meet me halfway
meet me halfway
jr./suzy, woohyun/chorong
3352 w, g
a/n: a belated birthday gift for se0ulmate and also belated anniversary gift for eternal_hopes. I hope you guys cry. if it's confusing feel free to ask me to explain!
“You’re out of milk!” Jinyoung yells from the kitchen. “Again,” he later adds quietly, sighing as he searches for a sign of life in the refrigerator. There’s a loaf of bread that he bought last week, a bag of frozen dumplings almost two months past the expiration date, funny smelling Chinese takeout leftovers and two eggs. After much consideration, he takes the eggs and bread, telling himself that food gets preserved longer refrigerated so fungi wouldn’t grow on the bread yet, would they? He checks the bread. Still clean.
Suzy comes out from her room just after he places a pan on the stove. “Sorry, I forgot to buy it,” she says easily, taking a seat at the dining table facing him. Her hair is still wet, and a there’s a towel hanging around her shoulders as she sits hugging her knees. She doesn’t even look that apologetic, only sleepy. Jinyoung returns his attention to the pan and starts filling it with the egg-dipped bread slices.
“What do you even eat, Suzy?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I just order in, or simply don’t eat.
“Suzy-”
“Yes, I know. It’s not healthy. I should watch what I eat and not skip meals. You said it too many times already I already have it all memorized.”
Yet you never listened, he thinks. Doesn’t say. She’s looking at him with a playful smile. He flips the breads, revealing the perfect golden brown side.
“Did you add butter?” Suzy asks.
“You don’t have it.”
“Sugar, at least?”
“Don’t have it either.”
“Hmm. I better do grocery shopping today.”
“Suzy.”
“What?”
Jinyoung stares at her, who stares back at him. He doesn’t know if she’s simply feigning ignorance or else. She’s good at that. Had him fooled several times. His friends told him she’s got him under her spell, and he told them off. He didn’t believe them before, but maybe they’re right after all. Again, he sighs, turns off the stove and transfers the bread slices to a plate before setting it down on the table in front of her. “You have an audition later,” he finally says. He doesn’t want to get fooled again.
“Right,” she nods, taking a large bite of his not-quite French toast, then speaks with her mouth full. “I’ll do it after the audition, then,”
“Are you prepared?” He raises his brows.
She looks at him again. Droplets from her hair are still dripping onto the table. “Don’t worry about me, Jinyoung.”
How can he not? This is the third audition he’s lined up for her, only possible after begging the seniors he hardly contacts on normal occasions. She didn’t show up for the first one, and came dressed all too casually on top of being late for the second. If she messes up this one as well, Jinyoung can’t help her anymore. He doesn’t even know that many people to begin with, not enough to pull strings to him, much less for her.
Suzy bites into her second slice of the toast, and he’s honestly relieved that she actually eats well. Just a month ago, she struggled to finish even half a bowl of rice. He pushes the plate slightly further towards her. There are five slices in total. She frowns at him. “You’re not eating?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, I ate.” A lie, but that doesn’t matter. He can just drop by a convenience store on his way back later and grab a triangle kimbab or something.
But then she drops her bread onto the plate and scowls, pushing the plate aside. “Not eating if you’re not,” she tells. Sometimes Suzy likes being difficult and it’s impossible to reason with her if she is, which is why most people give up on her too quickly. He’s watched so many people walk in and out of her life.
“I made these for you,” he replies.
“And I want you to have some.”
They are back at their staring game. They’ve been doing it a lot lately. Neither of them is the type to raise their voice and argue verbally, so this is how they have fights.
After a moment, Jinyoung, with his shoulders dropped, takes the half eaten slice she dropped and shoves the whole thing into his mouth. “Satisfied?” he asks, and her scowl turns upside down in a blink of eye. Suzy, despite how difficult she can be, is not that hard to please.
He watches her eat for a while more before picking up his jacket on the couch. He came here straight from work, almost every day depending on his shift and mood. Somehow, he feels compelled to check on her regularly and make sure she’s eating even though it’s not really his job. He has better things to do, honestly, like looking for a real job. Working at a fast food joint which exposes his fingers to all sorts of injuries after graduating because he can’t score a place in any orchestral group is certainly not what he envisioned for himself, but at least he can get by. Jongin plays piano for kids’ ballet class and whines about it every day.
Suzy looks at him. “Are you leaving already?”
“I have work later. Need to sleep.”
“You can just sleep here.”
