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𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄, 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄

PAIRING- Baker!Ex-surgeon!Jake Sim x Fem!Traveller!Reader

SUMMARY- when his wife passed away, Jake thought the chapters of happiness in his life had commenced. To salvage whatever he could remember of her, he moved to Europe and opened a cafe, leaving his life as a surgeon and everything along with it. Starting anew with his wife's fantasy for a life, he lived for eight empty years until Y/N eased into his world and filled holes he didn't know existed, but she was fated to leave him like his wife did

NOTES AND WARNINGS- this took months to complete, months. I put so much effort into this so the people that actually wind up reading this monster 'till the end? You have my heart, ya'll are real ones. So warnings, uh, death, alcohol, mentions of sex, lots of travelling and most of the story is set in Italy. I put in so much effort ya'll. I can confidently say that I probably won't write anymore if it becomes a flop. We've seen posts about how people should interact more with fanfiction writers and fanfiction posts. Yeah, it'll all I ask for. Anyways, enjoy

WORD COUNT- 33k

ᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀʟɪsᴛ | ᴇɴʜʏᴘᴇɴ ᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀʟɪsᴛ

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i. The End

If being a surgeon had taught him anything, it would be to remain calm.

Under any circumstance, remain calm.

Growing up, Jake was always clumsy. Even with steady fingers, he would always find himself tripping over his laces or swerving his car in the wrong direction if he was distracted in the slightest bit. In high school, his peers had even given him a nickname- The Klutz, his teachers and classmates called him and it had gotten to the point where it was the only name he responded to. But always with his charming grin and boyish charm, of course. During college, his professors almost laughed in his face for his clumsiness, deeming him unprepared and uncoordinated for medicine, let alone becoming a surgeon. However, throughout his years in medical school, it was his textbooks and heavy workload that mellowed his clumsiness into something easier to handle; into something his professors or mentors wouldn't call negligence.

Clumsiness always stayed with him though. It was a trait of his that refused to leave him and it manifested in mundane areas in his life like almost losing balance while carrying a huge pile of books or dropping his fork while eating ramen in the middle of the night. He found that tripping on his shoelaces was a habit that would never leave him but at least now, he wouldn't fall face-first onto the ground in the hallways. When he did embarrass himself, though, he would always brush it off with his signature boyish charm, a smile so irresistible that his classmates- fellow medicine students- would be swooning over him even if he had cake frosting and spaghetti sauce all over him.

Jake probably wasn’t the best medical student. Still, somehow, after taking many courses that sounded significant and writing exams that proved him an above-average student, he became an intern at Seoul National University Hospital. It was one of Korea’s best teaching hospitals and his parents couldn’t have been happier with him. Jake, despite being drained of his energy with ninety work-hours a week, could not be happier to be an intern among sixteen others because among those sixteen others was Ari, who would become his future wife. She was beautiful, just as her name defined her to be. Her long, black hair would always be tied in a ponytail and she would address her bosses with the utmost respect but seconds later she would be found cracking jokes and talking witty with everyone in the building. In the surgeries she was asked to scrub in, it was her words that would bring the doctors and nurses a sense of ease and her patients a strong will to believe- it was all in her nature; like she was born to do her job.

It was probably the sixth month of his being an intern that he remembered vowing never to show clumsiness again. He and Ari were asked to scrub in for surgery, specifically for a hemispherectomy, where the deceased half of a nine-year-old boy’s brain had to be removed. Doctor Lee was the Head Surgeon that day, concentrating through the lenses of his surgical loupes while holding scalpels that were expected to save the boy’s life. But, it was an unfortunate event. Something had caused Doctor Lee’s hands to shake, some nurse walked past him too quickly and nudged his shoulder and just like that, a surgery that was supposed to last six hours was ended in only two and the boy’s time of death was called at 11:38. Ko Ji-Hoon, his name was… and Jake would never forget the agonised cry his mother let out when she found out her son didn’t survive the surgery. The hospital faced a lawsuit and the nurse that had nudged Doctor Lee’s shoulder was fired within an hour.

Clumsiness was not a part of Jake’s personality after that incident.

Jake was a completely changed man since then. He remained calm through everything and perhaps that made him more endearing. He was calm when he asked out Ari for the first time, leading to the most eventful date he could offer her. He was calm when he became an attending cardiothoracic surgeon at Seoul National University Hospital, aiding his success in the field. He was calm during the most stressful surgery he had ever performed, instructing all the interns and nurses in the Operating Room with a steady voice and steady hand that stitched a broken heart together. He was calm while congratulating Doctor Lee on his promotion to becoming Chief of Surgery, raising his glass of wine at the dinner table with a simple nod and smile. He was calm on his wedding day, shedding a few tears in silence and whispering sweet compliments in Ari’s ear as she spoke her vows. He was always calm, only allowing his adrenaline to peak to a specific level and never passed it unless he was drunk. He could never control himself when he was drunk.

The only time he lost his composure since that incident was on the eighth of July, 2013. It started as a normal day- he kissed Ari a good morning before leaving for work as he had an early surgery to perform. He drank coffee with Doctor Lee and Doctor Park, joined by Ari a few minutes in. He took his time to finish pending paperwork, his lovely wife sitting beside him doing the same thing. It was a calm day, in all honesty. Either silence or childish banter was flowing between the married couple, a cup of vanilla latte was shared between the two because it was their first time trying it and they decided one would be enough- it tasted horrible. But the moment was peaceful and romantic, the definition of their marriage.

Then the day took a turn, though, when a new intern, Doctor Nishimura, burst through the doors of the room they sat in. He yelled at them with pleading eyes, ushering them out and into an Operating Room for emergency surgery- the married couple were trudging towards their beck and call.

“Honey?” Jake called as he emptied the pockets of his scrubs. Ari hummed, trudging beside him down the hallway. “Have I told you how much I love your hair today?”

“Why, thank you, jagiya,” she smiled, running a hand through her newly dyed auburn-red hair.

The change in her hair came around a month ago. She dragged him to the salon on a Tuesday evening in broad daylight. It was a bad idea to skip their duty as doctors uninformed, even if it were for only a couple of hours, but Ari was excited, skipping and giggling about how thrilled she was about something she refused to tell him. Jake spent his time in the salon guessing what it could be that his wife was enthralled about while her hair was being folded in sheets of silver foil. When he asked, she told him it would be a surprise.

“You seem to be smiling a lot today,” Jake voiced his observation as he stretched his surgical gloves on, closing the doors of the Operating Room behind his wife.

“That’s because I’m revealing the surprise today,” she wiggled her brows and her smirk was covered by her mask, but it was brighter than the sun to Jake.

So, the surgery started, a neurosurgeon and cardiothoracic surgeon working together to fix what was left of a crashing circulatory system. The nurses were cooperative and throughout the process, Jake was doing his best to allow Doctor Nishimura to learn something along the way, which meant that he was expected to answer every question he was asked and do what he was asked to do, even if it meant he had to squeeze a live heart for it to beat again- as an aspiring surgeon, he was eager. A complicated surgery progressed excellently yet it would be during that surgery that Jake lost his composure at 14:27 when Ari’s eyes started rolling to the back of her head, gasping for air as she stumbled back and eventually collapsed.

Scalpels still in his hand, he stopped probing his patient’s heart and yelled for help. Although he wanted to run toward his collapsed wife, he couldn’t due to fear of leaving his patient unattended. Doctor Nishimura and a few nurses carried Ari outside, urging Jake to finish the surgery before worrying about his wife and that she was in good hands- he was sure she was in good hands. All the surgeons in the hospital had grown to be a part of whatever family he had left and with their fondness towards Ari, he was sure they would do everything in their power to save her.

Jake barely made it out of the Operating Room, running towards his wife the second he was sure of leaving his patient with the rest of the nurses. His heart thumped with adrenaline, words spewing out of his mouth in yells and screams for the first time in many years as he ran towards whichever room Ari would be in. When he found her, she was lying in a hospital bed, her beautiful red hair strewn across the pillow while a tube ran down her throat. Doctor Park, Seoul’s best neonatal surgeon, stood beside her, Doctor Lee standing beside him with his hospital cap held to his chest. Doctor Nishimura stood on the other side, wide eyes with a gaping mouth, eyes empty as he stared at the corpse of his superior. The flatline of the heart monitor finally became audible to Jake.

“Time of death, 15:19,” Doctor Park announced, eyes and body unmoving though aware of Jake’s presence. “We did everything we could Jake, I’m sorry.”

Ignoring what he had to say, Jake took a step towards Ari, her skin suddenly a ghostly pale. “Jay, what happened?” He choked, refusing to take his eyes off the rest of the doctors in the room. “How did it happen?”

“It was an ectopic pregnancy,” Doctor Park responded. “She was pregnant.”

Jake, with that piece of information, collapsed on the floor. His whole world came crashing down- it was as though he was steadily riding up an elevator, only for its cords to snap and the elevator to crash in a fleeting moment. Bile moved up his oesophagus and pressure built up in his skull, chest and spine. As a doctor, he could diagnose these symptoms and give himself medicine and saline to recover but as a husband, he diagnosed it as grief. The sudden emptiness in his heart, the cold of a winter’s night burrowing deep within its four chambers, made him feel like he was about to freeze to death if he didn’t feel the warmth of his wife’s hugs again. He felt as though he would never feel warm again, no matter whose presence he was in. Yet the hot tears in his eyes told him he needed one of the doctors- anyone he considered family- to sit there with him and grieve. He wanted Jay Park and Heeseung Lee to sit with him and grieve.

“Doctor Nishimura, I think you should leave,” Doctor Lee mumbled, pressing his lips together and lifting his head to swallow his tears. The intern left, eyes remaining as wide as saucers until he came into the presence of the other interns he was familiar with, confiding in them the tragedy he was intertwined with.

“Heeseung?” Jake meekly whimpered. “Why?”

Doctor Lee sighed, nimbly stepping towards him and Doctor Park followed. The pair sat on either side of him, the former formulating an answer and the latter sitting in silence, paying his respects for the deceased- a girl he became friends with throughout their years as interns. “We were five minutes too late,” Doctor Lee answered. “Jake, I am sorry.”

“Do you know the gender of the child?” 

“It was too early to tell, I’m sorry.”

Jake wondered why the Chief of Surgery was apologising to him, as though he was the reason for Ari’s, his wife’s, death. He told himself it was fate, that whatever has happened needed to happen and no matter how much effort and drugs and energy they put into saving her, she would end up dead and the baby would end up dead. In a minute of silence, he went through all the possibilities of what could have been- if she had mentioned that she wasn’t feeling well in the Operating Room, they could have gotten her into Emergency Surgery sooner. If she survived and the baby didn’t, at least he would still have her with him and he would cradle her back to health no matter the grief that existed for a baby that could have never been. If Ari had survived, they could have tried for another baby and if it weren’t a possibility, they could have adopted or opted for surrogacy. If Ari had told him earlier that she was pregnant, such complications wouldn’t have surfaced and she would still be alive. The heart monitor wouldn’t be showing a flatline and her chest would still be rising up and down with fresh oxygen in her blood.

“She was pregnant,” Jake breathed, clenching his fist over the area where his heart resided, sharp pain in his emotions. “That was the surprise she was going to reveal today, that she was pregnant.”

He remembered how she proudly ran her fingers from the roots to the tips of her hair when he complimented its fading yet bright shade of red. He could almost picture the smirk she must have had behind her mask before they fell into the limbo of the rinse-and-repeat procedure of surgery. He could still hear her voice in his head, excited and giddy as she told him her plans while walking into the ill-fated Operating Room where she collapsed. He recalled and played the memories of all the moments that lead to her collapsing on the sacred floors of the hospital and suddenly, he couldn’t breathe anymore. 

In the minute of silence, while he went through everything that could have been and everything that was, he couldn’t breathe and he held onto Doctor Lee’s shirt in desperation- Jake wasn’t calm anymore.

ii. Somewhere In Italy, There Was a Café

Sunghoon had always been successful in his life, which meant that he was always surrounded by successful people in his life. His father was the founder of the most successful stocks company in Asia and even if he had no idea what the purpose of his business was, he still taught him how to gamble with luck and be confident with whatever decision he made. His mother was the most famous ballet dancer in Korea and she taught him how to chase his dreams no matter how unreal or impossible they seemed. He was taught by some of the world's most skilled surgeons, eventually becoming the best plastic surgeon in the country himself. 

He worked in one of the best hospitals and befriended some of the best neurosurgeons, general surgeons, paediatrics surgeons, neonatal surgeons and cardiothoracic surgeons. One of them was Jake Sim who was known to hold magic in the palms of his hands and worked miracles while suturing heart muscles. He was his best friend, they grew up around each other's families, went to the same medical school together, completed the same internship and worked at Seoul National University Hospital together. He watched him reach all the important milestones in his life; high school and college graduation, his first day of work, his wedding where he was the best man and buying his first house.

But neither of them was prepared for Ari’s death.

