Taehyung 

“Hi, Cho-Wol. How have you been?” I smile at her, and, as expected, she doesn’t return my smile. 

“Thank you for bothering to check on me. I’m still alive.” She answers snarkily, protectively wrapping both her arms around her baby and softly rocking her to sleep. 

“Congratulations.” I smile again, my voice quivering slightly with nervousness.

“For staying alive?” Cho-Wol snaps back, raising a brow at me, but her eyes are still as cold as ice. 

“For the baby,” I respond calmly, and she scoffs in disbelief, deadpanning.

“I can’t stand for too long. If you’re here for food, please enjoy your meal and leave,” she says passively and turns around to return to the doorway when I stop her.

“Cho-Wol, wait. If I came here for the food, how would I have known that you lived here?” My question makes her stop. “I came here to talk to you.”

With her back to me, she slightly turns her head to the side, but her eyes don’t move to look at me.

“Taehyung, there’s nothing for us to talk about. Please leave now.” She declares flatly.

“Is there nothing for us to talk about even if I was the one who delivered your baby?” I ask her, taking a step closer to the counter.

She stands still on her spot for a few seconds, and then she turns her head to look at me with a bewildered look on her face.

“What was that again?” Cho-Wol questions me, her eyes wide as she turns around fully to stand facing me.

“You heard that right,” I confirm confidently. “I work at the Cha Medical Center, and you were brought to me after you went into labor near a convenience store last week. Don’t I deserve to even have a word with you?” I speak with my eyes dead set on her.

I did not want to pull out the big guns this early into the meeting, but, as Jimin said, I’m only using the facts wisely. Granted, that was out of extreme desperation.

Cho-Wol’s lips part and tremble a little in shock, and then her eyes twitch and redden. I see a few tears pooling up at the corners of her eyes, which makes me feel terrible because I have no idea what emotions are coursing through her right now.

She quickly lowers her head and avoids looking at me as she squeezes her eyes shut and sniffles back her tears, and then her gaze lifts to meet mine.

“Come inside,” she says a little more warmly this time, slightly tilting her head in the direction of the doorway she came out from.

Her words jar me because even though I wanted to meet her and apologize, I was expecting her to actually scream in my face and throw me out of the place. I was even mentally prepared for such a humiliation. But this, I did not expect.

The pixie-haired girl who stands beside Cho-Wol casts me an indifferent look as I walk past both of them and move aside the curtain covering the doorway on the side. It leads to another arched doorway on my left, and inside, there’s a small home with very little free space for moving about. I step inside after taking off my shoes.

There is no living room, instead, straight ahead, there is a small, low wooden dining table with two seating cushions precisely placed on either side of it. A large window beside the table has a pretty, transparent curtain covering it, and cute little succulents in colorful pots are arranged neatly along the window sill. On my right, there is a kitchen with a single counter and tidy shelves with nothing out of place.

The house, though extremely small, is spotless, feels warm and compact, and the interior smells like babies, making it even more cozier. A doorway beside the dining table leads to the bedroom, but I cannot see much of it since there’s another similar but partially open curtain covering the doorway.

Just when I complete my visual survey of her pretty home, Cho-Wol enters the room, and I turn around to see her as she quietly walks past me into the bedroom. About a minute later, she returns after laying her baby down.

“Sit down,” she says softly, motioning towards one of the seating cushions, and I agree with a single nod of my head.

I take a seat and watch as Cho-Wol brings out a teapot and two cups and sets them down on the dining table. Her stitches are still a little too fresh for her to sit down comfortably in a cross-legged position on the floor, so she folds her legs to one side and sits down at the table facing me.

Cho-Wol pours out the tea into both our cups, and I pick up my cup to take a sip, and she does the same.

“Do you live here alone?” I’m the first one to break the silence between us.

“Now, yes.” She answers the bare minimum and continues sipping her tea without making any eye contact with me.

Exhaling softly, I look around the place from where I’m seated, and then she asks me something.