Jinyoung freezes for a second halfway through his right sleeve. “It’s okay,” he mumbles in return. “I’ll just go home.”
She keeps her stare at him in silence for a minute longer, then drops her eyes. “Okay,” she murmurs back.
He glances at her once more. Her hair is starting to dry, and the tiny droplets on the table have almost completely evaporated. “Good luck for your audition,” he offers, and she looks up again with a small smile.
“Thank you.”
He doesn’t say another word, doesn’t walk over in her direction to give her a kiss on the cheek or on the top of her head, not on the lips either. He’s not entitled to do any of that because it’s not like he holds a special place in her life. He’s just a friend, the only one who has stuck around when everyone else came and left.
Jinyoung doesn’t spare her another glance as she heads to the door.
The fact is, he doesn’t go straight back to his own small flat like he’s told Suzy. He wanders around, buys groceries for his own home, smokes half a pack of cigarettes (“This will be my last,” he promised Jongin for the nth time), and when it’s finally 12 in the afternoon, Jinyoung puts on some sample cologne from the drugstore and makes his way to the address his sister texted him earlier.
The automated doorbell rings as soon as he steps into the restaurant, arousing a chorus of greetings by the staff. He immediately spots Chorong who is sitting by the window waving at him. He raises his hand in return, and smiles.
“I already ordered for you, I hope you don’t mind? This place gets crowded quickly so I wanted our food to be ready before more people come in,” she explains once he’s settled down across of her, looking slightly apologetic.
“It’s alright. I eat anything,” he reassures her, lips stretching a little wider.
“Right. I raised you well.” She reaches over to pat his harm while laughing. His sister has a habit of taking credit from someone else’s hard work, in this their mother. It makes him wonder how she does at work, but she doesn’t ponder on it for long. “So how’s my baby brother?” she questions.
“Your baby brother is now a grown up, and he wishes you would stop calling him that.”
“Is he really?” she laughs again, taking a sip of her drink. She’s ordered that from him as well. “So, what, are you still a struggling musician?”
Jinyoung tries to laugh along but it comes off a little hoarse. If she noticed, she doesn’t comment on it. “Not sure if you can call me a musician, but yeah, fame is still a long way to go for me. Sorry to disappoint you, noona. You can’t make money from selling my autographs yet.”
Chorong’s smile turns supportive. “Don’t worry too much, Jinyoung. Some people struggle for a long time, longer than the others, but once they finally get to shine, they shine a lot brighter,” she offers.
Their food arrives right then, and he picks up his spoon right away, not wanting to continue the conversation any further. His sister has ordered samgyetang for both of them, along with several side dishes and two bowls of rice. He’s suddenly reminded of coming home from school one day to her cries, having spilled some of the hot broth onto herself while attempting to cook lunch for her brother. Their parents were elsewhere for a distant relative’s death at that time, leaving the two to take care of themselves. The burn has left a permanent scar on her arm which makes him feel guilty for some reason whenever he sees it although it hadn’t been his fault at all.
The dish she was trying to make then was samgyetang, a dish far too difficult for an inexperienced 15-year-old to prepare by herself, but it was Jinyoung’s favourite. He steals a quick glance at his sister. Maybe she did work hard to raise him, after all.
“Did you find a place already?” It’s his turn to ask.
“Yes and no. I haven’t found my own place yet, but one of my university friends has a spare room and said I can stay there until I find a house,” Chorong replies without looking up.
“What did Woohyun hyung say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She does this time. “He was never around for anything anyway. What made you think he’d be around to say something about this?”
“Is it… really impossible to make it work?” Jinyoung’s tone is more careful now as he presses deeper.
She exhales a heavy sigh, and he suddenly can see all the burdens on her shoulders. “To be frank with you, I don’t know. Of course I want to make it work, especially since we’ve known each other for so long. But then, I feel like I’m the only one who’s constantly putting in effort, who’s always giving in and tolerating. Relationship doesn’t work that way. It’s not something that can work when one person constantly gives and the other only receives, you know?”
He does know. Jinyoung picks on his rice and watches his sister do the same. Woohyun is not a bad person, really, but he spends too little time at home that the two of them hardly communicate. When he does come home, he would be too exhausted to do anything else but sleep. Chorong thought she could live with that if she tried to understand him, and she did, but she realized that she couldn’t.
“Do you still drop by Suzy’s place every day?” She starts asking again. Jinyoung takes it as a cue to stop talking about Woohyun.
