So the next morning, feeling all fresh and anew I arrived at Sung Yeol’s coffee shop, the draft for my love letter already made up in my mind. In all honesty, I was passive in admitting things, especially feelings which confused me the most. I wasn’t confused with the feelings I had for Myung Soo though; I’d been liking him for long enough to comprehend it that there was something legit to it, that there was no confusion involved in what I had for him; yes, there was love.

Okay, it’s not like I’m capable of defining exactly what love was; in fact, the only person who truly loved me for all I knew was my father, and that wasn’t the mind of love that one could expect to give a man, so it was different, therefore I didn’t know exactly what love was like. However my internal reactions explained it all, I mean, how else could I elucidate the weird thumping of my heart and the irregular beats? How else could I elucidate the reason why everything becomes warm inside me when he was around? The only possible explanation as it seemed to me was the conclusion that I had come to now; yes, I was in love.

So in order to admit the truth, I decided to write him a letter. How legit did that sound?

Well, frankly Howon was right. I would probably be an and lose this battle of mine to win his heart; because he and I both knew that I would never in this life confront him and tell him the truth. For I was afraid, for I was afraid to admit things that I wasn’t comfortable with, for I was afraid that even I had the prospects of great defeat.

So in order to overcome these particular impediments, the best and the most cooperative strategy was to tell him of my likeness through writing.

At least he wouldn’t see my face then.

So yes.

You see, I am really really bad at planning things, mostly thing in particular; like confessions, because those were the kind of activities that I had never done in my life. This is a negative trait of me of course, to be unable to plan things I mean. It’s better to plan, it’s better to be a good strategist because there was a high possibility that things could get messed up and end up in a really ty situation, and I was not born to bare embarrassment, really. But still I was stupid enough, even on this particular day to come without nothing so much as a plan.

Screw the plan, what’s more? I couldn’t even find myself a pen and a sheet.

First of all, it was really important to consider the aspects of the situation, the destination of the letter was a vital matter, for it, well…matters, in accordance to the demeanors of who may receive it, which was an extreme clean-freak. So the answer my friends, was simple. A clean, neat letter.

So it may not go as Lee Sung Yeol suggested, which was a ‘tissue’, for Myung Soo wouldn’t even clean his snot with tissues from other people.

The next matter would be the content.

Myung Soo and I both took social sciences, and in addition he took Korean contemporary literature which apparently made him a highly literal person, which, to be frank, is exceptionally nerve wrecking. Really. Whenever it was my turn to copy notes (Which very rarely happened) the first thing he would do is call me over and correct every single mistake, occasionally hitting me on my head, saying that being a Korean it’s unbelievable that I made the kind of mistakes I did make; well, mostly because I couldn’t remember what and what came after the other, and at those kind of situation I will always be considering the wisdom of drilling holes on his pretty head with ball-point pens. Well, it’s not like I didn’t like my mistakes corrected, really, in fact I wouldn’t mind having them corrected so I can add some more extra knowledge into my petty mind, but the thing is, When Myung Soo does it, it gets me really really mad; because he corrects my mistakes in a really nerve wrecking manner. So the last thing I want him to do after he got the letter was calling me over and telling me this and that and making sense, really, I wouldn’t want to consider wrapping him up and mailing him to Africa if he really got on my nerves. So in order to overcome this matter I thought I could use a, well, a dictionary.

But you see, I’m really confident in my writing, because I could write so well although I didn’t take contemporary literature like Myung Soo did (Maybe I purposefully evaded taking it because I didn’t want to be lectured about this and that every day).

 I have this, you know, hidden talent in writing which I improve on a daily basis by writing fan fictions for all the drama actors I love, and there are several others who read them and complement my talent, I post them on internet once in a while on sites that Myung Soo can’t even guess that exists; however, I figured, the confidence matters. Confidence, in other words is believing in oneself. And I do believe in myself in this trait I tell you. Except for the possibility that sometimes I didn’t make sense then and there, my writing was perfection. That was another reason why I thought that writing a love letter was legit; I mean, if any other charm of mine ( I wonder if I have those) couldn’t attract me, at least my words would.