“What did you want to talk about?” Cho-Wol arrives straight at the point, and it momentarily leaves me tongue-tied.

Taking a deep breath, I look at her and swallow my hesitation, anxiety, nervousness and every other irrelevant feeling.

“I’m sorry, Cho-Wol,” I apologize to her, for the millionth time in about fifteen years, but for the first time in person.

Her eyes slowly leave the floor and lift to look at me. All these years, I thought that the last time I saw her unconscious at the hospital many years ago was the one thing which would drive me to hell. But, right now, this haunting image of her is something that I will probably never forget for the rest of my life. The pain and tiredness in her eyes, the loneliness that surrounds her, the toll that years of injustice and unfairness have taken on her, the wounds that were inflicted on her that she has never fully healed from—all of it reflects in that lifeless gaze of hers.

“What are you sorry for?” She questions me as she sets her cup down on the table and sighs.

“For what happened. It was because of me, and I’m truly sorry for it, Cho-Wol,” I try my best to apologize in a stable voice.

She laughs softly through her nose but doesn’t say a word in response.

“There’s not a single day I’ve spent without mentally apologizing to you. I never thought you would drop out of school, and I even tried looking for you after I returned to school. But you had moved out, and there was no way I could locate you,” I pour out, my eyes never straying away from her face for even the span of a blink.

“Taehyung,” Cho-Wol sighs, “I can’t say I’ve healed fully from everything. I know I will never be able to say that, but I’ve healed enough to not hold grudges. I’ve healed from most of the things which no one apologized for. A lot of time has passed, and life has changed in many ways. I agree, I was extremely angry and upset with everything and everyone. Whatever I lost will never return to me, and I’ve grown to somewhat accept it. My anger has worn off, and I genuinely don’t wish you any harm. I’ve never wished for it though,” her solemn words feel like repeated painful stabs to my chest.

How could she be like this? She could have literally lost her life that day, and she knows and surely believes that I was among the main reasons for it. I know it, too, that if not for what I had done, all our lives could have been completely different and better today. Yet, now, even after all of it, she says she holds no grudges or resentment towards me. Is that even possible?

“Cho-Wol, are you not mad at me? How is that possible?” I question her cluelessly.

“What do you expect me to do? Slap you? Scream at you? Throw you out of here? Humiliate you?” Again, there’s no fluctuation in her emotions or the tone of her voice as she fires her questions at me.

“All of that. Punish me for what I have done. Please,” I plead, leaning forward on the table.

Her eyes stay locked with mine, gazes unwavering as we keep looking at each other for a good few seconds.

“Forgiveness is the biggest punishment, and I’ve forgiven you long back. That does not mean I trust you or I have accepted your behavior. I chose forgiveness for my sake. I chose to forgive so that I could let go of what happened and move on with my life. I hope you don’t intend to stir the pot.” She says sternly, yet with a slight quiver in her breath, and my chest constricts upon hearing what she just said.

My eyes sting, and when I blink, a drop of tear slides down my cheek, followed by another, but I don’t bother about it. And neither does she.

“Cry, Taehyung. Don’t hold it in. I will not tell you to stop because I’m still human, and I want you to regret and cry. You are suffering because of your own guilt, and not because of me. Are you happy seeing where I am in life right now? Is this what you wanted? If so, you’ve achieved it, haven’t you? Or did you wish for something even worse? Tell me so that I’ll know,” her chin trembles, her nose turns red, and her moist eyes overflow, causing her tears to trickle down her cheeks.

I stay silent and press my lips together, lowering my gaze and allowing my tears to flow.

“I’m not crying for what was lost. I’m crying because I’m still clueless why it had to be me. What did you have against me?” Cho-Wol demands an answer when her tears slow down. She wipes away the lingering tears with her fingers and turns her face to the side, avoiding my eyes.

