16 Days till Christmas

It probably wasn’t every day that two run-aways ran into each other. I suppose this was what they conventionally referred to as Chance encounter. I tried to think of the probability of it happening; one out of ten, perhaps? If you assumed at least ten people decided to run away from their lives on the night of Christmas eve? But given the unlikeliness of the situation under usual circumstances, I had to shake the thought away. It wasn’t just a coincidence, a chance encounter. It was fate. It was a story to tell.

His name was Kim Sung Gyu, which he told me as we acquainted ourselves over our coincidentally (or fatefully) mutual understanding. I told him my name, Jung Eunji; you can call mi Ji, that’s what I went by, and he addressed me by my entire name as a staple of courtesy. He and I both decided that we were in a situation which required a drink. It wasn’t something that we came down with in the same way that we’d decided to run away from a difficult situation in life. He asked me as we sat in the slowly thinning crowd of the station; “I feel that this unlikely turn of events need a round of drinks, what do you say? All on me” I looked up at him, smiled and said; “As long as you’re paying” and that was how we finally found ourselves walking along the busy streets of Gangnam, searching for a not-so-shabby bar for the two of us to sit and have a drink in. As we walked, we shared most truths about ourselves. He was a legal consultant; ‘Not a lawyer, just someone who knew the stuff but didn’t apply’ he added with a laugh. Apparently, there was a lot of people who actually thought he had anything to do in the court, and he admitted he’d never been to an actual court in the entirety of his life.

“I’m a licensed nurse” I told him, and he said that he could tell. I looked like someone who helped people, apparently. I could only return to him a smile. I could tell the same, although he didn’t much look like it. But I hadn’t the sheer ability to admit things to him.

There weren’t many good bars open at that time of the day, and those which were open and also were good, were overcrowded and we both didn’t feel comfortable to be among a lot of people, given the circumstances. We walked on a bit further until the street became less urban and the crowd thinned out. We talked as we walked, less about ourselves but more about things which surrounded us. He was witty and fun, he said the kind of things that only the people in novels would say, and the image I had of him from our first encounter slowly began to wither away. We settled to drink at a roadside eatery in the end. There were a couple of them lining the seemingly empty apartment complexes, and we eased into one, its warmth welcoming us with a gust of wind which carried the delicious aroma of fishcakes cooking in. I suddenly felt ravenous. It’s been quite so long since I tasted a good hearty bowl of sweet rice-cake, fish cake and a fizzy round of Soju. The prospect of tasting them made my stomach rumble with anticipation. Sung Gyu led us to a table towards the corner, the cold wind blowing in, a hearty contrast to the heat inside the tent. There was a couple of patrons who glanced at us with curious eyes. I pulled off my coat, set my scarf aside and Sung Gyu hurried off to the food stand after asking me to settle in. I waited, staring after him as his tall dark figure hovered about the misty stall, the ladies behind the steamy pots smiling at him graciously, and I felt a tinge of an unspeakable emotion within. He looked completely out of place inside the hut, amongst the little crowd, but he still seemed to so effortlessly blend in with his polite nods and kindly smiles.

A moment later, he returned to our table, and an old lady followed, carrying a tray laden with an array of dishes and a couple of bottles of warm soju on tow.

“Here, help yourselves!”

“Thank you Imo! We’ll eat well” Sung Gyu replied in a voice which was a strange contrast to the man that I first met. He was being cute, which was unimaginable in the first place, and when he caught me staring at him, his ears turned red and he gave me a noncommittal smile.

The food was warm and delicious, the thick sweet sauce staining my lips and the Soju trickling down my throat with a mind-numbing pleasure. He would pour me a glassful, I would pour him one in return, and slowly the plates emptied, the alcohol kicked in; we were still talking, and the conversations have changed.

“You don’t mind me asking...” He started somewhere at that time, his empty glass tipped to a side as he gazed at me. “Eunji-Ssi...the situation” his eyes were fixed on me, the fine fringe of his hair which was previously pushed back was slowly unwinding, falling over his eyes. I pursed my lips, feeling more reckless than I had ever been.