Sunghoon supposed the loss was also somewhat of a milestone for his best friend. Though he wasn’t there when he found out about her death, he was there while he planned the funeral and picked out the flower bouquets to hang around the coffin. He was there, by his side, holding his hand and crying with him while the coffin was buried six feet into the ground. He was taking care of him until he could stand on his feet again, made him breakfast, forced him to brush his teeth and shower and go back to work to save more lives.

What he wasn’t there for was when he made his decision to quit surgery, pack his bags and move to some small town in Italy. Jake left a note for everyone to read before he disappeared. It gave them instructions on how they shouldn’t look for him or worry about him while he would try living the life his wife dreamt of having. He contacted no one, ignoring every phone call or text sent his way and deleting all kinds of social media. Some believed he had moved on and started a new chapter of his life while the other eccentrics proposed that he was kidnapped and could be dead in a ditch somewhere.

One year after he absconded, Sunghoon received a text from an unknown number.

“I’m in Positano,” it said. “You should come and visit.”

In the eight years that Jake spent in Italy, Sunghoon visited him four times. The first time he went, he was hurriedly packing his bags and asking his girlfriend at the time to book flight tickets to a place neither of them had heard of before. When he saw him waiting for him at the airport, he stomped toward him and slapped him, cussed profanities in his face and cried about how he was alone for a year without anybody to drink and wallow with. Jake stood there and took everything that was thrown at him until silence ensued and they jumped at each other to share a hug. He showed him around the small town, welcoming him into the small apartment he rented and introducing a whole new world of tourist attractions to be discovered. Before he left, he told him about his hopes of opening a bakery or a bookstore.

The second time he visited, Jake’s café was under construction. He helped pick out the furniture and the paint to be sprayed on the walls. They spent hours in the kitchen, Jake whipping up pastries, various baked goods and drinks while Sunghoon acted as the judge and helped finalise the menu. They drove around neighbouring towns and cities to do more shopping; clothes, useless trinkets, snacks, groceries and raw ingredients for Sunghoon to take home as souvenirs and for Jake to use for his business. Along the way, they went fishing, swam in crystalline waters until they could watch the sunset and partied their night in a club called Music on the Rocks.

On his third visit, Caffè Della Bellezza was booming with business with two other employees and Jake had shifted his house to an apartment towering on the upper floors of the café. The building he resided in was almost ancient with daffodil yellow paint chipping off its walls and a couple of windows cracked with shattered glass and no amount of renovations could make it look modern. But its beauty resided in the myriad flowers and vines growing through the cracks in the bricked walls and the ravishing apartments it held within itself. Jake would close the café before sundown every day so he could take Sunghoon to explore the remaining untouched territory of Positano. They discovered pretty little restaurants for Jake to take inspiration from and roamed a worn-down archaeological museum where Sunghoon took pictures to update on his flourishing Instagram account.

Sunghoon’s fourth visit to Positano was when the real story would start.

A Salty Mediterranean breeze diffused into the café while Sunghoon sat on a table closest to the cashier where Jake stood and accepted payments from customers who drove from various parts of Italy to taste his famously baked and decorated cakes and pastries. What made his confectionery so famous was his unique implementation of Korean recipes and decorated them as minimalistic as possible and baked goods as such were hard to find in small villages. His café became one of Positano’s hidden gems and tourists that were lucky to find him usually came back the next day to place another order. Sunghoon had pitched the idea of expanding the business into an affordable restaurant and hiring a chef but Jake refused and insisted on continuing the way he was. The employees he worked with changed as years passed and currently he worked with a college student who was saving up money to buy himself a car and a high school girl that wanted to pay for surfing lessons. 

It was unusual to watch Jake use his hands to pack doughnuts and muffins into brown paper bags and boxes. His million-dollar worth of hands were once used to save lives and hold scalpels and various other surgical instruments that could fix any kind of broken heart but now he watched him waste his talents over baking, essentially, because it was the only wish of his deceased wife he knew to grant. Ari had always talked about moving to Europe after retirement and starting a small business. She could never decide exactly what she wanted to do; sometimes she would say she wanted to open an antique book store and other times she would say she wanted to open a flower shop or a bakery. Jake settled on opening a café because of Ari’s love for trying different caffeinated beverages and saccharine foods. He lived on through the memory of his wife by fulfilling her dreams.

Sunghoon was always surrounded by successful people and Jake was one of them, except he was once a surgeon; now an entrepreneur.

Sunghoon held an exceptionally large mug between his hands, the type of mugs used as props in 90s films and sitcoms, the smell of coffee mixing with salty air as he gawked at his best friend interacting with customers in fluent Italian. Living in the country for eight years would lead anyone to pick up a few words or phrases in the language but Jake could probably read old Italian poetry, accurately translate it and even critique it if he was given enough time- he had always been a linguist. Apart from growing up speaking and reading Hangul, he picked up on the English language faster than Sunghoon. Then came his sudden interest in learning Japanese after flying to Tokyo for vacation with his family and an inclination towards Latin after he stumbled upon an old piece of writing that sounded beautiful. Adding Italian to the mix, he could speak five languages in total and it was a trait of his that Sunghoon was always jealous of.

“Why don’t you visit Korea once?” Sunghoon suggested and Jake glanced at him from the corner of his eyes. “You can visit the hospital again. A lot of people have been asking about you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jake scoffed, chuckling as he closed the cashier. “Who?”

“Well, Heeseung and Jay, obviously,” Sunghoon raised his brows and shifted his gaze upwards while he pondered. “You remember Nishimura Riki? He’s an attending neurosurgeon now. He asked about you recently.”

“You should have mentioned this when you came first,” Jake made his way to the other end of the display case, reaching for a slice of chocolate cake for his indulgence. “You’re leaving today, no need to bring this up.”

“If I brought it up earlier, would you have agreed to come back home?”

The sly smile on Jake’s face told Sunghoon that his dreams of seeing his best friend stepping foot on the grounds of their motherland would never be fulfilled. Positano, Italy was the new home that he had built over the past eight years. He knew some of the village residents like they were old friends and he was personal friends with some of his loyal customers, greeting them with hugs and even giving out free casseroles on a good day. He had a membership to the local gym and a permanent discount at some of the stalls in the flea market because the sellers were fond of his kind smile, warm greetings and baking skills. Sunghoon could probably ask him to come back to Korea as a dying wish but if his best friend decided not to attend his funeral, he would have to haunt him even in his afterlife. 

Just as Jake sat in the seat across from Sunghoon, the entry bell rang and a young woman walked in. She looked curious, looking around and admiring the ivy and wisteria decor before clearing her throat. Her eyes were wide, feet tapping around in search of something. She was a new customer, never having interacted with her before which led Jake to believe that she must have been new in town. It was hard to conclude that she was a tourist because the bohemian skirt and tank top she wore was common fashion near the coasts of Positano. She could have been the daughter of one of the merchants in the market, visiting town for vacation or she could be the girlfriend of one of the bartenders at Music on the rocks.

“Mi dispiace signora, al momento siamo chiusi!” Jake hollered and pointed to the sign hung on the glass door which read CLOSED in bold Italian.

Now, she looked confused, her brows pulling together and lips twitching upwards in an embarrassed smile. With that reaction, Jake could conclude that she was simply a hungry tourist. Her clothes were probably bought a few days ago to be worn while she explored the town and the tan visible on her skin was probably acquired after a day at the beach. Her eyes almost looked innocent while she wandered deeper into the café, holding her skirt up to not stain it with dust. 

“English?” Jake cocked his head when she stood a few feet away from him and Sunghoon.

“Yes!” Her face lit up like she just found buried treasure, smiling ear to ear. “Yes, Thank God!” She cheered, holding her hands over where her heart resided as an act of relief.

“I’m sorry but we’re closed ma’am,” Jake nodded with artificial sympathy, squinting his eyes and pursing a smile as he pointed towards the door again.

“Oh, please, just help me out a little,” she asked with longing. “I just moved into an apartment upstairs and I’ve been roaming around town trying to look for a nice place to eat but I’m lost so I thought the least I could get myself was a muffin or something.”

“You moved into this building?” He stood up, stunned by the new piece of information. “You moved into the apartment across from mine? Third floor?”

It would explain the hustle and bustle of workers cursing and the thuds of what sounded like cardboard boxes and furniture he heard the previous night. It was her that moved into the apartment across from his and it was her that one of the neighbours was discussing with him in the morning while he sold him a bagel and cappuccino. He wasn’t sure if she had bought it or rented it but regardless, she must have been wealthy because the apartments were costly, taking up a chunk of Jake’s savings when he invested seven years ago. With inflation and increasing taxes, they were more expensive now but as he looked her up and down, she didn’t seem like the snarky affluent types he was used to meeting.

“Yeah, and I’ve been starving,” she sighed. “My breakfast was a packet of chips and right now, I’m too tired to walk around more to find a restaurant. So, can you please just help a girl out?” She might as well be begging as she clasped her hands together and shook them in front of herself, expression contorting into hope.

“Yeah, Jake. Help her out.”

Sunghoon was looking at her from over his shoulder, his lips slightly parted and eyes glazing over as he looked her up and down and examined her features. He was judging her through the eyes of a plastic surgeon, tracing the curve of her nose, sharp corners of her eyes and heights of her cheekbones with his gaze. So far, of the many women he had met in Italy, this mystery girl was probably the most attractive he had laid eyes on with the perfect height and splendid smile. 

Upon noticing where his attention was, Jake leaned toward Sunghoon’s ear. “You’re leaving today,” he reminded him with a look of warning in his eyes. Then, he stood straight and offered his new customer a welcoming grin. “Fine. What can I get you?”

The pair walked towards the display case, standing on either side while she closely examined the array of pastries to pick from. She squinted her eyes as she read the labels of each dish, two fingers holding her chin and lips folded into her mouth. “I’ll have a slice of pecan pie here,” she started. “But can you pack two slices of chocolate cake, two slices of red velvet, four blonde brownies, a pretzel, two croissants, a box of doughnuts of whatever you recommend and a baguette?”

“That’s a lot,” Jake raised his brows at the nonchalant smile on her face.

“Well, I need to stock up on something for me to eat,” she chuckled.

“You’re gonna get a lot of cavities with this much sugar.”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

With an almost sultry smile, she took her plate of pecan pie and made her way to a separate booth but Sunghoon ushered her towards him, offering to keep her company. She happily complied, ignoring the glare Jake sent their way, annoyed at Sunghoon’s advances. She gracefully sat beside him, fixing the crinkles in her skirt and pushing locks of hair away from her face. The shade of the tables closely matched her shirt and the flowers in the vase coordinated with her skirt. The braids pinned in her loose hair were close to untangling but the style made it all the more mesmerising.

“I’m Sunghoon,” he blurted while she took the first bite of her pecan pie. “And that’s Jake,” he pointed at him while he worked through her order and packed them into a parcel.

“Y/N,” she lifted her brows and chewed, an awkward smile on her face. “Nice to meet you two.”

Jake rolled his eyes but Sunghoon chuckled with glee, nodding enthusiastically. “So, what brings you here?” He asked. “A job?”

“Well, not exactly a job,” Y/N chuckled, rubbing the side of her lips with the knuckle of her pointer finger. Rings and bracelets decorated her hands, each with a different colour and made from varying materials; some with thread, some with metal and some with beads. “I’m just travelling around. I’ll study the culture here for a while and move on to the next city.”

With that, Jake's inquisitiveness peaked. “Really?” he asked with feigned indifference while filling a box of doughnuts. “Where were you before coming here?”

“Giverny, France,” she said. “I stayed there for seven months.”

“The Claude Monet Foundation, huh? So you can speak French?” He asked in awe.

“Yeah, a little bit,” she shrugged and tutted before they could continue asking her questions. “What about you guys? How long have you been staying in Positano?”

“Oh, I’m just visiting,” Sunghoon raised a finger, leaning into his chair and crossing one leg over the other.

“Eight years,” Jake said with pride.

“Impressive.”

“What are you planning on studying in Positano, anyway?” Jake pondered. “There isn’t much here. Most people would go to Rome or Sicily to study Italian cultures.”

“I know, but that isn’t the point,” she waved her fork around. “I’ll explore Positano and the towns surrounding it and to make detailed excursions, it takes time. There isn’t much that we know about small villages like these.”

“Interesting.”

The three hummed, allowing silence to settle amongst them while Y/N devoured her pecan pie and Jake finished packing the last of her order, Sunghoon observing her with squinted eyes and pouting lips. Jake brought the parcel to the table, sitting on the opposite side of the pair with a cough that attempted to clear the heavy air around them. Pedestrians carried laughter with them as they walked past the café, a group of children cycling down the road and yelling jokes in Italian that only he could understand. A freshly baked batch of cookies was waiting in the oven to be taken out and its smell overpowered the Mediterranean air.

Y/N was clueless as the two boys looked between themselves, sharing glances of concern while they judged her urgency to stuff her mouth with food. She was exaggerating when she said she was starving but she looked like a child coming out of poverty, eating food for the first time in a long time. She hummed in delight once she finished the crumbs, pushing the plate into the middle of the table as Jake wet his lips, looking between her and Sunghoon.

