Days passed by him in an unimaginable speed; with tests, scans and treatments, preparations for the surgery, physically an in his mind. His loved ones came and went; he got an endless supply of coffee and sugar cookies, two babies sitting on his bed, using his legs as mountainous terrain to hand-drive the toy cars that he bought them as christmas gifts and an older sister who kept a jolly face through the day, only to cry in his bathroom at times she thought he was asleep.

Soon, it was new years eve. Eunji came over that evening to remove all the christmas decoration and delivering warm scarves and jackets for him from his sister. Sung Gyu asked her if he was allowed to leave the hospital tonight. He’d have loved that, to go on a date with her, spend the coming of new year with her. But that’s something he couldn’t do with the surgery just two days away.

“No, silly, it’s new years eve!” She said.

And later that night, she got the nurses to dress him warmly, put him on a wheelchair with his oxygen machine and IV drip and wheel him up all the way to the rooftop. It was somewhere close to midnight; fireworks have already started going off in every direction. Eunji had set up a small table for them, a little portable stove for grilling meat and an array of side dishes. The staff set his wheelchair right behind it. It was their own little new year celebration.

Maybe it was because of his sickness, or because he was about to go into a life-changing surgery, maybe it was because he just got her back, his venus, the love of his life, that immediately after Eunji tool his hand and kissed his knuckles, Sung Gyu started to cry.

“Oh! Oh no, oppa, you can’t cry already!”

Sung Gyu shook his head and stared up at the clear sky above them. “No…sorry, I’m just… really thankful”

As a cold rush of wind blew past them, Eunji reached out to cover his vulnerable  throat a little more. He was the weak one now, with a cancer growing in his head, susceptible to die even from a simple cold. And Jung Eunji was her protector. She did a much greater job at it than he could in protecting her.

“I’m thankful too…that I finally found you” She gently caressed his cheek, reaching over the tubes of his cannula. “I have you here now. Nothing else matters”

Eunji deserved better than having to take care of a sick man, but she never said a word about it, as if she was more than glad to just have him again. Grabbing his arm, Eunji slid her fingers through his and laid her head against his shoulder. In a distance, beyond the horizon, the city of seouls had started to lighten up, welcoming the new year.

“How long is it until new year?”

“Hm?” Eunji lifted her sleeve, glancing at her watch. “Twenty minutes, exactly twenty minutes”

“What can we do in twenty minutes?”

Eunji thoughtfully stared ahead as she played with his fingers in her hand. “We could get the barbecue running”

“Oh, almost forgot!” Sung Gyu laughed, proceeding to turn on the stove. For the next few minutes, the two of them concentrated on grilling the meat, cutting it up and feeding each other while they laughed and chatted over the smallest things. These were the kind of moments that Sung Gyu was used to; the easy conversations, lost of smiles and laughter. Sung Gyu and Eunji were always their own people; silence in their presence was comfortable, inside jokes were the common place. They didn’t have to always be intimate to show that they loved each other. It was just there in the simplest things.

“After all of this is over, oppa, what is the first thing you want to do?”

Conversations about his sickness, Sung gyu realised, were getting harder to leave out, and they shouldn’t. Thinking about the afters were so much simpler and gave him home. The after was a time when he wasn’t actively dying. After was a time that he had all the time in the world to love her.

“I haven’t really thought about it yet?” Sung Gyu admitted and glanced at her. “What about you?”

Eunji was quiet for a little while drawing unknown patterns on the back of his hand. There was a certain heaviness in the air. He realised, the afters would always connect to the before. 

“Oppa on that day, before you collapsed, when you left me in the car, I thought about what I wanted to do, and I realised something”

Sung Gyu could recall that day. Although it’s been just about a week, he felt like an eternity had passed since then.

“What was it?” He asked her. 

Eunji pursed her lips, quietly tracing the contours of his hand. “That I wanted to marry you” She admitted in the end. 

Her response left a heavy weight in his heart, something hopeful, something that scared him at the same time. Before their parting happened, the two of them were already planning a future together. Getting themselves an apartment, moving away from the town, from her parents, start their own law firm, their own Jung & Kim. That would have given her enough time to fulfil her own dreams of starting a cafe, and time for Sung Gyu to visit his parents as often as he could. When she mentioned marriage again, all of these feelings were renewed.

