Soojung walks around town with both of her hands neatly tug in her pocket of the trench coat. The scarf that’s around her neck covered up to her nose and she has a grey knitted beanie on her head. It’s snowing since a few days ago and the temperature has dropped to almost negative degree. But still, even though the sky is dark and snow is everywhere that the road is slippery, people are still going out, buying things for Christmas that’s just a few days away.

Soojung too, is out, to buy gifts for Christmas.

She thinks on what to give the perfect presents for her loved ones. She wants to get a neck tie for her father, shades for her mom, and a watch for her sister, and maybe a pair of socks for Kim Jongin. She smiles a goofy kind of smile, knowing that Jongin must be mad if she gets him that because he hates socks.

And then, she remembers Myungsoo—once a boyfriend, and now a neighbour, and she doesn’t know what else. Maybe it’s just that.

Soojung asks herself whether to get him gift as well, or nah? And if she does and is about to give him whatever she gets him, what should she say? She’s sure only a ‘Merry Christmas’ won’t do. And what if she gets him nothing? She shakes her head just by the thought, thinking that she really needs to get him something. Anything. Just because. And she’ll let him decide to do whatever he wants to do with the gift.

It’s been two hours and bags are hanging on her arms, each is filled with a neck tie, shades, watch, and sweater for Jongin. She decides not to give him socks because it’s Christmas and Christmas gift should be something that the person likes. She looks around, and lets out a heavy sigh. Now for the last one, she thinks. The hardest one.

There are many things she doesn’t know where to start. What does he like? Soojung stiffens by the thought that she, somehow, doesn’t know what he likes and dislikes. The period of them being friends and together didn’t really long, and it seems like only him that could learn about her in that short period of time. And it’s , because she should’ve at least knew something—anything than just knowing that he dislikes mayonnaise, and he loves doing things that could make people happy, and that he now loves photography. Soojung feels bad, and mostly it’s because she didn’t use the chance she had to learn about him. The only thing she did was only putting herself first out of everything, when it’s supposed to be one way around—just like what he did. And it’s even worse because the days they were together, Myungsoo didn’t even complain about it.

And she still has the gift, the Christmas gift, which she got for him 6 years ago. It was an adjustable leather bracelet with a piece of metal tied to it. It was a DIY stuff; she made it by herself and she wrote their date—the day they became real—on the metal. She didn’t give him that because she didn’t want to leave any piece of her behind, and maybe because she’s afraid that he’ll dislike it, and it still lies in her secret box—a box that she keeps all her precious stuffs in it, from the daisies he gave to her—one that was in the journal and one that he magically put in her pencil case—to the gift that’s supposed to belong to him. And any other things; from Jinri, her sister, Jongin. She keeps them all there.

“Soojung?” a voice interrupts her thought—a very, very familiar voice—and her hands go even colder, if that’s even possible. She doesn’t want to turn around because she’s afraid, and before she could even plan something like running away or whatever, the guy already stands in front of her.

“It’s really you!”

Soojung breathes, her eyes locked into the taller guy’s eyes, and she thinks it’s just unfair how easy he could capture her. He’s beautiful, just like before and always, that she notices that people, women especially, give him double look when they walk past them both. Soojung wishes he isn’t as much as beautiful, though.

“You’re shopping?” he asks. Soojung could only muster a nod. He smiles then, knowing that she’s shocked to see him there. He, too, is shocked when he sees her all alone there, with bags and just like the old times, he notices her because she has either white, grey or black from head to toe. And he notices her because she seems lost in between the crowd—like she doesn’t remember the way back home, like she’s trying to figure out something important but can’t, like maybe Jung Soojung is still the old same Jung Soojung; the one who doesn’t need to try hard to overthink.

And he thinks she’s beautiful. More, even.

“Why are you so quiet?” he chuckles, brushing snow off from her beanie. “Relax, Soojung.”

Soojung tries to relax, and she manages to do so, and then after that they walk, together—their hands keep hitting with each other and he tries hard to just ignore it instead of just interlacing their fingers together; that’d be easier, but easy things aren’t always easy to do. He sighs, because he longs to do that.

They’re in animation store because he says he’s into Marvel these days, and