"I could assist you while you explore the town," he clicked his tongue over the roof of his mouth. "Sunghoon is leaving today and when he does, I could direct you to a great restaurant for dinner."

"You're leaving today?" She turned towards him with eyes of pity. "That sucks," she mused.

"I know," Sunghoon nodded, looking her up and down.

"So, what, you're gonna be like my tour guide?" She looked at Jake, pleased and grateful for whatever help she could find.

"Essentially, yes," he nodded. "We're going to be neighbours anyway. It shouldn't be too hard, I was basically a tour guide for Sunghoon."

"That'd be a great help, Jake," she smiled. "Thank you, really. I think this will be fun."

Jake wasn't sure why he was offering help, that too to a total stranger. Y/N was a sweet girl, seemingly easy to make conversation with and was venturing into an interesting field of occupation. He wondered how much money she made or if she simply lived off her father's earnings. He wondered where she studied and how many countries she had visited so far. He thought people like her, people who made a lifestyle out of travelling and learning, only existed on the internet and in fictional media but seeing a character like her in real life fascinated him. He saw the symbol of the swastika on one of her bracelets, leading him to believe that she had been to India. Then he saw the delicate carvings on her silver ring, resembling a common art form found in China. The earrings she wore reminded him of the architecture found in Egypt. Perhaps she could teach him about Giverny and all the other cities she had been to so far. He was always open to learning and history would be a new subject to touch on.

"You're a great baker, by the way. Seriously, you should start a franchise."

iii. The Difference Between a Traveller and a Tourist

Jake had forced Y/N out of bed while the moon was still hanging amongst the stars, only starting to set before the sun could rise. She was, in fact, in the middle of a pleasant dream; she had on a straw hat and a summer dress with bright yellow lemons, sitting in the middle of a meadow with a canvas in her hand and a paintbrush in the other, stroking an image of all that her eyes could meet. Bees buzzed around her and beside her sat a basket with strawberries that she had plucked on her own and mangoes as yellow as the shining sun above her. Twirling around her ankles was a white cat, fur softer than her pillow and eyes lighter than the blue sky. But Jake's voice pierced through it all, and her dream's colourful ensemble melted into the dull ivory and sesame paint of her bedroom walls, the lone painting of an unknown artist hanging opposite her bed.

It had been just over a week since Y/N had moved to the quaint town of Positano, Italy and Jake was the only friend she had made so far. And she saw him only a few hours a week. Her days were filled with unpacking her duct-taped boxes, dusting cobwebs off corners of the walls and redecorating to make her home of the next few months look presentable. When she was lazy or needed a break, she would drag herself down the rickety, wooden stairs of her building and muster into Jake's café for a snack or two. He took her to the market one day, so she could buy accessories for her home and she bought a few Persian carpets, potted plants for her balcony and a new set of chairs because the ones that were left by the owner had collapsed when she tried sitting on them. She would say her apartment looked welcoming for the time being. Perhaps it needed a few more paintings and she would dig them out of her boxes as time went on.

Y/N was used to the whole process of moving from town to country to continent by that point. But she wasn't used to switching homes. By the time she'd become comfortable in a house, it would already be time for her to move to the next and the cycle continued. She learned ways to efficiently pack her things and found tricks to learning the basics of new languages easily but never could she crack the dilemma behind learning how to be comfortable in a new set of four walls and a new bed. The only constant she had so far was the shark-stuffed toy she slept beside every night, just sitting on a corner of her bed and keeping her company with its beady eyes. 

Jake invited her for a relaxed dinner of ravioli and Italy's famous red wine the night prior. They lived right across from each other, making it all the more convenient for the both of them to visit each other back and forth. They were still getting to know each other, one trying to get comfortable in a completely new environment and the other navigating how to make a new friend. Apart from Sunghoon and the people he made neighbourly conversations with, Y/N would be the first person he felt a kind of responsibility towards when it came to taking care of her needs or teaching her the ropes of the small town they lived in. Not to mention, she was his age and he hadn't made friends with someone his age in a long time.

Dinner between them ended with a brief hug and a giddy laugh from Y/N. They had talked about their opposite taste in movies but how similar their music choices were and they pivoted to a conversation about one of her many experiences in Aswan, Egypt and how an almost invisible scar on her arm was from helping an archaeological dig near the Kom Ombo Temple. Jake didn't have anecdotes similar to hers but he did speak about his career as a cardiothoracic surgeon. When asked why he gave up the glory of surgery for baking cakes in a hamlet in the middle of Italy, he shrugged his shoulders and said he had no particular reason while pushing the leftovers of his meal back and forth with his fork.

The following night, he would enter her house with the spare key she had given him to shake Y/N out of bed and say, "Get up and get ready, it's your first day as a tourist," with a stern look on his face, a monotonous persuasion in his tone.

She groaned and turned to face away from him, reaching to find her stuffed shark but gave up when she realised it had probably fallen off the bed. "The stars are still out, Jake," she whined.

"Get ready, wear something nice," he commanded while pointing a finger at her face. "I said I would be your tour guide and I plan on keeping that promise."

By the time Y/N had freshened up and changed into something presentable, Jake was already standing in front of her door with a map and sunscreen for the journey. On their way down the stairs, he spread open the map between his hands and struggled to explain where he was taking her for the day but she pretended to listen and scanned the map to learn on her own. His voice registered as notes rather than words and then their footsteps were all that she heard as he guided her towards the coast, down many flights of stairs that were hidden in rows of trees and bushes of wisteria.

“They don’t call it the vertical town for no reason,” Jake humoured when she commented on the plethora of stairs, some worn down enough to crumble if she stepped her foot down with just enough pressure. 

“You could be kidnapping me for all I know,” she giggled when he almost slipped down a stair but quickly straightened himself with the help of a branch hanging in front of him. “I’ve known you for barely a week,” the night was only starting to end, the sky turning into a mix between blues and yellows, some stars disappearing and clouds reappearing.

“You’re right,” he grinned over his shoulder, the early rays of sun glistening across his eyes as he finally led her down the last few stairs. Holding her hand with subtle grace, he turned her towards the seaside, crystalline waters with ghosts of foam splashing against sand cleaner than Greece’s beaches. “I’m taking you to where I bury all my victims.”

She ignored the joke with a gaping mouth, eyes in awe of the visual in front of her. The sky reflected against the water, waves splashing violently against neighbouring rocks and landing softly on the coast and eventually her feet as she stepped closer. Stars glimmered above her and flickered away when she saw the rounds of a pink sun climbing up the sea- the Mediterranean Sea. The salty air frizzed her hair, her white dress following the wind and she was sure she stepped on a small cone shell but nothing could take away the serendipity in front of her. Her gape turned into an open smile, eyes hinting at a glimmer when she looked over her shoulder to find Jake admiring the view with his arms crossed and chin high, standing with pride over his discovery.

“I found this place a month after I moved here,” he smiled, strolling closer to her, languidly looking at the boulders secluding the location. “Barely anyone knows about this place or the stairs that lead here. That makes it more beautiful, doesn’t it?”

He was standing beside her now, a healthy distance between them as he stared into what looked like heaven. Y/N had seen so many beaches that she couldn’t put a number to it and she had experienced views and sights that knocked the breath out of her lungs, literally and figuratively. But it was something about the way Jake looked at the beach like he would look at an old lover or something of his past he was fond of that made the moment all the more personal and all the more confidential. His brows were slightly furrowed due to the sun and his eyes squinted, his lips pursed in a straight line and his hair struggled to stay in place despite the amount of hairspray he styled it with. Another second passed and his hands were stuffed into the pockets of his trousers and his head tilted to solemnly stare at the sand. He wiggled his toes as the water touched his feet and Y/N paid enough attention to catch the essence of a minuscule smile on his lips and the fluster in his demeanour.

“This place must mean a lot to you,” she observed out loud and his smile stretched to show his teeth. 

Jake let out a breath of a laugh and nodded, eyes not moving away from the sand. “This is where I scattered my wife’s ashes,” he kicked the sand in an almost juvenile manner, ignoring the weight of his words and the nonchalance of his tone. 

Y/N didn’t offer him a reaction but rather looked away and towards the sky that was blending into shades of orange, pink and light blues. Her lips folded inwards, swallowing the fact that her new friend- or acquaintance- was widowed. She wouldn’t know what to say and judging from his silence and refusal to shift his gaze towards her, she assumed he appreciated her lack of pity or empathy. Rather, she was still in a state of silent shock. She wanted to ask him why he hadn’t mentioned his interlude prior to their friendship or what drove him to bring her to a place deemed intimate and private to him. 

Did Sunghoon know of this place? Was this where he came to when she couldn’t find him at the café? What was his wife’s name? When would it be the right time to ask questions?

The last time Y/N had a friend share their past with her was probably two years ago while she was backpacking through raves and house parties in Goa, India. She found herself travelling with a group of passengers with the same aim as her- to party in every rave they could find. In that group of passengers, she grew close to a man with lusciously long brown hair and eyes matching the greens of the leaves surrounding them. Their companionship grew into a cliché romance and they would spend most of their midnights laying in front of a bonfire with a thin blanket covering both of their frames while they talked about things they claimed they had never told another soul. The conversations she had with him were like none other, so easily flowing between them like a boat drifting down a calm river and sometimes she feared she would never find an experience like him again. 

But here was Jake, a man she thought who lived a simple life was buried in a cloak of loss that she failed to notice; a man who had more to offer than he led on. In the split of a moment, faster than the time it would take for her to comprehend her thoughts, Jake’s coyness turned into what she perceived as reserved and independent. It was like she was meeting someone out of a tragic movie- like he was Noah from The Notebook or Rose from The Titanic.

“I’d probably want that, too, if I were her,” she hummed, crossing her arms and gulping as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other. She would be left in regret if she let the moment become awkward and if she unintentionally came off like she didn’t care by not answering. She assumed her words would hold somewhat of some significance to him. Her expression turned similar to what his was prior; squinted eyes, furrowed brows, and pressed lips added with a solemn stare. “Like you said, this place is beautiful.”

“As was she,” Jake lifted his head to look at the sea one last time to take in its glory. The beach was like the Taj Mahal to his Shah Jahan.

Jake still remembered the day he brought her ashes to the beach they stood in. It was a month after he had moved to Positano and was having terrible insomnia. The urn with her ashes stood on a shelf opposite his bed, haunting him every time he opened his eyes, reminding him of what once was- not just of his wife, but the family he left behind in Korea. So, in a desperate attempt to distract his nightmares, he found himself strolling the streets of the coastal town in cold winds. He looked up at the dark skies as though he was admiring antiques in a museum and breathed in sulphur and salty air like he was tasting cotton candy. Along the way, he had tripped and slid down a flight of stairs he had never come across before and found the enclosed, undiscovered beach he deemed to be his own. The next night, he scattered Ari's ashes in the calm waves and recalled how she always said she wanted to be as strong as the ocean currents and as deep as its trenches. 

"Let's go," Jake looked at Y/N, his brows drooping with minuscule melancholy. He stretched his hand towards her, an inviting smile driving her to step under his wing and let him guide her away from the beach.

They took the long way out and strolled for about an hour. He took her through narrow alleys where they had street food for breakfast and he took pictures of her standing under bushy vines of bougainvillaea. The orange skies turned a clear blue, sunlight shining against baskets of lemons and oranges outside grocery stalls. Salty air followed them every turn they took and Jake’s smile never left while his eyes followed Y/N’s skips on the stony pavement, her skirt swirling around her calves every time she turned to laugh with him at their conversation. He’d never seen her laugh that way; not when she was helping in the kitchen, when they were decorating her apartment or when they had dinner the previous night.

With their arms intertwined, Jake guided her up another flight of stairs painted white, rusty railings leaving hues of copper on her hands. He climbed slowly, taking her hand in his and looking back every so often to muse about the church he was taking her to. He enthused about the interior sculptures and paintings on the walls and the giant chandeliers that dangled from the ceilings and the intense wave of peace he would feel every time he stepped foot inside. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t religious but she would go along with him anyway, just to admire the architecture he preached so much.

“Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta,” he bellowed with a smile, stretching his arms as though he was a host starting a game show. 

When they walked in, Y/N’s eyes were met with an astonishing sight. It almost felt like she had walked into a palace, a castle that once housed a lonely princess whose hobby was to fill the walls with biblical paintings. The ceiling glistened with gold and the walls were a crisp white, reminding her of the ivory marble she once admired on the Taj Mahal. Jake guided her to sit on the benches, one isolated so he could fill her in on whatever he knew of the place. 

Then, he pointed towards an old couple that sat closer to the floral shrine, telling her that they owned his favourite stall in the flea market. They sold hand-crafted toys made of wood and organic paints- Y/N couldn't fathom why he loved the stall so much, owning only one of the products they had ever made that was sitting on his showcase above his television. But then he told her that the old couple ran a toy business because their deceased grandson loved such toys and wanted to keep living in his memory. He told her that a lot of people living in Positano started businesses in memory of their loved ones- it was the beauty of the village.

“Did you open Caffè Della Bellezza for your wife?”