Therefore to get a neat, impeccable writing taken down, I needed my necessities. Since it was still a little early on a peaceful Saturday morning, I decided to skip the morning hours of work at Sungyeol’s, told him the truth to which he willingly agreed and headed out to the nearest convenient store which had all that I needed.

The store wasn’t that crowded for an early morning, which was good since I preferred to do my shopping in a friendly atmosphere, thus I got myself a basket although it wasn’t really necessary and headed down through the racks. Back at home I had thousands of things needed because my father hardly ever went grocery shopping so I made a mental note to get that done after work before heading over to Howon’s and straight away went towards the rack where they had neatly organized the stationary; on the top rack were the items that people didn’t generally need but bought nevertheless, such as pencil holders and all, gradually moving downwards were the other items organized according to a certain order. In the bottom they had note pads and papers which I needed to buy. Therefore I kneeled down and began to go through the content.

While I was at it, the front door jingled, indicating someone’s entrance which really wasn’t anything to bother me, really, why would it? But then when I heard a familiar voice…

“Do you have sticky pads here?”

Well, there’s this thing; when you hate someone to the last fiber of his existence, you hear things at the most random moments, most likely to be that person’s voice, or his footsteps, or even the sound of his shoes rubbing against the marble; it could even be anyone else but you think that it was possibly him; all this would be what instincts give you, therefore its highly psychological. What you do at these paranormal moments? Ignore.

So even when a pair of feet (Really nice ones I tell you; not that I specifically looked at them) arrived beside me, I didn’t give a darn but continued my doing as though this particular person was in a parallel existence, I had my eyes thoroughly on the stacks of note pads and books, and my eyes caught something I would love to have for myself; a pink notepad with piggy prints; I mean, how adorable is that? I was reaching out for it just when-

“!”

A rain of stacks of multicolored sticky pads showered over me, several of them hitting my head, my eyes, my nose and everywhere they could possibly reach.

Okay, now how bad could my day be?

I whipped up my head, ready to give whoever it was a piece of my mind (I was ignoring my strange instincts since, you know, it could be psychological) when realization slowly dawned on me like a heavy grim shadow. I’d been wrong. Again.

“Y-you?”

It was him, yes, the handsome stranger.

I was surprised, bewildered and utterly irritated that the first instinct of mine was grabbing his sleeve for support to stand up so I can give him my opinion on what he just did, but what happened instead was that I lost my balance for I’ve been sitting for too long and fell right into his arms.

What I wanted to do just then was digging a hole and going to the other side of the world.

“M-miss…are you alright?”

Replying to him was the last thing I wanted to do at that very moment; in fact, I was fuming. What on earth was wrong with my fate that whenever I met him my anger would rise to red?

“I’m fine” I mumbled through gritted teeth and pulled myself away from him. He scented good, I tell you, and looked a lot better than I remembered him and sounded as equally as beautiful, but the thing is, I was never going to like him, for all he’d been doing all this time was climbing up my nerves.

He peeked into my face as though to make certain of something and stepped back. “Oh…it is you….did you hurt anywhere?”

I threw him my coldest glare, took the notepad before turning to him who was now blocking my way, staring down at me in bewilderment as though I were an indigenous species of some sort. “Get out of my way”

“Miss” He called out, grabbing my arm that I stopped on my doing out of impulse and he stepped on before me. “Miss, I apologize for the inconvenience-,”

“What? What’s with the formalities? You’ve caused me enough trouble by now so you know me enough to drop it…Ahjussie…”

“Eh?”

I rolled my eyes. “Look, Ahjussie. I don’t have all the time in the world to sit and listen to your petty talking. If you’re done here, you might as well pick up what you dropped on my head and go on your way.”

With that I made my way towards the cashier with the pink piggy printed note pad. I knew that I was definitely missing out on something which I couldn’t exactly make out, but the thing is, I didn’t want to see him again and make my day any worse, I mean, today is special for me, and if all the bad omens were coming on my way, I was most probable to get my plans messed up, therefore I should steer-clear of the walking talking nuisance. When I reached the cashier, however, I got the shock of my life.

Someone was right behind me, breathing down my neck.