“Not every day.”
“How’s she?”
He shrugs and tries to make it nonchalant enough. “She has an audition today. Supposed to be there by now but I don’t know if she is.”
“Isn’t this the fourth audition?”
“Third,” he corrects, but it doesn’t make that much difference.
Chorong is quiet for a while as she stares at him. “Jinyoung, I know you like her. It’s not that I don’t, but I don’t think she’s good for you,” she speaks after much consideration, or at least that’s what he thinks the silence was for.
It’s a euphemism for she’s bad for you. He doesn’t need Chorong to tell him that because he already knows. He knows full well, and yet he still finds himself going to her place with food in hand. He likes to think that she depends on him, but in reality he’s the one who is depending on her, holding on to a small silly sliver of hope that perhaps one day she will change. The corners of his lips curl into a sad smile. “Why are we so unlucky in love, noona?” he muses into his bowl.
She mirrors his smile. “I know right?”
They finish their meal 15 minutes later, talking more about life and reminisce how it was so much easier when it was just the two of them playing together as little kids. The only thing they had to worry about was what to play next.
After they leave the restaurant later, Jinyoung walks her back to her workplace which is just two blocks away. She gives him a hug, and he sees something glimmering on her finger when she adjusts her coat. That’s when he realizes that she’s still wearing her wedding ring. He smiles at that, wondering if she’s still clinging on to hope like him. Maybe some habits aren’t that easy to grow out of. Chorong flashes a tight lipped smile before she turns away, and he watches her go, slipping his hands into his pockets for some warmth. Does she even realize that the scarf she’s wearing now is Woohyun’s?
As Jinyoung is about to turn away as well, his phone vibrates in his pocket so he fishes it out. It’s a text from Suzy. I went to the audition, it reads. I got in. A smile grows across his face, and he starts typing out a reply. Before he can send it, his phone vibrates again with another incoming text from her.
I bought milk.
It doesn’t surprise her to come home to a dark apartment. But it does surprise her when she’s turned on the lights and finds Woohyun crouched on the floor, in between the couch and coffee table. He wouldn’t usually be home at this hour, and even if he is, he most probably would already be dead to the world to notice anything happening in the house.
Without a word, Chorong takes off her coat and scarf and hangs them on one of the dining chairs on her way to the kitchen, passing the bags and boxes containing most of her belongings, to pour herself a glass of water. The dishes she left in a hurry this morning are still untouched in the sink. She doesn’t know what time did he leave this morning, what time he came back the previous night, if he’s eaten, if he ever eats lately. She hasn’t known for a while now. She’s stopped making dinner and waiting for him a long time ago.
He looks up at last, and it appears like he hasn’t slept for days. Eyes sunken, cheeks hollow, hair a total mess. The top buttons of his shirt are undone and his tie lies on the coffee table. Any other day, or at least in their better days, she would have asked what was wrong, made some tea and massaged his back until his smile returns. But today is not one of those days, so she stays where she is and keeps her stare at him.
He stretches his lips into a weak smile, but it turns out stiff and awkward like he hasn’t done it for a long time, like he’s out of practice. “Early this month, this pair of husband and wife started coming in for consultation. They wanted a divorce,” he begins all of a sudden, staring off at the distance. “They met when they were in school, were friends before they started dating. Their friends thought they wouldn’t last a year, but they actually got married, dreaming and promising so many things for each other. But then they both started to get busy with work and neglect other things that are far more important. They started making excuses, wanting different things and finding faults in each other.”
Rubbing at her temples, Chorong closes her eyes and tries to be patient. “What’s your point of telling me this?” she questions.
“Doesn’t it sound so awfully familiar?” he raises his head and meets her gaze when she opens her eyes again. She doesn’t answer. Only looks at him. He doesn’t appear to have eaten anything for days either. Woohyun continues. “When I heard their story, I thought, who am I to tell them what to do when I can’t even fix my life? I sat there and listened to them, wishing I could do something, but I couldn’t.”
She just keeps on staring at him wordlessly, not knowing what to say, if she should say something at all. Today has been a long day, and all she wants to do right now is curl in her bed but he wouldn’t let her have that. “Woohyun, if you-”
“They came back to my office together and told me they changed their minds,” he cuts in.
