"Didn't you know your mother has organised for us to marry?" Mun Na Ra asks him incredulously.

The question leaves Logan speechless as he looks around the bar of the ballroom in terror. He's come to the ball that the Rot foundation has organised to gather intelligence about their surveillance activity. He's been following their criminal practices for the last six months. As he was sitting in the bar, sipping a martini blissfully to not raise any suspicion, a pleasant young lady approached and engaged in conversation with him. What he thought was an innocent flirtation on her part suddenly is revealed to be one of his mother's machinations and ploys. She's on a never-ending quest to find him a wife, as she l, along with everyone else has been kept in the dark about the woman in Logan's past that has ruined and him for other women.

"Why are you surprised?", Na Ra continues. "Now that I'm getting to know you, I maintain we'd be a suitable pair. Socially and financially of course, but we also seem to share an easy temperament, a key to make a marriage work. We're a great match", she affirms as she takes a sip of her champagne, the emerald stones on her necklace swinging as she moves.

"Unless of course there is someone else for you", she says hesitantly. She fears for his answer, and with a good reason. "Is there?"

This gets his attention from the spiralling into the past that his mind is engaging in. Someone else. How could he begin to explain what he felt back then. An image of long brown hair invades his mind, his hand running through the luscious curls as she looks at him lovingly. She's a heavenly sight in the white sheets of his bed. She smiles in her sleep as he kisses her forehead. Her eyes open and he gazes into her soul. He spends all his time with her, stolen moments and quiet touches.

The line of his memories unfolds further. Her thin frame clinging onto him in an embrace that feels like home. Her delicate fingers touching his cheek to make sure he's really alive the last time he saw her. A face of an angel and the mind of a warrior, always fighting to protect the ones she loves. How can he begin to describe that the months he spent with her, illicitly, her absence having left an emptiness in his heart that no woman can try to fill. How can he tell this perfectly fine woman before him that although he's single on paper, his heart will always belong to her.

He needs to end this conversation, focus on his mission and get to the server room, one floor down the main hall. But this exchange has brought his heartbreak in the surface, so he decides to spare the woman her own. 

"Na Ra ssi, the only problem is that I am not looking to marry, and no amount of my parent's insistence will skew me that way. You're a kind, well educated woman and you have better prospects than someone damaged and unavailable like me. Best of luck". 

Although he means it, every word carries the weight of his dejection. He's given up on looking for love in bright places, he only searches his memory and finds it. Pure, consuming love. He had it once, and he let it slip through his fingers.

I was such a fool, he thinks to himself. Not for the first time, he wishes he made her stay.

He excuses himself and heads to the ballroom area, where he can have eyes of every guest. As he's planning his next move, the crowd parts silently and a murmur spreads around the room. Someone special has arrived. He lifts his eyes to the red carpet-covered escalator and freezes.

A few feet away from him, bathed in warm lights that make her jewelry sparkle and her face blush, stands the only woman he ever loved. Her hair is longer, but it's the same person that captured his heart a year ago and left it shattered on his nightstand. She greets people around her and Logan feels a stab on his heart seeing her husband beside her, his hand resting on her waist. 

Su Ryeon inexplicably lifts her head and meets Logan's eyes. And just like that, he's transported in a time when she loved him. Her eyes widen and a shadow of sorrow overtakes them. As if there's no crowd separating them and they are the only two people in this room. 

Time curves and bends in this second. His life with her flushes before him. Their violent meeting, them slowly trusting each other and making plans, her waking up in his arms and brushing kisses on his chest. Yet, it's not just his past he sees, but a future. As he locks eyes with her, there's an image of her tired smile that he kisses while they put their daughter to sleep. He is rubbing her feet on the balcony of their new house and she's looking outside, free for the first time in her life. It's so close he can taste it.

He regains control of himself and forces his legs to move towards her. Every person between them is determined to slow him down, bumping into him and forcing him to look around. He sees the pink satin of her dress through the crowd. He almost runs the last steps towards the staircase but just like that, she's gone. She's disappeared in the second he wasn't looking. Everyone around him is laughing and chatting, while the only thing Logan notices is the empty space where she's supposed to be. He hears the music in the distance while his eyes close.

Blackness engulfs his vision and he lets out a sight. 

All of a sudden, a voice from behind him brings him back. It tugs his heart strings and he doesn't need to turn around to see who it belongs to.

"Logan".

---