I thought about the situation, meeting yet another suitor, handing the control of my life over to a man whom I barely knew. It really broke my heart, sometimes. People thought that being born into the rich was all about being able to own everything one ever wanted; the money, the luxury, all the technology and expensive things that they couldn’t afford. But being born into a rich house hold was all about power, and class and dignity; a bunch of people pretending to be happy in their made up lives, pushed and pulled around by the society’s demands, expectations crushing dreams and lives that had no control over. I couldn’t remember the last time I had enjoyed my life, the last time I was truly, indescribably happy. And I had to say, since the last time I had smiled genuinely or laughed or let myself unwind, this was the very first time.

So I felt reckless, reckless enough to let on the worries that had kept stewing in my mind, to a stranger who understood me a lot more than my parents ever did.

“Arranged marriage” I sighed, and slowly the jovial atmosphere between us began to flitter away. Sung Gyu stared at me for a moment, his gaze unreadable, a strange shine in his eyes. “That is...” He said in the end, and I raised my eyes towards him. I thought he was mocking me, a woman running away from an arranged marriage? Perhaps it wasn’t conventional in his lawyerly lifestyle. I scanned his expression, but I couldn’t possibly read his mind. He wasn’t mocking me; not even the slightest. What he was thinking at that moment, however, was beyond me.

“What?” I asked, and he slowly shook his head. “No, just...tell me about it” He said emphatically. “Is it that bad?”

I didn’t say anything for a moment, my fingers distractedly following the patterns on the plastic table, my thoughts disarrayed. Was it that bad? I thought to myself, recalling all the men I’ve been with, recalling all the dates I’d had. Then I remembered my mother, who was convinced that she had the most perfect love story but was unconsciously slaving for a man who probably didn’t even love her anymore, blinded by her beliefs.

“I...I don’t want to be married” I admit in the end. I realised it was something personal, something that I had never admitted out loud. I knew that I was afraid of what men could do to me. They would overlook my pain, they would overlook my insecurities, my fears. The centre of our world won’t be us, it would be them, and I would be the satellite in their solar system. I didn’t want to be that powerless. I didn’t want to be that, that; the smallest fragment in their vast world whereas they’d made our love appear the most precious. I was afraid of that life. And that’s what I told him. I told Kim Sung Gyu about my mum, and how I never wanted to be her. I told him about how I was afraid of marriage, of the prospects of a man, a stranger taking away the last hope of freedom that I had. He listened to me intently, nodding and serving with the impressions that I needed. At the end of my account, I was exhausted, and he knew a little too much than he should.

“I’m just afraid...I guess” I said, my head resting on my arm, my eyes focused somewhere beyond him, unconsciously following the late nightly patrons outside the tent. “Just imagine...someone making you so weak to the point that you have no grounds to stand on...isn’t that what marriage would do to you? I don’t want to be that person. I would want some comfort in my life, but that’s hardly what I could expect from a husband, isn’t it? I would just be as good as an exhibit in their house”

Sung Gyu was quiet for a very long time, and I couldn’t, yet again, tell what he was thinking. He was one of those people who was so guarded of their emotions; as many as expressions he seemed to carry. It was hard to read his mind, to see right through him, and so I found myself thinking about why he’d become so obscure. What was his story? Why wouldn’t he let on the things that he felt? What made him so guarded?

“I...” He started after a while, reached for the last remaining bottle of Soju and screwed open the lid. Then he made to pour it into his empty glass, but then decided against it and set it aside. “Eunji-Ssi, as I grew up in a different...sort of household, I truly don’t know what it’s like to be...” He pursed his lips and seemed to mull over what he wanted to say. “To be honest, I don’t have a dad”

There was a moment of silence following his revelation, and I felt a thick knot of guilt forming in my throat. I’ve admitted all the bad things I felt towards my own father to a man who probably terribly missed his father. I covered my face with my hand and let out a sigh, then I peeled them off me and avoided his eyes. “I’m....sorry, Sung Gyu-Ssi” I told him sympathetically.