“Woohyun-”
“They’re not getting a divorce anymore.” She doesn’t try again and stays quiet. He picks on invisible dusts on the rug he’s sitting on. “You know what made them change their mind? The guy - the husband - went back to their house to get his old stuff, and among them he came across his- their high school yearbook. He just sat there with the yearbook in his hands until his wife came back and found him, and then they started going through the pages together, talking about their school and university days and laughing at the memories. They said that was the first time they actually sat in the same room and talked without yelling at each other in probably a year. And then they brought up their issues and problems, went over them one by one, and they discovered that surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard to meet each other halfway. They even managed to put their egos aside for once and apologized to each other.
I came home today planning to look for our school yearbook too, thinking maybe that could be us as well. But when I walked inside, I saw all these bags and boxes, and I realized that I’m already too late.” He looks up to meet her eyes again. “Is it really too late?”
Chorong sighs yet again, already lost count of how many times she’s done it today. “We’re not having this conversation, Woohyun.”
“When I sat alone in the dark just now, I thought of how lonely you must have been all this time.”
“You have no idea.”
“I guess,” he smiles bitterly. “I’m just… sorry.”
“I know you are,” she says, looking away.
Silence settles between them again, heavy and suffocating. It never used to be this way. It was always comfortable, never bothered them to do or say anything to fill the space. Chorong bites her lower lip in her attempt to stop the trembling, the shuddering of her shoulders, but fails miserably. Her head hangs low and she hopes her long hair covers her face well as her tears betray her.
Woohyun’s shoulders are slumped, head buried behind his knees. She thinks he might be crying as well, but it’s muted except the sound of his sharp inhales.
The first time she’s ever left the house after an argument, she didn’t even manage to take the elevator down, what more go beyond the vicinity of the apartment building. She couldn’t bring herself to selfishly walk away, knowing that he was hurting just as much. In the end, she simply sat crouched down outside the door crying until he came out later to go after her. That wasn’t their last argument, but she never tried to leave again, not until now.
Her feet carry her towards him against her will, but she kneels down next to him and wraps her arms around him. She presses her nose on the top of his head and closes her eyes as she inhales his scent. It’s still the same scent she’s grown to be so familiar with.
He hesitates, but soon returns the gesture and circles his arm around her waist, thinner than he remembers. He closes his eyes as well, relaxes, and listens to the sound of her beating heart.
jr./suzy, woohyun/chorong
3352 w, g
a/n: a belated birthday gift for se0ulmate and also belated anniversary gift for eternal_hopes. I hope you guys cry. if it's confusing feel free to ask me to explain!
“You’re out of milk!” Jinyoung yells from the kitchen. “Again,” he later adds quietly, sighing as he searches for a sign of life in the refrigerator. There’s a loaf of bread that he bought last week, a bag of frozen dumplings almost two months past the expiration date, funny smelling Chinese takeout leftovers and two eggs. After much consideration, he takes the eggs and bread, telling himself that food gets preserved longer refrigerated so fungi wouldn’t grow on the bread yet, would they? He checks the bread. Still clean.
Suzy comes out from her room just after he places a pan on the stove. “Sorry, I forgot to buy it,” she says easily, taking a seat at the dining table facing him. Her hair is still wet, and a there’s a towel hanging around her shoulders as she sits hugging her knees. She doesn’t even look that apologetic, only sleepy. Jinyoung returns his attention to the pan and starts filling it with the egg-dipped bread slices.
“What do you even eat, Suzy?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I just order in, or simply don’t eat.
“Suzy-”
“Yes, I know. It’s not healthy. I should watch what I eat and not skip meals. You said it too many times already I already have it all memorized.”
Yet you never listened, he thinks. Doesn’t say. She’s looking at him with a playful smile. He flips the breads, revealing the perfect golden brown side.
“Did you add butter?” Suzy asks.
“You don’t have it.”
“Sugar, at least?”
“Don’t have it either.”
“Hmm. I better do grocery shopping today.”
“Suzy.”
“What?”
Jinyoung stares at her, who stares back at him. He doesn’t know if she’s simply feigning ignorance or else. She’s good at that. Had him fooled several times. His friends told him she’s got him under her spell, and he told them off. He didn’t believe them before, but maybe they’re right after all. Again, he sighs, turns off the stove and transfers the bread slices to a plate before setting it down on the table in front of her. “You have an audition later,” he finally says. He doesn’t want to get fooled again.
“Right,” she nods, taking a large bite of his not-quite French toast, then speaks with her mouth full. “I’ll do it after the audition, then,”
“Are you prepared?” He raises his brows.
