Time passed, months passed, since that day of his party and perhaps it could be said that things fell into a relatively calm pace. If I were to be completely honest, it did kind of feel like we were an actual couple. We could now freely go out in public and do everything that we pleased. It was strange at first to have Jinyoung by my side all of the time, but I quickly got used to it and actually enjoyed having him there. I liked knowing that he was beside me, silently protecting me, watching over me, loving me. It was like I got some silent satisfaction over the fact that I knew that there was someone who loved me out in the world, someone who always looked out for my well-being.

          Jinyoung had moved back in with his parents and I was still staying in my small room but it seemed like he had moved in with me. There were times when he spent the night but we would never get any sleep on those days. We should just lie next to each other and stare at the ceiling. We would hold hands and I surprisingly felt very content and very happy. I didn’t want to change those moments for the world and I certainly didn’t want the time to keep going. But there was nothing we could change about that.

          I probably didn’t understand it at first. Up until that moment I had never really understood what being happy entailed. Of course I thought I was happy with my life, or rather, I just understood my life for what it was. But after spending time with Jinyoung, him doing things for me, me doing things for him, the mutual agreement and understanding we had, I learned what it meant to be happy, what it meant to feel it and to enjoy it. To kind of live in the moment without anyone interfering.

          But despite me learning all about that, it definitely didn’t feel like I had known him for a year. It didn’t feel that long. To me, it felt just like yesterday. Okay, that’s a lie, it felt longer than a day, but a year? I was surprised when he told me that. How had my life been capable of changing that much within the span of a year? I had just been living my same old way for the past twenty years, I went through the same old schedule with the same old people. I lived doing things for myself and because I, myself, wanted to do them. There was no one to influence me and I was independent of my surroundings. Then he showed up and changed it all.

          I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing, it’s a good thing, a very good thing. However, it was still something of a shock to me. Everything changed in a year. There was no other way to put it. I was simply just not the same Seo Minyoung that I was a year ago.

          “What are you smiling for?” he asked as he slowly approached me. I was standing against the wall of the building where my apartment was located. I was so lost in my memories that I hadn’t even seen him come up, let alone probably hear him the first time he attempted to talk to me.

          “Nothing,” I said shaking my head. Even though it had been a year, there were still some things that I would be nervous or embarrassed about, such as revealing my inner thoughts to him. Honestly, it was probably because I’m not used to it, still not used to it, and probably never would be. I never expressed my inner thoughts to anyone before and while sure, I knew that there were some moments I did, sometimes things would be too embarrassing. That’s why I wrote it in a letter for him.

I was planning on giving him the letter later, as the last thing of the day because I didn’t want to be there when he read it. If that happened I would have probably wanted to run and hide somewhere where he wouldn’t be able to find me. I might’ve been too embarrassed to ever face him again but the words that he once said to me about it being easier to write letters to express yourself always stayed with me. He was right, I felt better, perhaps freer after I wrote the letter to my mother. So then I thought why not write a letter for him? I had always known that I was clumsy when it came to speaking but it always seemed like, after a little inspiration, writing came just a tad bit easier to do.

          “Alright then,” he said suspiciously eyeing me but not asking any other questions. “I have somewhere I want to go today.”

          “You do, do you? This is a first, isn’t it?” I wondered. Normally he asked me where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to eat and most of the time, I’d let him choose anyway. I didn’t really mind where we went. I found that I just liked being with him. The destination, the place, what we did, it all didn’t matter.

          We slowly walked hand and hand down the street, making our way through the shopping district, poking around at some stores while trying fun things on or just pointing out things that we thought were silly. In that moment we were just two young adults spending time with one another, having fun while being on a date. We didn’t think about what the outside world would hold and we didn’t dwell much in the past of what had happened or what may happen in the future.

          After some time we passed through the shopping district and made our way into a neighborhood, one that I had never seen before. “Oppa, where are we?” I wondered taking a look around. There were kids running and adults laughing as they watched them on the playground. There were also a couple of dogs on leashes that looked happy to see anyone that walked remotely close to them. There were families and couples all around us having fun in the slightly cold weather, but attempting to get as much use out of it before the weather really took a turn for the worse.

