As the elevator door opened, Seungho saw Sohyun boarding on another elevator at the other end of hallway opposite to his. He ran towards her Into the hallway, ignoring his father who was standing beside the elevator. When Sohyun turned upon boarding the elevator, she saw him running towards her. She saw her father beside her in the hindsight and slightly shook her head at him. The pace of his steps slowed down upon receiving her message to not close in. He stood panting at a few steps before and looking at her.

As the elevator door started closing in,  he rushed and blocked the door with his hand. When the door opened again, seeing Seungho standing there, Mr. Kim tried to hide his hostile look but in vain. Before entering the elevator, Seungho bowed greeting Mr. Kim politely and stood beside Sohyun, facing the doors.

Standing in between, she thought that the elevator music was playing her hear beat. Her mind went blank leaving anxiety in the background.

As the elevator went down, Seungho saw Mr. Kim’s gaze fixated on the digital display in the elevator impatiently waiting to reach the first floor. Seungho spoke in soft voice inclining his head up, “Uncle, I’m…”. Mr. Kim interrupted without taking his eyes off the digital display, “No need for an introduction, your father told us about you, your aim and even  your distractions”. Her heart sank. He noticed her knitting her eye brows in worry. He wanted to hold her, at least her hands to ease her concern but he knows that she will be flustered if he does any of it with her father beside.  So, he just stood a bit closer towards her to feel his shoulder to let her know that he is by her side. When the elevator reached the first floor, Mr. Kim got down first, followed by Sohyun. Seungho rushed to the front and asked while catching up with Mr. Kim’s fast pacing, “If my name didn’t have ‘Yoo’ in it, will you still object?”. Mr. Kim stopped and said with straight face, “I don’t deal with hypothetical question”.  Sohyun pleaded, “Dad, ...”. Mr. Kim interrupted, “Let’s go home, Sohyun-ah”. As Mr. Kim took a step, a car pulled over and honked.

They found Shin Jaeha in the car who lowered the windows and said, “Hello Uncle! Hello Sohyun-ah! Here to pick you up”. Mr. Kim nodded at his greeting, gave a quick smile and opened the rear door, while Sohyun gave him a weak smile and held her head low. As Mr. Kim hopped in, Sohyun turned to look at Seungho with worrisome eyes. After he nodded his head to assure her, she took her seat in the back.

Before driving off, Jaeha looked at worried Sohyun through the rear-view mirror and upon tracing the direction of her sight, he bent his head down to look through the window at Seungho standing beside the car. His eyes went back to Mr. Kim who told him that they are good to go. As Jaeha drove off, he noticed Mr. Kim being silent and Sohyun looking out through the window lost in thoughts. He has no idea what has happened, but he is not slow to read the atmosphere. So, to lighten the mood he asked, “Is no one gonna ask about me?”. Gathering his senses, Mr. Kim said, “Sorry! Just lost in thoughts. How am I seeing you here?”

Haha chuckled and said, "Landed this morning. I’ll be practicing medicine here in the Seoul hospital for 6 months. Sorta like exchange program. Since mom wanted to stay here for a long time, I opted for it.”

“Good to see you again”

“Well, you’ll be seeing me frequently, because we moved to our old house. We are just few houses apart!”.

While they exchanged conversation, Jaeha’s eyes darted between the road and Sohyun through the rear-view mirror and noticed her  still lost in thoughts. When Jaeha dropped them at their house, Mr. Kim and Sohyun thanked him before entering the house.

Expecting Sohyun to give him some attention, his eyes escorted her as she entered the house till the door closed blocking his view. when she just left without sparing him an inch of attention, he smirked in disbelief and drove off to his house.

On arriving home, Mr. Kim took off his shoes and reached the living room filled with Sohyun’s oppa, Jiwoo and Mrs. Kim. Sohyun who entered the house following Mr. Kim saw the assemblage and paced fast to pass the living room quickly to avoid being questioned. As she walked past her mom to climb upstairs, Mr. Kim told Sohyun firmly, “You won't be happy with him” which made her stop for a second. She turned to look at Mr. Kim who had a serious expression. When she tried to speak up, Mr. Kim interrupted, “Let’s not associate with the Yoo family under any circumstances!”. Unable to voice out her thoughts, she climbed upstairs to her room.