She looks at him again. Droplets from her hair are still dripping onto the table. “Don’t worry about me, Jinyoung.”
How can he not? This is the third audition he’s lined up for her, only possible after begging the seniors he hardly contacts on normal occasions. She didn’t show up for the first one, and came dressed all too casually on top of being late for the second. If she messes up this one as well, Jinyoung can’t help her anymore. He doesn’t even know that many people to begin with, not enough to pull strings to him, much less for her.
Suzy bites into her second slice of the toast, and he’s honestly relieved that she actually eats well. Just a month ago, she struggled to finish even half a bowl of rice. He pushes the plate slightly further towards her. There are five slices in total. She frowns at him. “You’re not eating?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, I ate.” A lie, but that doesn’t matter. He can just drop by a convenience store on his way back later and grab a triangle kimbab or something.
But then she drops her bread onto the plate and scowls, pushing the plate aside. “Not eating if you’re not,” she tells. Sometimes Suzy likes being difficult and it’s impossible to reason with her if she is, which is why most people give up on her too quickly. He’s watched so many people walk in and out of her life.
“I made these for you,” he replies.
“And I want you to have some.”
They are back at their staring game. They’ve been doing it a lot lately. Neither of them is the type to raise their voice and argue verbally, so this is how they have fights.
After a moment, Jinyoung, with his shoulders dropped, takes the half eaten slice she dropped and shoves the whole thing into his mouth. “Satisfied?” he asks, and her scowl turns upside down in a blink of eye. Suzy, despite how difficult she can be, is not that hard to please.
He watches her eat for a while more before picking up his jacket on the couch. He came here straight from work, almost every day depending on his shift and mood. Somehow, he feels compelled to check on her regularly and make sure she’s eating even though it’s not really his job. He has better things to do, honestly, like looking for a real job. Working at a fast food joint which exposes his fingers to all sorts of injuries after graduating because he can’t score a place in any orchestral group is certainly not what he envisioned for himself, but at least he can get by. Jongin plays piano for kids’ ballet class and whines about it every day.
Suzy looks at him. “Are you leaving already?”
“I have work later. Need to sleep.”
“You can just sleep here.”
Jinyoung freezes for a second halfway through his right sleeve. “It’s okay,” he mumbles in return. “I’ll just go home.”
She keeps her stare at him in silence for a minute longer, then drops her eyes. “Okay,” she murmurs back.
He glances at her once more. Her hair is starting to dry, and the tiny droplets on the table have almost completely evaporated. “Good luck for your audition,” he offers, and she looks up again with a small smile.
“Thank you.”
He doesn’t say another word, doesn’t walk over in her direction to give her a kiss on the cheek or on the top of her head, not on the lips either. He’s not entitled to do any of that because it’s not like he holds a special place in her life. He’s just a friend, the only one who has stuck around when everyone else came and left.
Jinyoung doesn’t spare her another glance as she heads to the door.
The fact is, he doesn’t go straight back to his own small flat like he’s told Suzy. He wanders around, buys groceries for his own home, smokes half a pack of cigarettes (“This will be my last,” he promised Jongin for the nth time), and when it’s finally 12 in the afternoon, Jinyoung puts on some sample cologne from the drugstore and makes his way to the address his sister texted him earlier.
The automated doorbell rings as soon as he steps into the restaurant, arousing a chorus of greetings by the staff. He immediately spots Chorong who is sitting by the window waving at him. He raises his hand in return, and smiles.
“I already ordered for you, I hope you don’t mind? This place gets crowded quickly so I wanted our food to be ready before more people come in,” she explains once he’s settled down across of her, looking slightly apologetic.
“It’s alright. I eat anything,” he reassures her, lips stretching a little wider.
“Right. I raised you well.” She reaches over to pat his harm while laughing. His sister has a habit of taking credit from someone else’s hard work, in this their mother. It makes him wonder how she does at work, but she doesn’t ponder on it for long. “So how’s my baby brother?” she questions.
“Your baby brother is now a grown up, and he wishes you would stop calling him that.”
“Is he really?” she laughs again, taking a sip of her drink. She’s ordered that from him as well. “So, what, are you still a struggling musician?”
Jinyoung tries to laugh along but it comes off a little hoarse. If she noticed, she doesn’t comment on it. “Not sure if you can call me a musician, but yeah, fame is still a long way to go for me. Sorry to disappoint you, noona. You can’t make money from selling my autographs yet.”
