Me? I'm still looking. It’s almost been two years and a half, but I'm still kind of hoping I could meet him again. 

I enter a coffee shop, and it's packed with people. I don't understand why people would go to a cramped coffee shop and wait for 20 minutes just for a drink! I shake my head and queue along. I just realize I am doing the exact thing what I criticized other people of doing. 

"Brewed iced coffee with honey, please," I order the lady behind the counter as my turn comes up. I smile at the lady and take out my wallet. Honeyed iced coffee. My new favorite, if you can count two years of drinking the same type of coffee every morning as new. Not too bitter, but no artificial sweetness either. Just like he recommended - fits my personality he said. Maybe he knows about me more than I do.

"It'll be ready in fifteen minutes, miss. Would you like anything while waiting?"

I browse at the selection of today's muffins, sandwiches and cakes, but pick up two pieces of honey sticks instead.

"And today's English newpaper," I smile at the nice lady.

"The name for the order?" the lady asks as she hands out a newspaper to me.

"Jiyong,"I say simply, like it’s my own.

I take a seat next to the glassed wall so I can see outside, and see people walking by. Sometimes I scan around the crowd inside the coffee shop to see a familiar face and profile, but all I see is strangers engulf in conversations with other strangers, to me, but friends, to them. The crowd inside the shop is never thinning. As people leave the shop new people come in. I observe this cycle in fascination, and think how easy it is for people to come in and out of one's life.

But why, why is it that I can't seem to let go? Why can't I stop looking around, can't stop searching for that one stupid face. For Kwon Jiyong.

For  26 months I've been away from California, I travel to places, learn music and art, perform with a band nightly at a friendly local bar until I have to move away again, and I have looked for Jiyong too. I look for him in places I'd know I would find him. Every two months my mother would email me the scans of his postcards- that give me clues where he could be - grand historical streets and piazzas of Florence Italy, coffee streets in France, local pizzeria of a small town in Assisi, and lately, all he sent was pictures of him working. Yes, working. In a studio. And it aggravates me to no ends because I can’t tell where he is.

But a postcard he sent that my mother emailed to me three weeks ago was a picture of him staying out late in his dark studio, with a plastic bowl of ramen with Korean wordings on it. And now here I am, in Seoul, with my average grasp of Korean. I can’t wait to find him and kill him for this homesickness I have over him. My only wish is that he’s still here, and that his next postcard would still be a clue he hasn’t left Korea. The problem is my mother would collect them in a bunch before scanning them all to me, and even though I nag the life out of her through my emails to always email the postcard right away to me when she receives them, she would scold me right back, saying I should come back home and read them on my own, and not make her do this difficult technical stuff again! 

I knew she knew I panicked, because I apologized to her right away and reasoned that if I'm there in California, how am I supposed to find him, when these postcards are the clues to his whereabouts?

"I miss you so much, girl. And I think I love you still. Cuz every postcard and coffee mugs I see wherever I go they just keep reminding me of you. Damn it it’s not that I can forget you even if I want to. I can't forget you cuz maybe I don't want to. I promise you, babe. Once I make it big again with my music you'll be seeing me, and I'll be coming to get you.

- Jiyong"

Almost all of his stupid cards are like that, with his playful, and indifferent words that send you into a rage of emotions when you first read it -you'd start to think that the messages are automated.

I bite on a honey stick and on it slowly; I have learned to love the taste of sweetness when with Jiyong. There's not a moment in my day that I stop thinking about him. Maybe when I am singing, I stop missing him for a few minutes and feel his presence in every lyric. But really, he's never been absent in my mind. And I haven’t cried in a long time now. And if you understand me, you know I don’t cry much.

I traveled to Europe and learned music and poetry. But I also looked for him at pizzerias and cafes, hoping that one day when my orders came out, the real Jiyong would come and collect them, thinking they were his, and I would rush to him and hug him from behind, startling him.

And then we would kiss, or he would brush me away. Or he would run away. And if we kiss, then I would slap him hard across his stupid, handsome face that I longed so much, for leaving me, for making me wait. And he would probably say sorry and promise to not leave me again. I have imagined all kinds of meetings – romantic ones, tragic, livid ones, dramatic ones, but in all of the fantasizing, I have never once imagined not meeting him at all.

"Jiyong, honeyed iced coffee!" The lady calls out, her head moves about looking for me.

"Jiyong! Jiyong, honeyed iced coffee!" I feel my head turns right and left too, out of habit, looking at the crowd, looking for one particular guy, an average height, average built, hair probably white, or blond, or blue, or black. That's the catch. His hair. I can never know him by his hair.

"JIIIIYOONG!!" The lady is pissed, I can tell. I stand up and lock my hair behind my ear, clearly feeling disappointed for not seeing a Jiyong rushing to the counter and take the order away. Again. And the newspaper is left unread.

"I'm sorry," more of disappointment than apologetic, I say to the nice lady, as I take the drink from her. "I went to the ladies." I have no idea if this coffee shop even has a bathroom. I thank the lady as she gives me one last look, turn around, and head for the door, my head hangs low underneath my fallen curtain of hair. 

I can feel people staring at me. So much for making a scene out of yourself, Jessica! My nose flares, this happens every time I feel somebody is watching me. Why would they stare at me? That's it! I am going to turn around to those that stare and tell them to it. I'm in a bad mood right now.

"...Ji?"

My breath catches in my lungs. Here in front of me is the very person.. is Kwon Jiyong. I’m not dreaming am I? He looks simple in a light colored sweater and loose khakis, looking slightly thin and less chiseled than the last 2 years, the last time I saw him. He looks as stunned as I feel, but his eyes register recognition longer than I notice his presence. Those eyes.. they no longer look fiery and arrogant. In fact I feel myself glow with warmth as his eyes penetrate against mine, making my own vision blur. He's here. In front of me, he's right here. This bastard.

"Jiyong," I croak, still holding my tears.

An arm gently slips against my back, pulling me closer to him - and now I am sure as hell I am not dreaming! - he slowly turns towards the counter before us, obviously still surprised at this meeting. I couldn't even get to say anything as a lady barista approaches with a takeaway coffee, and hands it to him, and says, "Here's your latte, Jessica. Have a lovely day."