Death isn’t for anyone.

That was the only thing I was able to tell myself when I sat in the restaurant waiting for Suho on our fifth anniversary. In a week, we were to get married and I sat there with his favorite bottle of wine. I could paint the features on his face and I knew what he would say if he ever did walk through those doors.

“Sorry I’m late, love.” he would have said, “Work was pretty busy today.”

“It’s okay, I understand.” I would have said back, standing up halfway to kiss him on the cheek. I would have told him to sit down and reminded him that we had to go for cake tasting the next day. We also would have to focus on making sure our color scheme was consistent.

“Anything you want,” he would say and I would smile at him because I knew he was like that.

He wouldn’t ask, he wouldn’t demand—he was Suho.

But he was gone and I sat in the restaurant, my face buried in my hands with the broken phone on the floor. It was abrupt, it wasn’t like I knew it would happen. My world shattered into pieces and I found myself plunged into a reality that he was indeed, gone.

It was a drunk driver.

It’s funny how alcohol was the one who killed him yet I began to drink every night. The irony.

And it was like my world stopped and I didn’t know how to function with the loss of my other half.

Five years. Five years of companionship and then it was emptiness.

For months, I woke up and dragged myself to work. Countless wine bottles lay on my kitchen counter and every passing day I found myself sinking into a hole I couldn’t get out of. I would drink so much, I felt like I wasn’t awake most of the time when suddenly I was called to the office that I worked for.

I was a real estate agent and went from being the star agent to the one person who hasn’t sold a single property in the span of six months. A woman stood before me, the daughter of the company and a friend of mine, the female told me that I should take some time off.

“Pull yourself back together,” I remembered her saying; but what was there to pull together if there was only emptiness? “Unnie, pull yourself back together and come back here when you’re ready.”

“Thank you..” I said to her and she smiled., reassuring me that it would pass.

That night, I went back to my apartment and cried with my back against the door when I decided to book a plane ticket.

To Thailand.

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I did what everyone told me not to do, and that was to book a ticket to a place that I and Suho had visited on each of our birthdays. Suho was a man of plan and he hated spontaneity. I loved that about him because I was a creature of habit and so that was why I stood by the beach with a drink in my hand—the same drink I used to drink and I felt the breeze against my face.

It wasn’t so bad.

Not really.

That was until I felt someone grab my , the gnawing tingly fingers of a middle-aged man groping my skin like it belonged to him. I gasped, turning to splash the drink on his face. The man was drunk and he stank of ‘one shot, fifty baht’ kind of liquor. He advanced to me and for a moment, I forgot that I was there on my own and no one was there to protect me anymore.

His hand grabbed my wrist and I yelped, my arm twisting behind my back when a yell sounded from the side and I saw a male come towards us, a bottle in his hand. With one motion, he had slammed the bottle against the man’s head. The breaking of glass rang through our ears when the newly come hero grabbed my hand.

“You Thai?” he asked in English and I winced, shaking my head when he ducked, the man coming for him. “Korean?” he asked this time in Korean and I nodded, rooted at the same spot as he was forced to wrestle a man twice his side.

He had light brown hair and honey skin, a boyish demeanor that I often would see in younger men. But he rang adventure, the way he smiled each time he was punched made me wonder why it seemed like he enjoyed it.

“You know how to fight?” he blurted out and I shook my head, the male letting out a groan. He grabbed an ice bucket and in one motion, brought it down against the man’s head before jolting to me and his hand landed on mine. “If you don’t, we have to run!”

“What—”

“Run!” he said and before I knew it, I was speeding barefoot across the beach with sand everywhere. The man who was with me did not stop and I felt my lungs burn when I finally collapsed onto the sand, my hair against my face. The adrenaline pumped in my ears and I closed my eyes, the man studying me. He was also out of breath and before I knew it, he had pulled me up.

“Thank you.” I managed to say, the male saluting me with a grin before waving goodbye.

And with that, he had walked away.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I wish I could say it gets easier each day but the thought of waking up still haunted me. My eyes flew open and I went on my day. Went to the same restaurants, the same places Suho had brought me to. I drowned in reminiscing because it was the only thing I knew of until another day had passed and I found myself heading back to the same bar.

Loud disco Thai music echoed in the background and I seated myself by the bar, opting for hard whiskey. On the rocks. I twirled the liquid in my glass as people began to dance and the crowd became crazier and there I was—in the middle of the chaos, staring at the ice that was slowly melting.

“You look like you have the world on your shoulders.” the voice of a man echoed from beside my ear and when I looked up, I saw that it was the man who had saved me the day before. My eyes widened upon recognizing him and he chuckled, taking a seat beside me. “You’re in the Land of Smiles, you should smile.”

Thailand, the Land of Smiles.

He had flowers around his neck a thin shirt with flowers printed on it. His hair flopped over his forehead and he had a lazy smile. Almost like he had just conquered the world and he had nothing to worry about.

“I haven’t been able to smile for a while,” I told him truthfully, a small smile playing on his lips when he placed the drink on the counter, settling closer. “You’re the first Korean I met today.”

“I wish I could say the same,” he replied, shrugging and I saw that he was pretty popular among the locals. “What’s your story?”

“My story?” I asked, frowning. “I don’t have a story.”

“Everyone has a story,” he said, pointing his finger at the man behind me. “That man over there has a 3-million-dollar debt in America so he came to Thailand to marry his Thai wife but he found out that she was cheating on her—”

“Really?”

“But sike—He has a side chick, so he doesn’t care,” the man said and I blinked at the absurdity of the story. “That girl over there is a spy by day and a bartender by night. Her name is Amelia.”

“She doesn’t look like an Amelia,” I told him and he chuckled. “She looks like her name is… Something Thai. Something like Ploy.”

“Her name is Ploy,” he corrected his statement and I turned to him.

“You made all of that up, didn’t you?” I asked and he shrugged, this time nonchalantly. “What’s your story?”

“My story?” he asked, lifting the drink to his lips and sipping the alcohol. “I ran