Everyone in the house was left bewildered by Mr. Kim’s words and Mrs. Kim looked at Mr. Kim with knitted brows. Mrs. Kim and others heard about the meeting and especially about Seungho from Mr. Kim which put Mrs. Kim in a stew making her unable to decide between whom to console and where the compromise has to be made. Jiwoo stood stunned and her brows furrowed with her eyes filled with worry.

She lied on the bed and saw the ceiling which was blank unlike her mind which was filled with unresolved thoughts like the peak hour traffic that was jammed with an accident. She kept her phone by her side but there was no messages or calls from Seungho.

Sohyun didn't come down for dinner and it's been hours since she shut herself in her room. She stayed back as she knows no one would heed to her voice because she wanted to voice out her thoughts to her family which her father didn't want to hear. When her phone beeped, she hurried to reach out. A tear trickled down on her cheek, when she realized it was a spam. Before her tear could reach her jaw, a flash of light fell on the wall being reflected from her dream catcher. On wiping her tear, she rushed to the balcony and saw Seungho standing below in the alley beside her house. Her face brightened but were over shadowed by sadness.

Seungho was sweating due to the rush even though it was cold outside. His worried face marked by knitted eyebrows and lost eyes, beamed on seeing her. He showed his broken phone to her to explain the reason for not calling or texting and mouthed the words, “Saranghae! (I love you)”. When he saw her taken aback by his sudden confession, he continued, “I’m lost. I don't know what I should say to make you feel okay, other than those”. Sohyun gave a sad smile at him and went inside her room to grab a paper and pen and wrote, ‘Let’s meet at the next station tomorrow’. She went back to balcony, crumbled the paper and threw it towards his direction. He caught the paper, straightened it and read it. As soon as he nodded looking at her, she left the balcony to her room without a goodbye. He shrugged it off considering her fear of her father seeing them together.

Next morning, Sohyun woke up early and left the house before everyone came down for breakfast. She left a note which read 'To class's. She waited and took the usual train but got down at the next station as promised. She saw Seungho waiting for her in the platform. His eyes lighted up on seeing her. He walked towards her while she stood still looking at him. When he got near, she adjusted the cap she was wearing to hide her swollen eyes.

As he approached her, he asked, “What happened in the meeting room?”

“Your father knows about us… and told us off to my dad”, she said with her head held low to prevent meeting eyes with Seungho.

“On the day you met my mom, my dad asked about her whereabouts when she came home. As she struggled to tell the truth, I told him that she met my girlfriend. But… Never once thought he would use the meeting to deal with personal issues.”

“Mmmm…”

As she nodded without looking up, he leaned front and bend down to meet her eyes. When she looked up startled, he immediately took off her cap and looked into her eyes. He noticed her swollen eyes and realized the meaning behind it. His straightened his back. He breathed out and asked with low voice and stern face while fixing his gaze on her,

“Looks like you cried hugging your knees.”

She went silent. 

“Is what I think is true?”, he continued.

“How will I know what you are thinking?”

“You cried coz… you thought of a tomorrow without me!”

Sohyun’s eyes were filled with pain and guilt. she said with pleading eyes knitting her brows, “The tomorrow I see is full of problems!”

His face saddened but his steady voice conveyed his anger , “What mistake did we do? You are not a married woman! You are a daughter of a lawyer and I’m a son of an industrialist, if that is the problem, then nothing is gonna stop us being together”

She looked at him with calm down eyes and retorted, “What do you expect me to do?”

“Come away with me”, he said firmly with soft voice and his gaze conveyed his sincerity.

She stood stunned for a while, but she looked at him and continued, “I can’t!”

“What you can't?”

“In can’t leave my dad, mom, oppa and Jiwoo. I can't leave them for you”

“But I can leave everything for you!”

She averted her gaze away from his eyes, while concealing her feelings, she asked him, “If you can leave your parents for me today, then what's the guarantee that you won't leave me for another girl tomorrow?”

His leaned forward to meet her eyes and said with anger filled low tone, “Is that a logic? It’s nonsense. Our love doesn't weigh that much?”

