13^th December 2019

-or the day after Kim Yae Na lost her boyfriend of six years

Yae Na stirred awake to the sound of her dogs bark. Sunlight was almost blinding her when she opened her eyes the slightest. The day was bright and loud and familiar, way too familiar. But not the persistent dread in her heart. She felt empty, cold and miserable. Vaguely, more like a distant memory, she could remember, she had lost something. She had lost something. Something important, something significant, something that she loved so dearly. It felt like she was breathing under water. Everything was familiar, yet everything was strange, unknown. The dogs kept barking, the sun kept shining in her face like a quiet invitation. Her mind still rang, her heart was heavy, so so heavy. The dread was keeping her low, holding her down by an incessant weight. She’d lost something. What did she lose? Yae Na closed her eyes and tried to breath again. And then it came to her, hard and fast and solid as a rock hitting her right on the heart, ripping her apart.

She lost Sung Gyu, Yae Na lost Sung Gyu, he was gone.

Yae Na couldn’t even cry when she sat up on the bed, her mind hazy, filled with hundred million thoughts. She knew she’d lost Sung Gyu because that’s what she was told. Howon’s voice was still cruelly loud and clear in her mind. She’d lost Sung Gyu, they’d lost Sung Gyu. But how? And Why? Why did she not know these things? Why did she not remember them at all?

Hazy, lost and disoriented, Yae Na slowly looked around herself. The room was bright, curtains were slightly closed, and it was chilly. In a distant, in reality or in her mind, her dogs still barked; on and on in anguish, in alarm. All of this felt too familiar to her, far too familiar, almost as if-,

Suddenly coming to, the first thing Yae Na did was lifting her hand. She was in her pajamas, The same blue and white pajamas. When she lifted her sleeve with a trembling hand, there was no bandage, no scar. The dogs continued to bark.

For a second, Yae Na thought she’d died and come back to life again. She was shaking, so hard when she reached for her phone on the nightstand. The time was barely past seven at that time, and the date was-,

12th December 2019

-Or the day that Kim Yae Na was forced to make a choice again

Sung Gyu was still alive. It was December 12th again, the day they broke up once, or the day that she could have lost him. It was still morning of 12th December 2019, and whatever the different choices that she’d make today would decide the fate of her life.

She was in a time loop, she’d realized it by then. To wake up to the same day for a third time was tiring, yet it was a convenience to know what to expect at least for the most part of the day. She walked straight into the kitchen to find the cat on her kitchen cabinet, Coco and Sam attacking it from down below. She knew how the drill went. If she moved too close, the cat would scratch her, leaving a deep, nasty gash. This time, she decided to make a different choice. She walked around the dining table, made a beeline for the broom cupboard and returned with the first thing that came to her hand. She stood behind the dogs then and ambushed the cat a few times. This time, its nasty little paws only managed to attack the broom’s plastic hairs before it made its way to the opened window and disappeared behind the curtain, leaving her without a scratch.

The small changes she did would make a big difference.

With a heavy sigh, she reached for the window, pulled it close and leaned against the cabinet to catch her breath. What now? In her room, her phone was ringing. It would be Lisa, and in her original timeline, she would tell her that she’d gotten wounded by a stray cat and Lisa would tell her to come by the nurse's office to get treated. She hadn’t a wound on her hand now. So what difference would that make in this new day?

Just because she needed more clarification, Yae Na her TV on her way to her bedroom to fetch the phone. The same TV shows were running again, and on the news, as she stood there nervously biting her nails, they said it. The day was still December 12^th 2019. Sung Gyu was definitely still alive.

Yae Na picked up Lisa’s call. For a second she contemplated telling her the situation that she was in, living the same day over and over again. But then again, she decided against it. It wasn’t that she couldn’t tell her. It was only that there was no way that she could prove it and also Yae Na was afraid that it would make a difference in this time line as opposed to the original and she could never tell what the reaction to that would be. While nervously staring at the soundless TV where people and places appeared in no particular sequence in her mind, she nodded and nodded, quite blankly to everything that Lisa said. They planned to meet before class for coffee. At which point Yae Na suggested that they went to the cafeteria, to which Lisa agreed.