“Oh now that’s interesting”

My first instinct in response was to momentarily whipping around with the idea of giving him a piece of my mind. You see, I was not afraid of the bastards who indulged themselves by picking at random girls under regular basis, I mean, if it was his personal preference; I as a woman had no power or right to amend the aspects of his perception, however, at that very moment I couldn’t help but react immediately for, yes, as slow as my memory could be to remember particular people, I knew that I was yet again overlooking things.

The deep symphonic voice was strangely familiar, but my memory was so weak that I couldn’t grasp where exactly I could have heard it, but something was telling me that I wouldn’t be really happy to turn around.

That I really should not turn around if I dare not to regret.

 “Nam Woohyun, let her be”

Upon hearing the voice of the last person I expected to encounter again, I swiftly whipped around, only to find the doofus from the other night right before my face smiling cheekily, and the handsome stranger a few feet behind him, standing on his magnificence as though he was sculptured out of marble. He had his eyes fixed on something in his hand, not once looking up to see whatever he was referring to as though it was the most natural thing on earth.

-but the strange strange feeling was back on toll again…

Did I know him from somewhere? Why was it so complex and nerve wrecking?

Then he finally looked up, fixing his eyes on mine.

“I’m sorry, miss, but we don’t have the whole day”

Face palm.

Did I mention before that I never was the kind to be left speechless? If I did not, allow me to get this fact straight and clear; I would never leave a situation without a defiance retort of a piece of my mind. Maybe that was how I was brought up, maybe that was something I got from the way my aunts and grandparents treated me, however it was; I knew exactly how I must momentarily react. In simpler words, to push the perfect button at the right time.

But the handsome stranger and his doofus of a friend was an entirely different story which hid certain facts that I couldn’t seem to get my fingers on. It was strange, how I couldn’t respond however good or bad they treated me; it was like the time when he carried me Myung Soo’s laundry and when the doofus called me a chick; I couldn’t find myself to reply. Walking off without a word was my instinct the night before which was all the more embarrassing, at least in my part, and even now when I stood by the cashier, dumbfounded, I couldn’t exactly grasp what the real matter was.

It was as though there was an intangible force, a great obstacle standing in my way, stopping me from crossing the path to strangle him according to my liking. He was entirely different from all the men I had met before. To add to that, all which was surrounding him, even the random-girl-hitter friend of his seemed so unreachable in his grasp.

I rolled my eyes and stepped away, allowing them to pass through to the cashier as I stood away. Moreover there was this strange intuition in me, constantly saying that my mind wasn’t properly functioning; but I had no way of grasping other things with my hay wired mind. I was in a feeble, inconsistent mental instability due to reasons in particular and coming across the handsome stranger wasn’t doing it any good.

He pushed the younger before him who was muttering some gibberish about his hyung not being supportive to rebuild his love life and moved just past me, to whom I gave my best glare although I got in return was, well, ignorance which I didn’t really mind, I mean, who would expect concern of such a nuisance who would only cause trouble whenever we meet…

…but I wouldn’t deny this, there was a teeniest bit of sadness in my heart…

Maybe I was too nervous, maybe the effect of Myung Soo’s secret was back in toll in my heart…

The two of them made their purchases and disappeared out of the store, making the front door jingle at their exit, and I moved towards the cashier, only to find the young boy behind the counter holding a pink pencil with a toy on a spring on one end, his lips playing an amused smile before he reached out and handed it to me. On the spring was a pig, an identical pig as of the notebook I picked. I widened my eyes in utter surprise.

The cashier boys had also started hitting on random girls? Was the first thought which came to my mind; soon enough, though, the young man answered my doubts.

He gestured to his side, on the counter was a holder full of various pencils in numerous colors, he looked up and smiled. “One of the men from before asked me to give this to you…miss”

“Eh?” I demanded in surprise. He continued to smile as he gestured at my hands. “And also paid for your purchase. Wishes for a good day ahead. Thank you for visiting us, good day!”

Somewhere in my life I learned that there were two kinds of people in the world in accordance of every situation that we come across in life. It was always a matter of being able to decipher what was and what was not; as long as we were capable of doing that, we would know the sort of people that we were constantly surrounded with.