“For three years, we met and dated secretly. Sometimes, you appeared out of nowhere, made me smile, laugh and now making me cry”, she uttered with eyes filled with tears.

“I love you”, he said with soft voice.

As the tears escaped her eyes, she asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“It means I can go to any extent for you”, his voice softened with every word he uttered.

“Then, what about jumping off this building?”, she asked teasing him while wiping her uncontrollable tears.

He let out a quick sad laugh and said, “I don’t know”.  His face saddened with each tear that trickled down her cheek. She turned her head away from facing him to wipe the tears that won't stop.

Like the flower that blooms in the crack on the rock, her tears struck the fragile nature in him. He averted his gaze from her and looked around to brazen himself. He wanted to hold on to her no matter what she says but, seeing her struggling to hold her tears made him realize, ‘If being like this makes it hard for her, then my love has lost its purpose’. He looked at her with a forced smile and said, “Is that it? Then, shall we shrug our shoulders and say our goodbyes?”

She turned towards him and smiled sadly. Though that's what she wanted to convey, putting them into words, stabbed her.

He let out his hand and said giving out a weak smile, “A goodbye handshake?”

She gave her hand and said, “I’ll pray that you’ll get an unappealing and dull-witted wife!”

He let out a laugh and felt the warmth of her hand as he gripped and loosened his hold immediately. When he loosened his grip, she felt like a lost child, alone in the crowd.

He stayed behind as she boarded the train. As the train departed from the station, she looked at him standing behind the glass paneled doors as he walked backwards.

The Sun rose and set again and again, nothing changed around them except them. Their breakup altered certain things in their daily life. Their selfies were turned into landscape and food pictures. No staying up in the night. No meeting and thus no waiting. Sohyun’s balcony remain closed during the night and the torch he used to reflect the light into Sohyun’s room slept in the corner of his desk. She took the bus instead of train to abstain from crossing paths with Seungho and he switched to car instead of his bike since he didn’t want to take off the pillion on his bike that he customized just for her. Their laughter was shattered into pieces, waiting get mended by the other.

Days rolled as he searched for her voice in the air while trying to avoid it. Whenever she crossed his department, she looked for his scent that got mixed up in the air but never wanted to cross paths.

Their senses were fixed in the air around them looking out for each other while trying to avoid each other.

They told themselves ‘Move on’, but when they realized to move means to leave their loved one behind, which they cannot and do not want to do.

Exams got them busy, occupied their mind, shielded them from the thoughts. As Seungho completes his masters with the exams, he starts his preparation for the loan sanction for the startup.

For Sohyun, a vacation isn’t what she wanted. It’s been a month since their breakup, but time didn’t prove to be the best healer and personally she didn’t want time to heal her wounds. Because as the weeks go by, the pangs have lost their sharpness, but the sense of loss deepened. The pain felt just as raw and the emptiness got vaster. Sometimes she even wondered if he misses her like she does. So, she signed in for a medical camp in a hurricane hit zone fairway from the city.

 Seungho went around to places with his colleagues-to-be for meeting with an entrepreneur named Kang Chulmin. He is a versatile and experienced entrepreneur who stays in the outskirts of City with his wife and doesn’t usually meet or discuss about the profession when he is on the vacation. Hence, Seungho had a hard time scheduling the meeting with him and thus he stayed in the rented room near Kang Chulmin’s. He has learnt to build a life around the gaping hole that was staying inside him, which he couldn’t fill in.

When Seungho came back to the city for some business, he met with Yooram who suggested a drink. Seungho drowned himself in the alcohol. On seeing him in the drunken state for the first time, Yooram decided to pull a prank on him and asked, “I heard when you are drunk you hallucinate about the person you want to see the most”

With reddened cheeks and half-closed eyes, he said, “Ayyyy…. Don’t bluff, I don’t see Sohyunie”.

“I thought you were going around looking for Kang Chulmin!”

“Whoo is thaaaat?”, he hiccupped and dropped his head on the table.

“It’s not looking good, I’ll get you some water with ice”. Yooram got up from the table.

Yooram brought him to his house and dropped him on the bed in the guest room. After a while, Seungho woke up and looked around to realize that he was in Yooram’s house. The room had the wonderful city view. Still in drunken state, he stared into the view and wondered it would be beautiful to appreciate this scene with someone rather than the scene itself.

