A/N: Y'all, this chapter was really, really emotional and difficult for me to write...I hope you find that this chapter was worth the wait! xoxo

In a flash, Kyungsoo stands up from his seat, pulling me up with him by the vice-like grip he has on my hand. "Don't you ever show your face or say a word in front of my girlfriend ever again," he all but growls. He makes a quick movement with his free hand, and for a second, I am afraid that he is going to hit Yongguk or throw a drink in his face. Thankfully, he only reaches across the table to grab my clutch before he storms towards the entrance of the restaurant.

"Mr. and Mrs. Do, are you leaving already?" The hostess asks us, confused.

"Our coats, please," he asks curtly, not answering her question. When she obediently retrieves the garments, he warns her, "You ought to do something about that waiter Yongguk. I will make sure that none of my friends, family, coworkers, or acquaintances patron this establishment as long as you are still employing boorish individuals who verbally harass your customers." He holds my coat up for me to slip my arms into, and then he is escorting me outside, into the first taxi that he sees.

During this whole ordeal, I feel completely numb, like I have no control over my muscles and Kyungsoo is just guiding me through the motions. With absolutely no help from me, he manages to get us back to my apartment and inside; I guess he really was trying to steal my passcode this morning. If I had any energy left, I would have made a joke about it.

As it is, I have none, so in my zombie-like state I drag myself into my room, throw on a pair of baggy sweatpants and a hoodie, and head back to the living room. I am vaguely aware that Kyungsoo is still around, but I can't bring myself to focus on that. The bay window in the living room is my favorite spot to sit and think, so that is where I place myself, back against one side, staring out into the darkness. Kyungsoo drapes the blanket from the couch over me and places a warm cup of tea on the nearby table.

He sits down on the ground next to me at a safe distance away. He doesn't say anything, probably because he doesn't know what is appropriate or not. It is unnerving, but he just sits there and watches me for God knows how long, waiting patiently for me to decide if I want to talk about it. Truth be told, I would rather not.

"If you want to leave, I would understand," I eventually break the silence with a whisper. My voice barely makes a sound, but as attentive as he is, he still hears it. It doesn't surprise me—he has always paid the utmost attention to every single detail of what I do.

"Is that what you want for me to do?" he whispers back, "I'll do anything you ask of me, but I don't particularly want to leave of my own accord." His eyes are glued to me warily, I can feel it, but he doesn't make any movements to reach out, even if he wants to.

"Ok," I reply, letting him be. I continue to stare out the window, too ashamed to face my boyfriend... if he even wants to call himself that anymore. The side of me that I showed him tonight is a piece of me that I never wanted him to have to see: someone so ugly, spiteful, hurtful, broken. I thought that I had outgrown that part of me, that I had buried it deeper than six feet under, but all it took was one look and one sentence for everything to come rushing back.

"I made you some tea," he offers, holding out the cup. Although I do not particularly want it, I accept it because it is from him, and by some miracle of God, he is still here.

"Thank you," I tell him, taking a sip of the now lukewarm drink. It does nothing for me, but it would be rude of me to reject it.

Without me even having to say anything, though, he understands. We have only been officially official for about 12 hours, but he already knows me so damn well. "You don't want it, do you? Here, I'll take it back," he says, as he gently pries the mug from my hands. That is the action that breaks the dam.

I start sobbing uncontrollably, and for a moment I can see the panic in Kyungsoo's eyes as he is torn between whether he should try to console me or go put down the tea. If I wasn't miserable and crying at the moment, I would find it quite comical. He settles on leaving the tea at a safe distance on the coffee table before he sits down next to me at the bay window and hauls me into his lap.

The warmth of his arms around me just makes me cry harder, letting out years and years of suppressed guilt, anger, and frustration. "Kyungsoo..." I try to tell him that he doesn't have to do this, that I don't deserve to have him do this, but he doesn't let me finish.

"Shhhhhh, noona, it's ok. You don't have to talk, just let it out. I'm not going anywhere," he soothes me, holding me tighter and rocking me back and forth. He starts quietly singing songs that he thinks will make me feel better, starting with the song "Don't Worry, My Dear." The combination of his singing, the rocking, and just Kyungsoo's mere presence slowly helps me calm down to an emotional level that is manageable.

"Why did you stay?" is the first thing I ask him once I have composed myself.

I can almost feel the frown he must be giving me. "How could I possibly leave you in this state?" he responds back. "You are clearly not ok. I couldn't have left you like this and not felt bad about it."

"Didn't you hear his warning to you, though?" I press him.

"Any and all of the words that came out of that guy's mouth hold literally zero value to me," he says fiercely. "And they should have no value to you either."

