Warning(s): cursing
Length: 8.5k words

Note(s):
This takes place many years after the last chapter!
At least ~8 years later.
Don’t hate me :-(

“Professor,” one of your students says, grabbing your attention, “I have a question regarding the project.”

You look up from your laptop screen, but before you even do, you already know it’s a certain Miyoung Kim. Asking questions after class is sort of her thing, and she’s easily one of your favorite students, if not your absolute favorite, because aside from being studious and diligent, she loves to strike up a conversation with you. Being a professor is hard enough but being treated like you’re merely a person who grades papers makes the job insufferable. Thankfully, there are people like Miyoung who make it lovely to come to class and lecture students even if some don’t really enjoy it.

“What’s your question?” you ask as you respectfully close your laptop.

“How many graphs do you want us to draw?” Miyoung asks, hugging her textbooks closer to her body.

“As many as you see fit,” you answer simply with a smile. However, as comforting as you think your answer is, Miyoung isn’t the type of student to like vague answers. The poor girl gives you a sheepish smile and shifts her weight from one leg to the other.

“May I show you the graphs I made then?” Miyoung requests. “I don’t know if they’re what you’re looking for.”

You resist the urge to laugh though you think it’s cute that she wants to be extremely sure with her work. “Go ahead,” you say. “I’ll be right back, though. I’m going to make a few copies of something.”

“Thank you, professor,” Miyoung beams.

You see her set her purse and textbooks down on a table before opening her own laptop. By then, you’re already walking out of the lecture hall with a few pages of your next class’ lecture material.

As an economics professor, you deal with a lot of graphs and charts, and sometimes even the large screen at the front of the biggest lecture halls can’t display the nitty-gritty of each graph. That means you have to print dozens of extra graphs so that your students don’t blame you for not providing sufficient information. It’s not like you mind printing out the extra copies, however, because it means going to the professor lounge—and that’s where you can find Yixing “Lay” Zhang after your 3PM class.

When you step inside the lounge, you’re immediately greeted by his adorably dimpled smile.

“Hey,” he says as he sneaks a kiss on your cheek. “How was class?”

“The usual,” you reply while you walk to the copier. Lay follows closely as he sips on his green tea, and you sigh as you make sure there’s enough paper in the tray. “It’s the first project of the semester, and I already know people want to drop the class.” The class in question is Economics 1 which means a lot of non-econ majors are taking that class for credit or some other requirement. “What about you? Aren’t you teaching python this semester?”

“Yup,” Lay chirps. “Lots of freshmen, but they’re not as jaded as your students.”

“Some of them are nice,” you say, thinking immediately of that Miyoung Kim.

When you finish making copies about ten minutes later and return to the lecture hall, Miyoung is still inside and sitting where she usually sits—at the very front row, at the very center. Her posture is perfect as always, and from a distance, she doesn’t seem like any other student you’ve had in your first year of teaching; in fact, she doesn’t seem like a student all—she acts more like a socialite.

You’ve just set down the stack of papers you were carrying on table when Miyoung calls for your attention sheepishly.

“May I email you the graphs I made later?” she asks. “They’re not on my laptop. I put them in a flash drive, and I don’t have it with me.”

“That’s fine,” you reply with a smile. “Send it to me whenever you can.”

Miyoung thanks you, closes her laptop, and begins to gather her belongings. But just when you think she’s about to leave, she approaches you once again with a beaming smile.

“I noticed that you have a poem book,” Miyoung points out. You look over at the book in question which is merely a collection of poetry from dozens of poets. “Do you teach a class on poetry or do you just like reading poems?”

“I love reading them,” you correct. “I wish I could teach poetry since it’d be really fun, but I’m not qualified.” You laugh and think about the years you spent working on your PhD in economics. It took you six years and a father who nearly turned his back, but it’s still worth it because now you work at a prestigious university as a lecturer and professor, and you love it. “The only poetry I could write,” you say, “is poetry about zero sum games, and I don’t think anyone would like that.”

“You never know,” Miyoung assures you. “The things that can make some people uncomfortable can be such a thrill to others.”

You give her a frown that’s more amused than confused. “Interesting way to put it,” you mumble. “I’ve never heard that before.”

