There were three things that Krystal could never imagine to happen in her life. First, living without her phone even just for a day. Second, losing her favorite YSL’s Pink in Paris lipstick and having them sold out in stores. Third, sitting with Kai Kim, having a drink with just the two of them.

But the latter now happened in just half a day away after their fateful encounter at the coffee shop.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Kai frowned after Krystal ordered a Jager Bomb, “I am just drinking a San Miguel, yet you are ready to get drunk.”

“I don’t like beer. Never was and maybe never will. So, deal with it,” Krystal replied nonchalantly.

“Oh, right, how could I forget,” Kai chuckled, “My, my, I wonder why eight years don’t really change some people.”

Krystal crossed her arms on the table, “So, you think I don’t change at all?”

“Let’s see… you’re still giving blunt remarks, having your strong personality, and dressing like Winona Ryder in her 20s. That’s all I can tell,” Kai gave Krystal an intriguing smile, “why don’t you tell me for the rest?”

“Why don’t you go first?” Krystal daringly asked him back.

“Okay, if that’s what you want,” Kai paused for a while, biting his lips as his fingers kept touching his beer bottle. “So, I’ve been…”

For hours that passed by in a blink of eyes, they finally talked normally like two old friends catching up after years of M.I.A. They talked about their lives after high school. Kai, who dropped out from his law school to pursue his passion in architecture and now worked at one of the finest architecture firm in Japan. Then Krystal, who graduated from a business school but ended up working as a copywriter in an advertising agency because she loved writing.

They talked about ideas; some they once had shared in high school and some that never left their minds even after they became grown-ups. Somewhere in between words, they entered a time machine that brought them back to their youth. When Kai was the captain of basketball team and Krystal was the head of school magazine at high school. When ideas of changing the world were all seemed reachable. When reality did not bother them and idealism started growing wild.

They talked about their old friends from high school and were surprised that the ones who already married were them who they’d thought would not get married until 40. While those who had maintained their relationship for 8 to 9 years somehow failed to make it to the Altar.

“How ironic it is; you spent years in a relationship and got to know them more than a skin’s deep, yet ended up marrying someone who just dated you for months,” Kai said.

“Time does not count. It’s the depth that matters,” Krystal replied.

Still, there was a wall between them that they couldn’t break through. It was either because Krystal intentionally avoided talking about it or Kai was careful enough in choosing his words. Or maybe, there was a rule about “No Reminiscing about the Past” in a manual book of How to Have a Conversation with Your Past Lover.

Somehow, they preferred to believe in the latter.

“So, your girlfriend—I mean, ex-girlfriend—cheated on you because you were too busy with work?” Krystal repeated Kai’s statement in disbelief.

Kai nodded as he gulped down his beer until the last drop.

“Like, really? I mean, it’s such a lame excuse. You’re both adults and adults need to work,” Krystal scoffed.

“Tell me about it,” Kai rolled his eyes, putting down the empty bottle, “I wonder why women can’t understand the importance of career, really.”

“Hey—I don’t. I clearly understand,” Krystal felt offended.

“Okay, some women,” Kai raised his hands in front of his chest, as if defending himself, “you’re obviously not a part of that cult. You’re one of a kind.”

Krystal raised her eyebrows, “Are you implying that I am weird?”

“Oh crap, women,” Kai muttered under his breath, but Krystal managed to hear him. When he caught her intimidating stare, Kai abruptly cleared his throat and grinned.

“You’re not weird,” knowing that it was not enough to satisfy her, Kai clarified his remark, “I mean, you’re different in your own way and that’s good. That’s why I like you.”

Krystal felt a shiver right down .

A waiter who brought her Tequila Sunrise and Kai’s Black Russian to the table saved Krystal’s awkwardness. She quickly distracted her thoughts, sipping her liquor a little too fast that she choked at the end. Kai asked her if she was okay and she replied by moving her hand randomly.

Kai chortled at the sight.

“What?” Krystal asked, rather bluntly.

Kai stared at her before he shook his head and said, “Nothing. I am still surprised that I can spend a night with you like this.”

“Yeah… I was thinking about that too,” Krystal muttered.

“Isn’t it funny?” Kai drank a quarter of his drink and put the glass down, “after all these years, we can finally sit together and talk. Something impossible for us to do back then.”

“What do you expect from 18 years old kids? Reconciling was as hard as telling your parents that you’ve been drinking liquor since you were 16,” Krystal retorted.

