Soojung. The first time I saw you, the way you tried really hard not to laugh at my stupid English pronunciations, I laughed to myself like an idiot countless times that day. I waited for tomorrow like a dog waiting to be fed. And, after a while, when you really came to me, agreed to be mine, I drew your face in my head countless times a day, each day, and waited like a kid waiting for his ice cream, for our future together.

With that smile you always left behind in me, I flew the skies. I was with the brilliant light of my dreams...

If you love me, Soojung, the way I love you and hurt inside because of how much I love you, if, you do...

Stay with me. Bless the days ahead of me with more and more thoughts, sensations, memories of you.

If you love me...

Don't...

Don't say you have to leave.

Please don't say you have to leave...

When we had both run our course. Remember then? You desperately wanted me to see, that you wanted me to come find you again. And I did as you said, knowing how much courage it must have taken you to tell me. And being so thankful that you were brave enough... I came and found you, and held onto you with all I had.

Soojung, if you love me, if you love someone like me who can't do anything unless you tell me the right thing...

Stay with me. Stay by me... Fill our days ahead with chapters of you and me.

If you love me... Please, Soojung, please... Don't let those fearful words come out of your lips.

That you have to leave me...

Don't...

...

Soojung jumped onto her feet, knocking her knees against the coffee table, throwing the paper coffee cup onto its side. Brown liquid seeped eerily into the wooden table top, the white slip of paper snatched up into Soojung's rigid hands at the very last moment before the milky puddle got to it. Precious seconds, it took for the rigid tension twisting every inch of muscle in her body to shiver back into a mode of function. Letting out a shaking breath, small and ghostly, Soojung grabbed her bag and ran. Taut, flat sandals pounding with a disruptive noise over cracked sidewalks. blurred faces whizzing past her against her grain. She ran, hair flying behind her and lungs burning with fire, she ran into his arms. She took his waist, the wrinkled slip of paper stuck to her fingers the way his lidded eyes and dark smile over thick lips were stuck to her heart. Almost as if she'd just remembered something very important she'd forgotten about, she lined her face with his, peering into his bleary eyes. She drew those thick lips to hers in such as she would draw the vivid past of how much he loved her and she loved him back into the empty tunnel of her chaos. In such moments, when Soojung lost herself in black, fearful emptiness, jongin was always the one she called out to. She had forgotten that. And thankfully, he had left her a precious, glittering trail of the two of them. If she loved him, she would have followed him. So, she had followed him.