SEUNGHYUN’S POV

Staring at the phone screen, I decided to give it one more try. I had been calling her before I boarded the plane to let her know I would stop by her place once I landed, but the call just can’t get through. And now I was standing in the middle of her living room, silence except for my own accelerating heartbeat, and a recorded female voice from my phone telling me to call again later.

My gaze was fixed on the lamp beside the long couch. Something’s wrong. She always kept that on at night, and the whole area is covered in darkness now.

In the middle of another bunch of calls which just would not get through, I threw open every single door in the house and none of them showed their sign. Her car was still parked outside. Where could they be?

Then something hit me and I was that close to slap myself because it was obvious. Perhaps they’re at my place? We had exchanged passcode to each other’s house.

I stared at the balcony of my house from the front gate, frowning. My place was as dark as hers. A surprise party? I suggested to myself as I pushed open the front door, although my brain and my heart told me it was more to it than that.

My legs felt heavier with every step I took, eyes nervously scanning the dark room. Where are you, Leena? A light of hope was sparked by the ajar door to my bedroom and I wasted no time to run towards it, flung open the door and greeted by nothing other than darkness. I had always been fond of darkness, but I started to hate it now.

Like everything I had seen since I entered her place, the room was dark, except for the faint yellow cast through the white shades of the table lamp. She was here, she had been in this room. Slowly I dragged my feet across the room to the desk, my palms sweaty. I didn’t know what I should be anticipating.

Then something on the floor caught my attention. At first glance I thought it was Minnie I gifted her but when I squatted down and studied it in my hands, I realised it was another half of the collection, the Mickey. For a moment I felt relieved and a small smile escaped my lips, Leena got that for me. But one second later it was replaced by worry and panic. How did it end up on the floor?

Standing back up, I put it on the desk with care and I saw something laying on the desk out of the corner of my eye, something I swore with my life I had kept it hidden.

Then my heart sank.

It was way past midnight but I just didn’t care. I made few calls on my way back to her house, one to Youngbae to ask him if Leena was with him, one to Clarence’s nanny to ask the same question. They both gave me negative answer. Youngbae asked was anything going on but I cut it before he could even finish his question. Another call was made to Seungri, Leena eating with him was the last thing I wanted but now I would kiss the maknae to heaven if she was with him. His answer disappointed me like everyone else’s.

Everything was the same as before I left for New York. Less than one week ago, we were eating dinner in this exact same place and cuddling and bickering over what movie we should watch when I got back. Few days later and they were gone.

The only difference was the closet. Some of her clothing were gone. I didn’t know why did I went upstairs and checked her closet, perhaps I was just following my hunch, or perhaps I was looking for something which can tell me they would be coming back, that they didn’t just vanish. Instead I found pieces of clothing had disappeared from her closet.

Slumping onto the bed, I called Seungri again. “She knows.” Silence hang in the air and he didn’t ask about what. Seconds later he told me he was coming to my place. 

In less than two hours the other four members were all gathered in my house. I didn’t intend to let the others know but Seungri insisted that five brains were better than two and I needed all the help I could get, so I braced myself for their arrival and Youngbae’s death glare.

“Are you ing kidding me?!” He flipped. I averted his gaze, I can’t even look him in the eyes. “Answer me! Tell me it’s just a joke!” He grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled me up from the couch, our face so close that his nose was almost touching mine. “Tell me it’s not true!”

Daesung and Seungri rushed over to separate us, Daesung grabbing Youngbae’s biceps from behind and yanked him backwards, Seungri standing in between us, forming a barrier and ushering me to sit back down. Jiyong hadn’t said a word since he stepped inside this house, he was now sitting on the floor, chewing his lips, brow frowning as if in deep thoughts.

“Jiyong-hyung, say something!” Seungri turned to him with pleading eyes while Daesung was struggling to stop another punch Youngbae tried to send my way.

With a solemn face and creased brow, Jiyong got on to his feet. “Youngbae.” His reprimanding tone was sufficient to freeze everyone in their motion in any other day. But today was not any other day. Youngbae broke free of Daesung’s bonds around him and successfully landed his fist on my left cheek, sending me stumble backwards onto the couch. Youngbae was one of the strongest among five of us, if not the strongest, he had once punched a hole in the sandbag with his bare fist. 

