By the time her exams ended, Yoojin had just one more day left in Ireland.  She decided to spend that day with Hweji, and at last even got to have that fancy dinner date with her, which the elder female had promised her weeks ago.  It was all perfect.  Hweji had thought it could be better to invite the two men along with them, but Yoojin insited that she wanted to just be with her alone.

Sunggyu stopped by at her apartment in the evening and they watched three full movies whist cuddling together on the couch in front of the television.  They didn’t speak much, and they didn’t need to;  all that had to be said, had already been said by then.

Then, he left early in the morning before Hweji came to pick Yoojin up to bring her to the airport.

Hweji only took her eyes off the road when they were at a red light to glare at Yoojin weakly. 

“Aren’t you going to ring him?”

“I will, when we’re in the airport. He’s busy today, preparing for an important gig tonight.” 

Yoojin’s mumbles were so soft that Hweji almost didn’t understand her words.  She let out a frustrated huff, and drove on when the light turned green.  Looking at the road, she told Yoojin that she was a bad girl, and then repeated it a couple of times over.

There was a sound of someone clicking his tongue in annoyance in the backseat but only Yoojin heard it. 

“I’ll ring him later, before I board the plane.”  She later told Hweji when they finally arrived in the airport.

“You stupid girl!”  Hweji’s anger blew up again,  “You’re here going through with an escape plan, while I’m the one who will have to suffer with all the angst and depressing music that’s gonna fill my coffee shop for the next month— Or who knows? Maybe a year!” 

That sounded a lot like what Myungsoo had previously said to her.  

It also hurt the same, maybe more.

Yoojin wrapped her arms delicately around Hweji, resting her chin on her shoulder while rubbing her back gently. 

“I promise that won’t happen.”

“How can you promise me something like that? Do you even know what you’re doing to that poor guy?”

“Yes. I know. And he knows, too.”  She whispered the last part under her breath.

-

In the end, Yoojin didn’t ring Sunggyu. 

Although she disapproved greatly, Hweji didn’t bother her about it.

“Go on now Honey. Safe flight, okay? I’ll miss you.”

“I’m sorry, Hweji... I messed up...”

“Oh. Honey...”  Hweji watched as Yoojin finally broke down and began to sob.  She wiped her tears for her softly, pulling her into her arms once more,  “Try to sleep and not to think about anything. Just look forward to seeing your parents at home. Okay? Hurry now.”

The broken girl merely nodded, and hugged her once more leaving towards her gate.

Hweji sat at the coffee shop later in the evening together with a half drunk Myungsoo.  His gig had evidently went well with Sunggyu, with no problems other than Myungsoo’s own occasional slip-ups as usual.

“He seemed completely fine today. I wonder if Yoojin told him?”

“I’m not sure but she cried in the airport, just before she boarded her flight.”

Myungsoo’s eyes filled with pain after hearing that, so Hweji grabbed his hand to rub it slowly with her thumbs.  He gritted his teeth lightly, with furrowed eyebrows as he glared at the table.  “I told Yoojin several times to be careful not to break Sunggyu. That she should tell him properly.”  He placed his other hand on Hweji's that held his,  “But the one who broke isn’t even Sunggyu.”

Hweji nodded,  “I doubt that he's really fine right now though.”  Myungsoo squeezed her hand, as if to point to the obvious advantage they both had compared to Sunggyu.  They had each other.  “God knows where he is right now.”  She whispered.  “Alone probably.”

Yoojin finally arrived in Korea after a long flight, to find her baby waiting for her and shining brightly as if to welcome her back home with glee.  Sungyeol had evidently taken very good care of her over the past four months.  She couldn’t help but bend her body over the hood and attempt to give the vehicle a hug and kiss, only to be pulled back by the tall male who then wrapped her in a hug. 

“I missed you so much, you know that? I should have just gone with you.”

“Well, why didn’t you?”  She asked tiredly, but she already knew the answer.  “Right. You hate Hweji.”

“I don’t hate her,”  he attempted to explain in the gentlest way,  “I just don’t feel particularly affectionate towards her evil stealing my man and bringing him along to knows where.”

“Ireland.”

“Right, the same hell which took you from me too for four horrid months.”  He hugged her again,  “Now tell me everything.”

“Sungyeol.”  She sighed loudly, resting her forehead against his chest.  “Just drive me home. I’m jet lagged.”

“My place or yours?”

“Which ever is closer.”  She said.

After driving her to his own place, which was closer to the airport than hers, Sungyeol decided to let her sleep for a couple of hours before offering her ‘breakfast in bed' at eight in the evening.  

Yoojin knew that Sungyeol was taking care of her so much because he was waiting for her to tell him a ton of details about her stay in Ireland.  Describing the first three months wasn’t that hard for Yoojin since it mostly consisted of her locking herself in her apartment while trying to keep up with her studies in a foreign language she had yet to get used to.  The occasional visits to Hweji’s coffee shop didn’t go unmentioned either, although Sungyeol was considerably less interested in all that.