But only, there was a massive barricade standing on their way.

“There are stories about people with cancer marrying the people they loved” Sung Gyu told her, speaking his mind out. “They work it out, somehow, Ji. Maybe we could do too”

“Oppa, you’re thinking too far,” She grasped his hand. “After the surgery, it will all get better”

“What if it doesn’t?” There was a lump forming in his throat, tears welling in his eyes again. “What if it comes back or never goes away?” He turned to her and grasped both her hands. “Eunji, what if this is my life now?”

“Then…” She started quietly, her voice trembling, and kissed him on his hand. “Then…we’ll figure it out”

“Do you think…we could do that?”

Eunji sobbed hard, but she wasn’t letting it show that she was crying. 

“Oppa, we spent the whole christmas eve making spontaneous plans to catch a criminal; and it worked out fine, right? We’re a team, you and I. We’re one team”

“One team” He smiled at the notion of it. Sung Gyu and Eunji, together, against the world.

“One team” Eunji reiterated and kissed his hand. “And that’s why I thought of-, Wait”

Sung Gyu gaped at her in confusion. “What?”

“The timings wrong, we have one minute remaining”

Sung Gyu blinked. “To?”

“New year! Oh god, we should start counting!”

Fire crackers were soon exploding in every direction, and in the clear midnight sky, thousands of bursting stars. They could see the han river in a distance, the bridge lightened up in thousands of kaleidoscopic colors. As Sung Gyu held her hand, gazing past the horizon, Eunji started counting down from her phone. When they finally reached the tens, as fireworks intensified, the two of them began counting together.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five…”  Sung Gyu turned to face her so he could clearly see her face, the bursting stars in her eyes, and took both her hands in his. “....Four, three, two, one”

As the clocks struck twelve and the year twenty-twenty four approached them, both Sung Gyu and Eunji spoke in unison.

“Happy new year!”

“Marry me”

Then he paused. For a moment, he thought he wasn’t hearing her right. There was a lot of noise out there with the booming fireworks in the sky, and it was so cold that his ears were beginning to freeze. He thought he was hearing things, running out of her mind.

Until Eunji slid off her chair and crouched down on the ground by his feet.

“Marry me, Sung Gyu oppa…after all this is over, when life gets better again, just marry me”

Sung Gyu’s heart started pounding in his throat. Not for once, in the life of him, did he think-

“Eunji-ah…”

“In fact, let’s not wait until its better, now is good enough for me…” Eunji raised a hand a placed it against the side of his face. “So if you will…”

Sung Gyu nodded, words not coming to him when he wanted them to. He leaned down and brought her into his arms, setting her up in his lap as if he couldn’t get her close enough.

We’ll make it work, somehow. He wanted to tell her, although all he did was breaking into tears. Eunji buried her face in his shoulder and they stayed like that for the longest time; as fireworks burst into millions of stars in the sky, Sung Gyu captured her face in his hand and brought her into a long, blissful kiss. With just his touch, Sung Gyu tried to make one last promise to her.

 I’ll be here.  No matter what happens, I’ll be here,

-Three months later-

“And that would be 65,000 won. Would you pay by card or cash?” The lady in front of her, a familiar face, handed her two fifty thousand notes. They had a couple of regular customers, gaining a few more since the changes they made to the store. This particular lady was one of them.

Eunji opened the cash register and counted out the change. “Your order will be ready in five minutes, please take a seat!”

The lady gave her one brief smile, and started to look around behind the counter. 

“Ma’am, is anything the matter?” Eunji followed the woman’s gaze and thought she was looking at this poster Minki put up the other day. “Oh, is it the cherry blossom meringues? It’s a seasonal special that we introduced this spring-,”

“Where is that young man?” The woman interjected her, clearly not interested in her newly introduced cherry blossom meringues (Which is one of her proudest work) “The one who’s usually working on the counters”

“Oh” Eunji narrowed her eyes. “Is it Minki? He’s right outside” She pointed at her younger brother who was carrying a tray laden of tens of glasses out in the patio. The woman looked behind her and shook her head.

