"Shin Hye eodi?" Yong Hwa asked Jung Shin as he got back inside the sojubang.

"Hyung, she stormed off," was Jung Shin's worried confession.

Jung Shin and the other guys looked at their hyung go, and they started to worry. Jin Yi and CL looked at each other, then at the door, where Shin Hye exited.

"Shin Hye-ssi must have heard something for her to run away like that," Jin Yi commented.

****

Yong Hwa presumed that Shin Hye might have used her car to get to the sojubang, but her car was not there. He picked up his phone and frantically dialed her number, waiting for her to pickup, but it looked like she had turned off her phone.

"Where is she?" he asked as he worriedly run to find her.

If Shin Hye ran away, and if Jung Shin and the others had a worried face, it might mean that Shin Hye had listened to the conversation. His phone rang, and on the screen registered Jong Hyun's number.

"Mianhada, Hyung," Jong Hyun said over the other line. "I think I gave her a mental message to follow you..."

Yong Hwa felt the regret of the other guy's voice over the phone, and there was no use of berating him now.

"Gwaenchanhta, gwaenchanhta," Yong Hwa puffed. "Maybe she had heard the conversation."

"You bet," Jong Hyun replied in regret.

Both guys hung up, and Yong Hwa ran all over to the flower shop. When he got there, he saw the other employee who was there during the time he brought flowers at the shop.

"Jeogiyo, did Shin Hye-ssi drop by?"

"Anio," the worker said. "She left because she said she'll be going to the sojubang."

"Algesseoyo," Yong Hwa said, nodding.

Then, he darted out of the store. He ran in every places he knew, hoping to catch up with her. He ran back to the sojubang to get his car, and he drove off to his restaurant. His employees said that Shin Hye did not drop by either.

"The greenhouse," he thought.

He drove to the building, only to find out from Eun Gi that Shin Hye left some hours ago.

"Where could she be?" he asked himself in great worry.

As he drove back to Hongdae, his phone rang, and he picked up the Bluetooth headset to answer the call.

"Eomma?"

"Yong Hwa-ya, eotteohke?" Eomma angrily answered over the next line. "Why is Yoo Ara here at my house?"

"Yoo Ara?" was Yong Hwa's confused answer.

He knew the fact that Ara often stalked him at home during college, and his parents never liked her at all.

"She is turning the house upside down, and she is threatening to storm to your room!"

Yong Hwa thanked his eomma for the information, and he drove faster to get home.

****

Ara was meddling with Yong Hwa's stuff that Eomma had to scold her. Her husband and her sons were out of the house, and she found it a great insult to be infiltrated with a spoiled brat.

"Stop that, I tell you! Stop it this instant!" Eomma commanded.

"Shirheo!" Ara answered rudely, much to Mama Jung's shock.

Ara was making the room inhabitable for human life by opening all cupboards and cabinets to find out about Yong Hwa's first love whom he had never forgotten.

"I will look for her, you'll see," she muttered. "I will seek her first, and crush her life! I will steal you away from her."

Yong Hwa got inside the room just in time to stop her nonsense.

"What the heck are you doing?"

Ara got hold of the planner which held his activities last year, and Yong Hwa dashed to retrieve it from her. The two of them struggled, and Mama Jung dashed to assist her son. But Ara kicked Yong Hwa and stole the planner from him.

"If something important is hidden inside, then I guess I have the right to get to it first," Ara threatened.

"Hajima!" Yong Hwa screamed.

Ara opened the planner and saw the picture of a little girl tucked into the plastic jacket. She watched in horror as she took the picture out of the planner. Yong Hwa, who got pale, stared at her in pain and anger. Even Mama Jung stared at her son in disbelief, for he had not thrown away the picture.

"What is this?" Ara asked, begging for an answer.

"Why do you still have that?" Eomma asked Yong Hwa angrily.

"Eomma..." Yong Hwa said as he looked at his mother for understanding. "I..."

"Tell me, what is this?" Ara asked again.

"What is it to you?" he asked in a manner which is similar to a shout.

"I lost this picture when I was five!" was Ara's shocking revelation.

The confession slapped Yong Hwa and his eomeonim hard. Say what?

"I lost this picture when I was five," Ara revealed in tears. "I had been looking for this that afternoon while waiting for my eonni... I remember... I remember.... My teacher told us to bring our best picture in class.... and... and I lost it... And you... you had it? You kept it? Huh, Oppa?"

Yong Hwa turned pale, and he suddenly felt cold. He lost his footing, and leaned on the wall. The truth suddenly got to him.

"The girl... the girl that I hated the most...." he mumbled as he looked at Ara. "Is the girl I had been loving secretly...all my life..."

The revelation was more than enough to drive him mad. He did not understand why it has to be Ara. And he could not even explain to her, out of shock, why he had her picture in the first place.

"Oppa!... Oppa!" Ara rushed to him in tears as she hugged him. "Oppa.... Oppa!!!! Saranghae, Oppa!!!!"

Mama Jung was confused, but, more of, angry.

"Get away from my son!" she ordered.

The event got Yong Hwa even more confused, as if Fate had played tricks on him.

"Oppa loves me... Oppa loves me...," Ara gushed in happiness.

The picture was their link to each other, but Yong Hwa was still bothered about it.

"Ani... ani...." he mumbled.

Then, his mind took over, and the struggle in his heart ended. The love in his heart for a long-time lover suddenly changed into rage because he still loathed Ara deep down to the bones. The great love he had felt for all those years suddenly faded, letting the emotion of hate fill his heart. He looked down at the girl who claimed to have lost the picture that he was keeping for decades.

"Get out!" Yong Hwa shouted as he pushed her.

"O...Oppa!" was Ara's startled complaint. "But... but you said you love me..."

"I did not say that I love you," Yong Hwa explained. "I loved the girl in the picture. I had been in love with her for so long. But when you admitted that the girl in the picture is you, I suddenly lost all that love for that girl."

Ara released her arms from him and cried.

"So... so you fell out of love for the girl in this photo just because it is me?" she asked in anger. "What if that girl in the picture is Shin Hye? Will you love her?"

Yong Hwa did not want to admit to Ara that he loved Shin Hye because he knew of what Ara will do.

"I have never entertained that thought," Yong Hwa said. "That face is not hers."

Ara stood up and looked at him spitefully.

"I wish you have never kept my picture," she spat the words at him before going away.

Mama Jung just let the girl walk away, and she knelt in front of her son, who was sobbing hard. She knew that he was being hardheaded, but there was no way of telling it to his face.

"Eomma..... mianhamnida....mianhamnida...." Yong Hwa cried in regret.

Eomma wrapped her arms around her son and patted his shoulder. Even she wept and was heartbroken for her son.

"Nae adeul... uljima...stop crying..." she hushed him sweetly and tenderly. "If only you had listened to Eomma...."

Yong Hwa, a grown man, cried out like a little kid who just lost a precious toy.

*****

Ara drove to the mountains to shred her emotions to pieces. She was not a smoker, but she always kept with her a lighter which she often used in times when she felt like it. As she looked at the picture she took from Yong Hwa, her heart suddenly got from longing to anger.

"I might have missed this picture, but seeing this makes me angry," she thought as her hands shook. "This picture will forever remind me of Yong Hwa-seonbae, the fact that he loved me only in his imagination, and the fact that he never loved me at all..."

She burned the picture, and after the last piece was about to burn, she flung it away. And, with all her energy, she shouted out her frustrations, pain, and anger as loud as she could.

Ara was looking for Yong Hwa's secret love to crush her life, but it turned out that she was crushing her own life after she had sought herself.

~~~~