[November 2011]

‘What are you talking about?’

‘It’s going to be winter and all…’

He sighed, averting his gaze from my eyes.

‘Okay, but you have to be home before I got back. Want Miss Han to go with you?’ He finally answered after a long pause.

‘No!’ The reflex action of my hand almost chocked him that I loosened my grip onto his tie but before I could remove my hand from his neck, he swiftly caught my fingers, squeezing them tight.

‘I love you so much, Jihyun.’

He’s always like this, blurting out love confessions out of nowhere that I almost got used to it. How I feel when he did? A rush? No, but it made me felt a little embarrassed when he said it while looking straight into my eyes. His piercing gaze, I felt somewhat scared, and nervous.

His bedroom went silent but the rapid beating of my heart. My mind was trying to dig up a word, a sentence, anything unrelated to anything of what he’d said earlier. This’s getting awkward that I felt like burying myself into a deep hole. And this’s how I felt whenever he said that he loved me, how tormenting.  

I twitched when I could feel his fingers running softly through my cheeks down to my bare neck. With my hand clasped tightly in his other free hand, my stomach started to hurt. I kept my eyes locked to his Adam’s apple, not even dared to look into his eyes that who knew what kind of gaze that he’d be showing. After a while that felt like eternity, I could feel his lips pressed softly against my forehead.

That’s like a must in my life now. Every morning, I prepared his working attire, prepared breakfast and fixed his tie. He kissed my forehead and off to his company. Four months and I thought that I could adapt to living a life like this. Living in the same roof with him after all this while, I finally knew that Mr. Nam Woohyun’s the punctual type, hated shrimp or any type of food that smelled like rotten eggs on his plate, wouldn’t wear any scrunched shirts and most importantly, he loved listening to some weird jazzy old English songs in his office at home.

Just like any typical rich guys anywhere but he’s very meticulous in his acts, I could see it whenever he ate. I'd never seen someone so careful and neat in eating. Steak for example; he would cut each piece of meat in exactly eight saws with his knife. Even if it took five to cut, the sound of the other two creaked the plate, hurting my ears. Yeap, I counted since we barely had a talk in the dining table. It’s just the two of us, not much words spoken other than “How’s your day?” or “Is the food yummy?”