It was his first date after the break up and even though Namjoon thought it was a bad idea, he insisted. Walking up to the restaurant, Yoongi rearranged the bulky watch that sat on his wrist. He wasn’t nervous--or at least he didn’t think so. He did the math about an hour before, and he realized that he hadn’t gone on a first date in five years. Yoongi didn’t have the signature sweaty palms, the racing heartbeat nor the dry throat. But he didn’t want to admit that he was out of practice at first impressions and that worried him the most. He coughed then stated his name once he reached the podium. The lean waiter with a crooked smile led him to a round table in the middle of the room.

The first thing he noticed about her was that her hair gathered up in a bun at the top of her head. An exposed long neck led down to a wine colored cardigan. Once he had walked around the table, he saw the faint copper eyeshadow across her lids. The two made eye contact and she greeted him with crescent eyes and a rounded smile. A slight grin appeared on Yoongi’s lips as he sat down across from her. The waiter asked in a grainy voice if they would like to start with any drinks. Looking up, Yoongi asked for a water and so did his date. Once the waiter left, both seem to sigh at the same time. She looked up at him and giggled slightly, before rearranging the creases in her dress.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Sungah.” Yoongi said, a little more politely than he thought.

But the woman simply dismissed it with a flick of her wrist. “Oh, that’s alright. I actually wasn’t waiting that long. At most seven minutes.”

The waiter had come back with the waters as a way to break apart the silence that enveloped them. Yoongi’s date had whispered a thank you to him and Yoongi nodded his way. Saying he’d be back to take their orders, the waiter left. Once he had, Sungah turned toward Yoongi and smiled.

“So have you ever gone to this restaurant, Yoongi?”

“Ah, yeah. I come to this restaurant sometimes with Namjoon and Hyeryung. I like their fish.”

Sungah nodded before retiring to her own menu. “Yeah, Hyeryung said that their fish was good, but that she really enjoyed the, um, red-wine spaghetti.”

The two exchanged menu ideas to fill the space until they went back to the fish and spaghetti. Yoongi had only known that Sungah worked with Namjoon’s girlfriend and that she was soft as stated by Hyeryung. But as the conversations unraveled, Yoongi saw her gentle personality, but with a joking side as well. She was a few years older than Yoongi and had a dog named Orange she had gotten from a pound. But as she started to talk about an incident with her dog she used the term, “looked like hell frozen over.” And in an instant he saw a face.

He remembered the exact way Daeun said it. Hair fell down her face in unruly curls, and her bare skin showed her naturally rosy cheeks and Yoongi loved it so much. Looking at the bathroom mirror, she leaned in and squinted. She groaned to herself and tried to fix her hair, but all she did was sigh in aggravation. She said she looked like hell frozen over but all he did was grab her waist and kiss her on the cheek. But then other memories started to flood his brain of her smile and her kisses and her hands and eye creases. Everything was silent and all that was, was his finger caressing her leg on the night of her birthday. Suddenly though, a glare flashed in his eyes and he was sitting back at the restaurant with a olive-colored woman in the golden light.

Locking eyes with her, Yoongi grinned sheepishly and drank a sip from his water. Nothing was said between them for a while. He had half-hoped that she didn’t notice that he spaced for a few minutes, but by her body language, that wasn’t the case. After a little bit, Sungah sighed and asked a question.

“What’s her name?’

Shooting a glance at her, Yoongi defensively looked down at his glass after. He sniffed before answering. “I really don’t want to talk about that.”

Her eyes furrowed as he said it. “It’s not gonna get better if you don’t talk about it.”

An embarrassed laugh left his mouth. Maybe Namjoon was right and getting this date wasn’t the best thing for him. But here he was and he just turned the water and said.

“I’m sorry. I’m just not ready to talk about it right now.”

Yoongi was sure that the rest of the night was going to be much worse as he saw her putting down her napkin and wrapping herself up in her cardigan. She looked at him and smiled.

