“Sir, you have a parcel.”

Sehun looked up from his computer and saw his secretary standing on the doorway holding a nicely wrapped gift box. Sighing, he gestured her to come in, not bothering to get up from his seat to check out the package. A good 1 month of those packages and he was tired.

“Just leave it on the coffee table and get back to your work, Ms Bae. Haven’t I told you to not bother yourself with such petty stuffs?”

“Sir, I have told them to stop delivering these things, but they are also helpless. Ms Kang is adamant…”

“Okay, I get it. You can get back to your work, Ms Bae. Thank you very much.”

“You are welcome, sir. Have a nice day.” And then she was out of the room, leaving Sehun to deal with the package on the table, something that had become a regular problem.

The moment Sehun heard the door closing, he leaned back on his chair tiredly and rubbed the bridge of his nose. In just a few days of time, fatigue had consumed him in a way one could not even imagine. His life was tearing him apart, using his emotional conflict as the weapon.

With his hand still clutching his forehead, his slightly open eyes fell on the coffee table on his left and focused on the package lying carelessly on it. Sehun didn’t need to know its content, knowing its sender was enough to put him through hell. He didn’t even need to ask the delivery boy to know the name of the sender, the way it was wrapped was something Sehun had seen for all his life, be it on his birthdays or any other occasions.

It was a month ago when he had got the first package from Jieun and since then it had become an everyday thing. All of them contained something that had a direct connection with their shared past, making Sehun question Jieun’s intention and his own emotions with every package. On top of that, the small notes he would get with those stuffs would always serve as arrows that pierced right through his façade of nonchalance.

Sehun was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t even realize when his legs dragged him towards the table. His eyes raked through the red ribbon tied in a cross and stopped on the little stuffed toy attached at the centre, on top of the box. It was a koala that day.

Eventually Sehun ended up picking up the box in one hand, while the other one started roaming around the wrapper, stopping when he couldn’t contain his curiosity anymore. Removing the stuffed toy gently, he placed it back on the table. Then his fingers got busy in untying the red ribbon, dropping it on the floor when it was undone completely.

When Sehun realized that he was just one step away from opening the box of Pandora, he took a deep breath and braced himself before opening the box, the thought of not opening it or throwing it away didn’t seem to occur in his mind at that time.

Sehun felt at a loss of words when his eyes fell on the Polaroid photo laying inside the box, tied to a small white envelope with another red ribbon. Feeling his hands shake at the sight of the photo, he decided to just go for the envelope, the memories the photo was bringing were simply unbearable.

Untying the knot of the ribbon, he left it lying beside the photo and took the envelope in his hand before getting a small piece of paper out of it, Jieun’s note. That day, the note was unusually long, long enough to be called a letter instead of a note.

Sehun, do you remember how you used to put sticky notes on your forehead
with the most unusual requests, knowing that there would be high chances of me
declining? From asking me to bunk classes to asking me to be your prom date,
we have a long history with these sticky notes.

Remember the time you had asked me what the most memorable moment of my life was
and I refused to tell you? Then you had asked me for clues like what reminds of that memory and
I still didn’t tell you. Here you have your answer, sticky notes. Because they remind me
of the day you had asked me to be your girlfriend, 'partners for life' as you
had quoted that day.

Now, after 9 years, I am using your methods of asking something and requesting
you to meet me for the sake of the old days. Because we both know that our life-long
relationship is not something that can be ended in a matter of days (okay fine, two years).

P.S. If you decide to meet me, then come to the penthouse. I can’t afford to go to public places,
you know. Otherwise, my peaceful life here won’t remain peaceful anymore.

P.P.S. I look really cute with that sticky note on my forehead, don’t I?

Sehun sighed shakily before putting the letter back to the box and picked up the photo again, this time to give it a proper look. It was Jieun, doing a peace sign at the camera with a bright smile on her face, the eye-catching sticky note on her forehead said, “Sehun, let’s meet” with a smiley.

His eyes scanned through the picture, his pupils shaking because of the overwhelming nostalgia he was feeling at that time. The next moment, Sehun found himself stuffing the picture inside the box and abruptly closing it because of not being able to handle his feelings anymore. He went towards his desk and pulled the lowest drawer open before shoving the box inside it, it’s companion being a pink rilakkuma plush, a pair of hand-knitted gloves, a heart-shaped keyring and many other stuffs that he got over the month from Jieun, memoirs from their time together. 

Sehun gave them one last glance before closing the drawer and fetching his phone, feeling a dire need of a distraction from the only person who could provide him with that at that moment. Everything was suffocating him, making him gasp for every little breath. Hastily, he dialled a number and the person on the other side didn’t disappoint him, picking up only after the 3^rd ring.