Chorong’s smile turns supportive. “Don’t worry too much, Jinyoung. Some people struggle for a long time, longer than the others, but once they finally get to shine, they shine a lot brighter,” she offers.
Their food arrives right then, and he picks up his spoon right away, not wanting to continue the conversation any further. His sister has ordered samgyetang for both of them, along with several side dishes and two bowls of rice. He’s suddenly reminded of coming home from school one day to her cries, having spilled some of the hot broth onto herself while attempting to cook lunch for her brother. Their parents were elsewhere for a distant relative’s death at that time, leaving the two to take care of themselves. The burn has left a permanent scar on her arm which makes him feel guilty for some reason whenever he sees it although it hadn’t been his fault at all.
The dish she was trying to make then was samgyetang, a dish far too difficult for an inexperienced 15-year-old to prepare by herself, but it was Jinyoung’s favourite. He steals a quick glance at his sister. Maybe she did work hard to raise him, after all.
“Did you find a place already?” It’s his turn to ask.
“Yes and no. I haven’t found my own place yet, but one of my university friends has a spare room and said I can stay there until I find a house,” Chorong replies without looking up.
“What did Woohyun hyung say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She does this time. “He was never around for anything anyway. What made you think he’d be around to say something about this?”
“Is it… really impossible to make it work?” Jinyoung’s tone is more careful now as he presses deeper.
She exhales a heavy sigh, and he suddenly can see all the burdens on her shoulders. “To be frank with you, I don’t know. Of course I want to make it work, especially since we’ve known each other for so long. But then, I feel like I’m the only one who’s constantly putting in effort, who’s always giving in and tolerating. Relationship doesn’t work that way. It’s not something that can work when one person constantly gives and the other only receives, you know?”
He does know. Jinyoung picks on his rice and watches his sister do the same. Woohyun is not a bad person, really, but he spends too little time at home that the two of them hardly communicate. When he does come home, he would be too exhausted to do anything else but sleep. Chorong thought she could live with that if she tried to understand him, and she did, but she realized that she couldn’t.
“Do you still drop by Suzy’s place every day?” She starts asking again. Jinyoung takes it as a cue to stop talking about Woohyun.
“Not every day.”
“How’s she?”
He shrugs and tries to make it nonchalant enough. “She has an audition today. Supposed to be there by now but I don’t know if she is.”
“Isn’t this the fourth audition?”
“Third,” he corrects, but it doesn’t make that much difference.
Chorong is quiet for a while as she stares at him. “Jinyoung, I know you like her. It’s not that I don’t, but I don’t think she’s good for you,” she speaks after much consideration, or at least that’s what he thinks the silence was for.
It’s a euphemism for she’s bad for you. He doesn’t need Chorong to tell him that because he already knows. He knows full well, and yet he still finds himself going to her place with food in hand. He likes to think that she depends on him, but in reality he’s the one who is depending on her, holding on to a small silly sliver of hope that perhaps one day she will change. The corners of his lips curl into a sad smile. “Why are we so unlucky in love, noona?” he muses into his bowl.
She mirrors his smile. “I know right?”
They finish their meal 15 minutes later, talking more about life and reminisce how it was so much easier when it was just the two of them playing together as little kids. The only thing they had to worry about was what to play next.
After they leave the restaurant later, Jinyoung walks her back to her workplace which is just two blocks away. She gives him a hug, and he sees something glimmering on her finger when she adjusts her coat. That’s when he realizes that she’s still wearing her wedding ring. He smiles at that, wondering if she’s still clinging on to hope like him. Maybe some habits aren’t that easy to grow out of. Chorong flashes a tight lipped smile before she turns away, and he watches her go, slipping his hands into his pockets for some warmth. Does she even realize that the scarf she’s wearing now is Woohyun’s?
As Jinyoung is about to turn away as well, his phone vibrates in his pocket so he fishes it out. It’s a text from Suzy. I went to the audition, it reads. I got in. A smile grows across his face, and he starts typing out a reply. Before he can send it, his phone vibrates again with another incoming text from her.
I bought milk.
It doesn’t surprise her to come home to a dark apartment. But it does surprise her when she’s turned on the lights and finds Woohyun crouched on the floor, in between the couch and coffee table. He wouldn’t usually be home at this hour, and even if he is, he most probably would already be dead to the world to notice anything happening in the house.
