I. 

Sooyoung.

She met him at her senior year of university. She had this habit of going home together with her father, even after she’s all grown up. The company that her father owned located just two blocks apart from her campus and she would wait for her father until the old man finished his work.

Changmin was working part-time in her father’s company. Tall and dashing, bright eyes, ebony hair. When she first laid her sight on him, he just came back from copy room and handed her father a stack of paper.

He flashed a wide and polite smile at her.

She liked that smile.

“This is my daughter. She's gonna be my successor one day,” her father proudly announced to Changmin. She felt her cheeks warmed, and for a silly reason, she kept her head down.

“I’m sure she will, Mr. Choi. I heard she got perfect GPA three years in a row. She’s popular on campus.” He spoke in a calm voice, but there was a hint of teasing there.

“Wouldn’t you greet Changmin, Soo?” Her father voice almost sounded amused. She lifted her head slowly and tried to look at him. Upon seeing the corner of his lips curled upside, she bowed her head.

“I’m Sooyoung. Nice to meet you.” Her voice sounded strange even to her own ears.

“I’m Changmin. Nice to meet you, Sooyoung. Of course, we’ve met before. I often saw you at campus. We’re in the same year, by the way.”

“I… didn’t know. I’m sorry,” she murmured. He shook his head.

“Well, of course you didn’t. There are many students in our year, so it’s not that strange if you don’t know me. It'll even stranger if you know me.” He laughed at his own words.

“Why don’t you kids go down, grab some coffee and talk? This old man still has something to do in his room,” her father said and chuckled. Changmin stared at her father with disbelief.

“Is it alright, Mr. Choi?”

“It’s okay. Your job is done for today. You’ll just have to keep my daughter a company while I finishing my work.” Her father made a gesture to shoo them away from his room. But she didn’t move.

“You don’t have to do that, Changmin-sshi,” she said politely to him, and then snapped at her father, “Dad, don’t be silly. I don’t need any company. I wait for you alone all the time!”

Her father just shrugged his shoulder and turned to Changmin. “I’m counting on you, boy!”

He tilted his head to one side, and said to her.

“So, coffee?”

****

They met again on several occasions. He would sit with her in the café on the ground floor of his father’s office, gave her company while she waiting for her father. At campus, he would stop to talk to her. Sometimes, he drove her home if her father working late that night. Her father clearly liked him, and wanted them to be close.   

She didn’t like her father’s idea.

She was rather a shy girl, awkward in conversation with people. He was a bright boy with a smile always plastered on his face which was very pleasant to see. 

It was until a breezy Friday evening that she accepted her father’s idea. It was the warmth of his hands that made her falling.

Autumn had come to its end, and the days grew darker and colder by the count of times. That Friday evening, they sat in his old and dull jeep, listening to rap song she couldn’t catch the words. They talked. Of course, it’s him who dominated the sentences. She listened to him, sometimes adding the words.

“Do you know that the earth is too crowded? The rate of human growth is exponentially distributed so it doubled and doubled each year. Just like the bacteria.” He liked to throw random trivia and discussed them.

“By 2050, there will be about twelve billion human living on the earth, they said. Pretty huge number, huh?”

“They who?” She asked him. He raised his eyebrows. 

“Scientist. Academics.  That kind of people.” 

“How many people are living on earth by now?” She asked again, because he liked it when she asked and he could answer it.

“Seven billion? About that number, I think.” He turned to her and shrugged his one shoulder while keep driving. He kept on talking about mammals and stars until the car suddenly stopped.

“What happened?” She stared at him. He looked worried, then jumped off from his seat. She trailed him with her eyes, watching him bent his body to examine the tire.

“I’m sorry, Sooyoung-sshi. I think, we have some problem with the car,” he said his apology and grinned hopelessly. She sighed but couldn’t help smiled a little after seeing his face.

“Flat tire?”

He nodded.

“Well, I can take the bus,” she said. He stared at her in disagreement.

“Mr. Choi asked me to take you back home safely.”

She glanced her eyes to his jeep’s tire. “And what would you do to this poor thing? Leave it alone here, on this cold night?”

He chuckled. “It’s his fault after all.”

“Don’t mind me, Changmin-sshi. This guy needs some air intake. You better take care of him first. Just don’t tell my dad about this and it’ll be no problem.” She gave him a light smile. He had this lost look on his face and she thought it was cute.

