III

“A long time ago, I had my true love: Lee Kikwang. We were happy but then I started to drift away, focusing on my career instead,” Hana said, her soft voice filling the icy, silent room. “One day, we had a shouting match and he walked off.

“He died. After a few months, I…I killed myself. I knew it was my fault. Doojoon resurrected me as an angel-spirit-immortal being thing, to be an Angel of Love. The one catch was that I couldn’t fall in love.

“He resurrected me a punishment – I would never see Kikwang again, and I would live for eternity with that guilt with me.  I would never fall in love, and move on. I was stuck. But that wasn’t even the worst of it.”

“He assigned you to me.”

“Exactly. It was a paradox – my job is to bring soulmates together, make sure they love each other. So when I was assigned to you, I had to bring your soul-mate to you, and make sure she loved you. So as your guardian angel and soul-mate, I was technically with you. But I couldn’t and can’t fall in love. There was nothing else I could do except stay with you – the assignment would be stay unfinished until the day you died.”

“Why didn’t you just kill me or something? Put us both out of our misery?”

“I’m an Angel of Love. I don’t kill people. Besides, I tried to solve it by finding you other girls but you refused to listen. I did warn you.”

“So why did Doojoon resurrect me?”

“Because that’s not all there is to the story,” the older man said. “You see, before Hana, I was the Angel of Love and the boss. And my assignment was Kikwang.”