I dip my neck, trying in vain to hold back my tears. I cannot give her any answers at the moment because no matter what I tell her now, she would only end up getting hurt more. Her emotions are taking over and fluctuating heavily, and she’s also a new mother with her hormones wilding within her. I must be considerate, and crying will only defeat the purpose of my visit.

I only look up at her silently, and her eyes look like they have the power to rip my soul out. The eerie steadiness in them is a little disturbing. It tells me that she has been hiding her biggest emotions in their depths and struggling for a long time now. The closure and the answers she demands are the only keys that will liberate me from my suffering, but they will do nothing for her.

I don’t find it in me to give her the truthful answers at this moment; I’m dumbfounded.

The silence between us is deafening, and I feel utterly helpless. We both have nothing to tell each other and, if anything, this wasn’t at all how I expected this encounter to go.

Was I even doing the right thing when I decided to meet her?

“Everything aside, are you still in touch with anyone from school?” She asks me first, after a long time of silence.

“I am, with a few,” I stop at that, but I have so many questions for her that I’m not entirely sure she’d appreciate or answer willingly.

She nods her head as she moves aside the teapot and our cups.

“Good. So, you’re a doctor now. I’m glad to know. Are you and So-Yeon still together?” My heart races to a halt when she brings up the past, and I swallow uncomfortably.

“No, we broke up a long time ago.” I keep my eyes on my hands as I answer her.

“Oh, that’s sad,” Cho-Wol comments dryly, exhaling deeply thereafter. “All of that for someone who never stayed. It sounds a little ridiculous to me,” her tone isn’t kind, but I was expecting to hear this from her.

“It is,” I laugh softly through my nose.

“It feels so weird. We have nothing to talk about, but we’re still talking about something.” She mumbles in an uninterested tone.

“Do you own this restaurant?” I deflect the topic in a different direction so that we would have something more to talk about for a little longer.

“It’s not mine, but I’m looking after it now,” she talks in riddles once again, hinting that things have changed ‘now’.

Does that mean her partner isn’t with her anymore? Or is it something else?

“I see,” I give a lame reply, but before I could ask her more, the baby wakes up inside the room and lets out a feeble cry.

Our heads simultaneously flick in the direction of the room, and Cho-Wol instantly rises from her seat and scurries inside the room as fast as she can while I get up, too, and wait for her.

She returns in some time with her baby in her arms, all bundled up warm in a swaddle.

“Is she feeding well?” I ask her, taking a step closer to her to look at the baby who is red in the face from all the squeezing and stretching she has been doing.

“She is. But she’s a light sleeper, just like her father,” Cho-Wol chuckles lightly as she tenderly brushes the baby’s cheek with a fingertip.

My eyes fly to her face, but she doesn’t notice, and I smile a little before focusing back on the baby. I want to ask her where the father, the irresponsible jerk in my opinion, is. But I hold back, presuming it could be a very personal question, and probably even too invasive. What if he’s not alive? It would be better if I don’t mention him now.

“I could have her for a while, in case you have something else to take care of,” I offer to hold the baby for a bit to help her in some way, but she declines curtly.

“Thank you, but I can do it,” Cho-Wol sends a soft smile my way, and I smile back at her.

“Will we meet again?” I ask her, pulling out my phone from my trouser pocket.

“If destiny has a plan, like now, we will,” her shoulders lift in a small, nonchalant shrug as she continues to smile and play with her baby.

“I don’t think I’m patient enough to let destiny reveal its plan anymore. Save my phone number,” I place a call to her phone, and her eyes shoot up at me, stunned, when we hear her phone vibrating on the kitchen counter.

Satisfied, I smirk as I bask in my little moment of happiness.

“Take your supplements regularly, and follow the exercises, too. Yeonju will not be a light sleeper for too long. I’ll see you around, Cho-Wol,” I wave her goodbye, walking a few steps in reverse, and then I step out of her home while Cho-Wol stands anchored to her spot, still staring at me in surprise.

🎭

Published on : 06/18/2025