Kai smiled to himself as he gazed into an empty space beyond her, somehow nostalgically. Krystal couldn’t help stealing glances at him, wondering why those deep eyes still caught her heart off-guard.

“What we had back then… it was really something, right?”

With just one short yet complicated question, Kai broke both the wall and rules.

Krystal looked into his eyes and saw his longing eyes staring back at her. As if the theory of gravity had failed her, she found herself drowning in a distinct nostalgic feeling. She wondered if what Kai had said might be true; eight years don’t really change some people.

Perhaps, eight years also didn’t change some feelings.

“It was…” Krystal’s voice trailed off.

“We were quite disastrous weren’t we? Fighting like a hurricane in the morning only to walk on rainbow in the afternoon,” Kai chuckled.

“Even a disaster happens once in a while, you know,” Krystal smiled knowingly, “yet there was never a week without fight for us; from unanswered calls to cancelled plans. Even a smile towards a stranger could ignite our fights.”

“Everything could be a reason for our feud, right?” Kai asked rhetorically.

“Blame that temper of yours,” Krystal emphasized, pointing her index finger towards Kai, “I must say, your nonsense jealousy was always a pain in the .”

Kai groaned mischievously. “Jeez, you still remember that?”

“How can I not? That one time when you hit a man who seduced me, you almost got us banned from the bar,” Krystal slightly chuckled, “if it wasn’t for Chen whose parents owned the building, we would have said goodbye to our favorite Turkish Arak.”

Kai laughed along with her, but his smile faded in no time. He pursed his lips into a faint smile.

“I was such a jerk back then, right?” Kai averted his eyes to her hands on the table, “I hurt you and I make you cry most of the time. Gosh, Krys, I am sorry.”

For a second, Krystal thought he was just casually saying sorry, but his eyes told otherwise.

“What’s with that look?”

Kai pursed his lips as he twirled his glass between his fingers. He inhaled and sighed, putting the glass down and entwined his fingers on the table.

“Listen, Krys. There’s something that I’ve been wanting to tell you since years ago,” Kai finally said.

Krystal couldn’t find any word to say. Instead, she locked her feet under the chair—

“I am sorry. I really am,”

— hoping that it would wipe out the urge to run away from anything Kai would unveil.

“This might be too late to say and you probably don’t care anymore, or you might have even forgotten about this. But, you see… the things I left unsaid end up making me feel guilty every time I remember you. I know this won’t stop unless I can tell this to your face.”

Kai looked up, staring right at Krystal’s stunned eyes and said, “I am sorry.”

“For when I hurt you and made you cry. For my childish acts and random tantrums. For not being thankful for what I had when I had you back then, when you actually deserved someone better than me.

“And for not fighting for us when you ended our relationship. For leaving to Tokyo, just like that.”

Kai’s last words hung in the air, filling the empty space of past memories that actually never even once left their heart, but had been buried deep inside their mind, waiting for a chance like now to be awaken again.

Carefully, Kai slightly shook Krystal’s left hand on the table, asking for a reaction.

“Why did you leave?”

Kai was taken aback. He never expected Krystal to bring up the question.

“Because I thought drifting apart was the best way for us,” Kai answered, straightly, “but I realized it was my pride who forced me to go. I honestly just did not have the guts to face you like a man. I’d rather run away than having to see you with some other guy.”

“But why did not you tell me?”

Kai bit his lower lip and sighed. “Because I know that once I talked to you again, I could never give up on you. Half of me told myself to run after you, but unfortunately, my ego won the battle.”

It reminded Krystal of a day in April, a month after their break up, when Kai suddenly left Seoul for good without telling her directly. He instead sent a message to Krystal through his best friend, Sehun, telling her to take care and be happy.

Happy my , Krystal remembered her own response, yelling at Sehun while breaking into tears at the dance floor of a club in Gangnam around dawn.

“I am sorry,” Kai repeated, as if his apology would never be enough.

“Stop saying sorry. It’s okay,” Krystal pursed her lips into a thin smile, “we were just teenagers trying for our luck in love, anyway.”

Kai looked down at the table, staring at Krystal’s right hand that wrapped her tall glass. He wondered why he just noticed that one gleam that reflected the room’s neon lights on her finger.

“Have you ever regretted it? Regretted us?” asked Kai before he finished his drink in a gulp.

Krystal shook her head.

“No, I never regret it. Not even once,” Krystal leaned towards the table, “I am instead thankful for what we’ve had.”