“Don’t be sorry, really. I don’t remember him much. He passed when I was still very young” He told me, met my eyes and smiled. He had this sort of smile, a disarming smile which would stop your heart for a moment and you’d hold your breath. And that was exactly what I did. I held my breath, feeling like the world gave away beneath my feet. He reached for his bottle of Soju and poured glass-fulls for the both of us. “My mum and my sister raised me. My sister and I are fifteen years apart. My mum had had her when she was really young, and it had taken her and dad fifteen years to bring up their...company. She had me afterwards, so I could say, unlike my sister, I was born into luxury. Then my dad passed when I was eight years old...”

I nodded, tipped the glass off Soju down my throat and closed my eyes. As I did, I nodded to indicate I was still listening, and a reckless question came to my mind. “How old are you?” When he looked at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling, I quickly added; “If you don’t mind me asking, I mean-you don’t really have to tell me”

He laughed in response, a small chuckle, his shoulders jostling as his lips donned a boyish grin. “I don’t mind” He said and met my eyes. “I’m Twenty-nine, actually. Turning thirty in a couple of months”

I absorbed this information and naturally tried to calculate his sister’s age. I was partially aware of him watching me, too drunk to see his expression. When I met his eyes finally as I was unable to get her age right, he laughed again. “She’s forty-four, if you’re still wondering”

“Oh” I nodded, blood descending to my face and I tugged stray strands of hair behind my ear. He made me feel things, I realised with a pang when something twisted at the sight of his smile. He made me feel things that none of the men I’ve dated had ever made me feel.

“She’s a strong woman, my mum” Sung Gyu continued, after all the laughter had died down. “She educated the two of us despite her shortcomings, handled the loss of my dad really well. She didn’t let the company fall apart. She kept it going...and now we’re going pretty well, pretty big. I hadn’t the time to be engaged in it much until I was done with my studies, so I can safely say, as women, the two of them did it pretty much on their own”

“What’s the company about?” I asked him.

“Construction” He nodded. “We have a couple of branches everywhere, and I work as the chief legal advisor in our branch in Thailand”

Thailand. That explained the nice sunny tan of his skin. I thought about everything he said, a woman who built an empire all on her own. I thought about my mum, who perhaps didn’t have the sheer mental capacity to even think about ordering her own food in a fast food place, let alone build an entire company.

“I think...” He started after a while, interrupting my thoughts. “I think it depends on your surroundings. How people think, how they behave. Perhaps, the way you feel is a result of where you grew up in and the way you were raised; it’s how you were conditioned to think” He paused for a moment to scrutinize me, and I felt undeniably transparent. “I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing. I’m just saying that it’s just how our lives are shaped”

“Maybe” I nodded and gazed down at the empty glass in my hand. “Maybe if I grew up with different parents...” I thought about the prospect of myself being with someone who wasn’t controlling, who was letting me have the freedom I deserved, and then I realised it was probably just wishful thinking. For Sung gyu, obviously, circumstances were different. We were Chaebol’s by family, a generation of Chaebol’s who’d only associated Chaebol’s and their lifestyles were all the same. In our families, women didn’t run the company; they ran the household. They made sure there weren’t a spec of dust on the mantel piece, that they always dressed well even as they sat in their too-large homes on their own. They handled dinner parties and charity balls and donation events; not business meetings and yearly budget presentations.

“No” I let out a sigh. “You see, my father raised me to take up a profession that he believed women traditionally took over. A nurse; that’s something you’d imagine a woman to be. He raised me in this certain way...well, if he had a son, he would have been raised differently. He would have the power that I, as a woman, would never have”

Sung Gyu nodded attentively and tilted his empty glass to a side. “Conditioned thinking...isn’t it? It’s not that one is particularly powerful or powerless...per se. It can be in their own way. I suppose, in a context like this, it’s comes down to what we are conditioned to think. Like- ‘I am a woman, so this is how my life should be’. Perhaps that is why, with marriage, you immediately imagined that you would end up like your mum. And it could have happened too, if you were marrying a man who was conditioned to think that he held the power over a woman, himself”

“Isn’t that how all are conditioned to think?” I asked him. I couldn’t imagine Sung Gyu being controlling; Sung Gyu rubbing the dust off a table and calling his wife an incompetent wench. But then I can’t imagine him anything outside of it as well as that was the only sort of husbands and men that I have met in my life.

