[CONTENTID1]Chapter 7[/CONTENTID1]

[CONTENTID2] Soundtrack: "You Said You'd Grow Old With Me" - Michael Schulte

[/CONTENTID2][CONTENTID3]

"I'd like to say I'm ok

But i'm not"

The day Heung Soo was finally able to walk without his crutch was clear, sunny, and warm. It should be a weather that would make anyone feel happy - but it wasn't the case for Heung Soo. He was not feeling warm like the sun, his eyes weren't bright as the sky. It's been six months - six months since he lost soccer, six months since that bastard had been gone.

Heung Soo would start school in two weeks - his new school, his new life. But he wasn't waiting impatiently for it. He wasn't waiting for it at all. He couldn't care less, because his life was already gone long ago.

That day he was walking down that soccer field three blocks away from his house. The field was huge, and the grass was a little too big, but he didn't care. He didn't even knew what he was doing there, holding a soccer ball in his hands.

He didn't know why he had hopes. He didn't know if that was even his dream anymore. However, what if he could still play soccer? What if his doctor was wrong, and he could play soccer again? If he could become a famous soccer player... then... would Nam Soon come back?

He clenched his teeth, trying to fade those thoughts away, as he dropped the ball on the ground, starting to run slowly at first. It wasn't really hurting - in fact, he could still run without his knees aching. However, that didn't mean that he would be able to properly kick the ball. And soon he found out that he wouldn't.

When he kicked the ball, an excruciating pain struck his joint, moving up to his leg and sending him down onto the grass. It ing hurt like hell, but the pain wasn't what got him angry - It was the memories. The memories of the bastard that ruined everything. The bastard that gave him that ing soccer ball that he couldn't kick anymore. And as if it were him, as if all the rage could be release with this, he took the ball off the ground and threw it as far as he could. He didn't see where it fell, and he dropped on his knees again, his hands pulling his hair desperately as his joints throbbed. It is his fault. It is all his fault. All Nam Soon's fault.

So where was that ing bastard right now when he needed him the most?

"I try

But I fall

Close my mind

Turn it off"

He went inside his room and, step after step, the anger decreased - but not the sorrow that came with it. Over his bed was a mess with pictures he had just ripped off his album. Pictures with Nam Soon, pictures alone, and some he took on the days he was hanging out with him- when he wasn't alone.

There was one old picture they took in his birthday that he ripped some seconds ago where he was holding the ball Nam Soon had given him. Nam Soon was laughing behind him, not really paying attention to the picture since they were just young kids back then.

It was his present - the one he just threw away at the soccer field some minutes ago. Without wavering, without thinking about his reasons, he went out after the ball - back to that soccer field, back to recover the gift he had left behind. The one Nam Soon left behind.

He found it near the gates - it had struck a loose nail on the gate that pierced it, and now it was laying punctured on the grass. Just an old, dirty, and ripped soccer ball, full of lost memories. He took it anyway, and headed back to his house, holding it on his arms. He didn't know why. Nam Soon left him. Nam Soon just showed him how less he thought of him. So, why was him still so attached to those memories?

Why couldn't he just forget?

"You've got your peace now

What about me?"

But Heung Soo never managed to forget. Even though he lied to himself saying he did, Nam Soon's presence was still there. The memories of those times, the feelings - they never truly faded away, and would mold his life in the next two years.

Over the next few years, Heung Soo did things he never done with Nam Soon, even though they were part of a gang. He surpassed the limits they had set for themselves. Because now he had nothing else to lose - he no longer had Nam Soon by his side, making all those stuff unnecessary.

He met people, unconsciously hoping he would find someone like Nam Soon. Someone that would fill that empty space Nam Soon had left in his heart. However, he made bad choices and met the wrong kind of people. In the middle of gangs, alleys, clubs and drinks, he got involved with drugs, more violence than they had ever experienced, girls, fights and theft - and not just the small kind like when he and Nam Soon stole vending machines to buy cigarettes.

On the following months, Heung Soo made things that almost ruined his life. But, among all those people he met, none of them managed to fill that empty void in his heart. Because none of them were Go Nam Soon.

"Didn't say goodbye, now I'm frozen in time

Getting colder, colder"

It was in the beginning of second grade when that happened. It was a younger boy, a lot skinnier, and just a bit shorter than Heung Soo. It was the first time he had seen him around, but apparently he was part of a gang in a richer college in town.

