“What’s taking her so long?”

Daniel stared blankly at the ceiling of his apartment, tapping his feet and drumming his fingers rhythmically on the sofa, as he waited for his neighbour’s meeting with her unexpected visitor to end. It had been a while, precisely thirty minutes according to the time on his watch (he definitely wasn’t counting every single minute impatiently, no he didn’t) since Jihyun had shoved all their groceries into his arms and told him to bring them upstairs by himself. He wasn’t worried about her, of course not, but rather concerned about leaving the fresh ingredients they bought not long ago from the supermarket lying without a care on top of his kitchen counter. Also, in his defense, they had agreed to divide some of the meat and vegetables into two equal portions and share them, and he simply was not willing to touch uncooked and raw food without any supervision.

He kept reminding himself not to interfere in other’s business, but he couldn’t forget the absence of Jihyun’s usual confident gaze and the colour draining off her face when the mysterious guy embraced her. Who was the guy? He looked rather well-off from the expensive Gucci coat and leather shoes that fit perfectly on his model-like physique and good looks. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they guy had some form of intimate connection to the girl next door, especially when he looked so happy to see her and immediately pulled her into his arms after calling her name (Daniel was somehow convinced that their feelings were not mutual because she had reacted quite the opposite to see him). But the most important question was, was he Donghae? The man who claimed to be Jihyun’s boyfriend?

Leaping off the sofa, Daniel would check the camera located on his front door through the intercom screen whenever he caught any sounds of footsteps in the hallways, but was left disappointed twice to see the Mr. Park arriving home after ending his shift at work and a delivery boy carrying Chinese takeouts for the Jungs. Daniel finally braved himself to stop the twins, Jihoon and Woojin who just came back from their night classes once he saw them appearing on the screen to ask if they had seen Jihyun on their way up, “Noona? I don’t think I saw her in the lobby,” Woojin replied, tearing open the bag of honey butter flavoured chips offered by the older male.

“Are you sure? What about a tall guy wearing a long blue coat? Did you see him?” Daniel sounded very eager as he rummaged through the grocery bags for more snacks and gave it to Jihoon, who snatched the mini pretzels in his hand.

“I think I saw noona at the playground. There was also a guy that fits your description,” Jihoon mumbled disinterestedly as he peeked over Daniel’s broad shoulders curiously, eyes landing on the rest of the delicious snacks and drinks on the counter.

“What are they doing there? Did you get to hear them?”

The twins exchanged knowing looks and grinned playfully, “Two more bags of snacks and we’ll tell you,” Daniel reached behind him without even looking and grabbed a bottle of soft drink and all the snacks he bought earlier, stuffing them into Jihoon and Woojin’s open bag with a sigh. He would have listened to Jihyun’s persistent nagging to cut down on these unhealthy snacks if he had known they would only end up as bribes for the Park twins. They high-fived each other before Jihoon cleared his throat and began to describe what he had seen, “I didn’t listen to their conversation, but from afar Jihyun noona looked rather tense. She was hugging herself and looking at the ground most of the time,”

Woojin was nodding along to his brother’s words as he ripped open his second bag of chips, “The guy was talking most of the time. I didn’t see noona’s lips moving that much, but then again we only saw them for a few minutes,” he narrated with his mouth full.

The twins’ report did nothing to ease the curiosity about what had happened and Daniel was instead left with more unanswered questions regarding Jihyun’s relationship with the man in the blue coat. After sending them off with another bribe so that they would keep everything a secret from their new neighbour, he went out to the balcony to take a breath of fresh air that would hopefully clear his mind. The howling of the wind sent chills up his arms to his neck as he stood facing Jihyun’s balcony, wondering if her simple oversized hoodie and jeans were sufficient to protect her from the cool night wind. Daniel groaned and immediately shook his head when he realized that his mind wandered again to the girl next door. Everytime he tried to shake the thoughts about her from his mind, something heavy pulled at his heart, threatening to sink it to the pit of his stomach with an unimaginable weight. He failed to identify the feeling inside of him, it was a mix of confusing feelings of concern, guilt with probably a dash of jealousy?

Daniel slipped his hands into his pants pockets while trying to justify each of the feeling he had listed. Concern; of course he was concerned and worried about her because if she takes too long to ‘talk’ with the mysterious guy, the ingredients he recently bought would slowly loose its freshness and this would affect the meals that Jihyun, as his personal chef, would cook for him. Guilt; Daniel did feel guilty for not insisting her to follow him and call the security on the guy regardless of whether they knew each other, because as a responsible neighbour, he had the right to protect her. Not to mention, if something bad were to happen to Jihyun, how was she going to finish paying for her remaining debt to him? And lastly, Jealousy; Daniel didn’t like how the guy was clearly giving him the side-eye and showing off their relationship by hugging her lovingly in front of him because Jihyun belongs to–

“Stop it Kang Daniel! Stop it!” he abruptly scolded himself out loud to stop his imagination from going wild, “She’s just your personal chef and neighbour. Why would you be jealous? Hah, that’s crazy!” he let out a heavy breath, deciding to focus his attention on anything else other than Yoon Jihyun when he suddenly caught a familiar crying voice coming from the balcony next door.

That was when he finally noticed the sliding door was opened and the midnight breeze blew her curtains out to the balcony. Daniel would get chills up his spine if the apartment next door was still unoccupied, because he’d immediately thought of any female ghost that might be inhabiting the empty apartment. However, he knew very well that the voice belonged to the living, since this was not the first time he had heard that particular crying voice. He hadn’t noticed when did she get back and entered her apartment, but judging by the intensity and loudness of the sobs, Jihyun had been crying her heart out for a few minutes. A part of him was concerned of the cold wind blowing mercilessly into her house and wondered if she hadn’t change out of the thin clothes she was dressed in earlier, while another part of him wanted to call her name out loud from the balcony or maybe knock on her door, but the fact that he was merely a neighbour prevented him from doing neither.

Daniel leaned closer against the railings and he held his breath to listen in more closely, suspecting that she was probably leaning against the wall next to the door as her voice was loud and clear. Although it was dark, he could clearly imagine her sitting on the floor, hugging her legs and burying her face into her knees. Ten minutes later, he heard Jihyun sniffed and inhaled sharply and thought that she’d finally stop, but she continued weeping in the next second. Jihyun’s heartbreaking reaction told him that her meeting with the guy did not go well and it had probably affected their relationship. Daniel couldn’t just leave her crying alone on a night like this and decided to sit quietly outside the balcony and waited until he could no longer hear any sound coming from the apartment next door. Some time later, only the howling of the winds could be heard and he believed that she had cried herself to sleep.

**************

Daniel jumped out of his shower and hurriedly ran towards the front door to open it without checking the camera on his intercom when he heard the doorbell that morning. He was taken by surprise to see Jihyun standing in front of him and slightly blushed when he realized how underdressed he was clad in only his bathrobe and shorts, “Y-Yoon…” was the only thing that slipped from his lips as he stared at her face, wondering how she had been feeling when she woke up this morning. She did a good job in trying to cover up the signs that she had cried her heart out last night with makeup, but he could still see her eyes were slightly red and puffy, “What are you doing here?” he asked, tying his bathrobe securely to cover himself.

“You always ask me to cook breakfast for you in the weekends,” she spoke softly. Her gaze was vacant, a contrast from her usual annoyed demeanor and tone of voice used whenever s