Jake didn’t respond, gulping to soothe his dried throat. Instead, he held her hand again, leading her to the ruins of a Roman villa. Well, they weren’t allowed to go inside due to an archaeological dig and study. It was taken over by a group of historians and Y/N wondered if she could join their team throughout her stay in Positano. The ruins were colourful, adorned with deep hues of blues, reds and yellows with symbols and artwork she was itching to decipher. Before she embarrassed him due to her excitement, Jake dragged her away, insisting that it was time for lunch.

During lunch, while she and Jake sat at a table on a Parisian balcony, Y/N thought about what it would have been like living in the Roman villa she just saw. She imagined what it would have been like living by the sea, between walls so colourfully painted and amongst a family, she imagined to be huge- she imagined herself to be one of six children of a man who travelled and was barely at home and a woman who loved to sing and read to her children. She even found an article detailing how archaeologists discovered the ruins in the early 2000s- she imagined how exciting it would have been to be part of the discovery.

She told herself that if she had time, her next goal would be to live in a beach house in the Caribbean, working with a team of marine biologists in their next deep-sea expedition. 

“Y/N?” Jake’s voice made Y/N look away from the sight looming over the balcony, levels of colourful houses and sprawling greenery more impressive than what she remembered from Lucerne, Switzerland. “What’re you thinking of?” 

She chuckled along with him, shaking her head. “Nothing, just…” she trailed off, “I’m not a tourist.”

“What?” Jake’s brows raised with confusion, tilting his head to the side and coaxing for an explanation.

“When you were waking me up, you called me a tourist,” she reminded him, a coy smile on her face as she broke off a piece of garlic bread. The warm cheese refused to split, stringing on until the chunk reached her mouth. “I’m not a tourist.”

“Oh,” Jake smiled, “My apologies. What do I call you instead?” He asked with a playful grin.

“I’d rather be called a traveller, an explorer of some sort,” she smiled back, holding her chin high with pride. “You know, someone who learns and collects memories.”

“Yeah, I gotcha,” he nodded, forking a piece of marinated shrimp and tossing it onto her plate.

“You didn’t answer my question, by the way,” she said, glancing at him through her lashes while chewing her shrimp.

Jake didn’t need to be reminded of what she was talking about, the memories of Ari never ceasing to play in the back of his head. It sent chills down his spine even, how he felt her presence throughout the day; on the beach, walking down the streets and even in church- it scared him how much Y/N reminded him of her. Like their laughs echoed each other, their excitement matching the same wavelengths. He didn’t have it in him to look at Y/N, afraid he would see the face of his wife- yes his wife, not his ex-wife or dead wife, but his wife- instead of the face of a girl he was just starting to get to know.

“Yeah,” he nodded, gulping. “It was for Ari,” and he acknowledged that, apart from Sunghoon, she was the only one he admitted that to.

iv. Basket Full of Strawberries, Mangoes and a White Ragamuffin

Jake owned a bicycle, one that was pastel green with white handles and a white wicker basket and upon discovering it, Y/N insisted that they rode around the market in them. Now, she didn’t own a bicycle so she borrowed their neighbour’s. It was the same one as Jake’s but the pastel green was replaced by a pastel pink. She promised their neighbour, a middle-aged physics teacher at the local middle school who everyone liked calling Mrs Giuliani, that she would return it by the evening. With a beaming smile on her face, giggles slipping past her teeth, she carried the bicycle down the stairs (because there was no elevator) by its handles and joined Jake on the gravelly pavement. Like a baby on a slide, she rode down the slope leading away from the cafè while screaming in joy like there was no tomorrow, Jake struggling to catch up to her no matter how hard he peddled.

Y/N had been living in the quaint village of Positano for about two and a half months now and one of the many things she loved about Positano was its weather. The skies offered various hues and shades of colours. The mornings were always blue with clear skies, rarely ever raining. The blue reflected against crystalline waters that reminded her of the time she cannonballed into Blue Lake in New Zealand wearing her favourite bikini along with a group of girls she had acquainted with in the student housing she paid for at the time. On days she didn’t come home tired from visiting the archaeological dig, she would stay up all night looking back to her time in high school. She looked back to high school because she wasn’t aware of the ticking time bomb that was her life at that point and she wondered how much longer her parents would fund her trips and when they would start begging her to come back home.

Before entering the wet market, Jake took her on a ride down the Amalfi coast, occasionally stopping to greet someone he was familiar with and introducing them to Y/N as his neighbour- nothing more, nothing less. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel guilty about reducing her to that when he truly looked at her as a friend, treated her like she was family and tended after her like she was his responsibility.

Just a few weeks ago, she had dragged him to the beach in the night, the same beach he had taken her to all those nights ago. She woke him up in a white bikini covered in some sort of green, knitted dress that did a terrible job at covering up her curvature and tanned skin. With her hand clasped in his, she led the way as though he wasn’t the one that introduced her to the secluded coast in the first place. She insisted on going swimming, which he was choosing against and telling her it was a bad idea. She dove into the water head first anyways, throwing her knitted coverup in his face despite his warnings of the waves being stronger in the night. The next morning, she woke up with a stuffy nose and hoarse mouth and Jake spent the rest of the week cradling her back to health- making her chicken soup for breakfast, reminding her to take her medicines and lulling her to sleep.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she had told him in her groggy slumber. Her hair was strewn across her pillow and her eyes could barely stay open due to the Aspirin. As Jake left her side on the bed, her fingers found his, willing him to stay with a whine. He could only smile, bidding her a good sleep before he left to sleep on her couch.

The pair eventually found themselves riding their bicycles out of the market, her wicker basket filled with cartons of ruby-red strawberries and bags of sunny yellow mangoes. When Jake asked her why she needed more fruit than he- a cafè owner- did, she insisted that she was going to take him on a picnic. Somewhere along the way, while he stopped to pick up a few lemons, Y/N came across a Ragamuffin, its hair as white as snow and eyes as blue as the clear sky spanning above her head.

“No,” Jake huffed when he saw her picking up the stray cat, holding it close to her cheek while he dropped his lemons into his basket. “No way,” he stomped towards her.

“What? Not a cat person?” Y/N grinned, avoiding his gaze and raking her nails through the cat’s fur. “I think I want to keep him,” she joked.

“You’re not allowed into my house or cafè. Ever again.”

Seeing her giggle with the Ragamuffin reminded Jake of his own dog. When he left Korea, he left Layla, his Cream Border Collie, with his elder brother. She passed away just a couple of years later and that would be the first time he ever had a reason to pick up a call from his hometown. He hadn’t talked to his brother since then and nor did he bother to contact his parents. He still had a smaller version of his family photo, framed above his television set which he stared at whenever he questioned his decision on absconding- he and his brother had their arms wrapped around each other, his parents seated in front of them with Layla drooling on their laps. His house, his big and beautiful childhood home stood behind them as a blurred background.

When Jake was still in middle school, his parents would tell him stories of how they met. It was a clichè anecdote, one where his father met his mother in front of an old cinema theatre on a Saturday and took two more weekends to pass for him to finally ask her out. When they got married, they built their house, the one Jake and his brother grew up in, each nook and cranny painted with memories of their mischief. He imagined that when he would meet his wife, he would bring her to his childhood house and they would all live together as a happy extended family. But instead, he lived in an apartment much more expensive with his wife until she was alive and now, he was living somewhere on the Amalfi coast, taking care of his vagrant neighbour.

His gaze followed her as she parked her bicycle and carried the Ragamuffin to a fountain located in the middle of the market. He was suddenly reminded of that one scene from Beauty and the Beast where Belle was sitting in a similar-looking fountain with a herd of sheep trying to eat the book in her hand. Y/N wore a similar outfit, in fact; a baby-blue sundress with a matching bow that pinned her wavy locks of hair away from her face. Her lips stretched in a toothy smile as she cooed at the cat who was camouflaged into a bundle of cotton that occasionally purred back. Slowly, Jake stepped towards her with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his shorts, tilting his head at the sight in awe as he towered over the girl and the cat he was sure she would take home.

“What are you gonna name him?” 

He smiled at her the way he once did at his wife. He smiled at her the way he used to smile at Ari while she played with Layla. He was reminded of how her dark hair would fall over her shoulders, her striped dress shirt exposing a bra strap and her collarbone. The curtains would ghost over her head, then retreat, leaving little to no space for sunlight to bathe the moment. Jake would capture his two favourite girls in his film camera with an equally bright smile. He still had those pictures and videos hidden somewhere in his apartment, behind dusty cabinets and under a pile of myriad other cardboard boxes. He pondered looking for them- it certainly wouldn't hurt.

“Oh, I can’t name him,” Y/N shook her head coyly. “I’d get attached.”

The Ragamuffin left her arms when she gave it another kiss, strutting into the house of a random shop owner- the cat’s owner. Chuckling, the pair rode back home in a hurry. Y/N returned the bike to Mrs Giuliani while Jake prepared a picnic basket with freshly baked bread from the cafè and the fresh fruit they had just purchased. Containers filled with homemade jam and butter were stowed on the other side of the picnic basket, wrapped up in a white and red chequered picnic mat. By the time she was back, he was holding up the picnic basket with a smile on his face that said surprise!

“I want to paint,” she declared and Jake was made aware of the skittish ideas and requests she’d been throwing around the past few days. What had started with midnight swimming spanned into learning how to play the guitar that stood in the corner of Jake’s bedroom when she told him she’d never had an interest in playing instruments, demanding to help make new recipes for the cafè, reading all history books of the Amalfi coast she could find in the local book store, making pasta from scratch, touring every single museum near their parameters and today, it was having a picnic and painting. Before Jake could ask about her random bursts of impatient interest and spur-of-the-moment decisions, she interrupted him. “Pack wine,” she crooned and disappeared into her apartment to gather her paints and canvases.

Jake waited for her near his car; his car which was red, an old Italian model which made Y/N wonder how much earnings the man truly had saved up in his bank accounts. Perhaps he had a secret side business going on where he could cook up coke in his kitchen and sell packets of it to teenagers near the beach. It would explain all the times he would lock himself up in his apartment, asking her to take care of his cafè and leaving her with no explanation for his absence. Chuckling at her far-fetched thoughts, she stowed small canvases, which were the size of Jake’s palms, and paint supplies in his trunk and hopped into the passenger seat.

She wasn’t sure where he was driving them. She didn’t particularly care either. Anywhere with a lot of grass and clouds, she said and he was at her service. To soothe her own cinematic urge, she made him wear sunglasses along with her and rolled the windows down so the wind could ruffle their hair. Her arm swung out of the window while she sang along to old English music and Jake laughed at her and told her to be careful. He had his hand near her leg at all times, just in case she slipped while peeking her head out the window, sunlight falling on her face. 

Around an hour later, Jake announced that they reached their destination. He carried the basket of food; she carried the art supplies and they strode up a small hill to reach the greenest patch of grass Y/N had seen in Positano. Jake set up the picnic mat and their cutlery while she ran to the end of the plateau to awe at the view. The town looked like something out of a cartoon and she could see brightly coloured cars, that looked like ants, driving down the Amalfi coast. If she put in the effort, she could probably find the cafè somewhere near the secluded corners of the town, furthest from the coasts and beaches. 

“Y/N,” he called out for her with his hand shading his forehead, squinting his eyes from the sun. “I cut some of the mangoes, we can eat now,” he said and she nodded at the view before turning towards him.

She folded her legs and fixed her dress as she settled opposite of him, one hand grabbing a fork and the other holding the small canvas to start her painting. The sweet nectar of the mango melted in her mouth and Jake stared at her while her expressions contorted into all the joys that food could offer. He filled their glasses with wine, making sure to give her less because her alcohol tolerance was low.

“What do you want to paint?” He asked, forcing himself to smile softer than before.

“What do you want to paint?’ She countered.

“What, I’m supposed to do this with you?”

“Well, obviously!” She chuckled as their voices raised. “I didn’t bring two of these for no reason!” She pointed at the extra canvas sitting beside him.

“I’m terrible at painting!”

“But it’ll be fun,” she whined.

“Hey, you literally lived in Giverny. You probably learnt how to paint like Claude Monet,” he pointed his finger at her and her laughter grew louder. “This isn’t fair game.”

“This isn’t a competition!”

And so, the pair painted, ate fruits and confectioneries from the cafè and talked more about Y/N’s adventures abroad. She told him about the time she went to Petra, Jordan and rambled on about how she wished she could create architecture as beautiful as what you find there. She told him about the old couple she met there who let her stay in their spare room until the end of her stay. They would make her breakfast every morning and tell her to have a good day and to come back home safely without a scratch. She told him how she could barely understand what they would say sometimes but the care they showed her was enough of an excuse for communication.

When the sun started to set, Jake insisted on driving home. He wouldn’t admit it to her but it was because he didn’t want the chilly wind to make her ill again- he was worried. While he cleaned up the dirty plates and plastic spoons, she compared his painting to hers. His looked like a child’s drawing compared to hers- green filling one half of the canvas and blue filling the other. On the corner was his poor attempt to draw the sun and a purple butterfly. Hers was rather detailed, clouds blending into the light blue atmosphere and each blade of glass stroked with various hues of green. She even painted a little of the town she could make out. After all, it was the least she could do after taking painting classes in Giverny.

