07. THE LAW OF HOW PEOPLE MEET.

ia Woolf wrote in her novel, Jacob's Room, "The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?"

Oftentimes, I think, the question isn't what you're going to meet, but in fact who.

There's an intriguing law I often heard growing up: You'll always end up meeting the person you least want to meet, no matter how far you've drifted from them. The world is strange in this way; how two people can be in the same place at precisely the same time, always on accident. Fate ties red strings more readily to the arms of enemies than to the wrists of lovers, a tendency that exhibits itself just as gravity functions within the universe: inevitably.

This would precisely be the case, when I walk around the block from my old apartment and bump straight into Jung Jaehyun, dressed in the same way I'd met him two years ago—scuffled black converse and blue jean jacket, rolled twice at the sleeves.

Jaehyun and I ceased to exist in the same sentence two years ago.

Yet here we are.

"Jaehyun." I raise my hand in a wave, my fingers outstretched but not quite. They curled limply, forming what looked like a tentative claw far more than a confident greeting.

"Kim Yerim." he says my name, a pleasant sort of surprise in his voice that brings a smile to his narrow brown eyes. His gaze was always gentle—that's what I most remember about him—and always filled with a plethora of emotions, though I could never quite figure out why those emotions were what they were.

I don't know why it tugs at my heart every time I see those eyes, because we'd split largely on his terms back then—I had nothing to feel guilty for, at least nothing sensible.

"After two years, the bread here is still your favorite." I remark, my eyes roaming over the shelves of fresh-baked patisserie displayed through the window behind him. "I don't blame you—it's still my favorite, too."

"You remember?" he says.

"I remember a lot of things." I say.

"You haven't changed at all, have you?" he says again.

I ponder his question for a small moment. "Well, from the looks of it...neither have you."

He seems uncomfortable by that last statement, the sole of his shoe hitting the pavement in a habitual .

"Want to sit inside for a coffee?" he eventually asks, after a minute pause.

"Okay." I agree, after checking my phone and confirming that Jungkook wouldn't be home for another two hours.

Normally, I wouldn't see a point in opening a closed book—but Jaehyun did deserve an answer that I'd never given him. Two years ago, he'd asked me if I could try—even if it was just for a moment—to love him.

"I would have said yes, if we had met each other before we did."

"How much earlier?" he asks.

"Five years."

"You met him seven years ago?"

"I fell in love with him seven years ago."

Jaehyun leans across the table a bit, his hands clasped in that familiar way—fingers interwoven, thumbs crossing over each other, tips reddening as his knuckles turned whiter by the second. His skin had always had a translucent quality to it, easily displaying reds and purples and pinks. His ears were stark red that winter I'd met him, his skin easily bruised.

"That's not fair to me, is it?" he says, quietly.

I shake my head. "It's not. I'm sorry, Jaehyun—I really am, and I'm not going to make excuses for myself."

The bell on the door rings as a young woman enters the store, masking the short silence which follows my words.

"See, that's the thing, Yerim." Jaehyun finally looks up from his hands to stare at me. "I wished you'd make excuses for yourself sometimes. I wish you'd just give yourself an excuse to be unreasonable—at least that means you'd try."

My lips wane into a defeated smile, my hands wrapping loosely around my coffee cup as I turn my head to avoid his gaze. "But that's not who I am, is it?" I ask.

He follows my line of sight, out the window and into the distance. "You're right. It's not."

The sunlight spills like honey on the side of our faces, the air smelling of bitter coffee beans and sweet butter and lemony yellow icing, melting on sticky fingers.

"Jaehyun, I do miss you." I say. "This isn't a scar to me. It's not a mistake or something I'm ashamed of. I look back at what we were and only remember the good things. I don't regret any of it."

He smiles a bit at the glass, and something inside me knows he finally understands what I'm about to say next.

"It's true, I could have chosen to let you love me. I could have chosen to let you believe I would one day love you, even though I knew I never would." I pause, letting the bitterness of the black drink in my hands seep down my throat. "But I didn't, and I don't regret that either."

Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower—"We accept the love we think we deserve."

—

I return home to find a vaguely familiar face waiting patiently at my doorstep.

A young woman—dressed in a simple blue t-shirt and black skinny jeans with a yellow bag slung across her shoulder—glances up from where she's standing at my front door. She has black hair piled up in a bun, red lips and a neat row of bangs. There's a small mole under each of her eyes, which are lined with black eyeliner neatly to a point.

I didn't know her personally—it just happened to be that this was the same girl who had been buying bread at the store Jaehyun and I were in.

"Are you waiting for someone?" I ask politely as I pull out my keys from my purse, fumbling for the right one. I gesture to the door in explanation, "This is my house, if you're looking for Kim Yerim."

The girl immediately shakes her head. "Ah, I'm so sorry!" she squeaks out with a sudden blush on her cheeks. "I must have the wrong address. I'm looking for Jeon Jungkook—would you happen to know where he lives?"

An intrigue tugs at my conscience as I raise a brow and answer, "He lives here too, actually. He'll be home in three minutes, if you would like to wait inside..."

