The day started with a memory. A heavy, heady memory that made the morning silent, filled with haziness like the effects of wine. It was a memory of a saturday night, spent with old company in a familiar territory. It was a memory of a sky of massive gears illuminated by a soft white glow, of light music in the air, of a conversation in the embrace of shadows. The memory cleared and the day shifted into focus. It was Sunday.

The day.

Myungsoo had messaged her a few days back. Would you like to have lunch with me? The message said. It was him that had held his hands out first, inviting her to jump over the edge of cliff. She had agreed.

Yes. Sunday?

He belatedly realised that he was excited for whatever it was to come. It was a novelty, a feeling he did not remember ever having. Was he supposed to tamp the stranger emotions down? Truthfully, he did not mind it.

His phone rang. Secretary Lee.

“Yes?”

“Myungsoo, are you in, sick? I came down to the office and you were not here. Do you need me to come over. Is your head okay?” Sungyeol spew it out in genuine concern.

“It’s Sunday.” Myungsoo said simply as if they explained many things.

But Sungyeol was confused, because Kim Myungsoo never miss any day of the week of work for anything. Not when his mother was admitted to the hospital, not when his not-so-distant uncle had passed on, not even when he had collapsed - he had came to his office that late night or early morning, Sungyeol was not sure. So, it did not make sense that he had not come down to the office simply because it was Sunday.

“Yes?” Sungyeol prompted him for a more justifiable explanation.

“It’s Sunday.” Myungsoo repeated it for himself. Because he had a date that Sunday. Because he could not bring himself to get out of bed because there was no need to. Because it was Sunday.

Sungyeol was curious but thought maybe he was out of bound to be asking questions about his boss’s personal life, even if they were tentative friends.

They agreed for lunch but there were no definite timing nor did they have an agreed meeting place. Jiyeon thought, this was a weird way of arranging a meet-up. From the outside perspective, this meeting seemed like a hoax or was simply an insincere invitation with no intention of concluding them. It did not really bother her, they would figure it out, come Sunday. Besides, this had always been the way things were between them, maybe it was not ideal but each to their own, Jiyeon liked this oddity.

He entered her establishment a little after eleven. It was too early to be having lunch. It must have been the nerves; she was jittery herself.

Eunjung shot her an understanding look from across the room as Jiyeon carefully pulled off her apron and as her eyes spied the newcomer at the entrance of their cafe. Jiyeon slipped away from the bustling of activities at the counter to meet the jarringly misplaced and unmoving man near the door.

Unassumingly, she took his hand and pulled him out of her cosy shop, without much acknowledgement. When they were out on the streets and thus were on more neutral ground, he gave her a comforting squeeze and she forgot that she was about to let his hand go.

Something settled between them. Understanding, maybe. So he kept his hold. And she let him. There was no promise to take it slow, to give the other space. She understood it then that he was going to take everything she could offer and more and that she should him too. Because he would let her and she realised she would him too.

Walking down the streets in broad daylight, with him by her side, felt too confusing and surreal. Their world revolved in dream-like states swirling out fantasies that Jiyeon had sometimes forgotten that it was real; that he was real.

Suddenly she was curious about many things. About uninteresting things like his address, his job, his past club activities in universities, his favourite songs - if he had one -, his current obsession, his hobbies, his worries, his favourite dishes. She wanted to collect them and compare them with all the things she knew about the boy he used to be. His habits and likes and dislikes: were they still the same or had they been lost then shaped new by time?

She did not know where to begin or if he could understand what she wanted to say. Could he still remember to understand her? All the said and unsaid. She held her breath. Would he start the conversation? But if he did, then she would still have to offer some sort of reply.

Reality, when they landed back to the ground after an exhilarating trek in the air, was scary.

She had taken the plunge over the edge, she realised. So if she crashed at the bottom of the cliff, then that just had to be the way it was, because she was not walking away from this.

Jiyeon gave his hand a gentle squeeze, this time, then she let it go. She curled her fingers, all of them  together except for her index fingers, until their nails met her thumb, spelling the start of the word. D. R. E. A. M.

You dream? What did you see?

Myungsoo could sense her anxiety.

He brought up his hand and repeated her actions. His eyes comforting her, his words soothed her as he spelled without pauses or beats in between, in what Jiyeon could only deduce as well-placed confidence.

“What did I see in my dreams?” He asked, his eyes filled with mirth, as if her worry was ludicrous. He continued, “I can understand it, Jiyeon. I read some books to memorise the alphabet and some simple expressions.”

What he did not tell her though, was the fact that it had been easy, as if he had knew them all before or that he had learnt it again because he had thought it was only appropriate so that they could hold a conversation.