Miyoung grins cutely and shrugs a shoulder. “When you’re passionate about something, you start to live and breathe in it.” Her words cause you to reminisce about how you started seeing numbers on walls because you had spent days studying for a cost accounting midterm. “But poetry aside,” Miyoung says, shaking her head, “I actually wanted to invite you to my friend’s showcase.”

“Really?” you ask pleasantly surprised. Out of all your students, Miyoung is the first one to ask you about your interests, much less invite you anywhere. “What showcase?”

“She’s a photographer,” Miyoung explains, “and it’s more of a surprise for her birthday, so I’m trying to find people who, I guess you could say ‘interested’ in arts.” She smiles another radiant smile and points to your poem book. “I figured that since you like poetry, you could like photography too. And,” she stresses, “you’re also one of my favorite professors.”

Your cheeks warm up, and you can’t keep yourself from grinning like an idiot. No one has said that before—not until Miyoung. So, of course, you can’t refuse her invitation.

“Can you email me the details?” you ask. “I’ll do my best to come even if it’s just for a few minutes.”

Miyoung soon exits the lecture hall, but she doesn’t leave without making you feel warm. It’s only your first year of teaching, and though the first semester was rough, the second one is quickly disproving the worries you once had. Sure, some students are jaded and uncaring, but there are always bright, diamond-like ones.

- - - - -

February 10 lands on a Friday which is the perfect date for Miyoung’s mystery showcase. She said in her email that its official start is at 9PM, but she prefers if you came at least 10 minutes early to partake in surprising the guest of honor. In addition, she also said that you could come with a plus one.

That’s why it’s you and Lay walking in downtown in a neighborhood by Midtown Manhattan and not just you. The address Miyoung gave to you is actually a contemporary art gallery, but obviously she must have arranged for it host her friend’s photography. It’s located conveniently near New York City’s Koreatown which is bustling with shops and vendors that you and Lay indulge yourself with before finally heading to the gallery.

Your timing is perfect because just as you approach the entrance, a shiny black car pulls just in front of the gallery’s main doors—and out steps your student. Miyoung always comes to class dressed like she’s going to a fashion show, and she’s not any different when she comes out of the car with an elegant black dress with a matching signature beret.

“Miyoung!” you call out to her, and she turns around just as the car drives off.

“Professor,” Miyoung calls back with glee. She walks quickly over to you, and you’re worried that she’ll trip with the heels that she’s wearing, but she doesn’t. “I’m so glad you could make it!” She turns to Lay, promptly beams a smile to him, and tilts her head to the side. “Hi,” she says, “my name’s Miyoung Kim, and I’m one of Rain’s econ students.”

“Hi,” Lay greets back with a dimpled grin. “I’m Lay. I’m also a professor at Columbia, and I teach computer science.”

“Wait really?” Miyoung eyes widen with a shining curiosity. “I was thinking about taking some computer classes, but my schedule was filled. I just think—” She cuts herself off when she seems to realize something. “Wait, we should go inside. I have to greet everyone else.” She gives Lay a sheepish grin. “We can talk more later, and you can recommend me beginner classes for when I do have a freer schedule.”

You and Lay follow Miyoung towards the gallery, the two of you exchange knowing looks. Before asking Lay if he wanted to come, he had already frequently heard you tell him stories of one of your students—the student being Miyoung, of course. Your stories of her never really did her personality any justice though, but it seems like Lay’s first impression of her is positive. He gives you an impressed nod, and you return it with a raised brow; you told him so.

When you walk past the lobby, the main exhibit, and into a room filled with large photographs, you immediately notice something wrong when you read the name of Miyoung’s friend on a sign.

Happy Birthday to Miss Seulgi, it reads, and you almost feel yourself sink into another era.

Lay notices your change in demeanor immediately, and he pulls you close to him to whisper to you. “What’s wrong?” he asks. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” you mumble, but you’re really not.

