"Mindeulle," He whispered in the quiet of the house.  Not a sound was heard in the house; not a one.  "Marry me."

He watched her reaction as the words passed his lips.  He hadn't meant to say it.  He had dreamed of it many times, certainly, but never once thought about the consequences if he actually said it.  And now he had.  All he had to do now was wait.

Blood pulsed through his veins as he watched her eyes widen, felt in his grasp the trembling of her hands.  Her breath began to pick up, her inhalations shallow.  Her eyes looked anywhere but his.

"Mindeulle," Minwoo hissed, as if cursing himself for what he was about to say. "I love you.  I always have.  You're safe with me.  I won't hurt you.  And I never will.  I'll promise that if you marry me, I'll always protect you."

Her shaking increased in waves of tremors.  Her eyes leapt from the smooth granite of the center island's countertop to the richly-painted kitchen wall, to the hallways whose corridors she slept within.  Her eyes grappled for anything stable, anything solid.  Her mind spun, she felt weak.

She wasn't ready.  Minwoo knew that.  He had known that.  Why did he have to say the words he pictured saying so many times?  Why did he let it slip out?

"Mindeulle, look at me." He spoke, but she wouldn't look at him.  "Let's go into the sitting room and talk about this."

He attempted to guide her towards the other room, but she pulled away from him and headed for the front door.  She had such force that he had to release his grip on her wrists as she crossed the kitchen floor.  He gave chase, but she pushed passed him and ran into the next room, quickly crossed the threshold and grasped the metal handle of the door. 

Mindeulle looked back just once, and Minwoo saw, very clearly, the tears in her light eyes.  And then she was gone.

She was gone.  Her mother wasn't there.  Mindeulle realized that as she touched the cool lock on the chipped-paint door of her childhood home.  Her mother had left her.  Not forgotten her.  She had intentionally gone and left her alone.

Mindeulle felt alone.  So very alone.  Never once had she known her father, only saw him in a very few number of pictures her mother had shown her only a few times.  Her mother had told her that he had died when she was very small, too small to remember his face.

But Mindeulle remembered.  She remembered his warm embrace as he held her as a baby, remembered his smell--cigar smoke and the smell of earth.  she remembered the tone of his voice--deep like a baritone, even and warm.

She recalled the smile her mother wore each time she requested to see the photo albums.  She remembered the single tear that always escaped her mother's right eye, the one she would quickly wipe away and pretend never fell at all.

Mindeulle sat on the edge of the porch outside that house, watching as the rest of the people of her small town carried on with their lives, watched as the present continued without her.  Without her mother.  Without her father.

Sorry I haven't had a chapter out in a long time, guys.  There's not many of you that read this story (at least, I don't think there are), but it's personally one of my favorites.  I don't exactly know why; it just is.  And it's been breaking my heart that I haven't updated in such a long time.  My anxiety has been really bad, and I needed to get it under control before I could go bad to putting all my efforts into this and the rest of my stories.  I hope you all can excuse the long wait.  This is also a story that I lost the chapters to when the server crashed (the second time it did so) because I was working on it before the site went out.  I lost all the chapters, but got them back with the help of dbskgirl4ever and a trick she found that brings back everything.  At that time, this story was not hard-copied, and I was fearing the worst.  However, it's back and now hard-copied, and I'm FINALLY back to writing.  Once again, hope you all can forgive my lack of updates for these past few months.