          “Follow me,” he said, a mischievous smile upon his face as he led me to one distinct apartment building. By the way he acted, knowing exactly where it was and which way to go, he had been there more than once. Just for what purpose, I didn’t know.

          We were greeted by Shinwoo at the door. He had on a big smile and I was sure he had been expecting our arrival. “You’re finally here,” he said once he laid eyes on us.

          “Sorry,” Jinyoung chuckled as he made his way inside. “We got held up a bit.”

          “You can come in, Minyoung,” he said gesturing for me to follow Jinyoung.

          “Thanks,” I softly said as I scooted past him.

          “Well, everything is set up,” Shinwoo said grabbing his jacket from the closet in the hallway. “I’ll be seeing you guys later. Jinyoung, you okay?” was the last thing he said and before I could even get a word in, Shinwoo left, closing the door behind him.

          “What was…” I began to ask. I turned to look at Jinyoung faking a smile. I had been with him long enough to know the difference between a genuine smile and a fake one and the one he was giving was definitely fake. “Oppa, are you okay?”

          “I’m okay,” he said with a smile but it sounded like he had winced a little.

          “Are you sure you’re okay?”

          “He’s a good man, Shinwoo. That’d probably be one guy I wouldn’t mind looking after you as well,” he said immediately changing the subject.

          “What?” I asked slightly confused by the statement. I had wanted to ask about his condition more, worried about him, but Jinyoung didn’t give me the opportunity to. Instead he led me to the living room and it was like nothing had happened to him.

          But that wasn’t the first time that I had seen that expression before. It always seemed like he tried to hide it from me and whenever I asked, or attempted to, he would always change the subject to something else, never giving me a proper explanation or an opportunity even to ask. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I was extremely worried about him. I knew that his approval for release from the hospital was approved but that didn’t mean that we were in the safe zone.

          “Anyway, this is Shinwoo’s apartment. He’s lending it to me for a little bit for us to use, mostly because his equipment is here,” Jinyoung said as if he were giving me a tour of the apartment.

          “Equipment?”

          “He’s a producer. He’s done some things, but he has all of the equipment to make songs and record here. He let me use it recently and he’s letting me use it now. I’ll be right back.”

          Before I could even form a question Jinyoung dashed away to somewhere. I sat down on the couch in the living room and admired the space I was in. It really was a nice apartment. I had never been curious about what the other guys did with their lives, I barely saw them anyway, but upon hearing that Shinwoo was a producer, I found myself kind of curious. I always wondered what exactly that entailed or if it were a lot of work. I suddenly had a lot of questions.

          But I was curious why Jinyoung wanted to use his equipment. Why did he need to use what Shinwoo had in his house? I did know that Jinyoung played the guitar. I’ve seen him play it and he’s played it for me before. Yet I wondered if Jinyoung was actually trying to make a song. If he was trying to compose something. That would be the only logical thing that I could come up with. After all, he had once said that songs are like the letters of musicians, or something like it.

          Jinyoung quickly came back from wherever he was and popped a DVD into the television before he came and sat down beside me. “Minyoung,” he said turning to me, “remember that song that I played for you before? I played it on the guitar to try and help you find inspiration for the letter to your mother?”

          “I do,” I said nodding my head and looking at the television. I slightly remembered it. I remembered him doing it and perhaps some of the melody, but I couldn’t remember it entirely and I kind of felt bad about that.

          “Well, this is the finished version,” he said with a sigh of relief.

          “Finished version?”

          “I enlisted Shinwoo’s help and went and made an actual song of it. I wanted to give it to you, I wanted you to remember the song. Rather, I wanted to be able to give you some more inspiration. That is, if you ever needed it in the future. You can use it for times that I’m not there.”

          His word choice seemed strange but I didn’t want to question it because he seemed in a good mood; he seemed excited that I was going to be listening to something that he made for me. I was excited about it, too, I wanted to hear how it turned out, but his words just struck me as strange. However, I attempted to push the thoughts out of my mind and to only concentrate, for the time being, on what was in front of me.

          “I call this song ‘Wait.’ It’s a song that I made the first time I ever saw you,” Jinyoung explained as he pressed play on the remote. Jinyoung appeared on the television in the pre-recorded video and he began to play the soft and gentle piano before he started singing.