“I dream a lot. Maybe a whole lot more than normal people do. Sometimes, I wonder if those were real dreams or were they a remnants of the past or were they my wishes or hopes. It gets confusing but I learnt to stop trying to figure them out. It was easier that way.” Jiyeon tilted her head and found the way the sun hit his hair, his face made him exceedingly handsome. The light caught his eyes and Jiyeon saw the glassiness in them as he shared something terribly private.

“I understand now that those repeated dreams were probably my runaway memories,” he smiled as he cracked a light joke for the heavy exchange, “Because there was always this girl whose face had always eluded me. In the dark, playing the piano, running in the rain.”

Myungsoo still could not call out the memories in perfect remembrance, he could not remember how they were friends or even why or him running in the rain or why he was playing with her by his side. But at least now, he could fix the puzzle perfectly like those were how his youth looked like, and this was how she looked like, and knowing that the dark room with the piano really existed and it was not because his brain could not conjure a space his head.

‘I don’t know how you feel but I’m here if you need help. I won’t tell you what you felt, or what you thought or why you did certain things back then, but if you want to know anything, just ask me, and I’ll tell you my version of the story.’

He nodded.

“There is a restaurant, down the next street. It was good, I don’t know if you had tried it before.”

Jiyeon smiled silently.

‘I like this. Back then, you don’t even speak this much with me. They’ll be shock to see how talkative you are. Did the nine years of keeping your silence taking its toll on you?’

Jiyeon thought that he looked a tad bit embarrassed but Jiyeon took his hand again and enunciated her words meaningfully. ‘It might have been that I’ve forgotten, but I really like this.’

Myungsoo just smiled. He seemed younger than he had ever looked to her. The conversation, Jiyeon remembered, were like trickling water on the pavement at the start of a rain: halting occasionally but still flowing slowly and surely. Because there were still many things he could not understand and she had to spell them out for him. But it was a start. There were not many occasions in the past where they were out free, without their piano holding and weaving their interaction.

From their table, they could see the streets through the floor to ceiling windows, two figures casting a silhouette against the brightness of the day. Sunlight rushed in, poured through the clear windows to cast shadows on their table as their waiter took their orders. Silence came after that. And after, Jiyeon watched her hands illuminated by the brightness, the small shadows behind the salt and pepper bottles, the white table cloth, Myungsoo’s hand on the other side of the table. One heartbeat. Two. Jiyeon could feel the sun despite the air-conditioning. It was warm, lulling her to sleep on that lazy Sunday afternoon. She wondered if Myungsoo could feel it too.

‘If you could travel the world, where would you go?’

“Travel? I’ve lived in London for almost four years, and I go out sightseeing around, every other weekend. Then I moved to the states and lived there quite a while. Then now I’m in Seoul. So, if I could travel, then I want to go to some place quiet. Not a bustling city. Mongolia is a nice start. I want to ride a horse to the end of a sunset, maybe.”

She smiled at his admittance. It sounded dreamy.

‘That sounds really nice.’

“You? Have you been travelling?”

‘Not really.’ She confessed. “Have only been around the area. Some parts of Japan: Tokyo, Osaka. Hong Kong. Only popular places. I don’t know many places.’

He nodded at her answer.

“Maybe when everything is in place, I might give myself some time for myself to go around, look around,” he looked at her, “With you, if you want.”

‘That sounds good.’

Jiyeon did not know that there were so many things one could talk about. She knew his home addresses: the one he used to have back when he was a student, then the two he had when he was in the states, his parents’ and his current apartment - she did not necessarily remember them all but but it felt nice all the same that he had told her about it, he still liked black, and loved his Kimchi stew and still hated raw food. She knew that he was obsessed with his work, it did not necessarily made him happy but it made him less lonely. Maybe he now knew things about her too.

“Do you remember what we did together last birthday?”

The question stunned Jiyeon. Because the entire talk, he had avoided asking any questions of their past history and Jiyeon thought that he was not ready to hear any answers from her so she had been careful in avoiding those topics entirely for his sake.

‘Yours or mine?’

“Mine.”

‘It was in the hallway. I passed you some notes, telling you to meet me after school. We passed by each other, as if we didn’t know the other and the others were oblivious about. It was our secret, you know.” Myungsoo thought it was a strange retelling. He had not remembered those. He only remembered the yellow notes he saw amidst the mountain of gifts in class. Remembered that he had carefully took it out of his pockets then looked at them fondly. What else was there about it that he had not known?

‘We went out after school. You cannot stand not knowing anything and kept asking just where was I taking you. Just walking around, in the streets. Me pulling you around, and then we ate because I was hungry.” A rosy colour suffused her face in a start of a blush as she recalled something in her head.

Myungsoo smiled, “Your stomach growled?”

‘You remembered that?’

“Yeah.”

