o3

“Is this your first visit at Busan?”

Slightly surprised, she turned around and met with a young face with his both big eyes staring at her. Knowing who he was, she quickly put on a smile and did a slight bow.

“How are you, Yoo Young Jae-ssi?” she greeted.

“Don’t be too formal,” he smiled, before gesturing to the couch beside the window. “Have a sit.”

Jieun followed and sat across him, getting ready for the interview with taking out the papers and put them on the table. Once she was done with the documents, she looked up and met with his genuine smile once again which somehow, felt pleasantly contagious. And she realized what she read about that guy was mostly accurate.

Yoo Young Jae was a singer and song-writer—but mostly known for his composing more despite debuted as a singer first. People knew him as a nice person with warm personality, and being called as naturally unpretentious artist since the beginning of his career. Jieun did listen to his songs one or two times and she could easily assumed that his songs were mostly about love. A typical topic around these day’s music yet Jieun felt something different on his creation than the others.

Something that couldn’t be expressed by words.

“Ah—I’m going to ask you some questions,” she finally snapped back into reality. “Please kindly answer them.”

He chuckled. And Jieun just realized he had a prominent cheekbones once his lips tugged up.

“Alright. You can start it now,” he nodded.

“What’s your current activities?” she started, right hand holding onto a ballpoint to write down the answer.

“Still composing songs, as usual. And I’ve been thinking about producing my own singer in the future,” he casually replied.

“Oh, so you’ll built your own agency?” Jieun raised her eyebrows, got excited to receive such new material.

“Not that kind of big strategy,” he laughed. “More like, I’ll work with another prominent agency.”

“Are the current singers not meeting your expectation?” she teased.

He tilted his head to the side, carefully answering the question. “Sadly, most new singers don’t want to put the whole of their efforts into a song. I don’t like if my hard work being sing that way.”

“You must love music so much,” Jieun smiled.

“Of course. I’ve already choose to be a singer and song writer so I must love music more than anything,” he agreed right away.

“What about your love life? Your songs are mostly about love but you’ve never been in a relationship again since five years ago,” Jieun trickily switched the topic.

He laughed. “Well, I’m a careless person, maybe?”

Jieun raised her eyebrows, wondering what was he trying to say.

“I love music more than anything. More than my own girlfriend as well,” he pointed out.

“Ah, so that’s it. Cold-hearted guy?” she chuckled.

“Not cold-hearted but I’m a kind of person that won’t force one to stay. I love music more so if you can’t bear with me, just leave,” he replied.

Jieun felt something off from his answer that somehow, made her voice couldn’t come out for a moment. She tried to shrug it off, forced her mind to focus on the paper back and asked the next question.

But instead of asking the one that was neatly written there, her lips moved differently from what her mind told her to do.

“Will you let a girl go if she can’t bear with your attitude? Or you will just ignore her until she decided to leave?” she murmured.

“I will let her go,” Youngjae undoubtly replied. “I won’t fight her nor telling her to leave. It’s all up to her decision.”

Jieun frowned. She couldn’t understand that kind of thoughts.

“Then, should she stay? What about if she truly loves you but it’s too hard for her to understand you?”

Youngjae raised his left eyebrow, kind of realized that they had been going off topic yet he wasn’t going to object it anyway. “If she really love me, then she should be able to understand me.”

Jieun chuckled, didn’t agree with him but still waiting for his further explanation.

“You know, love is about understanding. If you can’t understand, you can’t love and if you can’t love, you can’t understand,” he smiled. “The true understanding isn’t about knowing the whole about myself but rather to be able to know the reason behind my decision.”

She didn’t know why but Yongguk was the only person that came across her mind as Youngjae mentioned that thing. Did she haven’t tried her best yet to understand him? Did she was the one that decided to leave, or he was the one that throw her away?

She couldn’t find the answer. Stucked at the same problem—she still couldn’t figure a thing out.

“You know, you can’t force one to understand nor love you,” he leant against the couch, genuinely smiled right after he said it.

Jieun scoffed. “Love is complicated, right?”

“Who says?” his eyes widened in surprise, “love is always guileless—people make it turns to be complicated.”

And with that statement, Jieun looked at him, through his dark brown eyes that were reflecting warmth and confidence. Which somehow—without her knowing, took away a part of her worries that were staying all this time.

“Either to make love to be complicated or to nicely deal with it, that’s all about our decision. The point of love and life is the same and only one,” he paused for awhile, before slowly continued the statement. “It’s about being delightful.”

Being delightful.

Jieun stared at her computer screen without doing anything that afternoon. Those singer’s words had been dwelled on her mind for days and it didn’t seem like they could go away soon. It just stucked that way—no matter how hard she tried to forget it.

After more than minutes staying on that pose, she finally sighed and put her head on the table. She was kind of regretting her decision to go to Busan since it made her remember everything that happened in the past. And she didn’t like it. At all. It was something that she willing to forget and even delete them away and remembering them just added another pointless pain for her.

Those regrets, worries and immature acts—she wanted to forget all of them. Really wanted to.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Sunhwa tapped her shoulder in full of concern way.

Jieun looked up at her, attempting to force a smile yet she failed to do so. “Nothing.”

“What? Got stuck between works?” she smirked.

Didn’t know how to explain the true situation, Jieun chose to nod her head just so the talk would be over soon. She wasn’t in a good mood at all.

“I see,” she pouted, “but don’t you have an important dinner with your man tonight?”

Jieun’s eyes quickly widened as she remembered what day it was. She looked at the time that was displaying on her computer screen, realized that it was impossible for her to finish her works in such short due time.

“You’re right,” she cluelessly muttered, didn’t know what better to do while looking at a stack of documents on the side of her table.

