“You and me… this… it’s just an accident,” she says, and true to form, I feel as though I’ve been hit by a truck.
“Look… yes, I watched your records.”
She huffs derisively, as if to say obviously.
“There was nothing naïve about it, either,” I continue. “I knew from the very start that I am doing something that is profoundly wrong.”
She huffs another, similarly disdainful obviously.
“But… it was such a fucking treat, being inside that amazing head of yours. Getting to know you enough to trust you. To place my heart in your care. I love you.”
I’m laying all my cards on the table. She frowns.
“I’m sorry, but the problem is that I no longer trust you. The only reason you’re apologizing now is that I happened to find out. If it were up to you, I think I would have lived out my entire life without knowing. You’ve taken something from me, and I feel that you can’t give it back. The fact that you regret it doesn’t make it any better... It makes it worse.” She looks away and I pretend not to notice the tear gliding down her cheek.
“I love you.” I’d never said the words as loudly, as surely as I am now.
“Everything you feel toward me came from the virus.” She wipes her eye with the back of her hand. She is presenting my love for her as a condition, as something treatable, and my heart breaks.
“I think it would be best if you and I don’t see each other again.” She places her hand on the door handle. “And, just so you know, I never intend to use Bubble again. I’ll be deleting my old records, as well, so feel free to find something else to do with your spare time.”
The rest of the drive passes in a deeply awkward silence. I consider apologizing some more but feel that would be an exercise in futility. She has made it abundantly clear that she does not want any more apologies.
At some point I notice that she’s fallen asleep and I pull over to cover her with my jacket. For a while, I have no idea how long, I just sit there and watch her sleep. I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll get the chance to be this close to her again.
God. I love her so fucking much.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I’m in Busan, completing the final tests on the new encryption system. I knew that it would suck, being here again, remembering the last time. Still, I didn’t want to leave it to anyone else.
It’s been over a year since the last time I saw her. And it’s been rough. Mi-Ok did exactly what she said she would. She quit Bubble. She deleted her records. Several days after that she changed her number and moved out of her apartment. She went through a great deal of effort to make it clear she wants nothing to do with me.
I heard she moved in with a friend from school and took comfort in the knowledge that she wasn’t alone, living in a safer neighborhood, and close to her new office – a start-up company. Medical monitoring systems, I think. I was happy to hear she was still programming and hadn’t gone back to waiting tables. I’ve been keeping tabs from a distance, hoping one day she’ll forgive me.
Not a day’s gone by this past year that I haven’t thought of begging for her forgiveness. I never go through with it – I remember what she told me the last time I saw her, and it pains me too much. You’ve taken something from me, and you can’t give it back. The fact that you regret it only makes it worse…
I couldn’t beg her to take me back. Not because of pride or dignity or anything like that, but because I don’t think I could stand it if she looked at me with that much contempt again. I’ve been hoping that her anger would dissolve at some point, that maybe someday she’d just show up at my office and say she’s willing to give me another chance.
But it’s been more than a year, and I’m beginning to realize that’s not going to happen.
I wonder sometimes if she’s thinking of me, too. Because, as hard as I try, I can’t stop thinking of her. She’s in the elevator I ride up to my office every day. She’s in the passenger seat of my car. Sometimes I place my jacket on the seat, like I did that night, when I laid it over her as she slept. Whenever my office door opens, I hope it’s her. She’s inside my heart, so she’s everywhere. It seems unfair that my dead heart came back to life just to feel this much pain.
And now I’m staring at the flight display board at the Busan airport and thinking of how pissed off Mi-Ok was when that entire board was blinking red. Christ, she was furious – as if I was directly responsible for the typhoon – and now I can’t help but think about the rest of that trip. The time we spent at the house. The intense kiss in the pool. The abject horror I felt when she ran out into the freezing cold and nearly passed out from hypothermia. And still, when I think of the two of us hugging half-naked under the blankets, my heart can’t help but wrench.
“What are you doing here?” I look to my right and she’s standing right there next to me, in front of the display board. We stare at each other, dumbfounded.
“Testing a new version for the encryption system,” I say once I’ve regained my speech.
She seems cold and distant.
“Which flight are you on?” I’m not sure if she’s hoping I’m on the same one as her or on a different one. Not that it matters.
