In which a broken man found his way back home.

Starring: Broken man Daniel and ballerina Yoona.

Disclaimer: Angst (as usual), but it's really more of a subtle angst really. More blabbering in the A.N for why I'm writing about Daniel.

SIX. 

His breath left him in one slow, long exhale. The warm air transforming into a momentary white fog before it dissipated into nothingness.

It was a cold, cold night in Korea.

Kang Daniel took another quick drag of his cigarette, relishing in the warm burn of his throat. The winter night was frost, encapsulating everything in its icy touch.

Sighing, Daniel craned his head up to the night sky, his gaze fixated on the round moon hanging in the cloudless sky, the snow having stopped falling a while ago.

If he were a wolf, Daniel thought, it would be a darn good sight to howl to.

Unbidden and utterly against his own will, his traitorous mind started playing that infuriatingly mellow ballad from some famous idol boy band – what was it again? Wanna something – that he heard on the radio a few days back, triggering a series of visions Daniel wished he hadn’t remembered.

So beautiful, beautiful.

A voice. A smile. A laugh. A time long lost.

With a quiet sigh, Daniel shook his head to rid his thoughts. It was pointless to reminisce the past.

No longer having the urge to smoke, Daniel snuffed the burning white stick, thinking to return to his group of friends who were inside the barbeque restaurant.

It was only with his hands on the ice cold metal handle of the sliding door that he changed his mind, opting to venture down the dimly lit street, the snow crunching beneath his black timberland boots.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Daniel paid no heed to his surrounding, his mind purposefully blank. He didn’t want to think of anything, no, he didn’t want to think nor remember period. Daniel had no destination in mind whatsoever, all I knew that he didn’t want to stay still, that he didn’t want to be within the confines of the four walls, and so he walked, and walked and walked.

A hard knock to his shoulders snapped him back to reality, his mind having the sense to register the sight of a hurried middle aged lady offering a rushed apology before he registered his surroundings.

Daniel straightened his back slowly as he took in the sight of familiar looking store signs – signs and lights that he hadn’t seen in a year.

He realized two things at once. One, he was over at the other side of town that he took extreme care to not venture to. (And a small part of him wondered just how long had he been walking so as to get here). And two, he was alarming close to where she would might be.

It was that precise realization that had him his hands that was deep in the pockets of his coat.

It was also that acute sharp pain of skin stretching over raw, bruised knuckles that reminded him of why he lost her to begin with.

You’re being stupid, he told himself as he started walking again.

She might not be there anymore, quipped the rational part of his brain as he stepped aside an ice patch.

She wouldn’t want to see you again, cautioned the bruised soul deep within him, the words a sharp tug to his heartstrings.

I know, confessed Daniel, I know. But the boots never stopped making the tell-tale crunch of a man walking over snow.

The light of her ballet studio was still on.

Daniel’s breath caught in his throat, had him swallowing hard. A part of him hadn’t expected, nor truly invested in the possibility that he might be seeing her again.

And the light of the studio turned off.

Heart thumping, Daniel waited with a bated breath, his eyes trained on the glass door on the ground floor, knowing that she would have to go through that in order to leave the building.

True enough, an eternity of a wait later, she emerged, laughing with her co-worker as they exited the building.

The laughter that died the moment she laid her eyes on him across the narrow street.

Daniel watched as her co-worker followed what she was staring at, an empathic smile on her face as she whispered something into the shell shocked girl. And with one last maternal pat to the girl’s forearm and a brief wave to him, the co-worker left, her figure blending into the night, leaving the two of them alone.

Yoona blinked once, twice, and once more to be sure of what she was seeing. Briefly, she contemplated in pinching herself to make sure that it was all real.

He’s really here, she thought to herself in a daze, Kang Daniel is really here.

One year. One whole long year since their bitter, explosive fight that had them ending their relationship.

She took in his face, his cautious expression, his wide shoulders all the way down to his trademark black timberland boots.

And a part of her didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at how familiar he felt to her. And just like that she was that girl again; the girl who spent her nights cuddling into him as they watched crappy tv with his pet cats lounging at the foot of the bed, the girl who spent her summer riding a bike as he skate boarded beside her.

Images after images flashed across her eyes and bombarded her senses.

And Yoona felt like she couldn’t breathe.

She had missed him of course. Missed him so much that the initial months following their break up, she wa