It’s 5:52AM as Jaehwan wakes up and walks over to where Soyoung is sleeping soundly. He gently shakes her shoulder to wake her up. She doesn’t budge, so he shakes her harder.

“Soyoung wake up.” He says as he continues shaking her. She rolls over and mumbles something but Jaehwan couldn’t make out what she said. He suddenly gets on her bed and starts jumping up and down all the while yelling at the top of his lungs.

“Seyoung! Seyoung! Seyoung wake up! Wake up wake up!” he continues until a pillow is thrown at his face, forcing him to jump off the bed and shake Seyoung again.

“You have to wake up! Hurry hurry!” he says as she rolls over and gives him an annoyed look.

“Do you know what time it is?!” Seyoung asked more annoyed than ever. It’s spring break so she should be able to sleep in. This was the second time Jaehwan has interrupted her sleeping. She rolls back over and on her side and tries to go back to sleep.

“No, you have to get up or we’ll miss it!” he shakes her again.

“Miss what?” she mumbles still half asleep.

“The sunrise.” He says as he starts tugging at her pillows and blanket. Seyoung gives up and lets him pull her up and drag her outside.

“It’s cold out here.” She whines as she walks outside in her pj’s and slippers.

“Come on, it’s suppose to rise at 6:03 and it’s already 5:59!” Jaehwan jumps up and down looking over at the horizon. They stand there together in the chilly morning air waiting for the sun to rise. The sun finally rises and they stand there staring as the sun comes into view.

“This is for sure the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life” Jaehwan says as he admires the sunrise. Seyoung doesn’t say anything as she admires how pretty the sky looked with all the shades of yellow, red, and orange.

“Today’s gonna be a great day! It already started out great!” Jaehwan says as he heads back inside to get ready. Seyoung follows just behind him.

“So what are we gonna do today?” Seyoung asks as she finishes getting ready.

“I don’t know.” Jaehwan says with a smile.

They get their stuff packaged and check out of the motel. They drive for a few hours and admire the scenery.

“Where are we?” Seyoung asks after getting tired of staring at trees.

“I don’t know.” Jaehwan says.

“Okay, that’s a funny joke Jaehwan. But really, where are we?” Seyoung looks at him. Jaehwan just gives her a quick glance before returning his eyes on the road.

“Are you kidding me right now? You don’t know where we are?!” Seyoung yells at him.

“Just calm down okay, we aren’t lost but we don’t know where we are.” He says calmly.

“That doesn’t even make sense, we’re either lost or you know where we are!” Seyoung starts to panic. ‘What if we run out of gas? What if we break down on the side of the road?’ All these scenarios run through her mind when Jaehwan snaps her attention back.

“Look, we’re not lost. There’s a town up there.” He says as they start to pass old houses and small stores.

They drive a bit further and spot a gas station so they pull over to get gas. Seyoung notices a strip mall of several shops and boutiques across the street from the gas station.

“Let’s go there.” She says as she points to the strip mall. Jaehwan looks and laughs.

“You’re such a girl. Of course you’d find the stores.”

“A trip isn’t a trip unless you window shop.” She said matter of factly. Seyoung is excited to finally do something she loves to do, shop.

The strip mall is bigger than she thought. They walk along looking at all the different stores. They enter a bookstore that has books lining all the walls. Seyoung has never seen so many books packed into one room. She walks along looking at the different books. One thing that she does love to do on her free time is to sit down and read a good book. Reading helps her get her mind off studying, school, and stress. Seyoung immediately notices Jaehwan walking over to the comics section. She walks over to where he is and notices a particular book in the kids section. She stops to look at it then picks it slowly. She remembers this book, this used to be her favorite book to read as a child. Jaehwan appears behind her and asks what she was holding. Seyoung jumps a little and puts the book back down.

“Oh, nothing. Just a book I used to read a lot when I was little.” She says as she walks away. Jaehwan looks down at the book. He then picks it up and takes it to the cashier along with his stack of comics. He hides it so Seyoung doesn’t see so he can surprise her later that day. They leave the bookstore and continue window shopping. They pass a boutique with a display of jewelry in the window. Seyoung stops and stares at the necklace in the center of the display. It was a simple necklace but it had a cute charm to it that made it look pretty. The necklace had pearls along the chain with a heart hanging in the center. Seyoung immediately fell in love with the necklace.

“Wow, look at that pretty necklace.” She cooed as she looked at the price.

“$148?! Are they being serious? It’s pretty but I don’t have that kind of money.” She says as she walks away disappointed. Jaehwan follows behind her noticing how much she really liked the necklace.

They finish looking at all the stores and Jaehwan sees an arcade at the very end of the strip mall.

“Look! It’s an arcade! Let’s go and play some games.” He starts pulling Seyoung towards it.

“Ah, I’m tired Jaehwan. You go without me, I’ll just wait in the car.”

“But, it’s more fun if you come with.” Jaehwan pouts at her and gives her puppy dog eyes.

“You think your pouting will work on me?” she narrows her eyes at him. They continue this stare down until Seyoung finally gives up.

“Okay, fine. But only for half an hour and then we leave.” She says in defeat.

“Yay!” Jaehwan says as he skips towards the door.