Though you and Seulgi did keep contact through Baekhyun in your final semester of undergraduate studies, the two of you stopped talking when you and Baekhyun grew apart. Baekhuyn went upstate to Stanford Law School, Seulgi was still in London the last time you talked to her nearly a decade ago, and you moved out to New York City to pursue higher education. Though you and Baekhyun had tried to email or call each other, he was busy with law school, and you were busy with your PhD. Growing apart was inevitable, and you didn’t care much of it anyways because you found new friends and eventually a boyfriend.

However, seeing Seulgi’s name after years under these circumstances isn’t just shocking, it’s heart wrenching. Someone who comforted you in arguably one of the darkest eras of your life has turned into a stranger because you have no idea of what has become of her until now.

You’re glad that Seulgi is clearly successful in some way if she has friends like Miyoung who care about her to the point of surprising her with a thoughtful gallery on her birthday, but it still makes you somewhat melancholic that you lost contact with her. It also makes you wonder how Seulgi can be friends with a girl at least a decade younger than she is, but knowing Miyoung, it isn’t surprising. If anything, you’re more worried that Baekhyun is a guest to this celebration since he is Seulgi’s best friend, but you’ll just have to steel your nerves in that case.

“Oh,” Miyoung exclaims when she turns to you and Lay for a second. “Meet Irene. She’s my friend Seulgi’s fiancée.”

Irene shakes you and Lay’s hands and greets you a soft, cool hello. Like Miyoung, she moves with an effortless grace about her. She possesses the type of beauty that you could see (or have seen) in movies. Even the way she’s donning an expensive Chanel dress that you were ogling at online a few weeks ago suggests movie star or model, but you keep those assumptions to yourself and merely smile when Miyoung compliments her outfit.

The gallery soon fills with more people that Miyoung greets individually, and Irene excuses herself to talk with others, leaving you and Lay to wander around the room while waiting for the guest of honor—Seulgi, apparently.

Seulgi’s photography appears mainly of striking fashion photography. Models of all shapes and colors are captured timelessly through dozens of large canvases in the main exhibit, and there are even small descriptions or titles by the side of each photograph. Some of them include names of famous models that you’ve seen on billboards in Times Square, but what makes you gasp in awe the most are the magazines that Seulgi has worked for as a photographer.

“Vogue Korea May 2021,” Lay murmurs, reading the small placard next to a photograph of Irene in a red dress and golden crown. “Wow.”

Wow indeed. The photograph of Irene has an overlay of Vogue’s classic logo along with English and Korean subtitles that name Irene as the it-girl and leading actress of South Korea.

You and Lay move to a smaller exhibit dedicated only to photographs of Irene and eponymously titled to her, and through the descriptions on the placards by each photo, you become aware of what happened to Seulgi when she moved to London. Within a few years of living in London and working at British Vogue, she met Irene at a photoshoot, became infatuated, moved back to South Korea to live closer to her, and then eventually proposed to her only a few months ago.

You’re about to walk into an exhibit titled College Life when Miyoung calls for everyone to come into a now darkened exhibit.

“Seulgi’s almost here!” Miyoung announces. She looks at her phone and waves her arms. “She’s parking one block away from here, so everyone be quiet and don’t make too much noise.”

Everyone congregates closely to each other, and you and Lay press yourselves against a wall to accommodate for other guests to make themselves as hidden as possible. In a few moments, all the lights turn off, and you can only press your cheek against Lay’s arm in anticipation of the moment. You hear someone—a last minute guest, presumably—run into the gallery, and Miyoung hushes everyone.

“It’s not her, it’s not her,” she whisper-yells. “She’s still walking!”

The seconds feel like hours, and hours feel like knives digging into your stomach. A part of you feels guilty for losing contact with Seulgi and not even trying to reconnect with her after all those years, and another part of you is overwhelmed with excitement of meeting an old friend.

All of those feelings are released when a slender figure walks into the main exhibit, and the lights all turn on to the sound of everyone yelling happy birthday. You can barely see Seulgi over the heads of other guests, but you catch glimpses of her shocked face here and there. Unlike the very last time you saw her in person, her hair isn’t a bright orange; it’s a neutral brown, frames her face in wavy locks, and falls over her shoulder blades. Some things haven’t changed, though, because she still dresses in a style most people would call masculine.