“I’m not taking a commercial flight. Private jet,” I explain, realizing that I’ve just told her I’m only here for the view. I came to look at this board and think of her.
“I actually wondered about that, last—” her voice dies out.
“Last time we were here I didn’t have time to make arrangements. I was replacing your team leader last minute, remember?”
The light flush in her cheek tells me she remembers vividly.
“You’re so thin. Have you been eating well? Sleeping well?”
I smile crookedly. It would’ve been so lovely if she actually cared, but she’s probably just being polite.
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” I profess, and run my fingers through my hair.
She smiles apologetically. “That makes sense, I suppose. I’m sure it’ll get better with time.”
She uncomfortably shifts her weight nervously from side to side. I also thought it would get better. But it hasn’t. At night I miss her the most.
“You seem to have lost weight, too,” I say. “And you look a bit tired, maybe.”
She touches the tips of her finger to the dark circles under her eyes. “Work’s been eating into my sleep,” she awkwardly tries to explain them, and I immediately regret my tactlessness.
“You must be very proud,” she says, obviously trying to shift the conversation back to safe, work related matters.
“Of course, very much. It’s my baby, after all. Then again, I created it, so I’m understandably biased.” The new system is truly a masterpiece of encryption technology, if I may say so myself.
“I’m sure it’s every bit as lovely and clever as you.”
“Thanks,” I laugh a bit at the concept. “That’s quite an expectation for an encryption system to live up to.”
She gives me an odd look. “Encryption system?” she echoes.
“Yeah. What were you—”
“Never mind. Nothing.” She shrugs. I squint at her, trying to catch her eye. She’s acting very strangely.
“I’m sure you’ll all have a wonderful life together, I… have to go,” she says and turns around, walking away from me in quick, long strides.
“Wait,” I hurry after her and grab her wrist. “What? Together with whom?”
She squirms and tries to shake loose but I can’t, I won’t let her go, I feel like I’m losing my mind.
“Please just let me go,” she raises her other hand toward her face, but my hand gets there quicker, and I wipe the tear from her cheek.
“Please stop crying,” I whisper. “I think we need to talk.”
“What’s there to talk about?” she wh
ispers back, her voice choked, and my thumb keeps wiping away the tears that keep sliding down her cheeks.
“Will you tell me why you left me like that?” I look into her tearful eyes and finally demand the explanation she’s owed me for a very long time.
“I had no choice.” Her voice is oddly strangled.
“You had no choice?” I echo. I know I sound angry – that might be because I am quite angry. “I know how furious you were when you found out I’d been watching your Bubble records. You were right to be – it was a truly shitty thing to do and I wish I’d told you sooner, I wish you hadn’t found out the way you did. But I’ve apologized and apologized. You could’ve chosen to cut me the tiniest bit of slack.”
She is shaking her head. Tears stream down her face as she repeats, “I had no choice.”
“I’m sorry, but you did. You had a choice all along – you chose to cut me off completely. Won’t you even admit that?”
She raises her eyes toward me, and they are sad and confused.
“At first, I really was furious. Hurt. But once I gave it some thought I realized you’d have to be a saint not to peek through the keyhole into someone else’s Bubble. If the opportunity just presented itself, I’d probably look, too. So yeah, I forgave you a while ago. I even considered that what we had might’ve been real, because the pain I felt from missing you, that feels pretty real, you know?”
I hold my breath, wait for the other shoe to drop – something stopped her from telling me all this a year ago.
“But,” comes the shoe, “when I went down to the police station to give my statement, I met Lee Sung.” All my blood seems to go to a low simmer when I hear that name.
“She told me she was three months pregnant, that the baby’s yours. She asked that I vanish from your life and give you a chance to be happy.”
I’m flabbergasted.
“No. What?!” This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. “She and I never—”
“Slept together?” she interrupts me, her face crumpling in a sad half-smile. “The entire country saw you leaving her hotel room.” But I was manipulated, I want to say, and suddenly the possibility that Lee Sung was telling the truth hits me with all its weight, and I am horrified to my very core.
“I was drunk,” I mumble and rake my hand through my hair. I vaguely wonder if I’m having a panic attack. Cold sweats beads on my forehead. I feel sick to my stomach and try to gulp in some deep breaths. Mi-Ok stays beside me.
