Jong Kook had been sitting in the booth for an hour. He had long since pushed away the microphones and, eventually, the sound engineers gave up on him and walked out. Only the camera crew was left on the other side of the glass, still filming, always filming. But he had forgotten they were there. He just sat there, staring at the black velvet ring box in his hands. Every now and then he would open it, always startled by the way it snapped open. Sometimes he closed it just as suddenly. Other times, he would gently pull the ring from its cushion and hold it up to his face, turning it slowly so that the princess-cut diamond would catch the light, watching the way it sparkled in that frame of round accent stones.

He had been scheduled to work on a new song during his time in the studio, but he had no desire to do anything but sit there and sort through the array of emotions working their way through him. At times, he was mad at himself for falling so quickly for someone he had just met, someone who was now gone. He thought about all the years he had waited for that moment, that moment he would propose to the woman he loved, and he squeezed his eyes closed, trying not to think about the night before, about what could have been. At times, he felt mad not at himself, but at her. She had led him to love, and just as he was about to declare it honestly and intimately, she left.

Occasionally, he would feel this force within him, daring him to leave on the next flight out of Seoul and find her at the address she had given him just before she tearfully kissed him goodbye at the airport that morning. But this force was short-lived. His heart was broken and he felt paralyzed. He didn’t know what to do.

There was a chance she would come back, he thought. Maybe her father would recover from his illness soon. But thinking about her father made him feel guilty. He knew that she was where she needed to be, and her devotion to her family just made him love her even more. 

He tried calling her that evening when he finally left the studio and returned home, but she didn’t answer. When her voicemail picked up, he ended the call and stared at her number on the screen. He realized then that he hadn’t thought about the time difference. Fourteen hours. It was seven at night in Seoul, but only five o’clock in the morning in New York. He felt terrible for not realizing this sooner and hoped that he hadn’t woken her.

He didn’t want to be alone that night. He thought about calling Kwang Soo or Jang Hyuk. He hadn’t talked with them recently. Every waking moment he had thought only of her. He had forgotten his friends. And he felt bad about that. But if he called them now, would they think that he was only calling because she wasn’t there? They’d be right to think so, and he didn’t want them feeling that way.

It was raining outside. He pulled the hood down from his sweatshirt, realizing then that he had w