On the morning news, something that she hadn’t noticed the previous two times appeared. Perhaps she hadn’t paid enough attention, perhaps it just simply skipped her mind. But there it was, a news bulletin recapping the new progress of the case of Yong San Murders, or as how Yae Na recognised it, The ‘Red Cross Murderer’

The case had been stretching on for more a month now, becoming more and more intense as days passed. Sung Gyu never disclosed much details on it, he never did, as he wished to perfectly compartmentalize his work and personal life. But Yae Na knew it for a fact that the reason why he did not let on anything about the cases was her. How sensitive she could get when it was anything that had to do with someone dying. Death, as it happened, was Yae Na’s biggest fear. She lost both her parents in an accident when she was still a child, a scar that had stayed with her for the longest time. She grew up in an orphanage until she made it to college, moved into her own house when she earned enough to do so. Having been mostly by herself, Yae Na had very little that she feared, but death, Sung Gyu knew, would terrify her. And therefore she never knew the case in exact details, only that it was happening, only that it’s been a big pain for him.

Clutching her phone in her trembling hand, Yae Na sat down on the floor, staring at the TV. She didn’t know what caused the turn of previous nights events, by what cause she’d lost Sung gyu that night. She could very vaguely remember what Howon told her on the phone, still. ‘We were on a car chase’

They were on a car chase. And if they were on a car chase, did Sung Gyu-?

No. Yae Na shook her head, forcing herself to not think any further. She had to, but she couldn’t, not unless she wanted to lose herself again. If she was to remove the incident from the new time line, however, she had to know how it happened. By now, she knew that it had everything to do with the Red Cross Murderer. She wasn’t in her right mind to absorb much from the news bulletin, but there were a few things that she did understand. The killings were unconventional, and also that the murderer was a former medical worker of the Korean Red Cross. The rest, including the actual progression of the investigation from her fiance’s end, she had to find out.

What also occurred to her at that point was just how difficult things must have been for him, being the prosecutor responsible of the case. A case so difficult, so twisted and ugly. Sung Gyu could have been like any other prosecutor, dealt with it from the surface, fabricate evidence maybe, get a higher up to frame the murderer somehow and throw them behind bars, or even worse, tally it down to a case with no evidence and serve the victims no justice, close the case. But Sung Gyu wasn’t like any other prosecutor. His strong sense of justice and his will to serve justice, whatever it would take, would always keep him engaged to the case until he’d solved it with nothing amiss. Sung Gyu was always emotionally attached to the victims, emotionally attached to every case at hand. And whenever something went wrong, which did, on many occasions, it affected him so much that he would be morally drained for a very long time. Yae Na understood this too, hence her trying her best to be by his side. But this time, with the wedding, with her own frustrations, Yae Na realized how very little attention that she’d given him, and in turn, perhaps believing that it would be straining for her as well, how very little that Sung Gyu had let on.

So perhaps, in this time line, that was the element which she had to change in order to save Sung Gyu as well as their marriage all at once.

She was scared to change a lot of details from the original timeline in fear that it would cause a considerable chain effect in the following events. She got into the same outfit she’d worn before, drove to work in the chilly, brilliant morning. She met Lisa down in the corridor which was different from the last two times, perhaps due to her avoiding the cat attack. She smiled at her, although her heart felt like an inflated balloon with anxiety.

“Yae Na-Ssi!” Lisa called, reaching out to her and grabbing her hand. “I was just on my way to the cafeteria”

“Great!” She laughed, but she was breathless. “I’ve been starving-,”

The two relocated to the cafeteria where they got themselves coffee and sandwiches, another event that didn’t occur in their previous timeline, and then they shared tales from their life. Yae Na, scared of compromising the coming incidents, tried her best to divert the conversations as to how they originally should be. But to no avail, they were mostly about wedding planning and dresses and shoes and how excited Lisa was to see her on her wedding day; nothing about her frustrations, no venting anger, no complains. She supposed that it was the impact of getting no cat scratch. The problem was, however, how would this affect the rest of the day?

She went to her class afterwards, and yet again didn’t dare change anything that had previously happened in the two timelines that she’d passed, afraid to compromise the children’s fate. She left school on a half-day leave as planned, went to Sung Jong’s exactly on time, who welcomed her with a bright smile.

