Sumbisori

The flight to Seoul he had booked was scheduled to depart at 1 PM Paris time.

It was the last flight that would allow him to barely make it to work at Phantom by 10 AM. He needed to leave the 19th arrondissement by 11 AM at the latest to board without rushing.

He had planned to leave after catching sight of Yeehyeon returning home from his morning walk. But that day, it was hard to pull himself away from in front of The Hands. Just ten more minutes, just ten more… before he realized it was 11:30. Thirty minutes to Charles de Gaulle Airport. It was definitely time to leave now.

But just as he was about to turn the steering wheel, Yeehyeon reappeared.

Liu had no choice but to take his hands off the wheel.

Yeehyeon, dressed in the same clothes as that morning, was with a few colleagues. It was a group of six or seven people, including Baek Yuni and her girlfriend, and Ben, whom he had seen that morning. They all seemed to be heading out for lunch together.

The group, mostly in their twenties, was boisterous, excited for their Sunday outing.

When his colleagues cracked silly jokes, Yeehyeon simply looked at them and smiled. Within that group, Yeehyeon looked like a college student his own age. Someone striving hard toward a dream, perhaps worrying about their career path, spending weekends with friends… a sincere, ordinary twenty-three-year-old.

The way his hands were tucked into the pockets of his coat, the jeans that looked ordinary yet fit him perfectly, and the delicate, clean-cut features on his small, slender face, as if drawn meticulously with ink. Above all that, the shy, introverted smile that would occasionally surface.

"Ugh…"

Liu groaned, bending his upper body forward awkwardly. The emotion was so overwhelming that he actually felt a pain in his chest.

He once knew the happiness of having that loveliness as his own.

The privilege of being able to hug him, to stand by his side, to touch his cheek and lips, to bathe in his pheromones.

Someone in the group bent over to tie their shoelace, and Ben jumped over their back as if it were a vaulting horse. Yeehyeon shook his head as if exasperated, yet he revealed his teeth and laughed brightly. The sound of laughter from that group of young people drifted through the leisurely Sunday alley like a multicolored balloon.

Yeehyeon's smile, directed at someone else while looking at another person, gripped and twisted Liu's heart. He managed to open his mouth, suppressing the pain.

"Are you happy?"

It was a voice as soft as a small whisper.

Liu couldn't tell if he hoped Yeehyeon would be happy here, or if he wanted him to suffer from longing and seek him out every night. Perhaps the question was really aimed at Liu himself.

He desperately wanted to jump out of the driver's seat right then and call out to him.

If he called out, "Yeehyeon!" he imagined Yeehyeon would stop walking and turn around, then rush over with a smile that seemed brighter by several magnitudes than the one he showed his colleagues — a smile encompassing his whole face and heart.

He would embrace Yeehyeon fully, breathe in deeply the scent of Diamond Dust that only he was allowed to savor, and confess his true feelings.

For one moment, he was completely captivated by the thought that all their problems could be solved so simply.

But he knew he couldn't possibly dare to do such a thing.

If he appeared before Yeehyeon now, he surely wouldn't treat him harshly. After all, they hadn't broken up because they stopped loving each other. Yeehyeon might even look at him with tears welling up, a mix of hate, longing, resentment, and desire, and fall into his arms.

But was that truly the way Yeehyeon wanted things to resume?

Had Yeehyeon really come all this way and endured everything just for such an ambiguous reunion?

A definitive ending was necessary. And it had to be Yeehyeon who tied that knot, and then trimmed away the remaining loose ends to declare the end of their time together. Only then could they bury the past where it belonged and move forward together into the future.

The best he could do now was respect Yeehyeon's choice.

And wait.

Yeehyeon turned the corner with his colleagues. It seemed the last vestiges of light illuminating the alley had vanished with him. Suddenly, the alley was dark.

It was so hard to breathe, as if Yeehyeon had taken all the oxygen with him.

Liu buried his forehead on the steering wheel and collapsed.

A short honk echoed down the deserted alley, where most shops had closed their shutters. It sounded like a heavy scream.