I don’t actually remember what happened that night. I remember waking up naked. I remember Lee Sung in the shower.
Mi-Ok looks at her watch, then at the display board. “I’ll miss my flight,” she says quietly.
“Wait. Please, I have to make a call. Just one call.” She doesn’t respond – I interpret this as a sort of agreement. I take my phone out and find Lee Sung in my contacts. I hesitate momentarily.
“Lee Sung. It’s me. How are you?”
“Utterly astonished by your call,” she drawls. “I’ve left you a million messages – you never called back.”
“Here I am. What was so important, then?”
“It’s… I’d prefer not to talk about it over the phone.” Nothing about her answer is making me less nervous. I need to know, now.
“Tell me!” I bark, impatient.
“I just… want you to give me another chance. To give us another chance. We could be so good together, I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“I might’ve considered it,” I lie through my teeth, “but I’m still disgusted with myself every time I remember that night – I was drunk, and you took advantage of me. There is no chance in hell of me ever getting into bed with you again after the shit you pulled.”
“But nothing happened! I swear, I just helped you out of your clothes, popped into the shower, and by the time I came out you were already asleep.”
Oh, thank Christ.
“So why did you tell Mi-Ok you were pregnant?” I seethe, wishing my tone could kill.
She falls momentarily silent, and sounds incredulous when she asks, “She told you about that, huh?”
“Yes.” An entire year after the fact, unfortunately.
“God, that girl is so naïve. I never thought she’d make such a thing out of it. You should have seen her face when I told her you and I were having a little baby girl! Priceless,” she giggles.
“I can imagine.” My knuckles whiten around the phone. Thankfully Mi-Ok is right there, listening with me, and her hand gently touches my arm, and holds back the flood. I’m still shaking when I hang up.
“It… terrifies me to think that we might never have met here and cleared this up,” she eventually whispers, her voice cracked, “this goddamn lie that’s been keeping up apart… I was such an idiot for believing her.”
“Promise me you’ll never leave me again,” I ask, and she nods. “You brought my heart back to life and I am giving it to you, for safekeeping. So please never leave me again, because I need you with me.”
Tears fall from her eyes and I place my palms on her cheeks and absorb them. Only then I realize that her hands are on my cheeks as well, absorbing the tears which had apparently been falling from my own eyes.
My lips touch hers in a delicate, salty kiss. She slides her hands to the back of my neck and buries them in my hair as she pulls me in, deepening the kiss, leaving us both breathless. We remain in our own world for a while, forgetting we’re in the middle of the airport until the cries and catcalls of the passersby bring us back to reality. Mi-Ok detaches from me, embarrassed, and I notice that quite a few people are staring.
“Nothing to see here, keep walking. I just love her so much that I can’t stop kissing her,” I loudly exclaim, and nothing scares me anymore, because I know that nothing in the world will tear us apart again.
Ever since I can remember, my present has been decided by my past. For the first time in my life I feel that my future will be decided by my present. I know Mi-Ok and I will get married soon. I know our honeymoon will be in Upolu Island and that we will have at least two children. I know all this because it is time for our dreams to come true.
And I intend to record every second of it on Bubble.
About the Author
After years of the daily grind of working at a bank, Merav woke up to the realization that in this incarnation you only live once.
With a passion for writing, rich and diverse knowledge, and a lot of love of South Korea, she decided to give up tenure at her workplace and devote herself completely to writing, where previously she had only dabbled in as a hobby, alongside her career with the financial institution.
Equipped with a list of dreams such as traveling the world at least two months every year, writing books that make people think, feel, laugh, and cry, falling even deeper in love with South Korea, and dreaming of one of her books one day becoming a TV drama, she embarked on a new, exciting journey.
Merav is married and the mother of two daughters. She holds a master’s degree earned with honors in the social sciences, and a real estate appraiser certification. She is an insightful individual with a positive attitude towards life.
Message from the Author
Before you go, I’d like to ask you for a little favor.
If you enjoyed this book, please don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon! It only takes a minute. I highly appreciate your input.
Independent authors such as myself, depend on reviews to attract new readers to our books. I would greatly appreciate it if you’d share your experience of reading this book by leaving your review on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be long. A sentence or two would do nicely.
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