan’s face fall.

“Excuse me,” Gongchan said as entered the bathroom of the hospital room. Hyuna blinked and gave Shinwoo a look of disapproval.

“Why did you hurt him like that?” she asked Shinwoo.

“It was a lie, Hyuna-ssi. Of course I don’t find his frequent visits annoying. If anything, the only things I live for are his visits. But I’m such a burden to him and I feel like it’s my responsibility to just detach him from me just a little bit before I do pass away.”

“Detach him from you?”

“He’s attached to me, and that’s bad. To be attached to someone who’s dying is bad because the blow that will come at death will be huge. And the only way to mitigate the blow is if I detach him from me.”

Hyuna nodded idly in understanding, “but isn’t it ironic that you’re hurting him while doing that?”

“Maybe. But the hurt from that would be so much less then the hurt that comes with death.”

“You don’t know that,” Hyuna said. “You think by hurting him, you’re making him love you less? No. You’re not. You’re just hurting him. He’ll still love you, and when you pass, he’ll still hurt the same. I still love someone that hurt me so badly…” she covered as soon as she said it. She hadn’t realized she still loved him. It was just something that came out of like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Shinwoo looked at Hyuna, as if he was reconsidering everything he just said.

Hyuna took a deep breath and continued talking, “I don’t think you should purposely try to hurt someone you love so that they would stop loving you. That’s stupid. That’s just crazy and…”

“But it’s driving me mad with guilt!” Shinwoo said as wetness formed in his eyes. “It’s killing me on the inside what his attachment to me is doing to him and what it will do to him.”

“His attachment to you is making him happy. You should see it no other way. Visiting you everyday is his attempt at using whatever time he has left to take out as much happiness as he can. You are not a burden to him; you are a source of comfort for him. Pushing him away will only hurt him.”

“You’re very wise, Hyuna-ssi,” Shinwoo said to her. “Could you bring him to me? I need to apologize.”

-

In her second visit to the hospital to see Gonghcan, she saw Jinyoung. He was there at the pharmacy of the hospital, buying prescribed inhaler gas.

My respiratory system. Something was wrong with his respiratory system.

At first he didn’t notice her. He didn’t realize she was standing there watching him with dread in her heart. She knew he was sick. She knew something was wrong with him and she certainly cared.

After he finished buying the inhaler gas, he turned around and saw her watching him.

 “Are you sick?” she asked immediately before he had time to react.

“What are you doing here?” he asked back. “Are you sick?” He flashed her a weak grin, but it wasn’t like those grins he had when they first met.

“I asked you first.”

“It’s not like you care anyways,” Jinyoung shrugged, “you hate me, remember?”

“I don’t hate you,” she shrugged, “and even if I did, I still want to know the answer. Are you sick?”

“It’s just the flu.”

“You don’t need inhalers for the flu.”

“You don’t? Damn, my lie didn’t work,” he said sarcastically.

“Are you going to tell me?”

“I’d rather not, babe,” he said.

“Is it serious?”

“No,” he shrugged.

“Is that a lie as well?”

“No.”

Just then, Gongchan came into the pharmacy. “Noona, did you find what you were looking for?”

“Who’s that?” Jinyoung asked, looking at Gongchan curiously.

“Stop changing the subject!” Hyuna said in agitation.

“Look babe, you shouldn’t care. I don’t. It’s nothing serious. And I’m not dying any time soon so you can just relax.”

“Noona, what’s wrong?” Gongchan asked Hyuna in concern as he looked at Jinyoung. “Who is he?”

“Are you guys dating?” Jinyoung said looking at Gongchan inquisitively.

Gongchan looked towards Hyuna for permission to tell him the truth, but Jinyoung understood the answer.

“I’m glad you were able to move on, babe,” he said with a smile. He turned towards Gongchan: “Take care of her, okay?” He then attempted to walk away, but Hyuna grabbed his arms.

“Tell me the truth,” she demanded.

“Okay, sheez. You’re much stronger then you were a few months ago.” He pulled his arm away from her grip and rubbed it, “I have this little breathing disease called Silicosis.”

“How long have you had it?”

“I got it from Syria, because of the shrapnel and the silicon gas particles being released into the air and a bunch of other reasons. It’s nothing serious though; it’s just that I need to carry an inhaler everywhere I go.”

“You didn’t carry an inhaler everywhere you went a few months ago,” Hyuna said in dread.

“Because it was less serious then.”

“So it’s a progressive disease?”

“Well, it doesn’t progress farther then this,” he said.

“Can you die from this?”

“No,” he said, but Hyuna could hear the uncertainty when he said it.

“I know you’re lying.”

“Babe, of course you can die from it if you don’t try to remedy it. But lookie here, I’m buying the inhaler stuff and coming here for check-ups. I’m fine. And why the do you care anyway? You’re not supposed to care.”

Hyuna knew why she cared, but she didn't want to tell him. It’s because she still loved him, no matter how much she denied it. She couldn’t tell him she loved him though, and not only because Gongchan was there listening to everything that was being said.

Jinyoung sighed and then said, “are you sick babe? Why are you here?”

“She’s here to see a friend of mine,” Gongchan answered for her.

“I see. Well, have fun. I’ve got to get going love. It was nice seeing you again,” he smiled brightly at her and then paused for a moment before taking her head between his hands kissing her forehead softly. “Take care love.”

-

As soon as she went home that day, she looked up ‘Silicosis.’

He lied.

He can die from Silicosis. As a matter of fact, patients with this disease will most likely die from it.

She learned from her research that there are four types of Silicosis: chronic simple, accelerated, complicated and acute. After reading for hours on the descriptions of each type, she learned that Jinyoung would most likely be classified as acute. The most severe type, the type that would mean the patient will not live more than two years after he’s diagnosed.

It’s been almost a year and a half since he came from Syria.

After she realized the implications of that, she slammed her laptop shut and buried her face in her arms on top of it.

That Apple logo on her laptop shone in her face and at this point she just lost it and burst into tears.

-

A/N: One more part! I still haven't finished writing it, but I'm almost done. Hopefully by tommorrow!