“But….” He tried to argue. She shook her head.

“No. I’ll take the bus,” she cut his words off. 

He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Nah. Don’t be,” she waved her hand in front of his sullen face.

So he walked her to the nearest bus stop. The autumn breeze grazed her bare hands. Her body shivered against the cold air, and that time, he held her hand for the first time.

It was warm.

So warm.

They stopped for a while. He took off his scarf and wrapped it around her neck. She froze in her place, her body felt numb. Her heart jumping and rolling inside her chest. They were so close that she could taste his breath on her face.

“Better?” He asked. She only nodded in response. He gave her his beautiful smile and they walked again to the bus stop, hand in hand.

***

Later that night she was pondering if she had fallen in love with him.

At first, it was only his smile that she liked. But since when she started growing to like him as whole? She liked him when he smiled. She liked him when he walked. She liked him when he smoked. She liked him when he talked to her father. She liked him when he talked to her.

She liked him when he sat by her side, sipping coffee and threw random trivia.

Then the scene where he held her hand came to her mind, and she felt like her heart doing another round of jumping. When she couldn’t help herself to keep smiling like an idiot, she buried her face into his scarf, which smelled like a mix of sweat and mint cologne, inhaling his scent slowly.

She loved it when he enclosed his hand around hers.

****

He didn’t love her.

One day when she met him on campus, excited to tell him about the party which her father was about to hold tonight, he wasn’t alone. There’s a girl sitting close to him, fingers intertwining with his. Sooyoung frozen upon seeing that scene, but he smiled to her like the other days.

She didn’t tell him about the party. She gave him a weak smile and said ‘hi’ unwillingly.

“Sooyoung-sshi, this is Victoria. Vic, this is Sooyoung-sshi, my boss’s daughter,” he introduced them to each other. Victoria held her hand out to shake hands with her, so she reached that pale hand.

“Nice to meet you, Sooyoung-sshi.” Sooyoung didn’t know how to reply that kind remarks but nodding her head.  Like Changmin, Victoria had this big and kind smile, which made Sooyoung felt of herself as an arrogant .

Victoria was his girlfriend. Changmin had a girlfriend.

Her heart was breaking and shattered into pieces. She tried to collect and put them together, but she couldn’t. He was her first love. Her first love ended even before she started.

****

She decided to avoid him. She stopped coming to her father office after school. She took driving license and drove her own car. She didn’t want to see Changmin for the time being. Her heart still bleeding even after a full circle of earth orbiting the sun. She was too hurt to take a step for moving on.

Her father knew it. He didn’t argue when Sooyoung came to him with puffy eyes and asked for a car. He didn’t oppose when she said she won’t come to his office anymore.  Her father understood, and he gave her a warm and loving hug to comfort her.

****

By the time she started to work in her father company, Changmin was no longer there. It was one year after. She still couldn’t forget him. She missed him every time she remembered the warmth of his hand that autumn evening. She still had his scarf with her, which she put it in the depth of her closet, like how she pushed the memories about him to the back of her mind.

He came back on a pale day of January. He looked like a mess. There was no trace of smile on his face when he greeted her.

“Sooyoung-sshi.”

Sooyoung felt drying. She grabbed the corner of her desk tightly. She hoped that this was a dream. But her heart still beating like the first time her heart beat for him. This was real.

“Hello,” he said again. His voice was rough and somehow cold. This is not Changmin, she thought at that time.

“Hello,” she answered quietly.

“I’m back.”

When she thought exactly for what he’s back.

“I’m working here again. Not as a part-timer, of course.” He explained when they sat together at lunch. She noticed that he tried to sound cheerful, yet he failed.

“It’s strange that we working in the same department, right? After all this time I think of you as my boss’s daughter.” He laughed a dry laugh.

“What happened to you?” She asked him straight. He fell silent and stared at her with his tired eyes.

“Nothing.” He shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t lie.” Her sharp and demanding voice made him sighed.

“Why are you being like this?” He asked her, confused. Sooyoung jerked.

Yes. Why was she being like that? It’s not like that he owed her an explanation. They never have such relationship, to begin with.

But why did he come back? Why did he say that two words to Sooyoung like he was gone from her life? Did he ever leave her in the first place?

What happened to Changmin?

****

Victoria was dead.

He told her in their usual lunch time. He spoke out of blue and this sudden confession made Sooyoung almost spurted her orange juice.