“I think we should cut dinner short.”

Biting his lips, Yoongi nodded. “I--I understand. You know, Namjoon said it was too early for me to be dating--”

“Wait, Yoongi!” She interrupted with a smile. “You’re coming with me.”

He looked up but didn’t say anything. Honestly, Yoongi was a little confused by what she meant. With bright eyes full of expectations, she waited for a response. He asked what.

“I mean, this restaurant’s a little stuffy for a first date, don’t you think?” She whispered with a chuckle. “This isn’t what you need right now. You don’t need to go to fancy restaurants to meet girls, you just need to have time off and relax. Do things that make you happy.”

Just then, their waiter had passed them with another tray of drinks and she asked for their order to be boxed up. With a dimpled smile, he said it would be up right away.

Yoongi tried to convince Sungah to let him pay, but she kept saying that it wasn’t a date, so he shouldn’t have to pay. With their food wrapped in boxes, the two started walking down the lit up streets of Seoul. Honestly, Yoongi didn’t know that was how the date was going to go, but he was glad to get out of the restaurant. They didn’t say much at first, the two spoke in spotty conversation, before releasing into silence. Sungah asked where they should go, Yoongi suggested a park close to the restaurant. And so they two walked around the block as an evening wind picked up their hair for an instant.. Sungah then questioned how he knew about the park, to which he replied he played there a lot as a teenager.

“I see,” Sungah said. “Lots of nights riding bikes, playing football?”

Chuckling, Yoongi looked over at her and shook his head, “ah, not so much. I played a lot of basketball.”

“Really?” Sungah asked, almost unconvinced. Yoongi turned to her defensively, but then she nodded and explained, “I mean, I’m surprised you played basketball, considering…”

“My height?” He finished. He was no stranger to that comment. Even then, he saw barely over Sungah’s hair.

“Well...that and your profession. I mean, all young guys play football. Only a few played basketball, especially ones that want to become composers,” she justified.

Yoongi nodded, before replying, “Yeah, well. I didn’t always want to be a composer.”

She laughed in response to this and asked what he wanted to be. He replied a basketball player and she rolled her eyes. As the two started walking, in the corner of their eyes, the basketball court shined. Yoongi could feel Sungah tug on his sleeve with an innocent smirk on her face.

“Well, someone left their basketball here. Show me how to play.”

“Is that okay?” He asked while holding food in his hand, but Sungah already was making her way over to the bright court. Placing her food on the bench, she waved him over. With a quirked lip, Yoongi was surprised how excited she was to do this. And he was even more surprised how at ease he was, himself. Looking around the park, he walked over to her. He put down his box and watched Sungah take off her high heels.

“Where’s the ball?” He asked searching for it, courtside.

“Over there.” She pointed to a far dimly lit corner.

Yoongi honestly hadn’t spent a lot of time at the park. Not anymore. He used to come here with friends and then he spent time with Daeun here, but he stopped coming after a while. He had gotten too busy with work and Daeun, and he hadn’t even realized that he stopped going. Times seemed to slip by him, he didn’t even notice. Looking up, he went to the three point line and threw it in. It went in with a light swish of the net. He still got it. He heard clapping as Sungah walked onto the pavement.

“That was three points right?” She asked and he nodded.

Throwing it to her, she moved to the same place he was and slowly tossed it to the basket. Hitting the board with a thundering slap. The two laughed as she ran off and retrieved the ball. Turning to him she smiled and he spoke.

“Not...bad.”

Beside them, they heard the murmur of college students saunter through the park, drunk and from a party. But they didn’t pay much attention. Nor the darkening sky or rising night gale. She simply asked if Yoongi could spin the ball unto his finger. With a smile, he spun the ball, then he rotated it down his shoulders to the other and back again. She nodded, astounded for a moment, before Yoongi threw the ball into the basket again. Sungah’s eyes turned soft again as she watched him pace back into position. As he dribbled the ball, Sungah took a gamble and opened .