Nothing else really happened until her last month.

Talking about how Hweji had tried to set her up with just some guy was difficult when a certain someone appeared next to her and pestered her about telling Sungyeol all the details about the said ‘some guy.’  

When Yoojin didn’t mention Sunggyu's amazing voice and gentle and caring gestures, or how she spent more than a few nights together with him, Woohyun did.   When Yoojin didn’t mention having truly fallen in love with anyone during her stay in Ireland, Woohyun did.

Eventually, as she ended her story with the crying scene in the airport after having to say goodbye to her dear friend Hweji, Woohyun practically shouted that it wasn’t Hweji she was crying for but Kim Sunggyu.

Sungyeol blinked a couple of times when she was done, and stared at her as if waiting for her to continue with her story but she really was done.

Yoojin raised her eyebrows at him and waited for his reaction.

“Did you learn the art of lying from that unpleasant woman over there in Ireland?”

Yoojin furrowed her eyebrows.  “What?”

“Call me crazy, but there’s a certain spirit attached to you who practically just filled me in on all the stuff you decided to leave out of your sugarcoated and fluffy, and not to mention sleep inducing tale.”

The spirit in question made a show of falling off the bed with laughter while Yoojin turned bright red before glaring at him.  “You knew he could see you?”  Woohyun was laughing too much to answer so she turned to Sungyeol whose gaze looked just as confused as hers.

“You mean I’m not crazy? That’s Nam Woohyun right there?”

“Yeah.” 

“How come you never told me you could see him too? I was going pretty crazy for the first few months or so before I got used to him.”

Yoojin vaguely remembered a time when Sungyeol had looked about as awful and restless as she and Myungsoo had been back in the beginning of December when she first saw Woohyun.  That had been more than two years ago though.

“So you’ve seen him all along? I've only seen him for a month...”

“He popped up once or twice, or maybe two hundred and ten times over the past three years whenever you had an boyfriend he needed my help breaking you up with.”

“Ah.”  Yoojin let out with a nod like she didn’t just hear something crazy.

“So I guess Woohyun no longer needs me, right?”  he looked directly at him,  “He found someone he actually wanted to see you with.”

“Fat chance that’ll ever happen though,”  Yoojin mumbled.  “I think I’m done with dating for a really long time.”

“Jesus Christ, Yoojin. Just finish your degree and return to loverboy in Ireland. Problem solved.”  Woohyun said. 

“Yeah... No. I’m going back to sleep for a few more days. Goodbye.”

“Oh no you don't.”  Sungyeol exclaimed.

As someone who had the nerve to lie to him so blatantly, Sungyeol felt that Yoojin didn’t deserve to sleep over in his place and pushed her off the bed.  He had only meant to do it playfully, but then all of a sudden, Woohyun freaked out and caught her in his arms before letting her down gently since he couldn’t keep up a materialized state for long. 

“Don’t ever do that again, Sungyeol.”  He said seriously, surprising both Sungyeol and Yoojin with his icy tone.

They didn’t quite realise what had caused Woohyun to react that way until weeks after the incident.

Yoojin received a message from Sunggyu about a week after she arrived in Korea, through their chosen communication channel which was sending old fashioned postcards or letters.  The first postcard she received had a picture of the Spire on it and he didn’t say much except that he hoped she arrived home safely and was doing well.

She couldn’t hide her giddiness as she quickly found a page to write him a letter in return.

While she continued to occasionally keep in contact with Hweji over phone calls and instant messages on the computer, the only form of communication she and Sunggyu maintained was through letters.  This meant that she would only hear from him directly around two or three times a month, which didn’t bother her nearly as much as everyone around her thought it did.

In the letters, they often decided to make up silly or creative stories about their lives to entertain each other.  Sunggyu, with how sunny the Irish weather turned as soon as she left. Or how he finally met success with his band together with Myungsoo, and how he wrote another song about her but wouldn’t let her listen to it.  And Yoojin, with how great her life in Korea turned as soon as she finished her degree by the end of that summer. How she had a ball of happiness running around her house—a pet tiger named Daehyun, she told him—along with the other animals she helped escape from a zoo, a giraffe named Sungyeol and a lion named Dongwoo.

Meanwhile, during these exchanges, a certain spirit was just about pulling his hair out with frustration at the fact that neither of them were being completely honest with each other but were perfectly happy with it anyway.

Sunggyu and Yoojin seemed to have a silent agreement on a taboo topic in their exchanges, which was dating. 

They also never talked about using the money they made to buy a ticket to go and see one another.

Their exchanges continued like that for about a year before the letters became less frequent. But as long as they didn’t stop completely, Yoojin had nothing to complain about.  Sometimes she thought about using finger paint to put two hand prints on one of her letters, but then she always set the painted page aside after washing up and sent the letter off without it.