“That depends...doesn’t it? It depends in where you’re coming from; like...well, my sister-no offense to you but-,” He raised a palm at me apologetically and I nodded. “She’s pretty strong. She’s now the CEO of dad’s company as mum is too frail to be involved in that stuff. And I can’t imagine her getting bossed around by a man...” He paused thoughtfully and added. “In fact, her husband is pretty supportive. We thought an outsider would screw things over, but he’s doing alright. So, I suppose, like I said, the way he was conditioned to think was different”

I stared at him for a moment, and then pouted in response. “That may be true. But for me, I will mostly definitely end up in the same place as mum, because dad wouldn’t settle for anyone lesser. He would want someone like himself.”

He stared back at me and tilted his head to a side. “So why let him decide?”

“I don’t have a choice”

He watched me carefully, and then smiled in this way that I could swear something twisted in my heart. “Make it that he doesn’t have a choice”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I left it hanging. I just smiled and told him no more.

We went on quietly drinking for a while, him deep in thought, and me looking around. Somewhere close by, I could hear the Christmas mass going on. I left home at around nine in the night, and it had turned eleven thirty already. I thought about what I could do next. My parents were at a party, from where they would go straight to the mass. They were quite religious, they never missed out on the mass. So, I had a bit of time to decide what my next step would be. Then I looked up over at Sung Gyu; whom I realised was gazing at me. Our eyes met, a frightfully enigmatic moment, and my hearts constricted. When he smiled, a small, gleeful one for no apparent reason, I realised, I didn’t want the night to end. I wanted to talk. I wanted this small bubble to last forever before the reality could hit in.

“So” I went as a conversation starter. “What was your situation...if you don’t mind me asking?”

He stared at me a moment too long, is cheek resting on his hand, his hand which I thought was strangely beautiful, and blinked drunkenly at me.

“Same” He replied.

I opened my mouth and closed it again, too baffled to form a coherent response. He continued to watch me, smiling, and it made me feel difficult to even breath, that unyielding gaze of his. He was doing things to me. And on top of that...

He let out a small laugh, and I wondered if he was too drunk. But then he shook his head. “Strange, isn’t it? Two people running away from arranged marriage crossing paths on a Christmas eve?”

“Doesn’t...happen every day” I muttered in response.

“Something from a cliché fairy-tale” he nodded and then he stared again. I melted under his gaze, something was happening to me; and I suddenly wanted to escape. But still I wanted to talk.

“So what is your story?” I asked him.

“It’s a lot different from yours” He shrugged.

“Tell me” I urged him to continue and rested my chin on my folded hands.

“Well, the thing is, my mum and sister decided on my marriage like it was a business deal” He started.

“That’s interesting”

“Not for me” He sighed. “Like I told you, I’m the legal advisor at the Thai branch of our company; but the plan is for me to take over as the Managing Director after my uncle resign. And that means I would be pretty much residing in Thailand, taking over the complete responsibility. We’re growing there; we have several major projects happening and so I need to be around the whole time if I were to take it over”

“Oh...” I gulped, and my eyes involuntarily fell over his strong, tanned arms.

“So that means I won’t be returning for a while” He went on “My mum thinks I should get marriage out of the way before I take up he place as I wouldn’t have the time to focus on anything else afterwards. Besides I can’t be the Managing director and not married...” He swallowed hard and looked down at his hands. “If...something ever happened to me...like my dad...there has to be someone to take over...”

I remained quiet, something bursting open inside me, and when he looked up to meet my eyes, I felt my heart constrict and I held my breath. “So yeah...that’s how arranged marriage came about”

“Oh...” I nodded and grasped onto the cold of my glass. The bells of the church nearby were chiming outside. It was almost Christmas. “So...how did tonight come about?”