“No, no, not that one. The handsome one”

It took a second for her to put two and two together. She couldn’t help smiling at her, at the way she called him the handsome one when her younger and clearly quite handsome brother was right outside. She figured there was different types of handsome, specially in older women’s eyes. And he was definitely one who belonged to that type.

“Oh him,” She clapped her hands. “That’s my husband. He doesn’t work at the cafe much anymore”

The woman’s face visibly fell. “Why not?”

“He got reinstated in his job!” 

“Oh wow," The lady looked genuinely interested. "Where does he work now?”

It was at this same moment that the bell at their store-front door chimed, and he finally walked in. The way the lady’s eyes widened with envy was hard not to notice. Eunji couldn’t really blame her. If it was her, she would have been the same.

“Hi, Ji” Sung Gyu greeted, coming  around the counter to her side. “Oh, Hello, Missus Jang!”

“Oh, that’s where you got reinstated to” Missus Jang muttered, almost mystified. “To the army”

There were absolutely two things that Eunji was the proudest of and happiest to share with everyone she knew. The journey towards this wasn’t easy; there wasn’t a day that they haven’t cried happy or sad tears, sitting into long nights, watching the starless sky, waiting for the day to pass so things get better again. Waiting for our after. Was what he used to call it. And their after came to them sooner than they imagined.

“Were you looking for me?” Sung Gyu asked Missus Jang as he took off his cap. He was in his ceremonial suit today; the cap, the tie, the medals, all that lot. At the first glance, he looked more like a prince stepping out straight from a fairytale than an army commander. No wonder that Missus Jang stared at him like she’d lost all her words, despite having a husband and a son of her own.

“What are we getting today, Missus Jang, the usual?”

Missus Jang nodded blankly. Sung Gyu took off his jacket, put on his apron, and soon got to work.

“Oppa, be careful with your shirt!” Eunji called after her husband.

“Alright, sweets!” Sung Gyu returned and rolled up his sleeves. 

With a relieved sigh, Eunji leaned against the counter, just watching the love of her life as he worked away. 

It was such a comfort, knowing that the biggest worries she’d have from now on would be the stains on his shirt sleeves. They have truly come a full circle, Sung Gyu and her. They beat a half-a-decade long time apart, a murderous psychopath, they beat cancer together and they were finally here. She could remember him asking her before he was reinstated to his position in the army and was promoted to commander. Ji, what if I had to go on ground missions again?

Eunji hated it, she hated even the thought of him doing it again. But she also knew what she had to do, because he would have done it for her in a heartbeat.

So she told him, without hesitating for a moment.

“I’ll come with you, wherever you go”

~Fin~

Author's note

Hi everyone!

First of all, I'm wishing you a merry Christmas a little early. I hope you would have a joyous time, and a happiest new year as well!

To tell you a bit about this story, it's fun writing this, but it's not one of my proudest works, especially the premise. My goal was to write the assassin trope so I hope you take everything that talks about killing in this story with a grain of salt. I hate killing people. I hate capital punishment. There is no moral dilemma when it comes to human life, whether it's a good person or not. Please note that nothing I have written here about killing are things that I stand by. It's all for the story. Think of it as a dystopian world with things that should never happen in the reality we live in now.

As a piece of fiction, yes, it's a story that I'm proud of. Running for 36,577 words and 106 pages, this novella took me about two weeks to write. What makes me the proudest is that, at the moment, I'm immobile with an ankle injury so it's difficult for me to move around. Because of this, 90% of this story was typed on my phone. I have done that before, but not for so long. Not every challenge comes out a victory, but I'm happy at least this one did.

With that said, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. It's a difficult time to find joy, seeing what's happening on one side of the world where power and greed are taking away thousands of innocent lives. I hope you keep the Palestinian people in your prayers, I strongly believe karma will come full circle and get back at the people who commit the genocide, instigate the genocide, and support the genocide. As one of my characters says in this story, they would have a special place made for them in hell.

I'm ending this story and this year with hopes for brighter, happier days for all of us. I hope for the ending of suffering and I hope for the ending of the occupation.

Readers and my friends, I love you all.

Bless,

Achini