Seungri gasped and froze, Daesung’s grip on his wrist was on time to stop another punch and I just sat there, motionless. I didn’t even feel the pain. No, I felt the pain, but not on my face, it’s in my heart. It hurt so much that it numbed everything else.

Jiyong strode across the room and stood beside Youngbae, hands grabbing onto his shoulders, spinning him around and giving him a shake. “Youngbae! Listen! You can punch him all the way you want, he deserves that, but not now! We need to get to Leena first!”

Anger drained from his face at the mention of Leena’s name and his fist paused in mid air before slumping back down at his side. Daesung took the opportunity to shove him onto the couch across the one I was sitting on.

Jiyong took a seat beside me. I didn’t lift my eyes from my lap. “Hyung, do you know who she may have gone to?” Pursing my lips, my fists balled up as I took in a breath and unclenched when I exhaled. “Friends? Colleagues?” Jiyong prompted. I shook my head. I had been running a long list in my head of who she could go to in this situation and a few in the list were now in the same room with me. She had mentioned few colleagues in her company before but I didn’t think they were that close. I had called Clarence’s nanny but the innocence in her voice told me she can be excluded from the list. Her family? She didn’t go to them in her hardest time, so why would she now?

“I called her parents, they are not in the country right now.” Youngbae said across the room, eyes averting mine, chest heaving.

I stare at my hands on my lap. She was holding them, she liked to draw circles around the scar on the back of my hand, saying it make me look manly, and she would turn her blushed face away, chuckling. I could still feel the warmth of her hands, but she was gone now. Is that it? Is that the end of us?

No. I can’t let that happen.

Swiftly I stood up and grabbed the car keys before making my way to the door. A hand on my shoulder stopped me. “Where are you going?” I turned to look at Jiyong, carding a hand through my hair. “Drive around. See if I can find them.” When I was about to turn around, the hand on my shoulder tightened its grip. “It’s midnight. They won’t be wandering on the street at this time.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing!” He stares at me for a brief moment with a knowing look on his face, as if telling me he knew how bad I was feeling right now, then he put another hand on my shoulder. “You need to rest. We’ll look for her with you tomorrow morning, I promise.” The strength and resolution in his eyes so strong that I can’t take my eyes away from them. Somehow they calmed me down. And I knew he was right. Leena would always put Clarence as her priority and she wouldn’t do anything that would put him in danger, that meant she wouldn’t wander on the streets at this ungodly hour.

I chanced a glance at the wall clock. 2.30a.m. I sighed and sat back down on the couch. Five more hours before I could do anything. And before that all I can do was sit still like the Mickey I put on the coffee table, staring at it, while my Minnie was out there, probably crying, confused, scared. Knowing the culprit of all these was me had been the transparent grip around my throat, suffocating me.

If only I had told her. If only she had known through a better way. If only I hadn’t been that selfish.

If only. 

Efforts to search for her turned out to be fruitless. We parted ways to different destinations—Jiyong and I drove around the city, stopping by some restaurants and shops Leena and I used to frequent to, Youngbae visited her company and her parents’ house, Seungri with the widest connections was responsible in making some calls to send out emergency beacon to look for them secretly without the media making a fuss, all the while Daesung waited in her house, just in case she might go back, though all of us did not think coming back would be her option if she had chosen to leave in the first place.

The only news I had was from Clarence’s school. His teacher knew me since I had sent him to school for a couple of times so she didn’t freak out when Jiyong and I stepped into her class asking questions, and she told me his mom had called in sick for him so he wouldn’t be present for the next few days, probably longer. That was not a good news, but at least that was something, I knew they were safe.

I had never been this grateful for Seungri’s ability to make friends with people from different circles. When I got back to my house with slumped shoulders and bloodshot eyes, he told me that there was no registration made under Leena’s name in hotels in Seoul. When I looked at him with widened eyes, he apologized and told me he needed more time to search for area outside Seoul.

Youngbae arrived shortly after us, apparently he had gone to look for her himself, going to her company and her parents’ house wouldn’t take him longer than us. The look on his face told me he was as clueless as us.

Seungri’s information told me one thing—Leena had either gone to other city, or someone she knew had given her shelter—but where and who?

I was sitting on the couch, legs spread, elbows on my lap, hands curled into fists against my chin. Most of the time I was contemplating where she could go to and to whom she could go to, other time cursing myself for being a coward and thousand ways this could have turned out if I had come clean to her.