He looked at me in this sort of way that I felt the ground give away beneath my feet. He had that kind of effect; it was something about his eyes, his smile, which seemed to hold so many stories, so many things he wouldn’t possibly put into words, and constantly kept me drawn to him.

“Call me unconventional, but I believe in love” He replied. I couldn’t say anything, and something inside me just snapped. A man who believed in love. It seemed like I was coming across the kind of things that I would never in normal circumstances. I suppose what they say is true; Christmas is a magical time.

“You see, I don’t want to be married to someone before I had fallen love with them.” Sung Gyu continued matter-of-factly. “I believe in order, I believe in the right way to do things. Marriage is not something that I or anyone can up and decide, is it? It’s not something that affects only me. It affects the...other party as well. As much as I want to be comfortable in the place that I am in, I want her to be so to. I want us to be compatible, supportive, understanding. I want us to be happy. I want us to be in love” He paused for a moment and let out a heavy sigh. “That’s hardly something that arranged marriage had to offer”

“So you decided to run away” I said, almost breathlessly.

“I decided to run away” He smiled.

“So, what was your plan?”

He tilted his head thoughtfully. “I was planning on going to Jeonju. It’s where I am from. I was born and raised in Seoul, mind you. But my family is from there. We have this lakeside house where we stay when we go there. So I was planning to stay there until Christmas was over so I could head back to Thailand when its time”

“Would you have avoided arranged marriage that way?” I asked him.

He sighed. “No. I guess not. But at least I would have avoided the dinner date with my possible future wife tomorrow...the wife I had never known in my life”

I felt a thick knot forming in my throat, an unfamiliar emotion; and I found myself staring at him. They say when the same thing happened quite so many times, it was no longer a coincidence. I was not sure if the same notion applied in this context; or whether even what was happening even remotely the same. But there was something enchanting about it, this entire ordeal, from the moment this night started with the two of us meeting in a chance encounter to every time when our situations clashed. People say that sometimes our lives are mapped out before us, and that everything that happened did happen, simply because they were supposed to. Fate. I knew that it was a superficial manner of interpreting things. Perhaps it was merely a series of coincidences. But tonight, on this strange, cold Christmas eve; everything just felt magically real.

“Same” I followed his strange manner of revealing things, and that rendered him speechless. He widened his eyes. “No way” He said.

“I have a Christmas dinner with my prospective husband as well” I admitted. “Not a dinner, per se. A party of a sort...”

“Oh...” Sung Gyu nodded his head, and he fell quiet at that. The way he appeared almost crestfallen made my heart do funny things to me. “This is silly, but I almost thought...” He said.

“S-so we both haven’t...” I muttered and trailed away, the knot in my throat made it almost too difficult to breathe.

“...haven’t seen them” He finished it for me.

I swallowed. “...Yeah”

“...Yeah” He nodded, and we both fell quiet, unable to take on the conversation from there. We didn’t want to make speculations, admit the things that we already assumed. It would be painful to learn in the end that all we’ve believed wasn’t true. The quiet moment saved us a heartbreak. A mere coincidence from a magical night. There was only so much that could be true.

We have already finished the meals, the two Soju bottles lied empty of the table beside us. Sung Gyu was quiet, mindlessly tampering with the glass in his hands as I listened to the church chimes. It was almost Christmas, almost. In another couple of minutes, my parents would return home and probably find me missing. They’d go berserk. They’d start ringing me frantically, and I already had no choice but return to the life that I’d always had.

A magical night would come to an end just like that and this strangely enigmatic man that I met would be nothing but a fragment of a beautiful memory in my mind. At that thought, the stiff knot forming in my throat grew stronger. I wished there was a way. I wished I could just disappear from my world completely, absorb myself in this moment, this tiny bubble of a universe a complete stranger had created for me.

A while later, a loud commotion erupted from the other end of the tent, cutting into the quietness between us, and Sung Gyu quickly reacted by climbing up on his feet. I turned to the direction of the commotion, only to see that the fellow patrons of the roadside eatery were all gathered around in a circle, blocking our sight to something appeared to be some sort of an argument, only except that there was a woman screaming, and someone was coughing so hard, almost as if-,

“Hold on” Said Sung Gyu, pressed a hand on my arm, indicating me to stay put and approached the circle in a careful stride. The circle parted, making way for him, and I could vaguely see a few people moving about. Sung Gyu then soon hurried away from them and came to me, almost in a run.