“I swear, you’re like a 5 year old trapped in a 22 year old body.” Seyoung laughs.

They enter the arcade and there is literally no one inside.

“Wow, look we have the whole place to ourselves.” Jaehwan chimes.

A half an hour passes and Seyoung is kicking Jaehwan’s at a shooting game that Seyoung isn’t too sure what she’s doing, but whatever she’s doing is working because she’s beating Jaehwan by 1000 points. An hour passes and Jaehwan is screaming at Seyoung to stop cheating because he is getting his kicked at a racing game.

“Lee Jaehwan, you really at arcade games.” Seyoung laughs as she turns the wheel and crosses her virtual car past the finish line beating him once again.

“No, you’re just too good at cheating!” Jaehwan protested.

Three hours later and Seyoung can’t breathe because she is laughing so hard at Jaehwan completely failing at a simple pinball game.

“Aish, this machine must be broken or something.” He says in frustration as he hits his knee against the machine.

“Really? Then how did I manage to get 139,823 points on it?” Seyoung teased.

“Shut up, you just got lucky because the machine had a glitch.” He argued back.

Seyoung looks at the clock on the wall and sees it was already 6PM.

“Wow, we’ve been in here over 3 hours.” Seyoung laughed.

“’Only half an hour’ she said.” Jaehwan teased as he repeated what she said earlier. Seyoung playfully hits his arm.

“Come on, let’s go. I’m getting hungry. What do you want to eat?” Seyoung asks.

“I don’t know.” Jaehwan smiles.

“You really like saying that don’t you?” Seyoung laughs. She walks up to the teenager working the front desk.

“Excuse me, is there a motel nearby? We don’t exactly know our way around.” Seyoung politely asks.

“Yeah, there’s one up the road about 2 miles. It’s right next to the pizza shop.” He says without looking up at from his phone.

“Oooo, pizza!” Jaehwan said excitedly.

“Mmm pizza sounds good.”

“Then it’s settled, we’re having pizza!” Jaehwan says as he points his finger dramatically towards the door and walks out. This only caused Seyoung to laugh. ‘Who is this guy?’ she wonders to herself and follows after him.

After buying the pizza and going to the convenience store to buy snacks and drinks, they finally settle in their room. Jaehwan sets the pizza down and stares at the beds.

“What’s wrong?” Seyoung looks at him confused.

“I have an idea.” He says as he walks up to one of the beds and pushes it up against the other bed making one big enormous bed.

“Look! Now we can eat pizza and watch movies tonight.” He smiles his goofy smile.

“Like a slumber party?” Seyoung laughs.

“No, of course not. I don’t go to slumber parties, I’m too manly for that.” Jaehwan laughs too.

They put all their food on the bed and put in a movie. They watched a comedy and a scary movie. Jaehwan laughed so hard during the comedy that he almost choked on his food and screamed a bit too loud during the scary movie.

After the movies finished they cleaned up their food and Seyoung could feel herself get slowly sleepy. She lays down on the bed and closes her eyes.

“Wait, you can’t sleep yet. I have a surprise for you!” Jaehwan said as he ran to his duffle bag and starts looking through it. Seyoung looks at him curiously and sits up.

Jaehwan quickly walks over to her and shows her the book she was looking at in the bookstore. Seyoung just stares at it feeling her stomach start to tighten.

“Why do you have that?” she quietly asks.

“Well I figured I will buy it for you since you said read it a lot I thought we could read it together.” Jaehwan sits down on the bed and opens the book.

“The little prince,” he says as he reads the title. “Long ago in a faraway land, lived a young prince…”

“Stop.” Seyoung suddenly says. Jaehwan stops and looks up to find her with tears in her eyes.

“Seyoung why are you-”

“I’m sorry, I just…” she pauses to wipe her tears away. Jaehwan just stares at her with worry on his face. Seyoung closes her eyes and takes a deep breathe.

“My mom, she got me that book for my 1st birthday. She would read it to me every night before I went to bed. I couldn’t sleep without having it read to me until I was 5. When she died, I couldn’t look at that book again. The pictures and words, they all reminded me of her and how she will never be able to read it to me again. When the doctors told us she was close to going, I read her that story. That was the last time I read it.” Her voice faded to almost a whisper.

“Seyoung I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have done this” Jaehwan says as he sets the book to the side.

“It’s okay, you didn’t know.” She tries to give him a smile.

Jaehwan quickly reached over and pulled Seyoung in a hug. She didn’t resist because his hug was comforting. She felt safe and sound in his broad shoulders and strong arms, she felt warm and wished she could always feel this safe.

When Jaehwan pulled back, he gave Seyoung the biggest smile he could possibly make to make her feel better. Seyoung lays back down on the bed and closes her eyes. It didn’t take long until sleep fell over her.

Seyoung couldn’t tell whether it was a dream or not, but sometime during the night, she felt something warm against her back and arms reach around her waist to hold her close. It felt like a dream, but the touch was too real. Seyoung was too tired to check so she just let her body relax in the warm embrace.

 

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a/n: i'm so sorry this took so long to update. for some reason it took me several days to finish the last part lol
i'm gonna be so glad when school is done so i can write more frequentely. i hope you enjoy this chapter ^^