I looked around the cozy little apartment-like room and smiled at its homeliness. It was bursting with a feeling of warmth and security, much like my house back home. There were many bookshelves filled with music history books, sheet music, and binders containing loose paper. A beautiful midnight-black piano was found in the middle of the room, sheet music carelessly scattered alongside the lid. I also found many pictures of him when he was younger. Other than chubbier cheeks and lighter hair, Yunho looked almost exactly the same appearance-wise. There was a picture of him with a thin smiley boy, both of them doing the Asian V-sign with wide grins that seemed super-glued onto their faces; it took me a moment to realize that the little boy was actually Yoochun in his younger days. The question ‘What happened to him?’ immediately rang in my mind. Then I came to a picture that made my eyes narrow. It was mostly a headshot of Yunho and a beautiful woman making a heart between them with their hands. I felt a twinge of jealousy build up within me.

“Oh, her,” Yunho smiled as he noticed which photograph I was looking at. “That’s Seul Gi. She’s a lovely woman.”

“Seul Gi?” I repeated slowly.

“Yah,” my professor said. “She’s my wife. We’ve been married for almost twenty years.”

‘She’s my wife.’ It was a stab in my weak heart. Those three words that rolled effortlessly off of my professor’s well-meaning tongue wounded me more than anything I have ever experienced, maliciously repeating themselves in my mind in an echo-like manner. ‘Yunho is married.’

I felt dizziness emerging from the inside of my head, and a buzzing in my ears started to form. I swallowed back my tears and started hyperventilating silently. I tried to move away from the horrid picture but my feet were glued to the spot, my eyes refusing to tear themselves away from the woman in the photo.

“Yunnie dear, you’re back!” I heard an unfamiliar female voice coming from behind me.

Filled with dread, I turned around slowly.

“Seul Gi!” Yunho smiled sweetly and kissed his wife lightly on her cheek. “Dear, I would like you to meet Kim Jaejoong, my newest and youngest ever student.”

I forced myself to smile and bowed politely. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Jung,” I mumbled. The last two words felt bitter in my mouth, the feeling you get after drinking a cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice or something equally sour.

Seul Gi giggled. “He’s awfully shy.”

Yunho winked at me, but I could not bring myself to respond to his playful gesture. Seul Gi was even more beautiful in person than in the photograph. She had a slim figure, a perfectly white doll-like face, neatly trimmed shoulder-length brown hair, and sparkling eyes that conveyed only kindness and love. Oh, how much easier it would have been if she had been hideously ugly or at least ill-tempered!

“Yunho has told me a lot about you,” she said kindly. “You are only sixteen if I am not mistaken.”

I nodded.

“When I first saw you, I thought that you were at least twenty!” she smiled good-naturedly.

“I get that a lot,” I murmured without looking up at her.

“But you are so young!” she exclaimed as she placed her hand on her heart as she looked incredulously at me. “And you came here all by yourself!?”

I nodded again with an unchanging face.

“Oh my god! Is Yunnie taking good care of you and teaching you well?”

“Yes, ma’am, he is very good to me,” I nodded hastily.

Yunho laughed as he ruffled my hair. “Jaejoongie is a very sweet boy.”

“Well, if Yunnie does anything bad to you,” Seul Gi teasingly scowled at her husband, “Just let me know and I’ll make sure that he is penalized.”

Yunho chuckled while I smiled sullenly at the lovely lady in front of me. I could not help but like her no matter how hard I tried not to. ‘No wonder Yunho married her,’ I thought acrimoniously.

“I should leave now,” I finally announced. My heart was on the verge of crumbling.

“At least stay for supper,” Seul Gi offered. “You look as thin as a railing!”

“Great idea!” Yunho clasped his hands together. “I hope you are hungry, Jaejoongie, because Seul Gi here makes the best pork dumplings in all of Korea.”

Before I knew it, I was sitting at the dinner table with my love interest and my love interest’s wife. To put it bluntly, life . I learned that Yunho and Seul Gi had the typical hate to love relationship. They first met in high school, and despised each other due to their competitiveness in grades and accomplishments. Yunho was a skillful pianist by then, and specialized in law and politics, serving as the student government president three times in a row. Seul Gi, on the other hand, was more into sciences and mathematics, and was always found dissecting frogs or experimenting with different chemicals. They were both elected valedictorian and even went to the same university though for different majors (Yunho for a double degree in Law and Music, Seul Gi for a joint degree in Science and Commerce). From there, they gradually fell in love and Yunho finally popped the question during their graduation ceremony (“Took him long enough!” Seul Gi said).