‘You had your first ddeokbokki, I think. And I bought you this horrid four-leave clover that looked too much like a flower as the first of my many gifts. I cannot remember if it was green in colour or red. Then you met my friend and we played until it was well past dark.’

“Yours?”

It took her a while to understand what he had meant.  Ah, her birthday. Jiyeon tried to keep the black clouds at bay. There were so many things that happened on her birthday. All the goods and bad. She still could not decide if it was one of her best days or one her worst days of her life.

‘You promised you were going to be back by then. We ran in the rain away from those other kids. We played together for the last time then...then you just left after that phone call. I can’t say much because there were a lot I didn't know.’

He nodded.

There was a slight pause after that, both of them too afraid to take a step forward. This was so close to where everything ended for them, so close to how they had lost everything they had between them. Tentative, Jiyeon was, when skimming the boundaries of this fragile relationship. She did not know how far she could push him.

“What..” she started, “do you remember what happened that night?”

Myungsoo’s eyes flashed at her question. There was pain hidden there, a small concealed memory that Myungsoo was trying to keep from destroying him. There was grief in that static moment, and guilt, and loss. But for a long time, there was silence. Jiyeon was not afraid of the answer that Myungsoo had wanted to give her. But more than that, she was afraid that she was not getting any answer at all. It was a selfish feeling, really. She knew that she should not have prodded into something as painful as the night of the accident, but she had somehow hoped that he would open up, to her at least.

The silence stretched, and Jiyeon was almost sure that he would not answer.

“I was rushing,” Myungsoo finally said, looking down at his hands. “I cannot remember exactly for what. But I was rushing.”

Pause.

“So I left the venue. In a car.”

Another long pause.

“I had wanted to leave alone, but then some-- someone--” he stopped, unable to continue for a long moment. And really, she could hear the fear in his voice, as if he was transported back to that night of the accident. That was it. Jiyeon was sorry that she had ever brought it up. There was no way he was going to answer her. Not soon, not in this state. But Myungsoo’s face was hard, determination set in all of his features, like he was trying to grasp something, hide something.

He continued, “My butler. He went out to stop me. And then he offered to send me. Wherever I wanted to go.”

Jiyeon saw it of course, his reddened eyes, the pool of tears contained at the base of his lids. His face was a storm of emotions, different variations of grief, one moment away from falling apart. And then his expression broke. Jiyeon did not know how to describe a face that shattered. Of control one second, and disarray the other. A thousand boundless words filtered through his face in that one second. It spoke of an all consuming sadness, cunning and intangible, it had made a home in his bones. It spoke of years of darkness, years upon years of mourning, of pain. And suddenly, Jiyeon understood.

There was still a lot that he did not manage to say, she knew. She knew that he still could not talk about his butler, he still lived with guilt of leading him to his death. It was still too painful. She regretted that she asked him the question. But at the same time, she did not think he would answer her at all. But in time, she hoped. In time, she hoped that she could help it get through the memory of that night.

There was only silence after that, one that shifted with the light and shadows that filtered through the windows. And in that moment, however impossible it was, Jiyeon realized. She realized that she loved Myungsoo. It was not realizing that she liked a certain thing that he did. It was not realizing how beautiful he looked. It was a realization that she loved him with all that she could give, with every fibre of her being, knowing that she would want to spend all her time with him. And nothing could have been more scarier than this.

Jiyeon let her thoughts carry away in the soft afternoon sun. There was warmth seeping in towards the windows and suddenly, it did not matter that she was hurt in the past nine years. She tucked her loneliness, her miserable hopes, her refusal to play, deep, deep, within herself because it was irrational. Irrelevant. But it was still there, pulsing, whispering, hurt, hurt, hurt.

“I’m sorry that I hadn’t meet you for so long,” Myungsoo said. The way he phrased it was weird because there was no way that he was able to meet her given his circumstances, but the hurt soothed, warmed her heart. She wanted to cry, too. Did he know that she had been waiting?

Myungsoo looked at her again, his eyes softer, his mouth not really a smile, but close.

“When you close your eyes, what do you see? What do you want your future to look like?”

She dreamt about many things, she dreamt of large windows of her apartment, white curtains billowing in the wind like waves of the sea, she dreamt of a piano in her parlor, black and polished, grand and unapologetic in the attention that it demanded. She dreamt of children running around her legs as she cooked in the kitchen, of serving steaming pots of stew for dinner. She dreamt of working from home, not bothering with things like accounting and logs and money. She dreamt of laughter and a house filled with warmth, of sharing her happiness with a significant other. With Myungsoo.

‘I dream of a happy family.’ She blushed when she signed this, a red warmth gently creeping into her smile. She had wanted to say, ‘I dream of you.’