I know Kyungsoo doesn't want me to let Yongguk's accusations get to me but given that he doesn't know any of the context behind where the words are coming from, I have a hard time with just going along with him. "You don't know what happened though, Soo...what if he's telling the truth? What if I'm not the nice girl that you think that I am?" I ask him, mentally preparing myself to tell all.

"You're right. I don't. But whatever happened between you two...that was a long time ago, and you are a completely different person now. The Jeon Riyoung that I am dating now is honest, straightforward, fun, and everything that I am needing in my life," he assures me. "I don't care about who you were back then as long as you realize the error of your ways and became the woman who is in front of me today. I know you can't erase your past, nor can I erase mine, but as long as we are continuously learning and being a better version of ourselves, that is what matters."

I can feel it in my bones that he isn't going to judge me for anything that I tell him right now, so after taking one more deep breath, I launch into a monologue of my relationship with Yongguk:

"We went to high school together, we were in the same year. We had many of the same friends, but I never really noticed him the first few years that we went to the same school. I can't pinpoint when exactly he became more prominent on my radar, but at the beginning of Senior year, he finally did. He was quiet, mysterious, enigmatic, and I wanted to be the person to figure him out.

"We quickly became each other's everything. We were each other's first kiss. We thought we were each other's first love, back when we didn't really understand what love was. Everything was perfect...except for the fact that we couldn't actually go on dates. My parents were the super strict type, forbidding me from dating so that I could focus on school instead. And as a high school student who depends on her parents for everything, how could I possibly go against any rules that they prescribed?

"Fully aware of that ban, though, I couldn't bring myself to put distance between me and Yongguk. He was aware of the situation as well, but he too felt too attached to end it. And so we went almost an entire year of 'dating' in that way: only meeting at school, finding alone time in abandoned hallways or classrooms. People called us Romeo and Juliet, the star-crossed lovers who were being kept apart by parents. All of our friends were aware of our special circumstances and cheered us on. All of those stolen moments were enough for me, but they weren't enough for him.

"He played baseball on a club team on the weekends, and he used to beg me to come out to even just one game to support him...I never even did that for him. I always had some excuse: too much homework, my part-time job, my parents wouldn't drive me, etc. He always tried to do his best for me, but I couldn't be bothered to do the same. Any other guy would have given up on me after 1 week, but Yongguk...he tried to win me over for almost all of Senior year; tried to help me build up the courage to defy my parents and reveal our relationship to them.

"In the end, I failed him. Somewhere along the line I got tired of him pushing and pushing and pushing me that I pushed back. I kept living my life the way that I was before, like he wasn't even a part of it. My parents didn't want me to go to homecoming with him because they already had suspicions about the nature of the friendship between us. Yongguk decided not to go if he couldn't go with me--I, selfishly not wanting to miss out on a quintessential high school experience, went with someone else. He wasn’t happy about it, but he couldn't (or wouldn't) hold me back.

"Senior year is when people start making decisions about their futures and where they want to go to college, right? That whole year Yongguk had enrolled himself and struggled to keep up in many honors classes I was in, just for the sake of sharing classes with me. It's not that he was dumb, he was just smart in different subject areas. Music was his forte and he could have coasted through his Senior year and still gotten into the music school of his choice, but he decided to burden himself with difficult classes just to be close to me...I didn't understand that decision then, and to be honest, I still don't understand that decision now.

"He told me he was strongly considering one school over his dream school because it would be a closer drive to where I would be enrolling. I told him he should stop being stupid, that he should do what is best for him and go to his dream school, because his future is important and we couldn't guarantee that I would be part of it. I didn't see the crack in his smile after I said that.

"As the year wore on, I found myself getting more and more annoyed with him. And I could tell he was getting mad at me too. After I basically told him to give up on his plans to see me much during the next 4 years of college, he started holding on even tighter. I hated it—that feeling of suffocation, being tied down. So one day, I told him that it was over, that I was done. That I couldn’t do it anymore. I tried to completely cut him out of my life cold turkey, and understandably, he didn’t take it well. He tried everything he could to regain my attention and my affection, eventually resorting to acting out and throwing himself into a downward spiral. I didn’t like seeing what he was doing to himself, so I told him that maybe we could just be friends.

“Despite what I had told him, I still stayed away for the rest of the year. We both went to prom with different people, but awkwardly still with the same group of friends. We graduated. We fully planned to never see each other again. But one day out of the blue he messaged me on KKT and wanted to hash out everything between us so that he could have ‘closure’…that was when he told me that he hated me. Hated me for the way I used him during our whole relationship. Hated me for making him look like a pushover. Hated me for making him clinically depressed. He said that when we started dating he felt like nothing but I gave him a purpose. But then just as easily, I reduced him to nothing again.