Yet again, she found herself seated on the exact same plush chair, facing the mirror, her reflection no different from the previous two times.

Sung Jong undid her hair, allowed it to cascade down the back of the chair, ran his fingers through it.

“Miss Bride-to-be, What would you like for your hair today?”

“What would look good, Sung Jong-Ssi?” Yae Na repeated for the third time.

“Well..” He said and yet again played with her hair. “Lets keep the length” He said in the same sing song voice that she remembered, followed by the little dramatic swish of her hair. “Some long bangs and straightening would look great on you”

This time, she decided to go with it. After the unexpected turn of events the last time, she was too afraid to make a different choice that could possibly make a bigger impact. It might be just the size and the shade of her hair, but as how the sequence of time seemed to work, even the subtlest things she did seemed to matter.

He washed it and started snipping it again, the same and the same things that she was used to. Yae Na pulled out her phone again, opened the last message he had sent her. Seeing his words, reading them in his voice in her mind made something snap in her heart. Had the timeline of the previous time continued, on the 13^th of December, Yae Na wouldn’t have the man she loved anymore. Even the thought of it was killing her, there was no word nor an emotion that she could put to explain how she felt. Without Sung Gyu, Yae Na would have no one. A mere orphan she was, without anyone whom she could call family but him. Sung Gyu was her whole life, her whole world. Even the thought of losing him…

“Noona?” Sung Jong’s voice came from behind her. “Are you alright?”

Yae Na didn’t even realise that she was crying. Quiet tears were streaming down her cheeks, falling on her hand. When she looked, her own reflection appeared blurry. She sobbed hard and Sung Jong immediately handed over a box of tissues. Some of it had indeed happened in the second round, the tissue box, her crying. But she certainly didn’t want it to continue.

“Sorry” She said, shaking her head. “I’ve just been stressed out I guess” She shook her head.

Sung Jong’s blurry image on the mirror seemed to stare at her for a second, scrutinizing her.

“You look stressed out, is it the wedding things?” He said, and for a second, the same words echoed in her mind like a distant memory, but only in a different voice.

Lisa. Her heart stopped for a while, those were the exact words that Lisa had said.

So what should she say now?

“Uh…” She looked away, trying to find her words. She was too afraid to say the exact same thing that she’d told Lisa at that time. She had to change. “Yeah…” She laughed awkwardly. “There is so much to do”

“I know right?” Sung Jong replied laughing, and his words echoed in her mind. “I can remember my noona’s wedding. She was so frustrated that she nearly did not have a wedding until we changed her mind!”

Sung Jong said this before, in the second timeline, he did. Yae Na had to change, redirect it on a different direction.

“Not only that” She sighed, and it wasn’t hard to appear devastated because that’s exactly what she was, having lived the same day three days in a row. “I haven’t seen Sung Gyu in a while”

If she calculated that time in her own timeline, Yae Na hadn’t seen Sung Gyu in person for nearly two days. So much had happened during that time that it felt like years had passed.

“Really?” He said, making a face. “So why don’t you visit him at work or something?”

Vaguely similar to what Lisa had said before, it was the sense and the purpose that set them apart. For a moment, Yae Na contemplated it herself. She’d never visited him at work, not in their entire time of six years together. Sung gyu, like said, liked to compartmentalize his life, and she knew that his colleagues knew her only by name and her part in his life, except for Howon who had introduced them to each other. He didn’t really like having her there, perhaps because her presence would disrupt his focus or perhaps because there was so much going on with work that he wouldn’t have a second to spare to entertain her. But that’s exactly what she also hadn’t done yet in this time line. When she come to think of it, the call that she would take after the hair appointment would make a massive difference. The first time, it was after the florists too, but still it was a call to Sung Gyu which determined the end of their relationship. The second time, yet again the call that was resulted by her message caused her to spend less time at the florist, then her visit to the ER; the biggest and most significant difference being that they didn’t meet each other.

Yae Na felt like she was hit by a strong gush of wind that knocked her out of breath, at that moment. That was it. She had probably cracked a riddle right there. Them not meeting that day was what made the biggest difference; and what led up to that was the call. The call the previous time made them meet. The call after that, didn’t. So what would happen if she skipped the call altogether and met him instead?