“You can count on me. Remember that I’m a writer too. I can edit them for you,” Sunhwa winked. “But just remember to tell me about the dinner.”

Jieun smiled. Sunhwa was definitely a nice person although she never wanted to admit it.

“I will. Thank you,” Jieun quickly took her bag and walked away, chasing after the time that was keep on moving forward.

As much as she didn’t want to disappoint Junhong, she was really afraid if something out of her expectation would happen later. Yet she kept on reminding herself that he was the best one that she could ever had, and there’s no reason for her to didn’t choose him as well. Afterall, she believed that life must go on. And all the pains from the past would slowly disappeared as the time goes by.

She believed it.

Junhong glanced at his watch again—for the fifth times since he arrived at that restaurant.

He had been waiting for almost half hour, and his attempt to ask her whether she would come or not through phone call was useless since her phone wasn’t active. He knew she might already on the way there, or just being late due to a meeting or trapped on a traffic jam but he knew it better that half of his mind was thinking of negative possibilities instead.

Did she doesn’t want to meet him? Did she finally realized that she had been on an unwanted relationship all this time? Would she come at least just to say farewell?

While blowing a heavy sigh, he buried his face on his both hands.

He got mad with his ownself more than anybody else. He knew that he had been too paranoid ever since those reunion invitation came to his hand which was something that he couldn’t be able to handle. It was like a bomb timer—he believed, the one that would ruin up himself, and everything that he had done in order to keep Jieun by his side.

And with that kind of thoughts, he decided that he had to do something if Jieun eventually came. He wouldn’t waste any times again. He promised.

“Sorry, I’m late!”

Junhong slowly lifted up his head and found Jieun that was heavily breathing in front of him. She was sitting there, showing her bright smile which he used to see for almost eight years, with both eyes staring straight at him—only at him.

And he wanted to make it always stay that way.

“It’s okay,” he finally replied.

“So what are you going to talk about?” she curiously asked.

Junhong smiled, trying to cover up his nervousness. “What about we order our dinner first?”

“Oh, alright,” she muttered, nodding her head with eyebrows raised.

Junhong spent the dinner with listening to her talking about the beautiful view of Busan or another usual thing like her tight schedule and how she wanted a holiday, badly. Sometimes, there’s a long silence between them where they just wordlessly ate their dinner before Junhong began searching for a new topic again. He wasn’t in a mood to talk such things yet he didn’t want to make her feel uneasy as well. He just needed a little time to think about what better to do because he knew, she already realized his different attitude since then.

“Did something happen?” she carefully asked after they finished the plate.

He glanced at her, before slowly putting down the fork. “Honestly, I want to ask you something.”

Jieun placed her elbows on the table, hesitantly waiting for his question.

Then, Junhong stared at her. Straight into her eyes. She could see his dark eyes that always seemed so warmth and comforting suddenly turned into a serious, intimidating one—a gaze that once he showed her on the first day they became a seatmate. Somehow showing that there’s nothing in this world that he’s afraid of, that there’s nothing relevant enough to detain his step.

“If I asked you to stay with me for the rest of your life, will you accept it?” he asked, with his slight husky voice.

Jieun had already knew it might happen, yet it felt completely different between imagining them and facing it by herself. She was at loss of words once he finished his confession. It should have felt so amazing to have someone told her that thing but it surprisingly so far from what it called amazing. Instead, confusion was the only thing that clouded her mind.

“Will you stay with me?” he asked once again.

Jieun realized they weren’t young anymore. They were already twenty-five and marriage was the only destination left after dating step. Junhong was a very kind-hearted guy. He had nice personality, always knew how to bring her smile back and had a million ways to sweep her sadness away. He had been there on her hard and joyful times—never once attempt to escape or walk out of her life. In short, he’s perfect. And Jieun knew it was enough for her to be trapped on a memory for eight years long.

More than enough.

“I will,” she finally replied.

Junhong didn’t expect her to give those answer but he didn’t want the worst one either. He was glad of her answer. Really glad. But it still wasn’t enough yet.

“Don’t be burden of this,” he muttered, while taking out a small velvet black box from inside his formal coat. “But I hope you can take this.”

By the time he placed those box on the table and pushed them closer to her, Jieun already knew what was there inside of it. Yet she still carefully took it on her hand and opened its case—only to find a diamond ring with continuous line of identically small cut gemstones wrapped on its band, making it looks pretty simple yet precious at the same time.

“It’s eternity ring,” he told.

Jieun looked at him after hearing that fact. She was wondering why did he give her such that kind of ring type when suddenly, his hand already slipped under her palm to put the ring on her middle finger. And with that such quick move, Jieun already found the ring placed on her thin finger a moment later.

Which made her got a little goosebumps.

“I give it to you just because I like it. You don’t have to be heavily pressured by a single ring,” he smiled, finally felt satisfied. “Maybe you can think of it as an engagement ring.”

Jieun smiled. No matter how burdensome those ring meant for her, she was glad to see him being happy with her decision. It was definitely the best choice that the other normal person would make—she thought. Wasn’t it much better to be loved than to love?

“This mean a lot to me,” she awkwardly said.

And now, this was the time. Junhong knew he must do that no matter what.

“Do you have time on next month’s 10?” he finally asked.

Jieun raised her eyebrows in surprise. “What?”

Junhong smiled. He slightly bent down to take out a card from inside his portable bag, staring at it for a moment—like wondering whether to let her know or not, before eventually put it on the table.

He didn’t have to be scared anymore. Jieun was his girlfriend now, the one that had already promised to stay by his side no matter what.

And there’s no reason for him to hide it from her as well.

They had to face the past.

“Let’s go to the reunion party.”