I didn’t know what was happening around me, neither did I care, until someone crouched before me, a hand rested on the couch few inches away from my thigh. I lifted my eyes to meet the pair with equal exhaustion, if not more. Youngbae. “I’m still mad at you. But you need to have energy to find them.” He added when I continued to stare at him, as if I was not listening at all. “C’mon, I cooked ramyun.”

My eyes blinked. That’s what I made for her during our short getaway and she had been bugging me for months for the recipe. I never gave her that but I promised to cook for her whenever she wished to eat the only dish I was so proud of and was capable of cooking. Then I looked at myself, looked at the stupid predicament I had put myself in. Any of this wouldn’t have happened had I been honest with her.

I ran a hand across my face and let out an exasperated sigh. “Bae, I ed up.”

LEENA’S POV

I was floating. I felt so light, as if I were lying on a bed made of cotton candy. Pieces of memories flashed before my eyes. The first time I met Cordy in her office and the warm smile she sent my way, the even more blinding smile she wore on her face when she told me she was now a mother, a hand caressing her still flat stomach. One or two months later she came to me, tears flowed freely like a broken dam. That’s when I knew about her cancer.

“My baby is innocent, he’s done nothing wrong,” she said to the doctor when she suggested an abortion which guaranteed much higher chance of recovery for her cancer. She was glowing despite her pale face. I didn’t know how was she so certain that the baby would be a he, but she was correct. Clarence came to the world a couple of months later. I had never been a believer, but if there’s God, He gave her Clarence, but He took her away from him. It’s not fair. Not fair at all.

Then realisation settled. The man I loved was the same man Cordy loved so much but never talked about. He’s the father to my son. And he knew all along, he knew and yet he kept it from me. Then the cotton candy was gone and I fell to the bottomless pit. Everything went dark and silent.

 “Mommy, mommy, wake up!” Someone was shaking me and I recognized the face of the owner of the voice once I cracked open my eyes forcefully. My eyes felt pain and swollen. What happened? Sitting up, I took in my surrounding with knitted brow. I was laying on the floor in my bedroom. Did I pass out?

“Mommy, are you alright? I’m calling Uncle Man, wait a minute.” He was typing furiously on the screen and instinctively I grabbed the phone from him. “No, don’t call him.”

The sternness in my voice had startled him as he looked at me with widened eyes, little hands frozen in the air. Closing my eyes and opening them seconds later, I took in a deep breath and let it out. “I’m sorry that I scared you, mommy didn’t mean it.” “But you fainted, you need help.” His eyes were watery, tears threatening to fall down any moment.

I was lost in his eyes. How can I not notice it before? It was there, it was right in front of me. They might look different from number of physical traits, but the pair of glistening eyes that can tell stories by just staring at you? I can’t believe it went unnoticed how much their eyes resembled each other. And the way they talked, the way they were able to complete sentences for the other without the need of thinking, as if they had the script written in their head beforehand. Not to mention the common preferences they share, bearbricks, action figures, ice-cream and their obstinacy towards pancakes. Like father like son.

I forced a smile and dragged him onto my lap, burying my face in his hair, tears falling down uncontrollably. My heart cringed at his words.

He promised I wasn’t going to lose him. He lied.

“Nahyun?” She was surprised seeing me at her door but her face lit up nevertheless. “Yeobo, who’s that?” Someone called out from inside the apartment. “An unexpected friend.” She turned her head around and replied cheerfully.

It wasn’t a pleasant time to be knocking at a friend’s door, but I had no choice. If I were on my own, I could find a cheap hotel and crash in for the night, or days. But I can’t do that with Clarence with me.

A puzzled look crossed her face when she noticed the luggage behind me, her eyes darted between me and Clarence for what I felt like hours before she invited us in, helping me with the luggage without a question.

It was my first time meeting her husband but she wasted no time for introduction as she dragged me into a room and closed the door behind her before gesturing me to sit on the bed. Clarence was left to play with her daughter in the living room while her husband had to be their temporary nanny.

“What happened?” She took my hands into hers and looked at me concernedly. I bit down on my lips, trying with all my will to keep the tears from rolling down. Her voice was soft and tender. “You come to me, instead of to your boyfriend. Is this about him? You two had a fight?” I remained silent but I bit on my lips with more force until I tasted blood in my mouth.

