A/N: This work has been translated from my own original work in Brazilian Portuguese, which is my native language. If you’re a Portuguese speaker, I highly recommend reading the original piece over Spirit Fanfics, O Fim do Inverno, under @Louxurious.

Many things had grown cold under the passage of time – the weather, bearing its cool wind by the sea; the coffee inside the paper cup between Joohyun’s fingers; the skin of Joohyun’s fingers and face, uncovered; and her heart, two years before.
 

Joohyun hated the cold. She hated feeling the sensation snake around her body like icy vines, penetrating her skin with its intoxicating roots until she’d feel her body freeze inside, feeling her skin become taken wholly by frostbite. However, since she had left, Joohyun would always feel like that: the cold had become her inevitable companion, towering above her hauntingly like a shadow. That feeling, established deep in her heart as if pierced by stakes, was a specter of those words that had doomed her heart to be an eternal land of winter.
 

“I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry, Hyun… I’m breaking up with you.”
 

She took a deep breath at the painful remembrance, and felt the cold air flowing up her nostrils, keeping tired eyes on the horizon, on the faraway mountains and on the sea that seemed to stretch infinitely in front of her. Joohyun avoided looking down, to her reflection on the water’s surface – reflections were the most treacherous of elements when it came to that place, serving as a constant reminder of her aloneness, haunted by a whisper of past, constant company.
 

That coffee shop had always been an important place for them, and, because of that, Joohyun had avoided the place like a hand to fire since her lover had left her. It was where they had first confessed to each other, with the overflowing embarrassment of not knowing what to do with such new feelings; where they had held hands uncertainly and noticed, with gasps, how magnetic the touch was, as if Joohyun’s fingers were made to fit between hers; and where they had spent the best new year’s eve of their lives, her arms around Joohyun’s waist as she leant against the railing, losing themselves in the deepness of each other’s gaze as fireworks sprinkled the skies with colorful dots. Those were memories that she loved deeply and held close to her heart, but they seemed to tore wounds inside her chest in piercing pain. They were comfort of the love she once had lived, and throbbing gash that bled in deep, thick scarlet until life began losing its sense to her.
 

That morning, however, Joohyun had woken up to the feeling of missing the way the sea air mixed with the strong scent of coffee, missing the quiet view and the low sounds of the old television inside the coffee shop airing soap operas all day long. The sunset painted the waters in orange glimmers, reflecting the sky’s melancholy every late afternoon; and it was a weekday, so the shop was considerably empty. On the inside, there were only a middle-aged man, two old ladies playing cards and an employee wiping the counter serenely.
 

Joohyun took a sip of the cold coffee. It was awful, just as she remembered – but, this time, she wasn’t there to make the bitter coffee taste a little sweeter; wasn’t there to make her laugh, to let her warm her hands with hers, which were always warm; she wasn’t there to tell her she loved as she always had and that was okay. Joohyun hadn’t visited the coffee shop because it had the best coffee she had ever had, but because she felt she needed to, that day.
 

And as she sipped at the bitter liquid, she looked down liked she promised herself she wouldn’t do. Her eyes widened as she observed a figure’s reflection trembling on the water’s surface, just as tiny as her own figure, but with a much more oval head shape that left tense and shivering at the realization. She felt her stomach churn, but she turned around to face the woman slowly.
 

“Hi, Joohyun,” the woman greeted her, bearing a small smile that did not match those lips Joohyun knew so well.
 

Joohyun blinked a few times with incredulity, observing the figure in front of her with her face paling and her expression terrified, as if she had just seen a ghost. In some type of way, she did – a ghost of her past, haunting her heart relentlessly. She wished that the presence in front of her would be an illusion only, but, at the same time, she wanted nothing but to hug her, to tell her all the things her heart had kept hidden since they broke up. They had never seen each other since that day.
 

“… Seungwan,” was the only thing she could answer, the name murmured lowly between trembling lips, shivering of cold and anxiety. She felt her lips become dry, and the trembling spread through her body like wildfire. Before, she felt like her heart had frozen and dried up inside her chest, weak and unforgiving. Now, she felt like her heart was expanding aggressively nonstop just by the mere sight of her former lover, crushing her lungs and leaving her breathless, pushing her ribcage so hard that Joohyun swore she could hear her heart thumping on her ears like a drum, so heavy was the weight of a vexatious heart.
 

“Didn’t expect to see you here…” Seungwan took a few steps closer to her, moving to lean her arms on the wooden railway where Joohyun had her hands and her coffee cup. “It’s odd… that we both decided to come here, on the very same day. By chance.” Almost like destiny, the women thought, but ultimately decided to keep it to themselves.
 

“I didn’t know you’d come, either…” the answer was low and almost emotionless – Joohyun was holding her every feeling inside her tightly, carrying the weight of a dormant chest for two years. She tried, above all, to conceal the way her voice barely left , unable to move past the lump that seemed to form inside ; tried to ignore the tears that had been denied of being shed for years but now burned in her eyes at the sight of Seungwan, being denied still.
 

“I hope I’m not ruining whatever you wanted to do here,” the younger woman cut through the silence that established itself between them tensely and heavily, pressing her lips t