“Eunji-Ssi” He called me, graveness engraved in his eyes. “You’re a trained nurse, right? Come on”

And before even I could utter a word in response, he reached out to take my hand and then dragged me towards the commotion.

As it happened, there was a young mand, extremely drunk and choking. He was choking so badly that his airways were seemingly blocked; he was beginning to turn blue and what this older woman was attempting to do clear his airways was making the situation even worse. She was attempting to shove her hand down his throat.

“Wait!” I exclaimed, unable to watch as his chances of survival declined to a minimal. People took chocking so lightly that they never realised how fatal it could be. Although not a very common cause of death among young adults, the prospects were still high. The young man was beginning to lose his consciousness. His chances were getting slim. Without wasting another second, I jumped into action.

Following the emergency procedure that I’ve been trained with, I put my arms around the young man’s waist and pressed my fist against his abdomen, grasping onto it with my other hand and tried to perform the Heimlich Manoeuvre. The man was still conscious, fortunately, but he was soon losing his ability to breath. Tried as I might, I was still physically too small to perform the on him, I was quickly losing my grip. It ed into his abdomen, blew hard on his back, but I simply wasn’t strong enough. I was slowly losing my grip; and if I did, we would lose the chances of saving him.

“Sung Gyu-Ssi” I gasped at the other as I lost my grip on the man. He quickly approached me, and I didn’t have to put it into words as he soon understood my predicament. He took over my place behind the chocking man and I explained to him the procedure. Five s, five blows, five s again. And Sung Gyu didn’t give up on trying.

“Call an ambulance” I told the woman as Sung Gyu continued the procedure, then all of a sudden, a throaty sound erupted from the man, along with a series of painful coughs. I quickly approached him and carefully reached into his opened mouth.

“Alright?” Sung Gyu grunted, his strong arms still grasping the man. I was quiet as I slowly swept my two fingers in his mouth. Nothing.

“ again. Its almost there” I told Sung Gyu, and he followed. The man started to cough and started to gag. “Blow on his back” I instructed again, and at the second blow, the man gagged even harder. I swept in his mouth, and my fingers were soon met with what he’d chocked on, assumingly half chewed food. I retrieved it from his mouth, and he heaved, releasing it all onto the grass underneath.

It took a moment before the man returned to himself, during which we all watched him; expectant and horrified. The adrenaline rush that I previously had in me was slowly dissipating, replacing it with something that I couldn’t quite put my hands on. I just stood there, trembling and weak after all I did, watching him as Sung Gyu slowly lowered the man onto the ground. The small crowd who had gathered was watching the three of us expectantly, the heroes and the victim, the rescue coming to an end.

Soon after he was laid down, he slowly regained his consciousness. I was afraid that he might even require CPR, which he thankfully didn’t. His breathing was beginning to return to normal, and colour returned to his face. I kneeled down and checked on his vitals. His breathing was fine, heart beat a little higher than normal. Intoxicated, but otherwise okay. I watched him for a moment as life seeped back into him, and from behind me, the buzz of voices seeped into my ears. Sung Gyu was right before he, watching me in this bewildered wonderment, but disbelieving in a way. It took me a while before the realisation hit me.

We just saved someone’s life.

It’s been only a couple of months since I received my license and there was only so much that I could do as a nurse. I wasn’t in the emergency unit, there weren’t many lives that I was saving. Except for checking vitals, changing IV tubes and delivering the daily medicine dosages, I haven’t done anything much in my nursing life, it was almost becoming dull. And most importantly, never had I saved anyone’s life.

And this thought simply overwhelmed me.