Heung Soo still didn't know how it happened. He was probably high, and his gang colleagues kept cheering for him to hit him. He said something about his leg - something about the rumors about how he got his leg hurt. It didn't matter. It didn't matter anymore, because that boy fainted on his first punch, right on the middle of his face. But Heung Soo kept on hitting him. He punched him until his hands were all bruised, blood stained his jacket, and the police siren approached. And the next thing he remembered was his sister's disappointed face. Until this days, he didn't know how he got out of it with just a probation.

"I can't be sober

I cannot sleep

He changed schools once again after that happened, and he didn't know how he even got accepted. They were supposed to go to a small town this time, but changed plans in the last minute. Heung Soo didn't ask the reasons for his sister, but after some time he came to the conclusion that she was already dating her current husband and didn't want to leave him that way. Today Heung Soo was grateful that they didn't. He didn't want to be the reason for ruining her life too.

When that happened, Heung Soo had already abandoned his feelings. He just promised his sister that he would graduate - he would change his life. He had to finally move on. That life with Nam Soon was over, and he couldn't ruin his own anymore because of him. In this new school, this new home... He would start anew.

He wouldn't see his sister's disappointed expression anymore - that was a promise that he intended to keep.

"One last word

One last moment

To ask you why

You left me here behind"

Life didn't get easier for him, but slowly, he manage to overcome it. He fulfilled his promise with his sister and graduated high school. His scores weren't the best, but they were enough to go through with it. He had to learn how to study, for his sister's sake. His knee didn't get better, but now he already knew that it wouldn't. He knew that soccer was a long lost dream... just like Nam Soon. Slowly, he learned to lie to himself that he forgot about him. That those memories were just bad memories.

He lost contact with his gang colleagues and his sister was glad for that. He stopped with the drugs and fights, and he only drank occasionally. Smoking was the only thing that he didn't let go, though he manage to hide it from Joo Mi - he didn't want her to get too worried about his health.

He did more than he planned for his life because of her. He did get into college, but didn't have any idea of what he would study there - the only thing that interested him was soccer, and now he couldn't even try something with physical education because of his knee - he even got dismissed from the army because of it.

So, in the end, he spent some years of his life studying economics and he didn't even know why. The only thing that mattered was to make his sister proud. That's why, since then, everything he did was for her - that was all he told himself. And so, to this day, he moved on just because.

Those days when he had dreams of his own were long gone.

"Thought we had the time, had our lives

Now you'll never get older, older"

It was in the final year of college that his sister got engaged. She did her best to present him as a good college student to her fiance's parents. "He's studying hard. He will be a great business employer." Heung Soo just listened in silence, with a polite smile on his face, trying not to think about the questions that were running through his mind. "He will have a great future", she said.

But the corner of his smile wasn't so politely anymore. A great future? Maybe. In appearance, maybe. However, truth was that everything wasn't as good as it seemed. He had no idea what he was doing. He was just living to his sister's expectations. But what about his own? After all, he was still stuck in those old days - those where he could only see himself in the soccer fields, when it was only him and Nam Soon, laughing, having fun... living together.

However, all that was left in his life was just him and Joo Mi. But she would have a new life now, she would have her own family, and Heung Soo wouldn't have a place in it anymore - that was how it felt. She would be a wife now, and in the future, a mother. Not Heung Soo's mother, but she would have her own kids. And Heung Soo was supposed to have a life of his own - he couldn't depend on her anymore.

And somehow, that made him feel lonely. Without her by his side, what was left? She was the only one who helped him through those hard times. Without her, he would have to live on his own, to get over it on his own. Would he make it? He asked himself that everytime.

"We had plans

We had visions

Now I can't see ahead"

He moved to his new apartment after his sister got married. He would live alone now for the first time.

When he moved, he brought things he shouldn't have - a box full of memories, that he knew he should have left behind. To truly move on with his mind and heart. Yet, he was still lying to himself. That's why he stored it deep down in his closet, promising himself that he would never take it out from there. That it wouldn't be seen anymore. It past the time to move on.

And for some time, he felt like he had truly moved on. He got his job, he had a nice place, he had a good life. He build up his lie pretty well, that he even fooled himself with it. But when he least expected it, Nam Soon was back. And suddenly, all he had before didn't feel real anymore. It was like he had stopped in time, and only after he had found Nam Soon that his life finally began to move again.

But that was not what Heung Soo had planned. He couldn't go back, and even if he could, was there still something to go back to?

"We were one

We were golden

Forever you said

"You said you'd grow old with me"