Without a word, Chorong takes off her coat and scarf and hangs them on one of the dining chairs on her way to the kitchen, passing the bags and boxes containing most of her belongings, to pour herself a glass of water. The dishes she left in a hurry this morning are still untouched in the sink. She doesn’t know what time did he leave this morning, what time he came back the previous night, if he’s eaten, if he ever eats lately. She hasn’t known for a while now. She’s stopped making dinner and waiting for him a long time ago.
He looks up at last, and it appears like he hasn’t slept for days. Eyes sunken, cheeks hollow, hair a total mess. The top buttons of his shirt are undone and his tie lies on the coffee table. Any other day, or at least in their better days, she would have asked what was wrong, made some tea and massaged his back until his smile returns. But today is not one of those days, so she stays where she is and keeps her stare at him.
He stretches his lips into a weak smile, but it turns out stiff and awkward like he hasn’t done it for a long time, like he’s out of practice. “Early this month, this pair of husband and wife started coming in for consultation. They wanted a divorce,” he begins all of a sudden, staring off at the distance. “They met when they were in school, were friends before they started dating. Their friends thought they wouldn’t last a year, but they actually got married, dreaming and promising so many things for each other. But then they both started to get busy with work and neglect other things that are far more important. They started making excuses, wanting different things and finding faults in each other.”
Rubbing at her temples, Chorong closes her eyes and tries to be patient. “What’s your point of telling me this?” she questions.
“Doesn’t it sound so awfully familiar?” he raises his head and meets her gaze when she opens her eyes again. She doesn’t answer. Only looks at him. He doesn’t appear to have eaten anything for days either. Woohyun continues. “When I heard their story, I thought, who am I to tell them what to do when I can’t even fix my life? I sat there and listened to them, wishing I could do something, but I couldn’t.”
She just keeps on staring at him wordlessly, not knowing what to say, if she should say something at all. Today has been a long day, and all she wants to do right now is curl in her bed but he wouldn’t let her have that. “Woohyun, if you-”
“They came back to my office together and told me they changed their minds,” he cuts in.
“Woohyun-”
“They’re not getting a divorce anymore.” She doesn’t try again and stays quiet. He picks on invisible dusts on the rug he’s sitting on. “You know what made them change their mind? The guy - the husband - went back to their house to get his old stuff, and among them he came across his- their high school yearbook. He just sat there with the yearbook in his hands until his wife came back and found him, and then they started going through the pages together, talking about their school and university days and laughing at the memories. They said that was the first time they actually sat in the same room and talked without yelling at each other in probably a year. And then they brought up their issues and problems, went over them one by one, and they discovered that surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard to meet each other halfway. They even managed to put their egos aside for once and apologized to each other.
I came home today planning to look for our school yearbook too, thinking maybe that could be us as well. But when I walked inside, I saw all these bags and boxes, and I realized that I’m already too late.” He looks up to meet her eyes again. “Is it really too late?”
Chorong sighs yet again, already lost count of how many times she’s done it today. “We’re not having this conversation, Woohyun.”
“When I sat alone in the dark just now, I thought of how lonely you must have been all this time.”
“You have no idea.”
“I guess,” he smiles bitterly. “I’m just… sorry.”
“I know you are,” she says, looking away.
Silence settles between them again, heavy and suffocating. It never used to be this way. It was always comfortable, never bothered them to do or say anything to fill the space. Chorong bites her lower lip in her attempt to stop the trembling, the shuddering of her shoulders, but fails miserably. Her head hangs low and she hopes her long hair covers her face well as her tears betray her.
Woohyun’s shoulders are slumped, head buried behind his knees. She thinks he might be crying as well, but it’s muted except the sound of his sharp inhales.
The first time she’s ever left the house after an argument, she didn’t even manage to take the elevator down, what more go beyond the vicinity of the apartment building. She couldn’t bring herself to selfishly walk away, knowing that he was hurting just as much. In the end, she simply sat crouched down outside the door crying until he came out later to go after her. That wasn’t their last argument, but she never tried to leave again, not until now.
Her feet carry her towards him against her will, but she kneels down next to him and wraps her arms around him. She presses her nose on the top of his head and closes her eyes as she inhales his scent. It’s still the same scent she’s grown to be so familiar with.
He hesitates, but soon returns the gesture and circles his arm around her waist, thinner than he remembers. He closes his eyes as well, relaxes, and listens to the sound of her beating heart.