Jake stood to his feet before offering Y/N his hand. They walked to the car with their arms linked and the stumble in her steps and giggle in her voice told him that she was already tipsy with just a few glasses of wine. During the car ride back, she laughed at everything he said and stared at the childish painting he made of the landscape. She looked at him with doe and glassy eyes when she spoke and his heart would skip a beat. He kept his hand on her knee while he entertained conversation, eyes fixed on the road ahead and clenching his jaw when she suggested they have dinner with more wine. Where did she get the habit of getting drunk on wine, he thought to himself, probably France.

When they reached Jake’s apartment, Y/N waited at the dinner table and he disappeared into the kitchen to whip up carbonara pasta. He joked about how she learnt so many skills throughout her years of travelling but could never bother to learn how to cook. She retaliated, saying he could never do half the things she could and he laughed in defeat. The sounds of boiling water and sizzling oil filled the air while her gaze looked around his apartment like she hadn’t seen it a million times before. Her feet bounced excitedly while she thought about food and helped herself to the leftover wine on the table.

She wasn’t even sure when they started eating but she did remember Jake’s warning of controlling her wine intake. She didn’t listen to him, of course. She never usually did. Apart from the fact that her favourite language was Greek and her favourite country to live in was China, if there was anything Jake learned about her, it was that she lived everyday like it was a new experience. He would never be the one to keep her from that- he didn’t dream of it. There was a point in his life where he wished to live like her, too- to seize the day knowing there would be no regrets and no repercussions for his actions. She would watch the movie, even if it had a bad rating; and she would climb the mountain, even if it was too steep; and she would kiss the person in front of her, even if her nerves were on the brink of stopping her.

Jake wasn’t sure who started it, being intoxicated himself. He remembered guiding her to his couch with his hands on her waist and her laughter echoing in his ears. He remembered her holding the sides of his face, the tips of their noses hovering over each other. He remembered holding her hips and crumpling her dress around her thighs and he remembered her fingertips trickling down his crisp dress shirt. 

He told himself that the rest was history.

His hand, once as steady as a rock, was shaking as he cupped the side of her cheek. His fingertips caressed her skin and his thumb pressed on her neck, feeling her heartbeat pulse in rhythm to his. Her hand reached for his and he felt her explore the dips and crevices of his skin, drawing circles and squares as if to encourage his actions. His eyes hooded as his head tilted, breath faltering as he slowly crooned his neck towards her face. His breath fanned her mouth and she instinctively closed her eyes when she felt his lips on hers.

Jake wasn’t sure what he was expecting but he felt an unfamiliar warmth in her presence. He hadn't kissed a woman in years and to feel Y/N’s skin under his touch, her body under his control was like living in a fever dream. He didn’t bother moving away, instead holding her waist tighter and pressing his lips harder onto hers. With a sharp inhale, he was pulling her closer and coaxing her mouth open. He could feel the way her jaw moved as she followed his lips, chasing his comfort while he embraced her foreign company. 

He felt her fingers on the angle of his jaw, sliding their way towards his chin, then down his neck until she found the buttons of his shirt. He allowed it. Though he didn’t understand what he was feeling at that moment, he allowed her palms to explore the crevices of his chest and he allowed his hand to roam beneath her dress and on the flesh of her thighs being pressed together. She squirmed under his touch, moaning into his mouth and pushing herself closer to him until he dragged her onto his lap and held her hips against his. Her hands roamed his hair and he wondered if she could feel the layer of sweat that formed on the nape of his neck. His hands climbed up her back, fingers sliding under the straps of her dress to slip them off her shoulders and when she didn’t stop him, tilting her head to kiss him further, he pulled down her zipper.

When his lips parted from hers, she whined, snapping her eyes open and taking in the sight of Jake dipping his head to let his tongue roam her neck. While he drew warm circles with his tongue, she threw her head back and sighed with parted lips, asking for more as he circled his arms around her waist. One hand found itself around her throat, the other being guided down to her hips and up her thighs. He didn’t know what prompted him to smirk but he chuckled into her neck at her desperation, her hips grinding just above his crotch.

Kissing down her neck, each kiss slower than the last, he found himself grazing her collarbones with his lips. He pulled her dress further down her chest, a cool wind bringing goosebumps to her skin. She was whimpering for him, moaning his name as though it would make him quicken the pace but it was not part of his plan. Her nipples perked up as he kissed the valley of her breasts, his right hand pinching her right nipple and his left moving further up her thighs, fingers teasing sensitive skin.

“Jake, please…”

As it became more apparent to him that it was her voice moaning his name; Y/N pleading for him to move faster, the thought only urged him more. He was drowning in the curves of her body, the weight of her on him becoming the only important thing in the room. The silence of the night wasn’t as lonely as he remembered, the sheets of his bed having another memory to remember. When she slid his shirt off his shoulders, his guilt disappeared and he allowed his hands to roam further, his infatuation to grow stronger.

v. The Romance of Certain Decorated Cakes and Mysteries Unknown

It was early in the morning when Jake woke up. The space beside him occupied by Y/N, her back facing him. He ignored the buzzing of his phone for a moment, reaching for her waist and kissing her shoulder blade with his cushiony lips. She stirred in her sleep, parting her lips and letting out a sigh before settling against his chest. The sunlight that filtered through the blinds covering his window made patterns across her cheek, the parts of her skin that weren't covered by the duvet spanning with goosebumps. He smiled, lips barely pulling upwards as he buried his face in the crook of her neck and groaned when he reached for his phone under the pillow. 

“Hello?” he grumbled, pressing his phone against his cheek.

“Jake?” Sunghoon’s voice echoed through the speaker and Jake rolled his eyes, willing himself out of bed.

“It’s so early, Sunghoon,” he grumbled while struggling to wear his pants.

“Well, I’m on a small break so I thought I’d call and check up on you-,” he paused. “Are you putting on pants?”

“Yeah?”

“But you don’t sleep naked.”

“You’re creepy, has anyone ever told you that?” Jake pressed his phone between his shoulder and cheek, zipping up his pants and sauntering into the living room with his eyes squeezed shut and his nose scrunched in annoyance.

“You sound different,” Sunghoon pointed out before he let out a loud gasp. “You fucked, didn’t you?”

“You’re being ridiculous-”

“You fucked that girl!” Sunghoon continued to exclaim. “Y/N, was it?”

“Sunghoon-”

“Tell me everything, you bastard,” he clamoured. “How was it?”

“My God. Not everyone goes around telling their friends about their sexual endeavours-”

“So you fucking admit it!”

“Aish, it’s six in the morning and this is what you called me for? Seriously, you’re annoying me-”

“I knew something would happen! You wouldn’t shut up about her when I asked how it was going with her-”

“This is turning into a kindergartener’s conversation.”

Jake pinched the bridge of his nose while continuing to listen to his best friend ramble. But then he heard soft footsteps, the wood flooring creaking before Y/N appeared at the entrance of his bedroom and he hurriedly hung up the call. He wondered how much she heard, but it wouldn’t make a difference since she didn’t speak Korean. Did she speak Korean?

Y/N stood there with his shirt around her body, a coy smile on her face as she looked him up and down. “I don’t know where my clothes are…”

Jake’s lips widened into a toothy smile, slowly stepping towards her and cupping her cheeks with his hands. As he leaned in to kiss her forehead, her hands wrapped around his wrists, their eyes closing to savour the moment. The kiss lingered, their breaths syncing as she melted into his embrace. Neither of them knew if this was natural or not but they enjoyed it, arms wrapped around one another as if shielding each other from all the bad in their worlds.

For a split second, he almost thought of Ari. All those years ago, the morning after their first night together, she had walked out of the bedroom in the same manner- his shirt hanging off her shoulders, messy hair framing her face and an almost embarrassed smile spread across her lips as she laid eyes on him for the first time after a milestone in their relationship. He would be lying if he said Ari wasn’t the first person he thought of when he saw Y/N sleeping beside him and he would be lying if he said he didn’t remember his times with his wife while it was his neighbour he was making love to. A part of him almost felt guilty for comparing the two women, so independently different on their own- but in that moment, while he hovered over Y/N and her hooded eyes in the sensual darkness of his room, he swore what he felt for her was the same as what he felt around Ari.

“Everything alright?” She mumbled into his chest.

“Yeah,” he breathed, pulling away from her and pushing stray strands of hair away from her face. She smiled at him, eyes glistening under morning rays. “That was Sunghoon being annoying.”

Humming, she pressed her forehead against his chest and he instinctively wrapped his arms around her. His chin settled on her head and he could feel her nuzzling her forehead further into his chest like a cat asking its owner for attention. He felt himself zoning in and out of consciousness, thoughts about the night before swarming his head, a plethora of questions unanswered. As real as she felt in his arms, the more transparent she became in his thoughts, the ghost of her remaining when he wondered what exactly knew about her- so much, yet so little. He held her closer, chin digging into her hair, thinking that she would disintegrate in the filtering sunlight if he didn’t hold her any tighter- the way Peter Parker did in Tony Stark’s arms.

If there was one thing he hated about living on the Amalfi coast, it was having to live with longer days because the sun rose earlier. In the beginning, he had loved having to start his days at the brink of the morning, going for runs and spending an hour in the gym before going about his day. He felt like he was in one of those ‘my morning routine’ videos on YouTube, living a life so healthy and aesthetic. But then he opened Caffè Della Bellezza and his mornings were filled with tables covered in flour and icing, freshly cut fruits and hundreds of mugs of filtered coffee. The gym would go unvisited for weeks and even if he would find the time, he’d be too tired to go. So he started eating a more controlled diet as to not gain too much weight. With Y/N in his life now, he was walking around town and driving more than usual. He felt like that was a workout in itself and he started to realise the realities of his age.

“Y/N?” He mused. “I need to get the café ready.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled and peeled herself away from him. Her arms loosely hung at her sides, gaze focused on her feet. It almost looked like she was squirming under his gaze and his smile grew wider as he realised he had never seen her this way.

“Join me in an hour?” 

“Yeah,” she nodded. 

He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to but he chased for her lips anyway. Slowly, his neck craned and his head tilted to peck her smiling mouth. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss kissing. Just the act ofit, to feel that intimate and safe with someone else, to feel another pair of lips mould with his own in harmony… he almost forgot how it felt like. So, he shamelessly kissed her more while she giggled into his lips and asked why he seemed so different all of a sudden, so lively after the night before. 

Y/N eventually disappeared into her apartment and Jake got ready to open the café for the day. He put extra effort into his outfit and styling his hair but he wouldn’t dare admit that it was because of her, the girl next door, his neighbour. His world, until a few months ago, was a slice of peace and solitude. Now with her, he was in bliss, a phenomenon he didn’t think would ever occur in his life since Ari’s passing. He supposed second chances were something life offered. Maybe this was destiny’s way of telling him that he didn’t have to spend the rest of his life alone.

When he walked into his café, he sped into the kitchen and pulled his phone out of his back pocket. Sunghoon had left him four missed calls by then. Fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, Jake called him back and waited for his call to be accepted.

“Yo!” Sunghoon responded. “You dare hang up on me!”

“Wouldn’t be the first time, ‘Hoon,” Jake shook his head. “What’s up?”

“Oh, no. You don’t get to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Change the topic.”

“We didn’t even start a topic-”

“Tell me about Y/N! Tell me what the hell happened-”

“You’re annoying me again-”

“How’d it start? How was it? How do you feel-”

“Sunghoon, you’re turning thirty-nine soon. Stop acting like a frat boy.”

“How dare you bring my age into this,” Sunghoon feigned an offended gasp.

“Get over it,” Jake chuckled, shaking his head. He stood in the space between his giant oven and freezer, one hand bent to keep his phone to his ear and the other dangling at his side. He cooly sauntered around until he got to a counter still dusted with specs of flour from the day before. His finger swiped across the cool surface, collecting the dust and flour of the pad of his finger and dusting it away. “I feel fine, Sunghoon.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sunghoon hummed. If Jake listened close enough, he could hear his footsteps. He imagined Sunghoon walking down the blue halls of Seoul National University Hospital, the echoes all too familiar to him. His coat was probably hanging off his arm and his hair was probably covered in those horrid blue surgeon caps that made everyone look oddly unattractive. “Nothing special?”

“Well, yeah,” Jake trailed off. “It’s not that it wasn’t special. I’m not really sure what to call it.”

Sunghoon hummed and Jake could hear the clatter of metal- scalpels falling into a metal plate, probably. He heard more footsteps in the background now, along with the beeping of phones and bellows of announcements from large speakers- the hospital’s reception. “Well… what do you feel for her?”

“Are you trying to psychoanalyse me or what?” Jake chuckled again, leaning his back against the counter and crossing his arm across his chest. 

“Can you blame me?” Sunghoon defended. “I haven’t heard you talk about another woman in eight freaking years. As your best friend, I’m the most excited to hear something like this.”

