Snowing, along the Seine

He took small measured steps, putting one foot in front of the other with some effort. He wasn’t used to taking leisurely walks to enjoy the scenery. No, in recent years, his steps had been hurried, his long legs taking him from venue to venue, schedule to schedule.

He let his mind wander, trying to remember the last time he could actually sit down and rest his feet, but realized that there was no recollection in recent memory.

And letting his thoughts flow, one after another; that was another luxury he seldom enjoyed nowadays. He came to a sudden stop, breathing in deeply and suddenly becoming conscious of the people around him.

Pedestrians, drivers, and even cyclists in this weather.

The cold air whipped his cheeks, and instinctively, he drew his thick wool coat closer to his body and rubbed his hands together before stuffing them back into his coat pockets.

It was December in Paris, and Christmas was in the air. Earlier that day, he’d taken a stroll down the Champs-Elysées and marveled at the festive markets. He’d enjoyed himself, despite not really understanding the rapid French that rolled off the stallholders’ tongues, presumably enticing him to buy a gift or two.

Snow had not yet fallen, but as he chanced a glance to the sky, it seemed imminent. A small sigh escaped him as he thought: she would have loved being here now.

As he continued walking along le rive gauche, he wasn’t quite sure why he was here in the first place.

It had been a last minute decision, made on the spur of the moment when one of the other members had asked how he was spending the precious few days of vacation they’d been granted for the upcoming holiday season.

He’d answered “in Paris” without first consciously processing the thought in his brain, yet when he realized what he’d said, there was a strange determination to actually carry it through.

The thought of spending Christmas in Paris had been a subconscious desire ever since she had mentioned it. He allowed his lips to curl into a soft smile, as he remembered how she’d described the weather, the lights, and the people. Her words, so eloquent and poignantly descriptive, had stirred a deep yearning within him to experience it for himself.

He wasn’t sure just when her words started having such an effect on him. When they’d first met a little over a year ago, it wasn’t her words that caught his attention. It wasn’t even that little black dress she’d be wearing, or the smile that seemed to light up her entire face when she acknowledged him in greeting as their mutual friend made the introductions.

But he soon learned that her words were something he looked forward to every day.

They became friends after that first meeting. It started as dinner with their mutual friends, and then he’d invited her to one of Super Junior’s performances, after which he had introduced her to his irascible band mates while she laughed at the silly antics they performed in the name of fan service.

When she left Korea to go home, they kept in touch. There was the occasional text message to inquire about his wellbeing. Once in a while, he would open his email inbox to find a rare letter she’d written while bored at work.

When that happened, he would growl in frustration at the Google translator, because it garbled her English words and the Korean translation would make no sense to him. But it spurned a determination in him to brush up on his English; he always wanted to be proficient in that language anyway, this just gave him a greater motivation.

As his command of the language improved, her words took on a different significance. He began to appreciate her flowery terms and her vivid descriptions. Above all, he realized that if he read between the lines, it was the words she left unsaid that spoke the most volumes to him.

When he asked her what her ideal Christmas would be, and she had described the beauty of winter in Paris in her usual verbose prose, he’d sensed how special the place was to her. He knew she spent two years in Paris as a student, but he never knew how deep her affection for the city ran.

She also confessed, almost as an afterthought, that she had never actually spent Christmas in Paris. Christmas, she’d written, was a time for family and she would never fathom spending such an important holiday away from the people she loved most.

He supposed he was here in her stead; he was experiencing what she desperately longed to experience. But as he approached the Pont Alexander Bridge, the magnificent gold statues rising up before him, he admitted that he’d made a mistake coming here.

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the relative quiet he had here, a welcome respite against the noisy fan girls he was more accustomed to.

It was because she wasn’t there with him.

If he was honest to himself, he knew that he had bought that plane ticket on impulse with the underlying hope that she might be here, in Paris. That by some chance or divine intervention, she would be taking in the same sights as he.

He had not seen her since the day she left, and had not yet the courage to tell her how his feelings for her were slowly, but surely, changing. He’d inferred, from some of her veiled messages, that a romantic relationship was something she was not interested in – not with him, a public figure, at least.

In coming here, he had secretly hoped – and decided – that if fate smiled upon him and gifted him with her presence here, he would grasp the opportunity to confess and tell her just how he really felt.

His reverie was broken as he felt a cold flutter touch his cheek. Lifting his hand, he realized that it was a snowflake, now rapidly melting into a small drop of water under the warmth of his hands.

As he looked around him, awestruck by the snow that was just beginning to fall gently, a lone figure on the Bridge caught his eye.

It couldn’t be… could it?