As people calm down and try talking to her, you keep yourself at the back with Lay and a few patient others. Secretly, you’re scared of meeting Seulgi—or seeing Baekhuyn. Fortunately, you can’t spot him anywhere.

“I knew her in college—when I went to UCLA,” you finally confide to Lay when you resume your tour of Seulgi’s photographs. “I think we were pretty close until we lost contact.”

“Really? You should talk to her then,” Lay says, squeezing your hand to comfort you. “You don’t talk a lot about your undergrad experience, so she must be pretty special.”

You hum nervously, now also feeling guilty for not telling Lay any of this sooner. Although he’s your boyfriend of almost two years, you still haven’t told Lay of every major—or at least relevant—experience of your life. He only knows of the small, unimportant details of your first four years in college; he knows about the parties, the experimental drug-taking, the “losing myself” crisis that happened in the summer of Baekhyun and his red Mercedes, but he doesn’t know about Baekhyun much less Seulgi.

A part of that is the embarrassment that Hani once warned you about: why did you allow a boy to destroy you, and why were you masochistic enough to think you ever had a chance with him? Another part of why you never confided those days to Lay is also the lingering melancholy of what could have been. The closeness that you experienced with Baekhyun was both painful and good, and thinking about it occasionally still makes you somewhat bitter in a sad way—even if you’ve already moved on. While Lay has never forced you into saying anything, now you wish that he had because at least he can know of how dangerous it is that you’re here.

“Let’s check out the college exhibit,” you mumble to Lay as you break away from the main one. That’s where Seulgi is, and right now you can’t face her.

Of course, going to the College Life exhibit is slightly worse—because there are photographs of Baekhyun in there.

“,” you mutter under your breath when you see pictures of Baekhyun and those awful parties that he so loved to frequent. You almost forgot that Seulgi liked to follow him around and photograph different scenes in each party, but today is a clear reminder that she did that.

While you peer at smaller photographs of students playing pool or in pools, Lay turns around to face another wall with bigger canvases. He has only turned for a few seconds before he’s grabbing your arm and attention.

“What?” you ask, but your eyes have already seen what he’s looking at.

It’s that picture of you and Baekhyun from over a decade ago—the one where the two of you are on the hood of his Mercedes, eyes both closed, your head in the crooks of his neck and shoulder, his mullet ever present in the foreverness of this photograph. This is from the one day that you can’t forget even after all this time; this is from the day that Baekhyun broke your heart so badly that it made you see him clearly. And unlike the black-and-white reiteration of this photograph that you still have tucked away in some boxes, this one is in color, allowing you to remember just how red his Mercedes and streaked mullet were.

“Babe,” Lay mutters, shocked, “is that you? Was that your boyfriend?”

“That’s me,” you confirm in a murmur, “but he wasn’t my boyfriend.”

“He looked like it,” Lay presses, and it’s not hard to tell that he’s hurt based on his voice. “How come you never told me?” He turns to you and gazes into your eyes through his glasses. Now looking at him directly, you can definitely tell that he’s hurt. “I thought we disclosed all of our past relationships.”

“But he wasn’t my boyfriend,” you urge, and it’s the truth. Even after agreeing to Baekhyun’s terrible idea of a so-called mutually beneficial relationship, he never let you become his girlfriend, and he never called himself your boyfriend—not even after you told him that you had fallen in love with him. “We were just friends,” you say, and it’s still the truth no matter how bitter. “We never called each other boyfriend or girlfriend.”

Lay is smart, though, and he knows that friend is a blanket term. “What kind of friends?” he questions to which you don’t answer. This causes him to sigh, but he’s hurt and not angry. “Rain, I love you,” Lay mumbles, “and if you say that you love me too, then you know it means that you have to be honest me.”

“Can we do this later?” you ask, shaking your head. “This isn’t a good time.”

“You’re right,” Lay fortunately concedes. “But you’re going to tell me later.”

“I will,” you promise.

The two of you finish looking through the “College Life” exhibit and return to the main one where Seulgi spots you first. Her jaw falls when she sees you, and Lay understands the gravity of the situation enough to encourage you to go to her before she goes to you, so that’s exactly what you do.

“Chun?” Seulgi whispers when you’re close enough to hear her without raisi