Jake laughed at his words. It almost sounded like they were still in high school, acting like the biggest struggle on Earth was going through a breakup. “I’m sure my parents would be happier,” he offered.

“When was the last time you talked to them?”

“I’m not sure… it’s been a while.”

“Your mother misses you, you know?”

“You keep in touch with them, huh?”

“Obviously, Jake. At least someone’s gotta tell them you’re still alive.”

The pair fell into synchronised silence. Jake found himself relishing in the background noises the call had to offer- nurses yelling across the room to each other, the beeping of automated doors, the clanking of surgical equipment and voices that sounded familiar. He swore he heard Doctor Lee Heeseung hollering to Sunghoon for something he couldn’t quite make out. He felt his heart skip a beat, bile filling his throat at the thought of the hospital. He still remembered the names of all the interns that used to study under him. He wondered if they still worked there or if they took up other offers.

Then, he kept his phone on speaker and placed it in the corner of the countertop. “Do you not have surgeries to complete?” Jake called as he moved around to fetch a bag of flour. He grunted lifting the heavy sack, its weight thudding when it hit the counter.

“No, I’m relatively free for the day,” Sunghoon’s voice sounded distant, as though he was focusing on something else. Then he heard papers rustling and assumed he was going through some clinical report. “I might go home early.”

“When was the last time you took a day off?”

“So long. You of all people know getting a day off would take a miracle,” Sungoon groaned. “Someone or the other comes in to get a rhinoplasty at the last second. I can perform those procedures with my eyes closed now.”

“Right,” Jake cleared his throat and poured half a batch of flour onto the counter. “Y/N’s been helping out at the café these days.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sunghoon mused. “You guys having fun?”

“Yeah,” Jake nodded confidently, without hesitation. “She’s been insisting on helping me make a new menu.”

“You seem to really like her.”

“I care about her, yes.”

“You don’t know what you feel, do you?”

Jake’s silence was enough for an answer. He wasn’t sure what he could label his emotions as. Did he like her? He supposed so. He wouldn’t have slept with her if he didn't and he wouldn’t allow her smile to replace Ari’s memories. But was like a word too naive and simple to use for what he felt? He was fond of her, that he knew he could say. If one asked him what the difference between the two emotions was, he wouldn’t know how to explain it. He cared for her, he made sure she was safe at all times and recently, he couldn’t seem to say no to her. So did he like her? Did he love her? Or was she just Ari’s ghost, a reflection he was looking too far into?

“I’m just scared, I suppose.”

“Well, Jake,” Sunghoon started. “As your best friend, as someone that’s watched you grow up, I’m telling you that there really is nothing you can be afraid of.”

“But what if I get too invested and lose her too?”

Sunghoon paused, gulping when he realised the mistake in his words. “She’s gonna move in a few months, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is she going?”

“Not sure,” Jake lazily drew shapes into the pile of flour in front of him. “She said she didn’t decide yet.”

“Ask her to come to Korea,” he suggested. “You can fly back here with her, we can show her around the country. Maybe I can finally take a holiday-”

“Sunghoon, it’s gonna take more than that for me to come back there. You know that.”

“Right,” Sunghoon sighed in defeat. “What can you do then?”

“I guess I’ll just have to make the most of it.”

“Yeah, atta boy,” Sunghoon encouraged and gained another chuckle from Jake. “Just think of it as an experience.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jake rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, exactly. The next few months will be fun. Just savour it.”

The entry bell rang through all the corners of the café and Jake peered through the glass screen to see Y/N and his two employees walking in. Not needing an explanation, Sunghoon bid him goodbye and told him to have a nice day. Jake shoved his phone into his pocket as the three entered the kitchen with drowsy eyes and haphazardly styled clothes. Y/N, however, sauntered in wearing a lavender sundress made of lace and the finest cotton. It took Jake in awe, looking her up and down in her outfit.

“What is it?” She asked. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like that,” she repeated, pointing her finger to his face.

“You need to be more specific, aein,” he grinned, bending to lean closer to her. His hands weaved together behind his back and he felt like a bird soaring through Positano’s clear skies when she smiled at him.

“Like I’m the only person in the world who matters.”

Jake stood straight again, clearing his throat and looking away. The two employees, whom he affectionately liked to call the kids, were already preparing a batch of dough for the cakes. He and Y/N stood there awkwardly, scratching the back of their necks and looking around to see what they could do to distract themselves. Well, they had a lot of options but simply chose not to busy themselves. 

“What does aein even-”

“Wanna learn how to decorate cakes?”

Y/N spent the day in the café with a plethora of different icing colours in piping bags that Jake helped her to prepare splayed beside her. They looked like a pack of Faber-Castell colour pencils, ready to be used by a toddler to colour inside the lines of a drawing that was terribly made. She practised on cylindrical plastic at first, eyes narrowing on whatever design she wanted to create. While she didn’t even finish a quarter of her target design, inspiration taken from the internet, the day fast-forwarded behind her and her stance would still be the same- back hunched over a plastic cake, elbows resting on the counter and hands nimbly moving around the thin tip of the piping bag. The sun would set and eventually the moon rose, but she was so determined, nothing distracted her until Jake shook her shoulders and chuckled at her reach to create designs too intricate for someone that never even touched a spatula.

“How about you start with something simpler?” He offered the next day, more plastic cakes lined up on the counter while the kids ran the café and made the drinks for the customers. He taught her how to ice a cake first, to create a flat surface with a substance made purely of sugar, tooth-rotting material that she couldn’t stop licking off the tips of her fingers. When she mastered the art, he taught her how to navigate a piping bag and he explained to her which tip to use while creating specific designs. 

“How do you write with this shit?”

“Oh, aein, it’s too early for you to learn all that.”

He taught her how to create ombrés first, blending in two shades of her favourite colours, green and purple, while guiding her hands with his. He breathed down her neck while he focused on the colours with her, hair brushing across her cheek when she told him she wanted to recreate the sunset. He kissed her cheek, lips chasing hers for a moment, rays of sunlight accompanying their laughter before he told her to attempt it on her own. She continued piping hues of yellows, oranges, purples and blues, this time onto a real cake, for maybe two hours, the movements in her wrists so minuscule and precise that she was impressed by herself. And when she was done, he pulled her into another kiss, dipping her with his arms circled around her waist and twirling her around the kitchen. He piped on a crescent moon and a few stars in white and revelled in the pride exploding in his chest. A mother eventually bought it for her daughter’s eighth birthday. 

Soon after that, Y/N moved on to learning the more fun stuff- making roses and cartoon characters out of icing and whipped cream alone. Jake first taught her how to make her own whipped cream and how she could infuse various flavours into them, ranging from cotton candy to pumpkin spice. Then, she was using Pinterest as an inspiration to write the English alphabet in various fonts and sizes. She even learnt how to design three-dimensional flowers… It took Jake about a day to teach her the tricks in perfecting the art of icing. At a point, it had turned into a game of who can waste more ingredients by throwing them at each others’ faces. They had to close up shop early to clean up the mess they made.

By the end of two weeks, she could create cakes with intricate designs of animals, flowers, leaves, mandalas- anything the customers wanted. She even iced a cake to mimic Claud Monet’s The Water Lily Pond. Her cakes sold for higher prices, of course, as Jake marketed them as limited editions and it took way too much time and effort for her to finish decorating a small batch. Caffè Della Bellezza’s profits drove up in that period of time and he would treat her to fancier lunches and dinners when they would go out- out on dates, as he liked to think. He supposed he never asked the question officially, but just her presence made him content enough.

A little while later, Jake offered to teach her how to use and make fondant. She found that working with it was much easier than making it- it was like playing with clay. A lot of the time, she would make pandas and penguins with different coloured fondants and design her cakes accordingly. When he wasn’t busy, Jake would watch her process, observing the way her palms rolled around the piece of confectionery and how she would smile when she was satisfied with a final design. Though she was an amateur at best and probably wouldn’t use the skill once she left Positano, he’d like to think it was like watching a master in the making.

It was after another night at her favourite restaurant that she stopped coming out of her apartment as much. They had slept together that night, much like most other nights where they would find themselves tangled in each other's limbs and wrapped up in his duvet. But this time, she complained of a headache and refused to come downstairs to help in the café. Jake wanted to keep his insecurities aside and just be worried for her but he couldn’t help but wonder if he had done something to upset her or push her away. Many girls from his youth had blown off dates with him by using headaches as an excuse. However, it would be unfair to compare Y/N with people from his past. 

The less time Y/N spent in the café, the less lively the atmosphere became. It was probably just him that felt that way. Sales were still high, despite the disappearance of Y/N’s cake designs. The kids would still work and tend to customers with a smile and his regulars would still offer him their routined compliments on his looks and talents. Nothing seemed to have changed except for her presence.

The first night he crept into her apartment to check on her after her episode of a never-ending headache, he found her laying on her couch with an opened bottle of pain-relief tablets on the table and a heat pack stuck to her forehead. He had tried waking her up for dinner but she grumbled and turned to face away from him, complaining that she just wanted to sleep. Jake pursed his lips and squeezed himself into the little space left on the couch, hugging her to sleep. He found no reason to be concerned, especially since she woke up feeling just fine, claiming that her headache could have been due to overworking herself.

He only started getting worried when her mood started to diminish. The adventurous and restless girl he was so accustomed to was draining out of her, her smile declining by the day. She would spend more time in her apartment sleeping than going outside and she chose to speak less to save her energy. When he kissed her, she wouldn’t make him chase for her like she used to. Instead, she would peck his lips and offer him a tired smile. Her skin started to pale and the life in her eyes started draining into dark circles. Her fingers were bonier than he remembered and her hands would start shaking when lifting a glass of water. 

She had also started spending more time on her laptop. Well, at least that was what it looked like because whenever he was with her, she was typing away on her laptop, claiming she had to write about her time in Positano and detail her experiences. She would ask Jake about little details of the town and would confirm timelines but other than that, there wasn’t much conversation. She would be wrapped in a blanket, back leaning against the headboard while tiny letters on her laptop reflected in her eyes. 

She would be so engrossed in her work that she would refuse to even eat or get out of bed to shower. Jake would feed her and carry her to the bathroom at times like these. He would even help her shower because sometimes, she’d be too weak to stand up on her own, mumbling that she was too tired or sleepy. There would be times when he’d find her sitting in the tub, hugging her knees to her chest in tears and he’d have to guide her out of the bathroom and dress her. Yet, she refused to tell him why she was in mystery.

“I just want you to tell me so I can help you,” he would say. But she would chew her lips with tears welling in her eyes and she would shake her head as an answer.

When he insisted on taking her to the local hospital, she refused and would lock herself in her room where he assumed she just slept some more.

From what he remembered from his days as being a doctor, a cardiothoracic surgeon at that, he was taught to never ignore the little symptoms because they could be the beginning of something terminal. What he observed in Y/N could be many things, illnesses ranging from various types of cancers to common viral fevers. They could also be signs of chronic depression, he realised, but he could find no explanation for her headaches and lack of strength. He chose not to be pessimistic and continued holding onto his hope that she would perhaps smile for him again. 

Once, when he was bringing soup to her apartment for dinner, he heard her yelling on the phone. Curious, he pressed his ear to the door but could barely make out a few words. It sounded like she was talking to her parents, people she rarely mentioned before, arguing about something he couldn’t figure out. It was probably the first time in weeks that he heard her raising her voice, talking in a tone that wasn’t weak whispers or hoarse replies. He could almost picture her lips in a scowl as she yelled at her parents, her hands raking her hair in frustration.

When he was certain the call ended, he entered her apartment meekly and placed the big bowl of soup on the table. “Was that your parents?” He asked, sitting beside her on the couch.

“Yeah, it’s stupid,” Y/N nodded, her breath heaving as though she had just run a marathon. Was she just angry or had she used up all her energy?

“Are you alright?” He asked again, reaching for her hand and weaving his fingers through hers. “Can I please take you to the hospital?”

“Jake, please,” she sneered, staring at him with narrowed eyes. “I get it, you were a doctor and you’re concerned, but I’m fine. I don’t need any more arguments.”

Though he felt a pang in his chest, he accepted her wishes and sat beside her for a few more moments, his thumb grazing over her knuckles as comfort rather for himself. He looked around her apartment, the cold of the night seeping through her curtains with a single night lamp turned on beside the couch. Most of the paintings hung up on the walls were illuminated by a soft, gold light, the rest of the apartment drowning in darkness. He wondered if this was usually the condition she stayed in when she was alone, sitting in darkness with as little light as possible.

“I know what’ll cheer you up.”

He knew it was probably a stupid idea, but it worked regardless.

He offered her the soup and demanded she finish it while he turned on the television and played a Korean drama. It was a rather new one, a cliché even, where a girl and boy meet at a law firm and fall for each other once they start working on a particularly emotional case together. Y/N found it intriguing, her eyes glued to the moving pictures on the screen like she’d never watched a show before. They stayed up way past midnight and finished more than half the show.