“God, I’m very sorry to hear that.” She managed to say her condolence after swallowed the juice. He looked so sad, but he smiled at her. Not his usual big and kind smile, but still dashing in her eyes.

“She had been suffering from leukemia for the past two years. I didn’t even know in the first place if she had that disease. She won’t tell me. I found out about that after she spent her last three month in the hospital. She gave up six months ago.” His voice sounded so sad and hurtful.

Sooyoung didn’t know what to do. So she reached for his hand and held it with hers.

“God, Changmin-sshi. I’m sorry.”

“The past six months has been a tough time for me. I love her very much. I just, can’t believe that she was gone. Gone. Won’t come back to me again. I feel like, betrayed. I don’t know. Do you understand this feeling, Sooyoung-sshi?”

She understood. Of course she understood. She lost her mother when she was a child. She cried every night and day. She wouldn’t go to school. She didn’t even go downstairs to eat. Her father was always the one who knocked her door and begged her to eat. So, she understood.

But that made her hurt even more.

The fact that she couldn’t be happy in this circumstance. The fact that it wouldn’t merit for her to dance for Victoria’s death and his state of mourning.

She still loved him so much.

And he still loved his dead girlfriend so much.

So what could she do? She remained a friend to him.

They started to hang out together after work and on the weekend. Sometimes they watched a movie. Sometimes they sat in the café and sipped their coffee between the conversations. Sometimes, it was only a long phone chat in the weekend nights.

For Sooyoung, it all felt like dates.

Her feelings started to crawl out from her locked part of heart. She got busy guessing his feeling for her. If, by any chance, he grew to like her as a woman.

On a drizzly evening when they went to the bar after work hour, she kissed him.

It was an accident. She was drunk. He tried to help her getting into his car when she grabbed his collar and placed her lips onto his.

He tasted good, and he didn’t pull back.

****

They dated not long after that kiss. For her, it was the happiest time in her life. It was the time when she decided not to care about Changmin’s unchanging love for Victoria. It was the time when she didn’t know that she was battling with the dead girl’s shadow. She was plainly blinded by the fact that Changmin was hers.

Changmin was a good boyfriend. He cared for her. He looked after her. He smiled a lot to her. His hand was warm when he held Sooyoung’s hand. His kisses tasted like the first time she kissed her. He always stared at her with a loving gaze.

At first, Sooyoung thought that finally he could move on from Victoria. She thought that she now could have Changmin entirely for herself. 

She was wrong.

Changmin had not fully moved on from Victoria. He still loved her like the first time he loved her. He loved Victoria more than he loved Sooyoung.

Sooyoung found this out when she visited Changmin’s apartment on a hazy summer day. Changmin was sick at that time, and she cooked for him and feed him. They cuddled and talked a lot. Changmin gave her random trivia like usual. She gave him some questions about his trivia and he answered them happily. She thought it was a good day, and had no worry at the time.

When he fell asleep, Sooyoung  started to clean his apartment. She found a box in his drawer and the curiosity filled her. It was a pretty box, with neat handwriting read as “Treasure” scribbled on its lid.

She found Victoria’s pictures there. And many other things from his past with the dead girl. There are a couple ring made from silver with C&V initials. Others were his pictures with her, polaroids from the past days.  

But there were no Sooyoung’s pictures in that box. Nor anywhere in his apartment.

The realization smacked her so hard, creeping into her mind and choking on her breath. She lost for the words and packed the box, placing it back into its right place. She didn’t say goodbye to her sleeping boyfriend and stormed away from his apartment with wounded feeling.

It’s not like that he was cheating on her. But it felt like he was cheating.

That night he called her, questioning about her leaving without saying goodbye.

“Changmin, do you love me?” She asked him through the phone.

“Why did you ask? Of course I love you.” He sounded so certain saying that words.

“Sooyoung, what happened?” He called for her. She tried to hold back her tears. Now that the warm liquid began to fill her eyes, she couldn’t.

She wanted to believe his words. She wanted to believe that he loved her. But it was so hard, and so hurtful, after seeing what she saw in his treasure box.

The rain started to drizzle. Outside and Inside.

A/N : The first chapter! OMG YES! This is my longest chapter in English hngg I'm so happy ;--; (well, it's a short one tbh. hehe). One chapter more I think. Hope you guys enjoy this (rather depressing) story. Do comment so I know what's in your mind. Thank you!