“Hey, Hun! Did you miss…”

“Hee”, Sehun let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding until then. The cheerful voice of his wife on the other side was already doing its job of healing him. “I missed you.” He whispered, hoping that Yun Hee wouldn’t hear him, but she did.

“Sehun, you okay?”, he heard her voice that was laced with worry, but that only made him smile. His pillar was there for him, to hold him still and straight.

“Hun, you are worrying me. Are you…”

“I am fine, Hee”, he let out a small laugh when he heard his wife getting hyper.

“But you…”

“Take a deep breath, Hee. And stop fretting over me”, he said after interrupting her. “I am just a bit tired. Work is taking a toll on me, that’s it.”

As if she didn’t hear him asking her to calm down, she went on with worrying over him. “You know what? I have asked you countless times to not overwork yourself, but you just don’t listen. If this keeps going on, then I am going to talk to dad to…”

“That’s not necessary, Hee. The pressure will lessen with time, don’t worry.” He cut her off before she could continue her blabbering. “Besides, you don’t get to complain about me overworking myself”, Sehun said in an accusing tone. “You are worse than me.”

He heard a nervous chuckle from the other side before she said, “How is that?”

“You stress yourself to the point of fainting, Hee. You go on without taking even a single bite of food for a whole day, if I don’t remind you to eat your meals.”

“I don’t do that.”

“You clearly do. And since you are at the end of your internship, I am afraid that the day is not far when I will get a call from the hospital and hear that you had fainted out of nowhere.” Sehun let out a sigh. “I don’t want that, Hee.”

“I know what you are trying to do. You are trying to change the topic and make me the centre of an embarrassing conversation.” He heard her huffing out in frustration after saying that, probably because of being nagged.

“Did it work?”, he asked in goofy tone, clearly enjoying her annoyed voice.

“No. Because I am not done.” If they had been talking in person, then she would have had her arms crossed over her chest already. Sehun couldn’t help laughing at the imagination.

“Stop laughing. Did you call just to make fun of me?” The question made him stop laughing and remember the reason why he had actually called her, making him realize that Yun Hee had managed to get Jieun out of his mind for a while.

“No”, his voice became serious, but softer than before, unknown emotions clouding his mind again, emotions that only Yun Hee could bring out. “I called you to just hear your voice.”

“Why?” She was also whispering, probably noticing the change in the mood.

“It always calms me down.” No other words were exchanged between them after that. They both chose to silently bask in the warmth of the emotions they were feeling at that time. 

After talking to a perfectly fine Yun Hee and then meeting her for lunch, Sehun didn’t expect to see an unusually worn-out wife when he went to pick her up after a long day of work. Unusual because he had never seen Yun Hee going straight to bed and falling asleep after coming home from work. In fact, he had never seen her doing anything else before taking a shower during weekday nights, let alone taking a two hours long nap.

So, despite of seeing her sleeping with a peaceful expression on her face, Sehun felt anxiety seeping through him at the thought of his wife being weak. Needless to say that after waking up, Yun Hee ended up being smothered by the overbearing care of her husband who, at some point, even started insisting on feeding her, afraid that the small action of eating might exhaust her. Even the poor Gummy was looking lost at the antics of his supposed parents.

 After an eventful dinner, which pretty much consisted of Sehun babying his wife and Yun Hee refusing to be babied, they ended up relaxing on their bed. Sehun was sitting in a half-lying position with the bedpost as his support, while Yun Hee was lying with her head on his thighs. She had this very thick book in her hand, probably a textbook while Sehun was busy carding his fingers through her hair, smiling slightly whenever she felt the need to pay him some of her attention and looked up.

It was all quiet and nice until Sehun felt his eyes wandering over the features of his wife and his fingers trailing over unconsciously. Starting from her forehead, his index finger glided through the side of her face and landed on her button nose, making her crinkle it in annoyance. Smiling softly, he guided his finger through her soft cheeks and stopped when it met the curve of her plump lips, lingering it there.

Sehun chuckled when he saw Yun Hee shaking her head and looking up from her book to glare at him before going back to reading again. It seemed as if his wife was more interested in her book and so, he decided to just let her be, moving his finger towards her jaw to continue his exploration. It was only when his finger travelled towards her ear, her patience wore thin and she complained against the ticklish feeling.

“I guess you didn’t notice mister, but I am trying to study here”, Yun Hee said after he placed the kiss on her forehead and straightened up. “You can’t just tickle me or kiss me on my forehead out of nowhere”, she said as she rubbed the spot where he had kissed her.

“It’s late. You should go to sleep.”

“I will when I feel sleepy. After a two hours long nap, I don’t see sleep coming to me anytime soon”, Yun Hee said before picking up the heavy book again.