She continued. “It’s okay. Every couple fights. I used to fight with my husband almost every day. There was not a day passed without us bickering with each other.” She snickered but it subsided when I gave no response. Then her grip on my hands tightened and she gasped. “Oh no! Don’t tell me he cheated on you.” 

He didn’t, but that was close. A tear escaped the corner of my eye. And then more of it.

Shinyoung knew almost everything about me. I had told her about my parents and Clarence, except that I had kept his father from her, she thought Clarence was my biological son. Today I decided to tell her. I had to tell somebody and I didn’t have anyone else other than her.

I didn’t know how much she had heard clearly for I was inarticulate between tears and snots. She had said something before tucking me under the blanket and asked me to get some sleep but I couldn’t remember her words.

But I did remember holding onto her wrist and wheezed out “Don’t call him” before I drifted to sleep.

It was about an hour before dawn when I woke up. The first thing I did was call in sick for Clarence. I had considered of sending him to school but at last decided against it. I didn’t want to risk meeting him, I was not prepared yet. There were dozens of missed calls and texts from Seunghyun, but I didn’t read any of them. A mere glance at his name squeezed my heart. I hated myself for being so infatuated with this man.

I received a few texts from Youngbae and Seungri as well, but I didn’t think there was a point in reading any of it. They’re with him, they probably knew too and they kept it from me. I scoffed. Were they looking at me as if I were I clown, as if I were playing in a circus and they were the audience?

Sitting on the bed with my arms wrapped around my knees, I stared out the window as the sun slowly rose on the horizon. Sunrise represented hope and a fresh start, but I felt neither of them.

The door cracked open a little, then a little bit more until the small body of my angel fit to slide in. Silently he climbed onto the bed and sat across from me, that pair of eyes looking at me intently. As much as I hated his father, I couldn’t lash out on him, he’s my life. No, I would put him before my life. I sent him a smile, hoping I didn’t look as terrible as I assumed myself to be.

He smiled back and climbed onto my lap, settling himself comfortably before lifting his head to look at me. “Do you feel better?” 

No, not at all. “Yes, I had a good sleep and now I feel much better.” I tightened my arms around his body and rested my chin on his head. “Sorry, I’d worried you.” He played with his fingers. “Can we go home now?”

“Clarence,” I released him and gestured so that he would turn around to look at me. He stared at me expectantly as I held his hands with mine. “Mommy… Mommy has to go somewhere for a couple days… and I can’t bring you with me. But I promise I’d come back to you. Can you stay with Aunt Shinyoung and Minyoung-ie for a few days?

He had never been away from me for longer than one day, there was not a day passed without us saying good morning every morning to each other and goodnight before we went to bed. I was expecting him to throw a fit or to whine that he wanted to stay with me. Instead he dropped his head low, continued to play with his fingers. It was so silent that I could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall.

“You’ll be happy again when you come back?” I studied him with widened eyes. He repeated when I was too stunned to respond. Blinking my eyes twice, I replied weakly, “Yeah…I’ll be happy again when I come back.”  It sounded like I was not convincing him but myself.

Still focused on his fingers, “Okay, then I’ll stay.”

I didn’t discuss with Shinyoung the day before about my plan. In fact I didn’t have any plan, I was just following my heart, and my heart was dripping blood and it needed some alone time to heal. She assured me that she would take good care of Clarence and that there was nothing to worry about. I trusted her on the first part.

When she asked me where I was planning to go, I simply shrug my shoulders. “Wherever my legs bring me,” I told her when she asked again with a worried look. I added, “Don’t worry, I’m a grownup.” She smiled and squeezed my hand.

Shinyoung and Clarence sent me off at the bus terminal. I was still unsure of my destination so I told them to leave and made a pinky promise with Clarence that I’d call him as soon as I arrived at the place my legs would have brought me to. Leaning close to Shinyoung, I whispered, “Make sure he doesn’t call him.” She nodded without saying a word and reached out a hand to Clarence which he grabbed albeit reluctance was obvious on his face. I could feel tears pricking my eyes when I watched them walk out the terminal.  

Glancing up at the digital timetable hung on the wall, I scanned through the long list of destinations and their departure time. There was not a place I wanted to go. So I walked up to the counter and bought a ticket to the bus that would leave the terminal in the shortest time without asking for the destination.

I could be anywhere, I just wanted to be alone.