“He told me that he had started seeing someone new. Someone who made him feel worth something again…I wanted to tell him that it shouldn’t take someone else’s validation and attention to make you feel worth something, but I didn’t. I don’t think he would have liked that response, and I didn’t want to start another fight. I just wanted to survive that conversation and then move on with my life, for good. So, I let him say whatever he wanted and needed to say, apologized, and then told him that it would be best if we just went our separate ways, permanently this time. He only tried to contact me once more after that; his university band came to my school for an event and he wanted to know if I could stop by to say hello. I lied and told him I was out of town.

“Tonight was the first time I had seen him since we graduated high school ten years ago. When I heard his voice again, it was like my heart dropped into my stomach. Not because I was afraid of what he would have to say to me, but because I was afraid of what he would say in front of you. You are so, so important to me now, and the fact that he knows enough of my history and my secrets to potentially drive you away…that terrifies me. He brings out such an ugly, ugly, side of me that I never wanted you to see, but it’s too late now. I’ve shown you what a heartless, selfish person that I am capable of being, and now…now you know all of me, and you’ll take it as you will. Karma really is a b****, huh?” I end my monologue with a mirthless laugh. Now that it’s all out there in the open for him to judge and decide my fate, I feel like a weight has been lifted off of my chest, but at the same time, I feel like I want to take back all of the word vomit that I just laid out.

For a long time, Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything. It’s unsettling and worrisome, and his lack of response makes me feel like I would have been better off keeping my mouth shut. Finally, finally he says something, and it isn’t at all what I am expecting. “Jeon Riyoung,” he addresses me, the underlying tone of his voice scolding me, “Do you really think so little of me?”

“W-What?” I ask him, confused.

“Do you really think that I would let my feelings for you be affected by the spiteful words of an immature high-school ex-boyfriend?” he asks, and his question makes me feel ashamed for having so little faith in him. “That was ten years ago!” He cups my cheek with one hand and wipes the tears from my eyes. “Do you feel badly about how you treated him?” he asks, and I nod. “Would you ever think to do the same thing to me if things start going sour for us?” he asks, and I shake my head. “Then you are clearly a different, more mature woman than you were in high school, and I have nothing to worry about. We’ve all been there, Riyoung. We’ve all been young and dumb, rebellious and reckless; but what matters is who we are here and now, and how our past experiences have shaped us into our current selves. Ok, so maybe you were a mean girl once who broke a boy’s heart and lied to her parents. But who hasn’t? Life…life is a journey of making mistakes, breaking hearts, and getting your heart broken. But what matters most is that with every experience and every little thing that goes wrong, you learn. You become better, smarter. In your case, yes, you were terribly mean to Yongguk, but you clearly feel badly about it and it has taught you to be kinder. You have been nothing but sweet and kind to me all the time I’ve known you, even with your sassiness.

“Admitting your wrongdoings and opening up to me about them doesn’t mean you are weak—it means you are strong. Strong enough to hold yourself accountable for what you’ve done and to give me full disclosure of what I am getting myself into. But I’m not going to run away scared, Riyoung. You have been punished enough, have been punishing yourself enough, these past 10 years that I am not going to make you suffer for your past any longer. I can see now, where your scars are and where they stem from, and I can see now why you reflexively shied away from us starting a relationship at first. But I want you to know and understand that it’s ok that you have a history. It’s ok that you had a relationship that didn’t work out, because if that had worked out the way you had initially intended, then we wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have met you, and even if I had, it wouldn’t be the same. You would just be my best friend’s girlfriend’s best friend. At the end of every Friday night you would be going home with someone else, and now that I know what it’s like to be the one to take you home, I don’t want to think about what it’s like to watch you walk away and leave me behind.

“Everything that has happened in your life is a part of you, just like how everything that has happened to me in my life is a part of mine. But if we are both willing to let the past go and enjoy what we have here and now, then slowly, day by day, we will heal your wounds together, and we’ll heal mine too. So what do you say? Are you willing to forgive yourself for what you did back then, and work with me to become stronger in the future? It might not always be easy, and maybe we’ll run into some bumps in the road that remind you of what happened before; but I need you to promise me that you won’t run away scared, and that you’ll give me the chance to work through them together. It’s probably much too early to say this, but I want to give us the chance to learn to love each other without the past getting in the way. Do you think you can do that?” His gaze is fixed determinedly on me with a depth and a determination that me in, making me not want to let go.

“Are you sure you want to deal with me like this?” I whisper, giving him one last chance before I launch into freefall. “I’m not letting you go back on your decision if you agree to this.” In lieu of a response, he just wraps his arms tighter around my shoulders and plants a reassuring kiss on the crown of my head. That’s the moment I knew that I needed to let go of my dark past, truly let go of my past, to give myself fully and completely to this radiant man who would teach me how to love again, both him and myself. For him, I could at least do that much.