Jong Kook places Ji Hyo on his bed. He pushes her against the headboard. Their hands are roaming in places that haven’t been explored in a while. He moans softly in her hair and as if coming to her senses, Ji Hyo jerks away from him.

She wraps her body around with the blanket. “Must be nice having two women at your service, right?”

Jong Kook looks at her incredulously, feeling as though she has slapped him. He runs a hand across his face, the haze in his mind is deepening. He can’t get himself to think straight.

“What the hell are you talking about?” He gets up from the bed. The lights from the building around dances off of his bare chest.

“Just forget it,” She turns around but he quickly catches her wrist and pushes her against the wall.

“I can’t do that,” He whispers angrily.

Ji Hyo just stares into his eyes blazingly.

When she doesn’t answer him, he adds the next part, “No, I haven’t slept with Eun Hye, if that’s what you’re referring to.”

Ji Hyo tries to let herself go but Jong Kook is too strong. “You know, Kim Jong Kook-ssi, I know your weaknesses. You want me now because I’m letting you go.”

“Do I?” Jong Kook answers with his deep voice. “But I’m curious. Why all of a sudden you’re ready to take Jin Joo’s custody?”

Ji Hyo smirks, giving Jong Kook chills to the core. There is a dead light in her eyes, a lack of life. “You don’t love me anymore, do you?”

“No,” He replies firmly. Even though in his mind he thinks, have I really stopped loving her?

“You won’t forgive me, will you?”

He averts his gaze, “You should go.”

She spares him one last look before walking away with the little dignity she has left.

Jong Kook throws his body onto the bed and groans, “You’re a babo, Kim Jong Kook! Babo!”

-

Early in the morning, before Ji Hyo and Jin Joo wake up, Jong Kook rushes out of the door and goes to his office. He can’t close his eyes last night since his mind keeps going here and there, thinking about this and that. When he sees that the sun starts rising up, he goes to the bathroom and takes a shower quickly.

Now, he’s out of the door. Only then he can kind of breathe. He feels choked up before.

Driving through the empty streets, his mind reminds him again of what happened last night. “Stop it, brain.”

How crazy he can be. He scolds his own brain.

Arriving in his office not until 10 minutes later. Even the security is surprised by how early this executive director arrives. To make him forget about last night, he starts getting busy with his works that were delayed yesterday.

He keeps typing here and there, reading this and that paper, until he looks at the calendar.

20190220

Jong Kook twists the ring around his finger.

“Song Ji Hyo,” He breathes out as his mind takes him down the memory lane. “This day was the day Eun Hye took your place.”

Jong Kook paced in front of the emergency room really late in the evening. His mother was in a critical state. She had a cardiac arrest in her sleep earlier when Jong Kook was still working. Jong Kook didn’t know what to do. Other than Ji Hyo and Jin Joo, his mother was the only family he had left. He had lost his father and he never heard from his Hyung again ever since 10 years ago.

Trembling, Jong Kook reached for his phone and dialed on Ji Hyo’s number. He waited and waited for her to pick up but she never did. After his sixteenth try and fifteen messages he sent, Jong Kook gave up.

The paramedics who had brought his mother to the hospital walked over to him, before he said, “I’ve tried to call your relatives but they didn’t pick up, so I tried calling your office and someone said they’re coming over.”

Jong Kook nodded, even though deep in his heart, he hated a stranger to see him in a blubbering mess. However, he would be thankful to whoever that was kind enough to come and support him.

And she was the one who came.

He knew her name was Yoon Eun Hye. He recognized her from being the team leader that she was a part of. They had worked on a couple of projects even though he never really got a chance to know her. 

Eun Hye came and greeted him, then she sat down by his side. She didn’t say anything, she just placed a hand on his shoulder and patted it every now and then. Support was what Jong Kook needed at that time.

Two hours later the doctors got out of the operating room and announced that his mother couldn’t make it. In that time, Eun Hye was the one who offered her shoulder for him to cry on. She kept holding him in her arms while he kept crying. She was the one who stayed by his side at his mother’s funeral. She was the one who picked up Jong Kook’s broken pieces as he fell apart.

-

“I was the one who wasn’t there for him, Joong Ki-yah,” Ji Hyo chats with her younger brother, Son