Throughout their story, I only nodded with a weak smile on my face. ‘Great. Good to know.’

After I helped Seul Gi wash the dishes and clear the table (though they insisted otherwise), I finally said my goodbyes. “I’m sorry for barging in like this,” I bowed as I made my way out.

“Oh no, it was a pleasure meeting you, Jaejoong,” Seul Gi smiled lovingly. Then she turned to Yunho. “You should walk him back. It is rather dark out.”

“It is okay, I’ll be fine,” I said, desperate for some time alone.

“No, I’ll walk you back,” my professor grabbed his coat and draped it around my shoulders before I could object again.

I sighed quietly and bowed once more. “It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Jung.”

“Please just call me Seul Gi,” she responded with a gentle smile.

“It will take a while,” Yunho joked. “It took him a few weeks before he stopped calling me ‘Professor Jung’.”

The corners of my mouth curled up into a reluctant smile. “Sorry.”

“AND he still hasn’t gotten rid of the habit of apologizing too much,” Yunho was looking at me while he said this, and my Adam’s apple lurched at his intense stare.

“Well, hurry off, you two!” Seul Gi smiled brightly. “The sky is darkening quickly; the weather forecast predicted a storm.”

“I’ll be back before you know it, dear,” Yunho grinned.

I bit my lower lip at their sugary sweetness and wished with all my heart that I could have just disappeared right then and there.

Yunho opened the door for me and I quickly stepped out, politely waving goodbye at Seul Gi.

“She’s very nice,” I told Yunho once we were both outside, a good distance away from his flat.

“Seul Gi is an absolutely wonderful wife,” my professor smiled proudly.

I gulped. “I can tell that you love her very much.”

“Yes, I do.”

A single tear trickled down my cheek but I quickly wiped it away.

“I hope that you will find somebody you love one day,” he smiled. “I’m sure you will.”

I looked up at him. “How so?” I asked. ‘I already found the one I loved.’

“Well, I think you are—hmm, what do kids call it these days?—‘cute’? Back when I was your age, kids used the words ‘dashing’ or ‘striking’. Nevertheless, you are all three.”

‘I may be cute,’ I thought bitterly, ‘but that does not change the fact that the one I love does not reciprocate my feelings.’

“Jaejoongie?” Yunho looked at me with worry in his eyes. “Are you alright? You seem quite pale.”

I shivered and swallowed the lump in my throat. “I-I’m fine,” I stammered.

Yunho grabbed my arm and quickly spun me around so that I was facing him. His gaze bore into me so powerfully that I could have melted into the Earth if the laws of nature allowed it. “Jaejoongie,” he repeated seriously, “Are you alright?”

‘No!’ I screamed in my mind. ‘How could I be alright when I am helplessly in love with you, a middle-aged man married to the most perfect woman? Huh?!? How could I ever be alright when I finally find out that all this time, the one I loved was never mine in the first place? Yunho, you were married even before I was born! How the f**k could I be alright!?!?!’

I would have loved to scream all of my deepest darkest thoughts out at him, to let all of it off of my chest instead of being crammed up into my cracking heart. Instead, I smiled weakly and told him the biggest lie that ever came out of my mouth: “I’m fine.”

Yunho let go of me, his arm slowly and grudgingly falling back to his side. Grief filled his eyes. “You can trust me, you know,” he whispered. “You can tell me, Jaejoongie. You can tell me anything.”

‘I can tell you anything except this,’ I mourned silently. “Yunho, I’m okay,” I forced out a wide grin.

My professor did not smile back before he continued walking towards the conservatory. I followed, uttering no word. As Seul Gi said, storm clouds started to form overhead.

If there was one thing I learned about Yunho, it was that I could never fool him no matter how hard I tried. Even if I was only a little bit distraught, he would automatically know despite all I did to hide it. He saw right through me, reading me like a book.

He knew that I was not alright; he just did not know why.

I hoped that he would never know why.

```

Once I stumbled back to my dormitory and had a good cry, I logged onto my computer and booked two airplane tickets from Belgium to Korea as Yunho asked me to. We would not be on the same flight, though: Yunho would be heading back to the airport near the conservatory and I would be heading back home—my real home.

And so began the last month and a half before leaving Yunho forever.

````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

I feel bad writing this, one because Yunho and Jaejoong are meant for each other, and two because I have been torturing Jaejoong enough as it is. I have been debating on whether or not to cut this scene out and give the story a different turn from what happened in real life, but I decided just to stick to my first plan.

Remember, life is not perfect. Jaejoong is just going through a mid-life crisis except several decades earlier.

But still, there will be more YunJae action after this. Please still support my fanfic!