“You know what, Sung Jong?” Yae Na filled in the quietness that had followed after Sung Jong’s questions. “I think I’ll do that. I’ll meet him there at work”

“I think that would be nice” Sung Jong said in agreement. “He might not let on most of the time, but Hyung says he really need moral support sometimes, and he said the biggest moral support he had was you”

Yae Na, yet again paused to meet his eyes on the mirror. With every time she had this appointment with Sung Jong, she seemed to learn something new.

“Really? Did he say that?” She whispered to him.

“Yeah, he told me one time when he’d been having a rough time and apparently you’ve been making him feel better…”

“I do” Yae Na muttered, although she felt chocked up. “I do”

“I’m really happy for you guys” Sung Jong went on in more of an end note. “I really am”

She drove to the florist next, this time drowned in anxiety as opposed to the light, featherly feeling that she’d had the second time around. She had her mind set on what to do there, however, and what to do right after. When she parked her car, she was quite doubtful about what flowers to pick. Now that she was certain that it was Lilies that they had to avoid, she was having second thoughts about white roses. What if her selection from the previous time had a big impact on what transpired afterwards? What if, even if it was a very subtle choice that she made, what if the very idea of white roses had some sort of a twisted, eerie connection to everything that followed?

Yae Na sat in her car for a while, contemplating things. At that point she was very much inclined to call Sung Gyu again, ask him about the flowers, hear his voice again. A part of her was terrified to, while the other part of her…

She kind of had the feeling that, with flowers, even in this timeline he would probably go with the same choice. Sung Gyu would want white roses, no matter what implication it may be. And the roses probably wouldn’t be the only thing that they’d talk about would she call him.

“No” Yae Na shook her head, her eyes shut tight. “No, No, Yae Na”

It was the call. The call controlled everything. She wasn’t certain, but if anything, she had a heavy gut feeling that it did.

Making up her mind, Yae Na finally made her way back to the store. Everything went pretty much the same as they did the previous time. She picked the baby roses which went with baby’s breath for the aisles and the backdrop of the altar and her bouquet and the banquet hall. That would be what Sung Gyu would want in his wedding decorations too; She reminded herself again. And this probably did not have an impact on the rest of the day. It was just the call, just the call, which she wouldn’t do this time.

So instead of calling Sung Gyu, after the florist appointment was over, she called Howon. Lee Howon, a reputed investigator from the Yongsan Police Department was Sung Gyu and Yae Na’s most trusted friend and Sung Gyu’s most trusted colleague. As a pair, a prosecutor and an investigator, they’ve been working together for a very long time. There was nobody else that Yae Na trusted more when it was anything about Sung Gyu; whether it was his well being or whereabouts (or when she didn’t want to talk to Sung Gyu after they’ve had a fight) Howon too, never hesitated to accommodate her the best he could.

“Yae Na-Ssi” Howon replied, a little breathless, the moment he picked up the phone.

“Hi, um…” Yae Na clutched the steering wheel with both her hands. “Is oppa around?”

“Sung Gyu Hyung?” He asked, and his voice went off the line just for half a minute. “Yeah he’s here. Do you want to talk to him?”

Just to know that he was there with him was enough relief for her, and also the cool calmness that Howon’s voice always carried, which put her heart at peace for a while.

“No, no, that’s fine” She quickly replied, fighting her urge to hear his voice. “Where are you?”

“We’re in Haebangchon” Howon responded hurriedly.

“Will you go back to the station afterwards?”

“Yeah we’re nearly done here, we’ll be going back in a while. Hyung too, I think. He’ll be with me”

That was enough reassurance for her, and enough clarification that she could go ahead as planned. She ended the call at that point, making up her mind. Haebangchon wasn’t so far off from the Yongsan police station, and by the time she reached the station. The two of them will be there too. So she pulled herself back on to the road again. As the sky turned Grey and a hazy shade of lavender, she drove her way through the serpentine Seoul streets on her quest of saving the love of her life.