That night, she laughed childishly for the first time in weeks. It was the same laugh she made while telling him something interesting about her day and the same laugh that she made while decorating cakes in the café. She joked about the melodrama of the plot and the slow burn of the romance and Jake would listen and make her laugh even more than the show did. He didn’t acknowledge it then, but he missed it. He missed having her intoxicating and exhilarating energy around him.

“Hey, Jake?” She called while he kept away the dirty dishes.

“Yeah, aein?”

“I’m sorry that I’ve worried you so much lately.”

Jake sauntered to her with a smile on his face, his hands in his pockets and head tilted to the side. “You don’t need to be,” he assured. “I just want you to be fine.”

For the first time in weeks, Y/N initiated a kiss. She stood up from the couch, balancing herself on her toes and wrapping her arms around his neck for support. He didn’t move, eyes simply scanning over her dulling features, his smile still intact. She kissed him in brief pecks, head tilted from one side to the other between each and he basked in her touch; in her surge of energy to please him. 

When he didn't make any effort to touch her, she pulled away, staring at him through her lashes with parted lips and hazy eyes. Jake only chuckled, whispering her nickname under his breath and removing his hands from his pockets to wrap around her waist. At that moment, while he admired her beauty under dimmed lights, he wasn't sure if he could confront his feelings again- the swell in his heart and the relief in his chest. He wasn’t sure if his dependence on her was appropriate but for the time being, he kept his worries aside.

“Kiss me again,” he said.

She obliged.

Jake didn’t know why it felt more natural to kiss her than to treat her like a friend. He wondered if this was what fate felt like, to meet someone you were meant to be with from the start. He asked himself if this was what he felt when he first met his wife. He questioned what the difference between her and Y/N was. He wondered if his questions were even relevant when he was treating her the way he would treat a lover. 

And so, he let her fingers card through his hair and his hands pull at the drawstrings of her sweatpants. Then, he was carrying her to her bedroom, lips still kissing hers open in desperation to feel her closer to him. 

vi. When the Curtains Start to Close

Jake didn’t want to jinx it, not that he believed in such superstitions, but Y/N was becoming lively again. After that night of bingeing that Korean drama, she started making increased appearances at the café and would take part in serving the orders of loyal customers. She retired from decorating cakes, despite being asked about it by the few customers that recognised her. Instead, she would spend her whole day outside like she used to and she would come back and tell Jake all about what she did. In the past few days, she had been visiting the beach more often. She said she would just stand there and let the waves tickle her feet and would be asked by tourists to take family photos for them. 

Other times, she would walk along the narrow road of the Amalfi coast and try all the street food she didn’t have a chance of tasting before. She also bought handfuls of postcards of all places she had visited in her time living around the coast- Capri, Procida, Forio, Ravello, Atrani, and so many more places whose names she couldn’t even remember at that point. She even visited the tiny museums that didn’t have paid entries. She spent all her valuable minutes reading the descriptions of each exhibit as though having such knowledge would make her existence any more significant.

The past six   months in Positano, Italy were colourful to say the least, more colourful than her time in Greece which was saying a lot because the sunsets there were phenomenal. She supposed it was all thanks to Jake and his company. And around him, she supposed she could say she felt significant for perhaps the first time in her life.

After Y/N seemed to regain her youthful curiosity towards the wonders of exploration, Jake spent a lot of his energy worrying about her regardless. Whenever she came home later than she would say, he couldn’t help fret that she had collapsed on a random street, crying and weeping over her lack of energy again. Every night, he would only fall asleep after she did and he would wake up before her to fix up a nutritious breakfast including all her favourite fruits. On days he could close the café early, he would wander the beaches and narrow roads of the coast until he found her and he would walk her home, clasping his hand in hers.

Desperate to cling to the familiar identity of hers that he had created in his head, the one that always had a smile while trekking through any path he took her through, he suggested he take her to an island he himself hadn’t visited yet- Ischia, also known as a paradise island. Much like the time he took her to Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta, he woke her up early before the sun even started rising and before the stars had a chance to flicker away. She groaned and crawled out of his bed and threw her stuffed shark in his chest to accentuate her annoyance but she still managed to make it across the hallway and into her bathroom.

It was times like such where Jake wondered why she was still paying rent for her apartment. She spent most of her time in his apartment anyway, not much would change if she moved all her clothes into his cupboards either. He was a man of fashion, he would admit. He wouldn’t dare buy a pair of jeans if he had no shirt to pair it with and he would never dream of wearing a shirt he got sick of. This meant that his clothes were pristine but limited and most of what he owned could be mixed and matched into various combinations. It also meant that he had a lot of space for Y/N, who was known to own various pieces of dressing, sometimes the same piece but in a different colour.

Y/N showed up at his door with tamed hair and an outfit consisting of his light blue shirt and a pair of shorts. They shared a chaste kiss before he was dragging her down three flights of stairs and into his cherry red car. The drive to the coast was short and they began making their way down the rocky bridge that led to the small, isolated island.

“Who knew all it took was a little lovin’ to make you feel better,” he teased her, reaching his hand behind him so he could grab her arm and yank her closer to him.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” she rolled her eyes, grinning. “I’m just glad I’m over that slump.”

“Me too,” he smiled and brought her hand to his lips, leaving a peck on her knuckles.

The waters on either side of them were crystal clear, a clean shade of blue that could be confused with the vast sky above them. They could hear the bells of the plethora of boats floating back and forth from island to coast, fisherman hollering at each other to ask if they had extra bait. Seagulls soared above them and pastel kites hung from near the coasts where children were guiding them with strings that were on the verge of snapping. It was the kind of day Jake would call ideal in Positano, Italy.

That morning, Jake had let go of all his worries and he wasn’t exaggerating. Seeing Y/N even remotely return to her previous self, the self that wandered into his café all those months ago, had him convinced that all was right in his world again. He was able to let her walk to her apartment on her own without asking her if she needed any help and when she told him that she could make her own breakfast, he let her. So when he felt her retreating her hand to take pictures, he let her and continued to saunter forward. 

He failed to realise the thump he heard was from her frail body collapsing on rocks and cement. Her camera rolled into the sea and the tips of her fingers caused ripples in the water. The bell of a sailing boat rang twice as loud, the worried calls of a captain finally made him turn around. The world around him shattered.

Nishimura Riki, or Riki Nishimura as Latin liked to frame his name, had gone through so many stages of education that he couldn’t even count the years in his head anymore. There was primary school, middle school and high school- the basics that any average child had to go through. And when it was time for him to pick a major in under-graduation, he studied Japanese and English Literature for a year. It wasn’t to say he didn’t like it- no, he sincerely enjoyed writing the many essay assignments and annotating specific phrases from manuscripts that shaped history. In a way, that one year shaped the personality he would sport for the rest of his life. However, he realised the subject wouldn’t exactly bring him a wealthy fortune. For a few semesters, he dabbled in Greek mythology and even thought he could switch to culinary school with a few cooking classes.

His parents, who had been shelling out too much money for his education alone and needed to save up for his two sisters, had started growing impatient with his lack of commitment towards any subject. For a while, they even suggested that he pull out of school and simply go back to training in dance, perhaps audition to be one of those trainees in Korea who would later debut to become idols. The idea of being ogled and drooled over by a bunch of strangers his age or older while he danced sensually on stage made him cringe. Granted, there was the added advantage of being able to travel the world and earn a truck-load of money… but he decided against the career. He even thought of putting his artistic skills to use and becoming an animator for manga- it was a booming entertainment across the world, these days- but it required for him to actually think of an interesting plot that would reel in readers. That career was a bust, too.

Like most boys at his age, he even went through a phase of wanting to become a footballer- or a soccer player, as the Americans liked to call it. This period of his life was when he dated the most and also the period where his parents were the most disappointed in him. His grades weren’t that great and he was found to be skipping classes a lot to play at the local football club. He would come home with sweat dripping down his damp hair and his jersey drenched by his bodily fluids and would instantly collapse to sleep when his head hit the pillow. It was probably also the period of his life where he was the least healthy. But then, he would make a decision that made his family overflow with pride- and perhaps even a little confusion.

Riki eventually found himself in medical school. He was a few years older than his first-year classmates but it was in that cohort where he met Sunoo and Jungwon. The three had similar stories to tell when asked why they joined medical school so late- neither of them had any clue what they wanted to do with their lives or careers. So, it was due to that reason that they became friends in the first place. Throughout their years of knowing each other and suffering through medical school and surgeon training, they had lived in the same dingy apartment with one twin-sized bed and a bunk bed. They would take turns sleeping on the twin-sized because, honestly, who in that age would want to sleep in a bunk bed that barely gave them space for their legs. 

By the time the three were on their last year interning at Seoul National University Hospital, only Riki was sleeping on the twin-sized bed because he was towering above both Sunoo and Jungwon and everyone at the hospital, for that matter. They had all accepted a fellowship around that time, Riki finally taking his final step towards becoming a neurosurgeon. When they became attending surgeons a year later, the three could afford to move into a larger apartment, one where each of them got their own room and wouldn’t need to worry about privacy if any of them ever brought a girl home. In fact, they had earned enough to each rent out their own apartments but it was a sense of familiarity that kept the trio together. In the hospital, amongst their colleagues and peers, they were known to be triplets glued by their hips at almost all times.

Riki had seen many peculiar things at his time in the hospital and he had grown to make many connections with his seniors as well. It would only make sense to come home to the people that took care of him when his parents couldn’t. There were patients that were admitted in the Emergency Room that both puzzled him and knocked his breath away and he had assisted and performed many surgeries that ended up on the front page of many medical-centred magazines. His favourite would be the one where a pre-teen was rushed to the Emergency Room by his father when he found out that his kid had been swallowing coins for fun.

Yeah, it was his favourite because Jungwon, the general surgeon, had to suffer through most of the work while he and Sunoo watched his suffering in cleaning out the patient’s stomach and intestines. 

When Riki decided to specialise as a neurosurgeon, he began spending more time with Doctor Sim Ari. She was famous for being from Seoul National University Hospital’s best batch of interns, the same one where her husband was from and where Doctors Park Sunghoon and Park Jay were from, too. They all had their respective nicknames within the famed, holy hallways of their hospital. One was known as the womaniser that specialised in plastic surgery to woo the hearts of many more women to come and another was known as the one born to become a dad who eventually specialised as a neonatal surgeon. As for Doctor Sim Jaeyun, he was famous for his hands- his hands that were dubbed a miracle by his colleagues and tabloids alike- that knew how to fix any heart that was suffering from any injury. He didn’t become a world-renowned cardiothoracic surgeon for no reason.

But Doctor Sim Ari? She was Riki’s favourite to be around. Not because he fantasised about performing adulterated actions with her or looked at her through a sexualised lens in any way- no, it wasn’t because he had a crush on her either. Don’t get him wrong, he wasn’t calling her unattractive either- she could easily be chalked up to being one of the most beautiful women that graced the halls of their hospital. She was his favourite to be around because, to put it simply, she was the least mean out of the rest of the attending surgeons in the hospital. Her beauty and talent in teaching neurosurgery with an interesting spin was simply an added bonus. While he assisted in Operating Rooms with her, she would laugh at a joke anyone made and would dance along if music was played on rare occasions. She would softly, calmly explain to him what he needed to do with the scalpel prodding at a patient’s brain if he was ever stuck and she wouldn’t yell at him or stress him out like the rest of the attendings with their students. 

Doctor Sim Ari was the type to listen to him ramble about what he remembered from his year in studying literature. Though the woman knew nothing about Japanese literature and could barely say she had ever read the English classics, she would still listen if it meant it would help Riki in improving his performance as surgeon and reducing his anxiety levels. Overtime, it became a habit for him to recall what he knew about literature in between surgeries or consultations if he ever found himself to be nervous, anxious or insecure in his abilities as a Doctor. He would find himself looking for some sort of connection between neuroscience and literature but an amateur like him could never even come close to it. He was sure various other writers, capable literates, had created the poem or prose that he wanted to, but he was yet to find it. Oftentimes, he was just reciting poems by Robert Frost or Sylvia Plath or would define literary devices in his head.

You see, that habit had only manifested somewhere in the middle of 2013, when his mentor, his favourite teacher, had passed away. Doctor Sim Ari, who brought out his interest in neurosurgery in the first place, had passed away. In literary terms, such an event would be called a tragedy or a plot twist, something that introduced a radical change in transpiring events. The loss of Seoul National University Hospital’s one doctor would lead to the loss of another- Doctor Sim Jaeyun packing his bags and leaving without bothering to tell anyone. All he left was his resignation letter and another letter that instructed no one to come looking for him.

Riki was devastated to say the least. He barely even made it to her funeral. The hospital didn’t function the same since then; it took a long time for all the staff to recover. To cope with the loss of his mentor, he let the habit of reciting poems and literary devices in his head become stronger because it reminded him of their lessons together. To cope with the loss of a surgeon and the disappearance of another, the hospital started performing Pro Bono surgeries every eight of July in remembrance of Sim Jaeyun and Ari. That month was also the month all the other attending surgeons, such as Park Sunghoon and Park Jay, even the Chief of Surgery Lee Heeseung, would start growing quieter as though not speaking of the tragedy would somehow make the event disappear in the space-time continuum. They would become easily agitated in that month and everyone around them, especially the new interns, would start to grow cautious, even if some didn’t know the reason. That month would later become Sunoo’s least favourite month because Doctor Park Sunghoon, who he learnt plastic surgery from, had a habit of screaming if he got annoyed or frustrated. The nurses even had a name for the month- the month of mourning, they would call it. It wasn’t very original, but it laid out the message. 