At a moment like this, I see two kinds of people around me; those whom we notice right away, and those whom we don’t. Or else I could put it in another sense; those who catch my heart right away and who don’t.  I truly don’t know how accurate my personal judgment was on people in particular, because they tend to differ time to time. I did have such a wary mind and such a frail heart, I tell you, and that was the very reason why it was so easy for anyone to sway my heart and vary my ideas with nothing so much as a gentle yet a provoking deed.

Prior to then, I considered the handsome stranger to belong to the former variety, and then his doing changed it to the latter, but then again…could it be that my judgment was moving back to the former?

That was quite a dilemma, to be honest, it was such a mind boggling dilemma, because at one point in the entire ordeal of the pencil and notebook thing, I was confused as to whom I was referring to. It was a matter of time and reason, or it was just how I was seeing it in my eyes; however, either one of the two men had played a heart churning trick on me; a riddle, who was it? Who wanted me to have a good day?

Was it the handsome stranger whose apparent liking was to cause me trouble wherever our fate decide to lead us to? Or was it the symphonic voiced doofus he didn’t at all earn my likeness but was in a loose ended game ( As I may have assumed) to build up a love life?

The strange thing was, no matter how many times I went round and round the story, I would still and willingly end up at one soft spot.

And that was where the handsome stranger stood metaphorically in my mind.

But all of these, at the moment should come under side notes, for whatever happened back there at the store had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with my on-the-verge-of-extinction, sad-stricken love life. Really, I wasn’t in love with either of the two men, I was just…distracted, and irritated, and confused; but that never meant that they had anything to do with it. Therefore I decided to simply and merely concentrate on what got me running the first thing this morning.

The letter to my beloved.

Sung Yeol’s coffee shop, the moment I returned was far from being crowded for a generally eventful Saturday morning. There were a few lazy customers scattered around in pairs, groups and on their own solidarity; some sipping on a warm share of café, some munching on the freshly baked muffins and croissants, the rest weren’t enjoying any food or beverage at all but chatting away or staring at nothingness as though they were lost in desires and dreams. I, on the other hand smiled cheekily at Sung Yeol and Chorong who were at the counter fighting over something mundane and clutched hard onto the newly purchased notebook and the piggy headed pencil before finding my comfort on a table for two which stood in a lonely corner and began to write.

Gripping hard onto the piggy pencil, I couldn’t decide where to begin and where to end; this love story was a rope without ends for me, or a rope of which I couldn’t find where it began.  There were so  many things I needed him to know, so many things that I’ve been holding, treasuring in my frail heart for so long, afraid to allow them to break through. There were the moments where I wanted to grasp onto them and pull hard until they all fell upon him against my will because it was too unbearable to be in love, there were the moments where I wanted to curl up somewhere deep, dark and serene and cry. All these things, I needed him to know;

I needed him to know that it was so so precious to me, his trust unwavering and steadfast on me which I treasured as how would a mother her child. I needed him to know how fervent I was that it was me that he opened his heart to, how he tossed the responsibility of treasuring the key to his heart because that made me feel as though I were guarding the heaven’s door. I needed him to know that I was willingly devoting my exquisite time for the sake of his well-being, because every second I spent for him was so priceless to me, because not even gold could bring back a second that had passed. I needed him to know how insanely my heart beat, my head pounded and my blood circulated in my veins whenever his glory lingered around my presence. I needed him to know the deepest depth to the truth of this incontrovertible, magnificent, implausible fact of I, a lonely bachelorette, being unconventionally and unconditionally in love with Kim Myung Soo.

All of this flooded my brain as the words slowly flowed into the pink of the paper, it was as if I had gone far beyond the reality to a place where only my love existed, transcending every barrier, every obstacle which stood before it, hindering it from reaching grandeur. It was so strange, that feeling, that feeling of pouring my love into words onto a lifeless piece of paper as though it was god listening to me when I sang my pleas, begging him for once amend the course of my fate so that he whom I love would once turn and see what had been there, right in his grasp for so so long…

But my fate, it happened to decide otherwise.

I was in the ecstasy of my writing, in the grand outcome, flowing vigorously through my mind onto the sheet in words when suddenly the all too familiar scent seeped into my lungs over the sweetest scent of baked muffins and cakes; followed by a warm touch across my shoulder. I froze in the moment, horrified. I scolded myself.