Myungsoo smiled too, a self-indulgent, knowing smile that almost made her think that he had the same dreams. He paused for a heartbeat.

“On my birthday, I’m not sure if you remembered.” He rubbed the back of his head, a little embarrassed that he was on the other side now, unsure if she had forgotten, “You gave me a box.”

Jiyeon blinked innocently, waiting for Myungsoo to continue. She tried to scour through her memories and realised that she had forgotten what she gave him for his birthday other than that hideous flower(four leaf clover) that she hoped he did not hate so much. What were her thoughts when she gave him that? You’re one in a million? She cringed.

When Myungsoo brought the box out from his pocket and placed it in the middle of the table, Jiyeon had to in a breath. It was a small box, black like his favourite colour, white stars spattered over the cover.

“It was empty when you gave it to me.” Myungsoo said.

She remembered. She remembered with vivid clarity now, the empty box that she gave him, an appalling metaphor for something that she had wanted for them to share, a failed attempt at poetry in her actions. She wanted to slap herself. Why did she ever give an empty box to Myungsoo for his birthday? And to think that her seventeen year old self thought that she was being profound and mysterious.

‘Don’t remind me,’ Jiyeon said, her memories already catching up with her too quickly and embarrassment flooded in her features. Jiyeon buried her face in her hands, peeking at Myungsoo through her fingers.

Myungsoo had a gentle smile, amused. “I was wondering what you were trying to give to me.” He led on, further reducing Jiyeon into a pit of embarrassing thoughts. She shook her head.

“They’re memories, am I right? You were trying to give me memories to treasure on my birthday.” There was a drop in his tone, and Jiyeon removed her hands from her face, clutching them neatly on the edge of the table. The expression Myungsoo had now was a careful, curious expression, and Jiyeon was afraid of unfolding it. “I’m sorry I lost them.”

His voice caught at the back of his throat. It was so soft she would not have heard it. Its emotion carried it to her ears and her heart where it nestled in her in the most afflicting way. He was sorrow and regret, this man in front of her, she wanted to reach out, tell him it was alright, she wanted to his hair and feel his head against her heart and tell him it need not to be this way.

‘I want to help you remember.’

He looked at her, and then towards the box and nudged it. “It’s not empty now.”

She opened the box, unsure of what she was expecting. It was a locket, a single musical note resting snugly in the dark cushion of the box. This was them. This was their whole life surmised into a single shape, fashioned into this single locket. Jiyeon knew that this was not simply a locket. It was of unsaid things, of a promise that he had passed her the box of memories to safeguard and help him rediscover what he had lost. She knew that there was a story to this gesture, a pledge from this man whom she had never thought would mean so much to her.

Myungsoo remained tentative at the other end of the table, his expression a sliver of hope.

So she took the necklace, and accepted it.

Jiyeon realised that even back then, there was no reason for them to know each other, or to become friends or to start caring for one another. They had two very different lives. She was the girl with normal parents and nice quiet little house. A girl who could not speak. She distanced herself from everything and her isolation made her angry and hurt at the world. He was a boy who was fed with a silver spoon, brought up for greatness tailing after his name. He had palaces and castles and horse-carriages and servants waiting for him. A rightful prince, heir. But he was angry too.

Her name was Park Jiyeon.

This had been her story of hope, of acceptance, told over the years. Of how two people, with two very different lives were connected by music. Maybe things went a little wrong in between but that was life. With his hand in hers, Jiyeon knew that this was not the end for them. She realised, fate was a scary thing. But she would see how their life would play out by its hands.

End.

A/N:

Sorry for the delay, I actually had wanted it to be perfect. But there is no perfect ending, there is only this. And I’m okay, with that for now, I think.

In any case, it has been almost 6 years since I started this story, and I did not imagine that as I sat in my parent’s bedroom 6 years ago with my mom’s laptop, crafting the first words to this story, that I would finally finish it after more than half a decade. But it has been an experience for me. Having a long hiatus and rereading it after 3 years made me have different perspectives of the character’s situations, feelings and actions, and although I don’t really recommend you to do such for your ongoing fanfics, I would say that it is a really different experience. Enlightening, as one would say.

I would like to thank all the readers, even if you only read one single chapter (and not reading this author’s note anyway), I want to say that I am eternally grateful for your support, without anyone reading it, what is a story anyway? I want to say thank you to those who commented and subscribed as well throughout the story, I read every single comment, and although I feel that my writing is never good enough, your belief in me and my story boosted me to never stop writing, no matter how slow the progress is.

I’m sorry I have never been a good writer, especially in updates, but if there are people who are still here reading after the long hiatus that I have, I want to say that I salute you. If you just recently read this, thank you very much, I appreciate all of you.

Until next time,

Faith.