By the time Yae Na arrive at the Yong San station, the sky was in a dull purplish Grey. It was so cold at that time that she couldn’t even imagine herself standing outside unless she dared to freeze herself to death. Yae Na had come to the station only a bunch of times during her acquaintanceship with Howon. It had to be years since she last came here. Nothing much had changed about the place, except that it was slightly more crowded than before. Sitting in her car, she stared ahead, watching the car park as vehicles came and left, searching for the black Hyundai that Sung Gyu drove, waiting for him to arrive. Even if he was with Howon, it was in his vehicle that they went around mostly because Howon made a terrible driver at times and also because his was leased, hence, given the kind of adventures the two engaged in (Not the kind that they’d get her involved in) he couldn’t afford to get it even scratched.

The wait was driving her insane. She hated how time seemed to stretch out so much, something she’d never felt until she got herself stuck in this time loop. Seconds seemed to take hours to pass by, minutes took ages. It was not until the sky started taking a darker shade that she saw Sung Gyu’s jeep pulling into the parking lot. Sung Gyu wasn’t a very patient driver himself. She gasped when he took a particularly nasty turn, reversed it in one pull and she held her breath. It felt like million years had passed by since she last saw him, and just like it had the very first time, Yae Na felt butterflied fluttering in her chest. He was here. Sung Gyu was here. He was really here.

With a deep breath, Yae Na climbed out of her car and made her way across the asphalt towards the main entrance. They haven’t even gotten down yet. But if she didn’t get down by then she wouldn’t be able to catch up with their hurried strides. Yae Na stood alone in the dark, hugging herself as her breath formed white clouds in the air. She swore her nose and ears have begun to freeze. But that was fine, as her heart warmed up and inflated the moment she saw Sung Gyu’s lean, dark silhouette make his way towards the entrance. Howon was beside him, the two, just as she guess, hurried on their feet. Sung Gyu was in the same suit as he was the night that they broke up, which was no surprise. It was the same day after all. It had to be by this time, in her original time line that she had called him as well. The two entered the gravel path that she was in, without even noticing her. They were talking among themselves, lost in their own world. It was time to make herself seen.

So Yae Na hurried her way behind them, she literally ran after them and soon called out his name in a shrilly, breathless voice.

“Sung Gyu oppa”

Sung Gyu stopped, so did Howon. Both the men turned around at once. When he registered her presence before them, he swore under his breath.

“What the hell?”

“Yae Na-Ssi?” Howon called. It was Sung Gyu who strode on her direction first but Yae Na couldn’t wait until he got closer. She took off in long strides and ran right into his arms. To say that she was overwhelmed was an understatement, at that time. There was no word that would properly describe exactly how she felt. To feel Sung Gyu’s warmth, to hear his voice, the beating of his heart, the sound of his breath. Yae Na was crying without even her realizing it. God was cruel, yet was kind at times, for she had lost the one she loved for a while. Now she had him again.

She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, sobbing into his coat, breathing in the sweet citrusy scent that she had always loved. Yae Na felt home again, in his arms, Yae Na could finally breathe again.

“Yae Na?” He asked, his voice coated with confusion. “Are you alright?”

No she wasn’t, she wanted to tell him. She’d lived the same day again and again three times in a row, lost him and gotten him back twice. She was tired, she was terrified. All she wanted right now was to be held in his arms and remain in his embrace as long as time lasted.

But she also had to pull herself together. She had a very confused boyfriend to answer to.

“Yae Na, what’s going on?” He asked her, pulling her away from him. He was so close all of a sudden, and in his warm hand, he held her face. She could see him through her tears; his warm, pale skin, the incessant love and concern in his eyes, the fine swells and contours, everything that made him, him.

Everything she’d thought she’d lost.

“I don’t know” She whispered, shaking her head. Yae Na couldn’t possibly explain everything that had happened in her life until then. Sung Gyu loved her, but he would never believe her. “I don’t know,” She met his eyes and felt like breaking apart again. “I just missed you”

“Tonight? All of a sudden?”

He didn’t know how long it had been, how much they’ve been through.

Yae Na only nodded in response. “I missed you”

Sung Gyu let out a heavy sigh and glanced behind him, perhaps at Howon who was quietly standing in the background. “Fine,” He said and his warm hand reached for hers. “It’s cold out here...come on, let’s go inside”