What was there to be so scared of? I was waiting for this, I awaited this moment for so long, and at the verge of losing this battle, was I shying away?

Jung Eunji, what was wrong with you?

“What are you writing?” Asked Myung Soo from behind me, slowly running his hands around my neck, a friendly gesture that he constantly performed on me. Maybe he was too oblivious to the effect it had on me.

But this wasn’t the moment to wonder how ecstatic it was.

I was horrified beyond belief. Did he just catch me? Right in the middle of me writing him…a love letter? It was the truth, I was originally writing it to him; but I wasn’t even done yet, I wasn’t even ready yet to face whatever my fate had in store in the love department-

I quickly reached out in light speed, kept the notebook covering the ripped sheet of paper I had used and quickly pulled the letter and let it land on the cold marble like a shattered dream. With my heart beating terribly hard in my throat, I looked up.

“What was that about?” He asked, although he sounded far from being concerned. I shook my head.

“Nothing…but what are you doing here?”

A strange shine, the kind of a shine that I despised to witness in his dark orbs, the kind of shine which wordlessly implied something that I feared to hear glimmered with a sadly palpable sentiment.

“Well I…came to meet Yeol, but since you happened to be her too…”

“Why?” I asked, pushing away my things, preparing to stand up.

“Because…” He trailed of and straightened up, allowing me to get on my feet; which I did and turned to him only to witness him giving me a strange feeble smile. My heart skipped a beat.

“What, Myung Soo?”

He grabbed my wrist and dragged me out to the front porch, Passing by I gave Chorong and Sung Yeol who were staring at me as though I was insane a knowing gesture, Implying that I had no idea what had gotten into him, once we were out on the front porch he stopped and stood right before me.

I stared up at him, and drank in the beauty of it as the sunlight poured gracefully on his impeccable features. Dark eyes, long eyelashes, lovely rose lips, lightly flushed cheeks with obvious dimples, hair fallen messily over the brows, and then the strange strange glint which I could quite keep my fingers on…

“Eunji, I have something to tell you”

My heart skipped a beat.

“Wh-what is it…Myung?”

He smiled, reached out and folded me in a warm embrace.

“I met the person I want to marry, I met the love of my life”

Then my heart raised in eager expectancy. Was I being too delusional? Was I being stupid? Or why was he hugging me? Why was he telling me all this? Why did he come to find me all the way here to-

“And before all, I wanted to tell that to my closest friend”

He pulled back, oblivious to how much my heart pained in my chest, burning thick and hot, burning up to my throat, making it impossible to breath.

I wanted to hit him, slap him, strangle him and make him a road kill; I wanted to bury my face against his heart and cry out how much of pain he was giving me just then.

“Eunji, I’m telling you before telling that bastard Yeol, Hyung or anyone else…I don’t know…It felt so right to tell you before everyone else the truth, that I met the girl I want to love. Really really love this time around, because…

It was so wrong though, to me it felt so so wrong, and I couldn’t hear him anymore. All I could see was him, standing before me, hands resting on either of my shoulders, sunlight casting ripples on his porcelain skin, eyes shining with eccentric excitement, all these sentiments which he wanted me to know, nevertheless, were slipping my mind.

Because I couldn’t take it any longer.

Jung Eunji, however, could take a grip of herself.

“So, what do you say?” He was asking when I had finally tuned into his voice.

“Eh?”

He sighed. “Eunji-ah, what do you say? Should I go for it? Because it feels just right-,”

I gathered all the strength I could muster and ventured a smile. However, from now onwards, the words I would drivel to Kim Myung Soo, I was certain, would be downright lies.

“Yup. I think you should” I said, trying my best to not to sound too giddy. “If it feels right for you, you go for it!”

Slowly I felt his grasp on me loosen, and no sooner had he slipped away from me. I felt so lost, so lost and perplexed, as though some peculiar force had forcefully dragged away Kim Myung Soo from my grasp. I sighed.

It felt like the end for me now. Nothing seemed to have the prospect of change. It was over.

He smiled and pulled out his phone, looking into it he smiled even more.