Everything became silent again as they went back to doing what they were at the start – Yun Hee focused on her book while Sehun brushed her hair repeatedly. But the silence wasn’t working the same way for both of them. While for Yun Hee, it was something that was helping her clear her head, for Sehun it was slowly becoming something that was clouding his mind with all kinds of thoughts, thoughts that he had been trying to suppress for a few days already. His mind was back to playing with the questions that had been eating him alive, making his days more and more unbearable as time went on.

He didn’t know he had spoken his thought aloud until he saw Yun Hee muttering a “What?” before sitting up on the bed to face him.

“Why do people fall out of love, Hee?”

He saw her looking at him with amusement in her eyes before she said, “Why this sudden question?”

“I don’t know. I just felt curious.”

He saw Yun Hee putting her book away from the bed before sitting right beside with her back against the bedpost just like him. “Are you asking me seriously or jokingly?”

“You decide.”

He saw her imploring his eyes to seek for his expression before sighing. “I don’t know, Hun. There is no definite reason, you know.”

“Is it even possible to look at the person you claim to have loved once and feel nothing for him or her?”

Yun Hee laid her head on his shoulder and Sehun wrapped his arm around her body instinctively. “People change, Hun; and so do their feelings. Some change with time, while some change with distance.”

“If we love someone, then aren’t we supposed to be in love with that person forever?”

He looked down at his wife for an answer and saw her eyes staring at the wall in front of them. “Not necessarily, not if the love isn't pliant enough to withstand all the changes.” Then she turned her face and looked at him with interest. “You are full of questions today, aren’t you?”

Sehun smiled slightly before placing a quick kiss on her forehead. “I was just thinking.”

“Well, then I hope you know that I am no expert. You happen to be my first love, for your kind information.”

“I am honoured”, Sehun said before kissing her on her nose and making her laugh in the ticklish feeling. Then he tightened his hold around her, burying her face in his chest so he could hide his conflicts from her.

“What is worrying you, Hun?” Who was he kidding? It was Yun Hee, after all. She guessed everything.

He sensed her trying to look at his face and so he hugged her even tighter, making her unable to look upwards. “Nothing in particular.”

“Sehun, please.” He felt her mumbling against his chest and knew that he couldn’t keep up anymore. So he took a deep breath before speaking his mind.

“I sometimes feel as if I don’t deserve you, Hee.” She was about to say something but he beat her to it. “No, let me speak.”

He held her chin and tilted her face upwards before brushing away her bangs from her forehead. Then he took her hand and brought it to his lips before placing a kiss on her knuckle.

“You are an amazing woman, Hee. You are honest, brave, loving, caring, compassionate, observant and so much more. When you love something, you give your all to it. I feel so lucky to be one of them, trust me. Since the day we got married, you have been doing so much for me.”

“It wasn’t always for you”, Yun Hee said, making Sehun chuckle.

“I know that”, he said, smiling at the poor attempt of her wife to lighten up the mood before gazing at her eyes with passion. “You love me a lot Hee, so much that it makes feel like crying in bliss. Your love, it’s unconditional. You give me everything without asking for anything in return. And you do that just because I have given you a promise that would have started seeming like an empty word to anyone else by now.”

“Sehun, it’s not like that. I…”

“I feel like I don’t deserve you, Yun Hee.” He cut off her words. “I am not strong like you. My past, it weakens me, but I can’t put all the blame on it. I cannot blame anything but myself for treating you so bad in the past, for trying to use you to move on from my pain, for ignoring you when you needed my assurance the most. I am selfish, immature and indecisive.”

Sehun paused for a while before burying his face in her hair, inhaling the citrus smell of her shampoo. “I am afraid that someday you will realize all these and that day, even your love for me won’t be enough to stop you from leaving me.” He let out a shaky breath. “I am afraid that my lacking will break us one day. I am afraid of making mistakes that could take you away from me. And I am afraid that I will end up making those mistakes.”

He felt Yun Hee’s hands wrapping around his waist, pulling him closer before moving her right palm down in a comforting way.

“Sehun, I love you.” He closed his eyes hearing that. “I don’t just love a single nature of yours or a single behaviour of yours, I love all of you. Yes, I might not know what flavour of ice-cream you used to eat in your school days or when did you learn to tie your shoelace, but I know the person those little things have made you and I love that person. I love the person who had once fallen in love with someone else with all his heart. I love the person who got broken into pieces by that person, but still pushed his personal conflicts aside just for the sake of his mom.”

Then Yun Hee retracted from the hug and held his face in her hands, cupping the apple of his cheeks. “I also love the person who got back on his feet after accepting his reality and gave me a chance. I love the person who, despite of feeling torn because of the news of his ex’s engagement, managed to notice my feelings and felt a need to return them. I love you Sehun and I am here to stay, for as long as you need me.”

Yun Hee dropped her hands from his face and held his hands in them tightly. “Now, tell me. Can a person as intelligent as me fall for a weak person?”, she said while wiggling her eyebrows.