It must be a job interview, I think. Another young, female secretary destined to wither away in the depths of Jungkook's laboratory...

I welcome her in the house quickly. She follows me closely as I set my purse and keys on the counter, before finding her an appropriate seat.

"I'm Seo Soojin." she introduces herself with a slight bow of her head, before she seats herself in our living room.

I return the gesture. "Kim Yerim." I repeat politely, extending my hand. "Are you perhaps—"

"Ah, my daughter!" I suddenly hear the voice of Ms. Seo cry out happily behind me. The two of us stand immediately, with Ms. Seo scuttling over to embrace Soojin, while I observe quietly, my mind whirring in realization.

Jungkook had told me before that Ms. Seo's daughter had graduated university recently, matching the twenty-two year-old countenance of the Soojin before me. I hadn't, however, known whether Ms. Seo's husband was also of the same family name, or perhaps whether Soojin had taken on Ms. Seo's family name instead of her father's.

"I thought your daughter was overseas, yimo." I laugh, picking at the hem of my skirt. "I'm sorry to have kept her waiting outside."

"It's okay, I was the one who didn't knock." Soojin quickly says, before tilting her body forwards, eyeing the parlor as soon as the turning of the lock sounds at the front door.

"Yerim?" I hear Jungkook's voice almost immediately after.

"You're home." I murmur as I walk to the front of the house to greet him, Ms. Seo and her daughter in tow.

"Did you manage to get everything out of your apartment alright?" he asks me as he takes off suit jacket. I reach out to take it from him, passing the garment to Ms. Seo as he loosens his tie.

"Mhm." I nod, before I gesture to the two women behind me. "Um, this is Soojin—"

"He knows who I am." Soojin interrupts. She walks up to Jungkook, voice breathy as she smiles at him. "It's been a while, oppa."

—

It's apparent, after the brink of it all, that the law of meeting people is proven almost always true—the little coincidences, which tilt the narrow balance of favor in the other direction, remain a driving force in the course of life.

Especially when—

(After having washed our hands and taken our seats for dinner, Jungkook introduces me as his fiancée.)

"Oh? I thought you were dating that guy at the coffee shop." Soojin giggles as she addresses me, biting on the tips of her chopsticks.

I feel a shiver of discomfort run down my spine.

"No," I say, continuing to eat my meal placidly. "The man you saw me with today...was my ex-boyfriend."

Jungkook glances at me from across the table.

Our eyes meet.

My lips press into a thin line.

—

After dinner, I drift upstairs to shower, letting the hot water surround me as I scrub my skin raw. Yet, when I finally nestle under the bed covers, book in hand, I can't seem to grasp onto the sentence I'm reading.

My mind keeps wandering, running over the course of the day's events over and over again. Meeting Jaehyun, and Soojin being there. Soojin showing up at my house, and turning out to not only be Ms. Seo's daughter, but also Jungkook's childhood playmate. It all sunk in like a stone at the bottom of a pond, ripples forming on the surface of my conscience.

And Jungkook—the way he'd looked at me across the table when all this was mentioned—I couldn't tell whether he was angry or simply inquisitive. I mull miserably over the possible outcomes of the the day's dice, my eyes staring blankly at the thin text on the book before me. I don't even notice Jungkook entering the room, until his weight sinks the mattress underneath me.

"You're not mad?" I ask, when I feel his arm curl loosely around my waist. I place my book down, shifting a little to turn off the lamp beside me.

The room is rendered in darkness.

"No." he answers softly, his voice muffled as my hand reaches out to rest atop his. "Yerim, just because we're getting married doesn't mean I can't trust you to make your own decisions anymore. Things that are apart of your personal life should be dealt with the way you want them to be." He pauses for a moment before he adds, "Besides, I know you've already found your closure with Jaehyun. Today, you probably just wanted to help him find his."

I laugh under my breath, a trickle of relief filling my chest.

"It's scary how well you know me." I murmur, threading my fingers through his, the back of his larger hand pressed against my smaller palm. Then, perhaps because the question forms in my mind at that exact moment, I ask, "Jungkook, do you believe everyone deserves their own happiness?"

He breathes softly beside me for a time before I hear his answer. "It depends. Happiness means something different to everyone. And sometimes what we think we deserve, we take for granted."

I think over this. "There's no formula to it all, is there? To being happy?"

"No," he answers, "there isn't."

After a moment, I say, "When Jaehyun broke up with me, I learned that there isn't a formula to love either."

I turn my body, then, rolling on top of him. His arms, as if instinctually, move to keep me from toppling off, and I prop myself above him, my head resting against his chest, my ear pressed right against his heartbeat.

The late Kalanithi once wrote, "Science is based on reproducibility and manufactured objectivity. As strong as that makes its ability to generate claims about matter and energy, it also makes scientific knowledge inapplicable to the existential, visceral nature of human life, which is unique and subjective and unpredictable. Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue."

"Jungkook," I murmur drowsily against his chest.

"Sleep, Yerim." he coaxes me gently in the dark.

I close my eyes as I murmur, "You know, there's nothing...there's really nothing rational about love at all."