“Oh, look! I think I should go now….Eunji?” He looked into my eyes, but unlike before, I didn’t see the entire world in his eyes.

“Yeah?”

He patted on my head. “Take care. See you later then!”

I nodded in forced nonchalance. He stepped back and raised his hand in the air. “Good bye! And wish me luck!”

And just like that, he disappeared from my sight.

I didn’t see the reasons and purposes anymore. Everything seemed wasted, everything was gone, everything was empty, blank and bland in my eyes as though I’ve been running in circles for all these years without ever seeing the actual facts of the core.

I should have seen this coming, for Kim Myung Soo, evidently and initially was never mine.

I returned to Sung Yeol’s coffee shop, alone and feeling desperately abandoned like a seriously depressed housewife, purposefully evading Chorong and Sungyeol’s who were evidently watching me as though they were watching the defeated female second lead of a weekend soap opera. Really, I had no interest on speaking to them anymore.

I felt so so wasted and lost.

To whom was I writing a love letter?

I myself seemed amusing to myself. Whom was I kidding? A love letter to Kim Myung Soo?

A love letter?

Oh yes, the love letter which I simply left there lying on the floor.

The strange thing was, however, I had this eccentric urge to somehow get it, retrieve it and hide away the content of it somewhere deep in my heart, as though to restore the feelings which I had deliberately pour on paper back in my heart, as though I wished to hold them back so that one day, to the person I would eventually fall in love, I could give. My first love, for me, was precious. The feelings I had confessed diligently to him in the letter were precious to me, for one day, those would be the very same feelings I’d be giving to person whom I would love, and whom would love me.

Although I still wished Myung Soo would turn around, come barging back into the café and say that he had been gravely mistaken. Sadly though, the world didn’t work out the way we wished it would.

I took all the time in the world to stroll back into the café as though I had lost a fortune in a flood. Of course I had to retrieve the letter which I left, just like that in a crowded store, and the embarrassment I would get if anyone I know happened to find it I could barely imagine. I didn’t want it to go lost in a random person’s hand either. I wanted it to be safe, I wanted it to be in my hands, though I took all my time to contemplate on the pettiness of my life because I knew it wouldn’t be much crowded today, and also because the seat I picked was usually secluded and also it was I who was on sweeping duty. It couldn’t disappear, possibly. And I needed my time to think.

But the world didn’t seem to be on my side on this particular day, for once I reached my spot;

It was already occupied.

I could only gasp in utter insanity,

For, the letter was gone.

Instead, on the very spot I sat the last time I was here was the person I last expected to encounter for the day; the extremely screwed, tipsy turfed, unpleasant day.

It was the handsome stranger.

What led me into extreme insanity, though, was not his mere appearance, no, it was the sheer fact that this particular spot where I left the letter was circled with a mob of men, the handsome stranger included. The next person who caught my eyes from the mob almost gave me the biggest shock of my life.

“Ho-Ho…Won?”

“Eunji!” He greeted me as though it was the most natural thing on earth. Making the state of my mind even worse, Howon had his hand casually slung over the shoulder of the doofus from the other night who was then leaning against the chair’s headrest, smiling greasily. The handsome Ahjussie was the only one sitting, I figured, provided that he had such a visibly poor health condition. What irked me to no end was that the letter, my letter, my letter of a love confession to Kim Myung Soo had obviously vanished from its mere existence.

I wanted to pull every strand of my hair, for I could hardly imagine what could have happened to it. I was on sweeping duty, Sungyeol couldn’t possibly have thrown it, let alone seen it on the first place, Chorong unnie was busy helping the bakers that left the men in the mob and Howon in responsibility.

I analyzed the situation. The letter was gone, he was sitting on the spot, looking natural and elderly as ever, not a least bit offended, nor smiling. He was seemingly the calmest member in the crowd. He couldn’t have seen it, could he?

In my peripheral vision, I could see Howon curiously eyeing me. “Eunji, are you alright?”

I managed to venture a simple nod, and with a forced smile, I looked up, because it seemed to me now, the only way of help.

