Ji Hyo woke up to Gary’s light kisses on her shoulder. She smiled, her eyes still closed. “Gary-ah,” she said in her most seductive voice. “Can you get me an Americano?”

“What?” Gary started laughing. “Yah, here I am waking you up with kisses and all you can think about is coffee?” He smiled. “Aish, I should have woken you up like I did yesterday.”

She kissed him sweetly on the lips and then looked at him, pouting and batting her eyes. But she couldn’t keep up the aegyo for long and soon broke out in laughter.

Gary smiled and shook his head. “Ji Hyo-yah, you know you have my heart.” He kissed her deeply, feeling like the luckiest man on earth. “I’ll get you anything you want.”

He had been in love with Ji Hyo all throughout Running Man. As the show’s loveline, they had pretended to be sweet on each other, but he hadn’t been acting. Those years had been hard on him, so hard that at one point, he had considered leaving the show. But he continued on, hiding his broken heart every Monday. Even later, when she began dating Baek Chang Joo, he had continued on, trying his hardest to forget her. But when Running Man ended, things changed – for everyone. Jae Suk and Suk Jin were participating in another variety show, Kwang Soo was busy with acting and Haha with singing, and Jong Kook, newly married, had moved to Hawaii. After a few months of little contact between the former Running Man members, Ji Hyo had suddenly called Gary and told him that she missed their Mondays together. And over the years since, their relationship transformed from pretend love to real love, and he eventually proposed to her with the ring that she had noticed in the jewelry store in Macau during one of their Running Man missions. Their life together was everything he had hoped for. Sometimes, when he would wake up, he would check to see if she was really there, to make sure that she wasn’t just a dream he’d had.

He kissed her again. “I’ll get your Americano,” he said, smiling, “if you promise to be up and dressed by the time I get back. I still want to go down to the beach before we have to leave.”

She reached up and held her hand against his cheek, brushing her palm against his skin. “Gary-ah, would you mind if, instead, we go back to Jong Kook’s house?” She hadn’t felt right since leaving. There was no explanation for how she felt; it was just a sense telling her that something was off. “I just, I’d feel better leaving tonight knowing that he’ll be okay.”

“Of course,” Gary said. He was disappointed, but he also wanted to check in on Jong Kook. He had been worried last night when Jong Kook asked to drink Soju with him. It was understandable, considering what Jong Kook had been through, losing his wife after only five years, but Jong Kook wasn’t much of a drinker – maybe a drink or two on his birthday, but that was usually all. Gary thought it was surprising that he had chosen that outlet, rather than exercise for instance, to deal with his emotions. But then again, Gary thought, everyone handles loss differently. He didn’t know what he would do if he lost Ji Hyo. He couldn’t even imagine it.

Jong Kook could hear Sun Marie’s laughter echoing throughout the halls. At first, he didn’t know if he was still dreaming. He reached over and patted the other side of the bed, looking for Jennifer. Part of him almost expected her to be there, for this to have all just been a dream.

He opened his eyes and looked over at her side of the bed, empty. But there was an indentation there. Of her body? He stared at the recess in the pillow, trying to imagine it as the shape of her head. And then the mattress, the sunken parts outlining the curves of her body. Had it been like that all week? How had he not noticed?

He had lost her in that very spot the previous Sunday. She had looked peaceful that morning. Her eyes had been closed, her lips just slightly parted. He had whispered her name to wake her up, but then he touched her arm, feeling her cold skin. He remembered that moment now, how he had panicked and had shaken her, rocking her body back and forth and yelling her name, and how he had held her then, lifting her lifeless body into his arms and pulling her face close to his chest, saying over and over again, why, why, why.

Jong Kook still didn’t have the answers. None of the doctors could explain it. The coroner had reported her death as due to “unspecified natural causes.”

Kaimana quietly walked in to put away some of Jong Kook’s clothes, freshly washed, and saw him staring blankly at the bed. She hadn’t been comfortable with him staying in that room. Her family was highly superstitious, their beliefs stemming from Hawaiian and other Polynesian lore. She was a believer, too. And each night, for the past week, she had been praying for Jennifer’s 'uhane, her soul.

She and Jong Kook both heard Sun Marie then, her laughter growing louder as she skipped down the hall toward the bedroom. She stopped in the doorway, looking up at Kaimana and then over at her appa, and then she ran and leaped into the bed beside him, startling Jong Kook.

As his daughter reached over to hug him, he stared at Jennifer’s side of the bed, the sheets now ruffled, the outline gone. And he suddenly felt awake, really awake, as if pulled from a haze. He looked at Sun Marie’s face, her cute chubby cheeks, her green eyes the same shade as her mother’s, and he asked her then if she had been sleeping next to her appa at night.

Sun Marie dramatically shook her head back and forth the way kids sometimes do, with every move exaggerated. “No, appa. That’s where Mommy sleeps.”

Kaimana cleared and continued putting away the clothes.

“Kaimana,” Jong Kook said. “Have you–”