"hey babe where are you?"

"Sorry if I'm bothering you while you're at work but I've been waiting for an hour and our reservation is only for two hours. Let me know when you're coming."

"I know you must be busy. I understand. I'll try to prepare some food at home. Take your time. Be careful. "

Jeongyeon sighs for what seems like a hundredth time for the day as she puts her phone inside her coat's pocket.

She's disappointed.

She had to book a reservation for the famous restaurant that her girlfriend has been raving about three months in advance but her girlfriend wasn't able to make it today.

She calls out to the server and asks for her bill which she pays for and gives the kind server a generous tip for making sure she was comfortable even when she's been waiting at the upscale restaurant only eating the complimentary bread and a salad for almost two hours. She buys an expensive chocolate cake from the place before she leaves so her girlfriend can at least taste something from the restaurant she's been talking about all the time.

She walks out from the warm restaurant to a cold parking lot where her old and crappy black ford crown victoria is looking out of place from all the luxury cars parked next to it. The car door gives an unpleasant squeak when she opens it which makes her sigh once again because she could've used the money she paid for the reservation and the food she ate alone to get her car door fixed and a set of new tires for the winter.

She drives to the nearest supermarket to buy some ingredients for a home cooked meal she wants to prepare at home. She and her girlfriend had been living under the same roof for three years now and everything is going well except that her girlfriend has been doing a lot of overtime shifts these past few months so they can pay for the house they wanted to buy together. Jeongyeon tries her best to put herself in her girlfriend's shoes and understands her. She herself has been working to the bone but a little discomfort now can be rewarding once they've reached their goals together.

She arrives home to a cold and dark apartment. It's almost nine in the evening and she's worried that her girlfriend hasn't eaten dinner yet. She tries to give her a call but she's getting redirected to her voice mail instead.

She decides it's best to not let the frustration get in her head and just cooks a few fancy dishes that she knows of. When she's done, she looks at the clock hanging on a wall of their living room to see that it's almost ten in the evening.

She's tired from her job as a waitress from a local diner and she's going to have to leave for her second job as a pharmacy attendant at a 24-hour drugstore in a few hours. She settles to wait on the couch without turning the lights on. For some reason the darkness gives her comfort and she feels relaxed without any lights on. Every now and then she has to fight off sleep when the lids of her eyes are getting too heavy for her to keep open. She perks up when she hears the familiar sound of jingling keys, a telltale that someone is trying to open their apartment door from the outside.

She's home. Jeongyeon thinks.

She quickly runs towards their fridge and takes out the cake she bought from earlier. With shaking hands she quickly lights up the candle and rushes to stand in the middle of their living room. She puts on a party hat that makes her look silly and she also puts an equally silly looking party horn between her lips, ready to blow once the girl she's about to throw a surprise gets inside the apartment and turns the lights on.

Once the lights are on Jeongyeon blows on the party horn, throws it on the floor after to sing a merry tune of happy birthday. She expects her girlfriend to come at her with tears of joy, after all it's rare for Jeongyeon to do surprises and affectionate gestures. But the complete opposite happened, her girlfriend is just standing there looking at her as if she's grown a second head.

Jeongyeon ignores the gnawing pit in her stomach.

"Hey babe. Happy twenty-fifth birthday! " She puts the chocolate cake on the coffee table next to their couch as she prepares herself to give her girlfriend a kiss on the lips.

"Jeongyeon stop. I'm tired." Her girlfriend grunts, stops Jeongyeon's lips from landing on her cheeks with her palm as she moves away to put her bag inside their bedroom.

Jeongyeon notices the way her girlfriend stopped calling her with cute names. For months she's just Jeongyeon, not babe, not baby, not love of my life. Just Jeongyeon.

She still ignores it.

"Oh. I'm sorry, Nayeon." Jeongyeon follows Nayeon to the room where she sees the girl strip her clothes off like she doesn't care whether Jeongyeon is watching or not.

Jeongyeon notices the small red bruises on Nayeon's neck and chest. She knows what those are but she's sure she's not the one responsible for it. They haven't had in months. Nayeon would still lay next to her in bed but the older girl would always make excuses that she's tired whenever Jeongyeon as much tries to lay a hand on her.

"If... If you don't love me anymore, you'll tell me right?" Jeongyeon almost whispers while standing at the doorway of their bedroom, her eyes looking straight at Nayeon who is now dressed in the pajama set with cute bunny prints that Jeongyeon gave her on their first anniversary as a couple.

"It's not like that. I'm just tired from work Jeong. The hospital shifts are crazy. I appreciate your efforts. I really do. I'm sorry I'll have to eat the cake tomorrow. I need to sleep." Nayeon gets on the bed and faces the other side of the room, completely ignoring Jeongyeon.

Jeongyeon sighs and ignores everything again. She'd rather pretend to be blind to everything that's been happening around her than to lose the woman that she loves.

She closes their bedroom door and sleeps on the couch for a few hours before she has to prepare to leave for work again.

-----

"Hey Jeong, isn't that Nayeon?" Jeongyeon hears her friend say while she's busy munching on a hotdog.

It's the weekend and she's out and helping her friend Momo find some appliances that the girl will be needing for her new apartment. Momo was her coworker from the diner she's working at who recently resigned to go back to her province to take care of her sick mother and their small restaurant.

They are out eating at a food court inside a shopping center when they spot her. Momo is right, it's Nayeon and she's with another girl. The girl is just slightly taller than Nayeon, wears an obviously expensive set of clothes with her long silver hair. She can see from where she's seated that her girlfriend have stars in her eyes as she laughs heartily at what the other girl is saying.