Before I could ask anything, though, the doofus beat it to me. He nodded towards me before pointing out; “Our Hoya seems to know her too”

Hoya, I knew as his stage name. He nodded and extricated himself from Woohyun before casually approaching me.  He slung his hand on my shoulder and began to carry out the introductions as thought it was a formal first-meeting.

“This is Eunji, Jung Eunji, besties since high-school”

“Hello!” I greeted as nicely as possible.

“Hello to you to, lovely!” Said the doofus and held out his hand to me. “I’m Nam Woohyun, it’s of my greatest pleasure to meet you…and I apologize for the previous night, about misconceptions”

Howon immediately wanted to know about the ‘previous night’ which I casually waved off, promising him to tell later on, and I took Woohyun’s hand with a smile. Surprising me though, he kissed lightly on the back of my palm. My eyes almost popped out of its sockets in utter befuddlement; the others, nevertheless were coolly laughing it off as though it happened on a daily basis. Suddenly I remembered him talk of his love life the previous night, and decided to say nothing in retort, I saw how sincere and warm his smile was.

Woohyun, seemed to me to be a witty, charming young man who could catch a girls’ heart in an instant. Although, at first he sported before me the appearance of a hot headed bad boy, later on I realized that he, in fact had a really really warm heart.

Those were the rare kind of people we wouldn’t come across every day. He was cheesy, nevertheless didn’t seem to fail to make a girls’ heart flutter.

“Woohyun’s doing Underground too, Eunji” Howon said.

My eyes almost popped out for the nth time.

Underground, which was commonly known among teens and young people of our age in our vicinity, was a secretive performance stage specially initialized to young-adults and teens who never had gotten their chance to follow their hearts to become entertainers; dance, drama, music vise. It was more like a paradise for dreamers, a battlefield for fighters and a pit of pure happiness for viewers as myself. I got to know it not a long time back, only after I submissively happened to learn that he’d been hiding it from me throughout our high-school days that he had been attending this event. Therefore I hadn’t seen many performances since they hold a stage only once in a month owing to the low budget to treat the performers and owing to the fact that half of them were performing against their families’ will; however I had attended a few where Howon was involved.

I wasn’t surprised that I couldn’t recognize Woohyun’s face as someone from Underground, for I had a snail-brain which was witty enough to not remember someone’s name the next day.

“Ah, really?” I ask, smiling. “That’s good to hear”

He smiled and made me promise I attend the next performance. Next in the crowd was Dongwoo oppa, whom I knew closely as Howon’s dance partner. He was cheerful and funny yet a wonderful person with a warm heart, he would sit and listen to me to whatever the hell I had to blabber about.

The next two people introduced themselves to me as twins, talked about themselves briefly, yet owing to their age, they seemed to be far from the rest.

Finally it came down to the person whom I’ve strangely yet eagerly waited for.

He, as soon as he realized it was his round of introduction pushed back his chair and stood up; I was surprised at how much of a gentleman he could be. Intrigued, at some point but I couldn’t help building and sporting this hate towards him, because he was a person who seemed to reach my heart without even trying, knocking on its door over and over again, endlessly telling me in that wonderfully deep voice of his that I knew him, then again I didn’t. That somehow we could be, and we couldn’t.

He was causing me trouble without even trying, and I hated it.

Nevertheless I held onto my smile as he bowed lightly. He too, smiled in return, his eyes disappearing when he did, he reminded me of flowers and sunshine.

“I couldn’t formally introduce myself although we met several times before” He said, and his voice was so inducing, I wondered if my legs failed to put through.

I despised him because he caused me so much of trouble, but this eccentric little creature in me was telling; it’s okay if he found the letter…it’s OKAY if he found the letter…

“Miss Jung Eunji, I’m Kim Sung Gyu…”

Kim Sung Gyu, I repeated in my head as though it was a name I should remember for a history test. Kim Sung Gyu…

Several times I repeated the name to myself, then only I realized what I was doing; something was amiss, and I was trying to recall.

Everything was a mess, my whole mind was in a mess, I couldn’t even think straight anymore; the first impressions, judgments, Myung Soo’s hurtful words and the feelings I lost on a letter, everything seemed to run round and round in my head-

I forced a smile and bowed in return.

“Kim Sung Gyu-Ssi, I apologize…yet it’s my pleasure, meeting you”