          I concentrated on the video and the song, not that there was much happening with the video. Still, I enjoyed the song. It was a story of a guy wanting to see girl he saw before again and I thought back to the first time I met Jinyoung.

          I thought he was annoying, honestly. I thought he was weird and I wondered why it felt as though he were only targeting me. It seemed like he would show up everywhere I went and I would run into him when I least expected it. I didn’t know or understand back then, but in a way, I was glad that he did. I was glad that he came into the convenience store and talked to me that first time. Even though I didn’t really remember the other times we supposedly talked, I remember the time he told me to cheer up. That’s mostly because I thought it was strange that some stranger was telling me to cheer up, but who would have known that we would have come this far?

          The song came to an end and I turned to look at Jinyoung with that goofy gummy smile on his face. “You made that…for me?” I asked.

          “Who else would I make it for?” he joked. “But yes. You just looked…sad, and I wanted you to know that you had someone out there who was willing to be a friend, your shoulder to lean and rely on.”

          “But you had no idea if we would even talk.”

          “I talked to you while you were at work, but you mostly ignored me. Still, I was planning on just writing the song and handing it over to you one day without a word.” Jinyoung shrugged his shoulders. “But now, instead, I get to play it for you and watch your reaction.”

          “Well I loved it, thank you,” I said as I leaned over to hug him. “It was a wonderful song.”

          “I also have something else for you.” Jinyoung went into his pocket and pulled out a small box. “It’s to celebrate your birthday, and Christmas, and even our one year, I guess,” he said with a chuckle. “Basically anything and everything that I had missed during my hospital stint.”

          “I don’t need anything.”

          “I wanted to get you something. What kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t?”

          “I don’t need things from my boyfriend. Just you being here is good enough,” I muttered under my breath.

          If Jinyoung had actually heard what I said, he didn’t show any sign of it. He didn’t make fun of me or anything else. Instead, he just swept it under the rug. “Well…do you want to open it?” he asked.

          I gently took the box from him and slowly opened it to find a ring. It wasn’t overly fancy and had just the right amount of modesty coupled with elegancy. It was beautiful, though. Even me, knowing that I was never one for jewelry, knew that I was in love with the ring.

          “I thought…you could wear it as a necklace, you know? It’s just…I just want you to know that I’m always going to be there for you, no matter what. Just like I wanted to express with the song. There’s always going to be someone who wants to be there for you.” I hugged Jinyoung again and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “Here, let me help you put it on.”

          I turned around so he could put the necklace on and still admired it. I could barely take my eyes off of it, really. It made my letter to him seem incomparable. “Um…I did do something for you,” I slowly said as I reached into my purse to pull out the carefully concealed letter. “But you have to promise me that you’ll wait until later.”

          “Later?”

          I pulled it out and showed it to him. “You can’t read this until later, when you get home.”

          He took the letter from me with a smile. “I promise. Ah, here,” he said standing up and going over to the television. “The DVD is yours. You can listen to it whenever you want, you could put it on replay and I could sing you to sleep…or maybe actually sing you to sleep.” I smiled at his attempt at a joke. “Anyway, I’m going to go get some drinks. Shinwoo won’t be back for a while.”

          While he went to the kitchen, I kept admiring the ring that was hanging around my neck. It still baffled me how Jinyoung could do something like that, something so thoughtful and unexpected. I was surprised and extremely touched at the gesture, I was also definitely happy.

          Yet happiness could only last for so long as I heard a thump and something shattering on the ground in the kitchen. I quickly scrambled off of my feet and made it there as fast as I could to find Jinyoung on the ground, the remnants of a dish around him.

          I approached him with caution, as to not get cut by the shards of glass, and attempted to wake him. “Oppa? Oppa?” He didn’t move and I hurriedly tried to find my phone to call for an ambulance and then call Shinwoo.

          “Minyoung?” he asked, answering on the second ring.

          “Oppa, you have to come back, you have to—I just…Jinyoung-oppa…I…” I tried to say something coherent but words were failing me in that moment.

          “I’m coming,” he said as though he understood all that he needed to and then the line went dead.