Sehun laughed at his wife who was busy in self-praising before delving for a deep kiss, stopping occasionally to laugh with his wife like two maniacs in between those kisses.

They were being themselves. They were happy. They were home, safe from every pain out there.

Sehun was tapping his feet impatiently, waiting for the person he had come to meet while leaning against his car. He looked around the garage of his previous home and felt the familiarity of that place punch his guts.

Taking out his phone to check the time, he saw that he had been waiting for 5 minutes, minutes that felt like an eternity. The feeling of nostalgia was hitting him again, making him see vivid images of a man and a woman laughing while getting inside a car, images of them kissing without any care of the world and images of the man crying his hearts out while resting his head against the steering wheel.

Sehun had even started hearing the sounds of those images in his head before he was abruptly interrupted by an incoming call on his phone. He picked up call hastily as he saw Jieun slowly making her way towards him.

“Hun, guess where I am.”

He looked in front of him and saw Jieun standing only a foot away from him, looking at him with an amused smile with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Hee, can I talk to you later? I am slightly occupied with dad right now.” He saw Jieun smirking at him, making him grimace.

“With dad?”, he heard the Yun Hee whispering, but all he could see the deepening smirk of Jieun, making him hurry the conversation.

“Hmm. I am hanging up now, okay? Bye, Hee.” And the call ended. He felt guilty for lying to his wife, but he had no other choice. After all, he had come here to make sure that this would be his last time lying to her.

Sehun put the phone in his pocket and saw Jieun who was about take a step forward, so he stopped her before she could do so, not wanting to close the distance between them.

“I knew that the last parcel would be effective, but I certainly didn’t expect it to bring you right here, in my humble abode. You could have come upstairs, you know”, Jieun said, that sugary smile attached on her face, taunting Sehun’s whole being.

“I don’t plan to step inside that place. Besides, I have just come here to return your belongings, nothing else.” Saying that Sehun opened the door to the passenger seat and took out a box that contained all the things Jieun had sent to him over the month. Then he took a step closer to her and handed her the box before stuffing his free hands inside the pockets of his pant, trying to maintain his composure.

“You could have just thrown them away if you didn’t want them.”

“I didn’t have time for that”, he said while shrugging his shoulders. He thought he was doing okay with his cool act, but when he saw Jieun smirking, he knew that she could see through his façade.

“More like you couldn’t do so. You couldn’t throw me away from, Oh Sehun.”

“You think I can’t?”, Sehun said while plastering a similar smirk on his face. “Well, too bad. Because today I have come here to do that.”

He saw the smile on Jieun’s face falter and knew that it was time for him to be honest. “Look Jieun, I know that we go way back, what we had is not something that can vanish overnight. But it’s broken, Jieun. What we had is broken and we should not drag its broken shards with us. Or else, we will end up scaring ourselves for life. So we should stop right here, right now. Let's not have anything to do each other anymore.”

Saying this, Sehun was about to turn but stopped when he heard a scream coming from his back.

“You can't end things just like that”, Jieun said as she grasped Sehun’s arm in her own.

Sehun couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was neither the cheerful Jieun from his past nor the uptight smirking Jieun he had been seeing for the last few days. It was a desperate woman, desperate for something that was not possible.

“But I have to", he said before loosening her hold around his arm and gripped her shoulders. "Otherwise we will end up hurting the persons who love us dearly. You have a fiance, Jieun while I have a wife. I can’t hurt Yun Hee and I am sure you also don’t want to hurt, what was his name; Lee Jong Woon. It’s better if we don’t meddle into each other’s life for a while.”

Sehun let go of her shoulders and went towards the driving seat. He was about to get inside when he heard Jieun speaking up, her voice full of confidence.

“Quite a loyal husband you are, huh? Do you think you can be done just like that, Oh Sehun? You think running away is that easy?”

“What do you mean?”

“You think I don’t know about the questions that run around your head? Why did I come back? Why did I buy the penthouse? Why am I trying to remind you of our past? Where is Jong Woon? And most importantly, why do you feel so restless around me?”, she said as placed her hands on the roof of the car and rested her head on them. “These unanswered questions, they are going to haunt you to your destruction.”

Sehun got inside his car, giving Jieun one last glance and drove away from that place, thinking that he had managed to end everything. What he didn’t know was that Jieun was actually right and he was going to have to pay for not realizing that on time.

Hey, this is Anikasen.

9 days of writing and then posting only one chapter, I must have disappointed you all. I don't know what had happened to me, but I just couldn't write anything that would satisfy me. I kept writing and deleting, so much that I am sure my MS-Word will be malfunctioning the next. 

Anyways, I just hope you enjoy this new chapter (though it might not seem much, but it had some important psychological elements).

I don't know if I should ask you to stay home since many countries are lifting the restrictions, but still, stay safe and stay healthy.