“You taught me how to love someone so deeply, like jumping off a cliff without knowing when I will land. It was so crazy and emotional. I loved you like there was no tomorrow, as if I was the moon and you were the earth, my life revolved around you.

"I know that kind of love will not happen anymore, Kai. It’s only once in a lifetime. So, instead of punching you in the face for hurting me, I want to thank you. Because that’s what first love did, that’s exactly what first love should have done. And you gave me that.

"So, thank you. Really," Krystal said.

Kai chuckled, softly, holding back his voice. “You overrated me.”

Krystal shrugged as she vaguely stirred her drink with the straw before she sipped it until it ran out.

“You know, it once crossed my mind that,” Kai leaned his chin on his palm, “if only I was a bit mature and not that ill-tempered or possessive towards you back then, maybe we are still together until now.”

Blinking her eyes as she slowly looked into Kai’s eyes, Krystal smiled knowingly.

“I believe so, too,” Krystal said, “and if an alternate universe is really out there somewhere, maybe we have already got married, living in Iceland as what we dreamed of."

Kai laughed, but his eyes wandered somewhere beyond Krystal’s whereabouts. He stared at the emptiness behind her shoulder, trying to gather the scattered words that he had been thinking over years.

Words that Kai knew would haunt him for the rest of his life, if he did not spill them now.

“Krys, it might be easy for me to ask you for a second chance and get you back together with me right here. But I know that it’s out of the question now,” Kai said, “I realized that you have put a ring on it.”

Looking at Kai directing his eyes to her entwined hands on the table, Krystal immediately looked down. She spotted a small stone diamond ring wrapping her finger, hiding in line with her other rings that she liked to put on.

“I guess I am too late, then?” Kai smiled bitterly.

“If only you asked me a week earlier before I said ‘yes’ to my boyfriend, I know that I would have given you the chance,” Krystal muttered as she her engagement ring.

“But no, you’re not late. You’re perfectly in time. Because you know what, Kai? I finally find the answer to my question that I’ve been asking myself for years.

"That maybe what I need—what we need—is not to try to fix our past,” Krystal pursed her lips, hiding her shaking voice, “but instead a proper way to say goodbye.”

The words slapped Kai on his face, waking him up to realize that what Krystal had said was the right answer to the unfinished love that still lingered on his mind ever since he left.

Maybe the reason why her name still sometimes nagged him at the back of his mind was not because he wanted another shot to make their relationship right, but simply because he had never taken a chance to make farewell.

Meeting Krystal’s somehow blurry eyes, Kai smiled softly. She returned the smile too as she dabbed the corner of her right eye. They seemed to have understood the unspoken words between their stares to each other.

We have long gone and we have moved on.

“I still use the wallet you gave me on my seventeenth birthday,” Kai said as he opened his brown-leather wallet, taking out the money for their drinks that he insisted on paying.

“God, it’s really worn-out. You should change that,” Krystal frowned.

“No, I like this one. I plan to keep using it,” Kai shrugged, “do you mind?”

“Of course not,” Krystal stood up from her seat first and put on her coat. “Sometimes I still use the biker jacket you’ve given too, you know.”

They headed out of the bar and stood still for a while in front of the door, looking around the street as they waited for one of them to speak a few words of farewell to end the night. To end the long-missed encounter before they go back to their separate ways.

This time, a real farewell between two past lovers.

“I should get going and catch the bus. I hope there are still some,” Kai said, facing Krystal.

“Do you want a ride?” Krystal offered, half hoping that time would stop for them to talk. Just to talk.

“No, it’s fine. I want to take a walk too, I miss this neighborhood so much,” Kai said.

Krystal bit her lower lip and nodded slowly. “So… I’ll see you when I see you?”

“See you when I see you,” Kai resisted the urge to hug her. He shoved his hands into his coat’s pockets and kept them tight. “Be happy, okay? Good luck with everything.”

“You too.”

Just when Kai began to walk to Krystal’s opposite direction, she called his name again. Kai turned around, but he did not come closer.

“Just so you know, Kai, you’re still the best I’ve ever had,” Krystal said loudly, fighting her racing heartbeat and the tears that were ready to break.

Kai smiled; the exact crooked yet warm smile that once had made Krystal believe that love was indeed something to fight for.

“But you don’t need me back,” Kai said.

“I don’t need you back,” Krystal smiled, small tears running through her cheek.

“Take care, Krystal.”

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