He took his phone and dialed a number, it said the phone was switched off and went to a voice mail, he spoke with steady voice but blurred mind, “I’ll wait however long! Will your dad accept when you are fifty? I’ll be fifty-six, I’ll wait till then. I’ll see you now and then, like before. You will meet me, right? That’ll do”. He went silent for a while as the time he spent together with Sohyun streamed in his mind. Then he asked inflamed, “Did you feel the wonderful chemistry we had? Did you sense the magic between us? If we can’t live our life with the person we love, then what’s the use of living?”. He got infuriated when he thought that she broke it off just because her father said so. He then calmed down when he remembered her love filled gaze and spoke with soft voice, “Do you even know how you look at me?”. He hung up the phone and went himself to sleep.

He woke up in the morning with no recollection of whatever happened yesterday except the drink with Yooram. He bathed and changed into the spare clothes that he has once left with Yooram. Before bidding farewell, out of the blue, Yooram said, “I don’t see Sohyunie”

Seungho puzzled as he already mentioned about his breakup to Yooram.

“That’s what you said yesterday after you are drunk”, he said clearing his doubts.

Seungho gave a sheepish smile.

“But you spoke to me mistaking me for Sohyun-sshi”, Yooram teased.

“Ayyy…!”, he said not believing his words.

As Seungho drove off, he vaguely remembered, calling someone during the night. He suddenly changed the lanes to stop. She unlocked his phone and checked his call log. His heart stopped for a while when he saw that he has sent a voice mail to Sohyun not Yooram. His eyes widened on replaying the voice mail. He immediately called Yoonhwa,

Hello Yoonhwa-sshi, do you know where is Sohyun? (His voice clearly stated his hastiness)

I heard you two broke up. Why are you asking for her?

Ju… just because.

Yoonhwa witnessed how Sohyun bore the pain by herself and how she struggled hard to forget him. So, she wasn’t ready to let him meet her easily unless he is determined. So, she said,

Call her then.

(He said with low voice emphasizing each word) I want to meet her.

(hesitantly she said) You can meet her next week, she is in a medical camp.

NEXT WEEK?! (he exclaimed).

Meanwhile, the place that was hit by hurricane was still raw. The people kept coming in for the medical assistance and the place where Sohyun stayed in was still out of network coverage. Though the electricity supply was limited, it was enough to aid the medical devices. The hectic schedule overshadowed her thoughts about him.

After a few days, the plight of the people improved, and the network were back to normal. On reaching her room, Sohyun immediately looked for her phone to call home. The notifications showed missed calls from her mom and Jiwoo and a voice mail from Seungho. She deleted his number from her phone but not from her memory. Trying to forget it, ended up as a recollection.

She called home to inform she is okay, but she couldn’t continue her conversation for a long time as her mind wavered to the voice mail waiting to be heard. As soon as the call got over, she listened to the voice mail.

His single voice mail shattered all her resolutions. She thought her resolve is concrete, but his voice mail blew it away like a card house. She walked out her room, fencing her tears with her eyelids. She stood on the corridor, placed her hands on the guard rail while closing her eyes and breathed deeply. As she let out her breath, she opened her eyes to see Seungho standing in front of the dorm.

Seungho’s clothes and hair looked disheveled. As he walked towards her carrying his backpack, Sohyun stepped down the stairs. Unable to control her tears and emotion, she fell on her knees. Seungho threw his backpack down and got down on his knees. As he cupped her face, she held his hand and let the tears break the fence. He placed his forehead against hers. Before he could say anything, she said crying,

“What took you so long to come in search of me?”

As his tears welled, he looked into her eyes and said, “I can’t be separated from you! I can’t live without you!”

“Really?”

“I love you”

“Can you go to any extent for me?”, she asked him holding the gaze.

“You want me to jump off this building?”

“Marry me!”, she continued, “You stay in you house and I’ll stay in mine”

Seungho gave her a wholesome smile and said, “You want to marry secretly?”

“Tell me ‘yes’”

“If you say so”.

Author’s notes:

Yay! Marriage, it is! A new era begins!

P.S: I have introduced new character called Kang Chulmin. (Park Chulmin in and as Kang Chulmin)