||   1 Year Later   ||


 {  Daesung  }
 

     It has been a year. 

     "Daesungie, are you okay?" the person who was sitting ahead of me finally spoke. My eyes rolled to his attention when he leaned his chest forward to the table that stood between our distance, showing how his anxiety affected on me. His thick eyebrows were knitted together, and his forehead wrinkled. His darkish orbs were emotionally mixed, broken inside but still have that captivate. His face looks sad, sadder than those past months. His voice fill with concern, although it was rather disastrously deeper and worn out. His voice was once perfectly deep, cheerish at the same time but nevertheless, it was long gone. Even myself couldn't find a way to get that voice back. It was hiding somewhere darker, fell deeper into an endless hole, beyond from anyone to reach for but it was waiting to come back and only itself can do that. This fragile guy, he's my about-to-be-future-husband and he lost his lifetime best friend about a year ago.

     This about-to-be-my-future-husband guy, his name is Choi Seung Hyun. 

     A new Choi Seung Hyun. His undeniable Choi Seung Hyun's love was still there, except everything else was nowhere to be seen, probably they were thrown into his delete button. He erased them all, well, except for his love. 

     To be honest, I, Kang Daesung, didn't like this new Choi Seung Hyun. Even for a bit. 

     The caramel latte that he ordered earlier, he didn't even took a sip. He watched as the water bullets were starting to form on the plastic cup, his caramel latte was melting. He stared at them as they raced to the bottom of the plastic cup, as if he was watching race cars that was racing with each other to cross the finish line. Caramel latte was suppose to be his favourite, but ever since a year ago, caramel latte was starting to be tasteless to him. Probably, every foods he ate and beverages he drank were tasteless at the edge of his tongue. Even toy bricks and teddy bears were seems to be nothing in his eyes. I was starting to think that he was bored of me too.


     I don't blame him though, for being like that. If I were in his shoes, I probably act like that, maybe a lot worse than that. I understood him for losing his lifetime best friend and I know how much hurts he was binding with. I knew, because his best friend, was my best friend's husband.

     Yes, my best friend's husband. They were married, the happiest-best-friend-and-worst-enemy-ever-and-silly-human-beings married couple I ever known    Lee Seung Hyun and Kwon Ji Yong.

     I blinked my eyes, and it hurts, maybe because I forgot to blink again and that made my eyes dried. "I think hyong know the answer pretty well than I do," I replied his answer. He knows me better than I do, a true fact between our relationship. I threw him a small smile, one of the corner of my lips went slightly up. He immediately frown when I did that, perhaps he knew that it was one of my fake smiles. I started to learn to use fake smiles these days, I'd master the art of giving fake smiles. I reached my hand out and wrapped my fingers around the half-ring shaped handle of a tiny cup. I took a sip of my tiny cup of espresso. The bitterness were running down into my throat, like how the cold bitterness were starting to darken my once alive heart. For 365 days, I've spent those days with a bitter heart on bitter days. 

     "Oh?" he squeaked silently, but still enough for me to hear it. He sounded surprised, I wondered what or who made him surprised. "You order a cup of espresso?" Oh. That. He was surprised by my sudden change. "I thought you hate it," he said as he stared at the tiny cup, right at the moment when I placed it down on the table. He was right, I hate espresso. Maybe because of my days has been spent with bitterness has make me hunger for something bitter to drink. I realized I had changed too.

     His eyes were still glued on the tiny cup, he clenched his cheeks and his jawline seems intense. He was blinking, his eyelashes were hitting on his eye bags, as if he was trying to fight something. Like he was trying to hold something heavy that was about to come out. His chin lift up to connect his gaze against mine and this time, his eyes were watery. As if he was about to cry. He seems like he tried to not cry, but in the end, he lost the battle. His gaze lingered towards mine, it was long and sorrowful, he felt guilty in a way. "A-Am I the r-reason?" 

     His sudden question made me think for a quite moment. His question might refer to almost everything, I just need to find the right one so that I can answer that question correctly. Except that, I don't think I can find one, my brain was too frozen to be thinking of something. I leaned my back against the headboard of this chair, "what do you mean,hyong?" I asked instead, but my eyes were rolling down, watching as my fingers were playing with one another. 

     He was quiet once again. Letting the same old silence seeps between us. But then he decided to spe