“What was her name?”
 

Yoongi turned to her with the ball in his hand. He parted his lips to sigh.

“Lee Daeun.”

Sungah nodded in reply.

Trying to dribble again, he finally stopped and sighed. “We, uh, met through friends; started dating. You know, it was perfect. It was going really smooth. I think for her, though, it was going a little too fast.”

He threw the ball, it hit the rim and flew in Sungah’s direction. She ran over to catch it as Yoongi muttered a sorry. But she told him to continue.

“She started to withdraw, make new friends and started to hang out with them a lot more. I think she expected a proposal from me and that freaked her out. Honestly, it would have freaked me out too. Uh, one night, I kissed our close friend when I was taking her home. I told Daeun and she told me she kissed one of her friends too. There was no fight, no tears. We just knew it had to be over. She moved out by the next week.”

The whole time, Yoongi had looked down. Finally, he turned to face Sungah and she nodded with furrowed eyebrows. She opened to ask a question, but then she paused and said instead.

“His name was Son Ilwoo.”

Yoongi didn’t say anything, just moved his mouth in slight empathy.

Sungah sighed before beginning. “I met him the first year of college. Um...He found out he had cancer, three years in. He said he didn’t want me to be there when he died. He wanted me to start getting over him as soon as possible. I tried to argue, but he had made up his mind. He wouldn’t let me go through with it.”

With a crooked grimace, she turned toward the net and said, “two months later, he was with a girl that had the same major as him. Said it was true love and they couldn’t help themselves. She was there at his death bed a few months later and I couldn’t even go to his funeral.”

She looked back at him and threw the ball his way. Walking over, she sighed full of thought. “I was really angry for the longest time. Maybe a little jealous and for a while very sad. Whenever I saw someone with dimples, I was filled with so many emotions. I was hurt and betrayed and it was hard for me to work them out. But one day, I woke up and it didn’t bother me that much anymore. I could think back on our time together and not be angry anymore.”

Yoongi locked eyes with hers. Both of them seemed clouded by deep seated memories and conflicting emotions. She was still sad, but not for the same reasons. She smiled slightly.

“It really does get better,” she said. “Don’t rush into it. Don’t listen to anyone  who says you just need to get over it as quickly as possible. You will, but in your own time. Process it, try to understand it. It will hurt. It’ll hurt so much. But as you keep going, it’ll get so much better.”

She didn’t say anything for a while and waited. The truth was, Yoongi just broke up with Daeun three months ago. He was angry and sad and betrayed as well. He thought though if he could just pass through all that hurting crap.He could just be himself again. At that moment he was just a sad and frustrated version of himself. For a while he thought he didn’t try hard enough to make her stay, but he also felt like she didn’t try hard enough to stay with him. But that’s not his fault. It’s not even her fault. But sometimes he wanted to blame her, he thought he would propose to Daeun someday and he felt hurt that she didn’t want it too. He didn’t know he could love someone so much, then have her not feel the same way. But all the events just had to happen to show they couldn’t be together anymore. Honestly, he didn’t feel like those were truths, but he knew he could believe them someday.

The two were silent as they sat on the bench. Nothing passed between them besides the buzz of the hidden cicadas underneath and the crossing stars above. With a weighted feeling, Sungah stood up to leave as she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her soft voice asked if he was alright. With the bright park lights illuminating his face, Yoongi said he would be eventually. There was a smile on her face. She had a good time that night, even though it wasn’t really a date. Yoongi said he did too. She squeezed his shoulder encouragingly, but then there was a lingering. It was just for a moment but they both felt it. Yoongi looked up at her, she still seemed sad, but a completed sadness as if she could finally pick up the pieces--a finishing. He wished that for himself one day, but maybe not anytime soon. Picking up her things, she said that he should call her if he wants a real date. He said he would. So she left and he walked in the opposite direction. Instead of a string of graceless good-byes, the two simply said thank you for not taking their hearts but listening to each other’s souls.