Even as the ambulance arrived and took the man away, I was quite bewildered. My thoughts were all over the place, unfocused. The adrenaline drive was gone; and instead, I was absolutely horrified. The Heimlich Manoeuvre wasn’t that complicated of a procedure, but even that could have gone terribly wrong. I was trained, but that didn’t mean I was good enough to perform them in an emergency situation. That was brave of me to take up charge in that situation; but what if we went wrong? What if we, instead of saving a life, ended up.... oh god.

I clutched the nearby chair and fell into it. Tonight, was too much already. My head was spinning.

In front of me, Sung Gyu was taking care of the entire ambulance process. He explained everything that happened, and I heard him explain to the others a couple of times; “My friend is a Trained Nurse” I caught a tinge of pride in his voice, although I still doubt that it was it. Was it fair for him to give so much of credit to me? I wasn’t strong enough to perform the manoeuvre. I could have ended up killing him. Thank god Sung Gyu took over, otherwise I couldn’t imagine what it all could have been.

Then for a moment, I thought about what my mother told me as my eyes followed Sung Gyu’s lean, dark figure. He was quite so handsome, even more than I previously noted. And what made him so...attractive was the way he carried himself. He walked leaving all his weight to the ground, a walk of absolute confidence, and he spoke with such wit and eloquence, I could listen to him talk every day. And he wasn’t like all the men that I have met in my social circle. He didn’t take control. He was just in the same level as me. He didn’t wait for me to pour him the first glass. He would pour it for me. He had this way of looking at me that made my heart stop in its constricted cage, and he looked into my eyes when he spoke, when he listened, and whenever he pleased. All I could see in his own was honesty, concern and sometimes something more that I could hardly put into words.

‘I want us to be in love’ his voice echoed in my head. And a strange thought occurred in my mind. What if, what if this was my story? What if this was me writing it? And then what if.... what if this complete stranger who stayed beside me in an unlikely moment was here to sweep me off my feet?

The thought made me feel even more overwhelmed. My thoughts were all muddled up, the vague memories if the rescue returned to me, and I clutched onto the back of the chair even harder.

“You okay?” Came a voice, a familiar voice floating into my thoughts, and there was Sung Gyu standing before me, his shirt crumpled, and hair messed up, but still undeniably beautiful. His concerned eyes fell into mine, and something just snapped inside me.

“Eunji-Ssi...hey” He muttered, taking a step towards me. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, I wasn’t sure what made him appear so concerned. It took me a second to realise that I had tears pouring down my eyes. I sobbed, once, twice, and covered my face with my hands.

“Hey...ssh, don’t cry...you just saved his life” He muttered to me, and at the mention of saving a life, I cried even harder. Why did I deserve all that credit? It was just sheer luck. I could have killed him too.

“Come on, don’t cry. You did really great” he murmured, peeling my hands off my face. I put them down and raised my head to see the close proximity of our faces. I saw him closer than we ever were, the shine of the florescent light above fell into his eyes and made them appear very, very brown. They were the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.

“I...I have never done that before” I croaked out wearily. “And I... I thought...”

“But you did it...you saved him” He said, smiling up at me. He was crouched down on the grass before me, his smile so brilliant, him so close to me. I was overwhelmed. “There is always that first time...”

“B-but...” I started and let out a sob. “I could have...” Another cry broke out from me, and I covered my face. But then, before even I could realise what was happening, “Come here” came Sung Gyu’s voice to me, almost too close, and soon he had me enfolded in his warm embrace. I closed my eyes, my heart just about bursting inside me. He smelled sweet and citrusy, a little boozy and expensive. His shirt crumpled under my hand, the soft material of the cardigan he wore over it graced my cheek where it rested on his shoulder. His hand patted me gently on my back, and I could hear his voice reverberating. “There, there...you’d be fine...”

For a moment, my world stood still. All I was aware was him; Sung Gyu. His arms around me, his sweet musky scent in my lungs, his voice in my ears, just him all over me. I thought about the words he said, the events that led us to this point. I thought about our stories which undeniably collided together. I thought about my story, which never seemed to write itself.

And then I thought...perhaps, Kim Sung Gyu was my story. This was our story. He was here to sweep me off my feet, carry me into a universe which was all and all mine.

❄