Perhaps it was eight or nine years after her death though, Riki couldn’t remember, the month of July seemed to have a ray of sunlight shining on it. He didn’t know what exactly happened but Doctor Park Sunghoon didn’t show up for around a month that year and when he came back, he seemed to have come back with news that was worth smiling until his cheeks hurt. Rumour had it that he found the whereabouts of Sim Jaeyun, his best friend, and it was all anybody could talk about for weeks. That is, until new gossip surfaced and everyone forgot about the random vacation that Park Sunghoon took. Since then, the month of July wasn’t that scary anymore. It was as though the attending surgeons had found some sort of closure- nobody knew what it was, in all honesty. 

The answer was finally revealed years later, when the interns that Ari’s batch taught had made their own names in their respective fields and when they were the ones that were expected to take over Seoul National University Hospital’s medical hierarchy. Riki, who was expecting his day to go like any other day, following a tight schedule of surgeries and meetings to attend, walked down one of the many hallways the hospital had to offer. He had just returned from a business trip to Busan that lasted a week where he assisted in a terminal case and now that he was back, coming home to the hospital he was most familiar with was better than any high-class hotel or private hospital he’d been to. To the right of him were glass windows- or rather, a glass wall itself- from which he could see pedestrians walking down the sidewalk closest to the building and trees growing around the hospital’s gardens. To his left were the hospital rooms of many patients, some of whom he had to check on and others who were assigned to the interns to check their vital charts. When he walked past room 203, he was expecting to see the nice ajumma that was admitted for stage-one stomach cancer but instead, he was met with the familiar face of the Chief and Doctor Park Sunghoon. Standing in front of them, across the bed in which an semi-unconscious patient lay- was a man he had to squint to recognise. It was only when the man made a light shift in his stance that Riki caught the side of his face.

Holy mother of God- it’s Doctor Sim Jaeyun.

Internal monologue, Riki thought to himself as he scrambled into room 203, almost tripping on the laces of his shoes as he barely made it in. The boy was panting, beads of sweat suddenly forming on his hairline. The people inside the room were met with his face contorted into a mix of shock and disbelief, his mouth agape and eyes resembling two baseballs. Doctor Sim Jaeyun- he wasn’t even sure if he was supposed to call him Doctor- or Doctor Sim, or Jake as he remembered him saying he liked to be called, turned to face Riki and suddenly, the boy was transported to when he first placed a step in the hospital as an intern. Better yet, he was transported to the day he saw Doctor Sim Ari on the hospital bed with her vitals reflecting a flatline.

Riki wasn’t exactly sure why he was reminded of the memory. It was distant in his head, tucked away in the many corners of his neuromatrix. Moments and pictures of various other memories had piled on top of that one, as a matter of fact but seeing the way Jake looked at the woman on the hospital bed, his fingers picking at the skin on his lips with worry, brought upon him a wave of deja vu. 

“Doctor Nishimura?” Jake turned to face Riki with a smile on his face. It was the kind of smile that manifested in a moment of desperation for a break away from the reality he was in, almost a way in which he was ignoring the reality he was living in. In that moment, Riki was his distraction and he was pulling him away from reality with a firm handshake- even if it was only for a few seconds. “I remember you,” he enthused.

“Yes,” Riki nodded with a gulp while he was sure the Chief and the plastic surgeon were giving him cues to leave the room. “I can’t believe it’s you,” his statement, though he was truly enthralled and curious, came with a stammer. It was a stammer bad enough to ruin the rest of his image as a confident, budding neurosurgeon. “How have you been?”

“Oh, I’ve been great,” Jake nodded, his smile disappearing into pressed lips. He crossed his arms across his chest, tapping his leather-clad feet against the cool tiles of the room. “Sunghoon told me you’re an attending neurosurgeon now? I’m very proud.”

“Yes, thank you” Riki nodded again, darting his eyes towards the Chief who was mouthing words that resembled get out and not the right time while shifting his gaze between the woman on the bed and the door. “Well, it’s nice to see you Doctor- well, Jake-ssi- um, Seonbaenim,” he settled with, gulping again and offering him a respectful bow. “I’ll be going now,” and he sprinted out of the room, certainly not expecting the interaction to go as he had thought it would and making his way towards where he assumed Sunoo and Jungwon would be.

Jake was brought back to reality when Riki ran out the door and down the hallway. Heeseung’s cough brought his attention towards the conversation, his fingers returning to their previous position near his lips. “Jake?” He said, crossing his arms. “She’ll be fine,” he assured, pointing to Y/N.

“Hyung,” Jake asserted. “She remembers nothing from the past four days.”

Well, that would be an understatement- there was a bigger story to catch up on.

When Jake found her unconscious on the bridge leading to Ischia, he spent no time wasted in attempting to shake her or slap her awake. And no, he didn’t spare a moment in thinking that she must have fainted due to heatstroke either. When he saw her in her predicament, her weak and frail body collapsed on the ground, a part of him was already expecting it. He wasn’t saying that he was looking forward to it- no, he was saying that there was no way her malnourishment and all those weeks of physical decline weren't correlated with something bigger. So, without wasting a moment, he carried her to his car and drove her to the nearest hospital he knew. In that car ride, with Y/N secured in the passenger seat, her expression cold and body almost unmoving, he thought that his life must have been some sort of joke to God. Only a few months ago, he thought that perhaps this woman that was introduced to him had come to save him from the misery he refused to accept, perhaps remove him from a cocoon of isolation. Instead, he was convinced that he was paying for the sins he probably committed in his past life.

When he got to the nearest hospital, they had taken Y/N away in a stretcher and brought her to their small and insufficiently equipped ICU. Around that time was when Jake called Sunghoon and filled him in on the events of the past few weeks- perhaps months, he couldn’t keep track of time any more. He told him everything- from the headaches Y/N experienced to her lack of energy, appetite and enthusiasm and he told him about all the times he found her crying on her bathroom floor and the times he had to feed her because she couldn’t even lift her hand towards her mouth. Then, her sudden and unexplainable increase in stamina became suspicious.

“Jake, I know you don’t want to come back to Korea but flying back here would cost you the same as flying to America. You and I both know what this sounds like and you and I both know if she’s getting any help, it’s at our hospital.”

Y/N, in her drug induced coma, had boarded on a helicopter with Jake and they were on their way to South Korean, Seoul, home of Seoul National University Hospital. Being a world renowned hospital with monetary funds pouring in from all over the world, they were bound to own a helicopter and it was used in high-profile or emergency cases such as these. Over the years, the hospital’s helicopter had gone through many changes and repairs. When Jake boarded the helicopter, he was expecting to see the same one he did from all those years ago, from when he was still working. Seeing that they had bought a completely different model was when he truly realised that he was about to go back to his motherland and the place he dreaded the most- but when he got there, breathing in the air he grew up with and hearing people speak his language, it felt like nothing had changed, like he had never left the country in the first place.

When he showed up on the roof of Seoul National University Hospital, Heeseung, Jay and Sunghoon were all there to receive him and his lover- or their patient, none of them were really sure what to call her, at that point. Heeseung, as Chief of Surgery, was hollering directions over the juddering of helicopter wings and was dragging away the stretcher that Y/N lay on. When silence ensued, the three left on the roof glanced at each other with awkwardness, only for Jay to wrap Jake in a long awaited hug. He held onto his friend that he hadn’t seen in over a decade like he was holding onto a kite that was being carried away by a hurricane. They didn’t leave the roof until Jay was able to give Jake an earful of curses and disappointments, which eventually led to tears streaming down Jay’s cheeks.

Heeseung would have a similar moment with Jake while some of the residents took her Y/N’s scans and blood tests. However, this interaction ended with Jake tearing up as Hesseung was telling him how his children still ask about him sometimes. Various people walked across them, oblivious to the history Jake held with the hospital, but those who did recognise him had stopped and stared, only to be ushered away by Sunghoon and Jay. Y/N was admitted to the hospital as an official patient by then and she still succumbed to the coma.

Jake spent the whole day sitting beside Y/N. holding her hand in his, occasionally nodding off to sleep and fighting back tears that had choked his throat. He prayed that she would wake up soon and that her tests would reveal a very minor illness, something that could be cured with a simple surgical procedure or with the right mixture of medication. Sunghoon pleaded with him to call it a night and come back to his home to sleep. “I bought a new apartment not too long ago and you don’t even wanna see it?” Was his attempt in guilting Jake into leaving Y/N’s side but he insisted that he wanted him to be the first thing he saw when she woke up.

She didn’t wake up that night but left behind the promise of demise in the form of a CT scan that made neurosurgeons gasp. 

The next morning, Jake’s family had burst through the sliding doors of the hospital on the news of his return. His mother strutted down the hallways like one of those hysterical mothers in soap operas, yelling her son’s name in demand of his appearance in front of her. His father followed behind her, not sure whether he was supposed to be disappointed or overjoyed at the return of his son- he had to cancel a business trip to Australia. The couple was reunited with their son after around eight years or so, their arms wrapping around one another in a solemn, melancholy and bittersweet hug. However, the moment was forgotten when his mother’s shrill cries of sorrow filled the hallway they were having their reunion in. 

His father had to hold the poor woman as she almost collapsed, Jake kneeling on the cool tiles with her and pleading for her forgiveness with their hands intertwined. Sunghoon found himself jogging with large strides towards them, his white coat hanging off his forearm and his eyes wide in concern. When he saw the two elderly collapsing, Jake struggling to keep a straight demeanour himself, he helped them up and brought them to converse in room 203.

“Who is this woman?” His mother asked, despite wanting to gnaw at Jake for the reason of his disappearance.

“She’s the whole reason I came back,” Jake responded.

His mother made a mental note to thank her when she would wake. 

Jake, for the rest of the time his parents were with him, was either crying from loneliness or explaining to them the past eight years of his life that they missed. He was sure Sunghoon had informed them of all that they were missing out on but hearing it from Jake himself was something they refused to miss out on. His mother and father listened to him with patience, every ounce of hatred and disappointment they held against him disappearing with each word he spoke. And suddenly, they weren’t estranged anymore and the only mystery between them was Y/N and his intentions with her.

“Come home, son,” his father suggested but before Jake could answer, Y/N was stirring under the sheets of the hospital bed, her fingers twitching and throat eliciting a low, painful moan.

In the next second, Lee Heeseung was rushing into the room with a team of nurses and residents behind him. He was ushering Jake’s parents out of the room and Sunghoon had led them out of the hospital with promises and assurances of Jake’s safety and wellbeing. “You can see him again, I’ll take care of him,” he said and boarded them on a cab back home. Perhaps it was cruel of Sunghoon to push them away and attempt to take the role of Jake’s care-taker but if he knew anything about his best friend, it was that he would prefer being around someone that didn’t require carrying around the weight of guilt. Especially at times like these.

Back in room 203, Heeseung was shining a light into Y/N pupils, encouraging her to either continue resting or speak coherent words. Jake stood across from her, hoping that his presence would elicit any sort of reaction. Instead, all any of them got was “Jake? What’s happening?” That question would be followed by a string of mumbles and murmurs while Jake and Heeseung would try explaining her predicament to her and the events that lead up to her being in Seoul National University Hospital. 

“This is normal,” Heeseung assured. “She should come back to full consciousness in a few days.”

He wasn’t sure how but Sunghoon managed to convince Jake to spend the night in his apartment. He spent an hour telling him about the lengths he had to go through to buy the expensive furniture that furnished his home and the tiles that lined his walls. For as much as he could, Jake acted interested. The pair didn’t sleep that night, instead arguing over the fact that Jake hadn’t eaten a proper meal in over twenty-four hours. Then, Jake had continued to cry about his bad luck, Y/N and his distaste towards her life’s uncertainty. 

The next day, Jake’s parents returned with his brother. Jonathan and Jake looked nothing alike. He was much taller than Jake, sporting a rather lean figure than a muscular one. He walked into room 203 with a pair of spectacles hanging on the bridge of his nose, eyes blank as he looked at his younger brother as though he was looking at a ghost.

“Hyung?” Jake blinked at him in surprise. He wasn’t sure why he was surprised- if he were to meet his parents, meeting his older brother was inevitable. “You’re here?”

“Of course,” Jonathan leapt to hug his brother, his weight leaning on his. Jake’s arms hesitantly wrapped around his torso, offering brief pats on his back. “Mom and dad told me everything.”

“Thank God, because I’m not in the mood to repeat all that.”

With laughter subsiding the looming awkwardness that would follow, the older ruffled the younger’s hair as though they were children again and exited the hospital to indulge in soju. It was a drink that burnt all of Jake’s memories back into his head, even the ones that he thought he’d forget- all the embarrassing moments of clumsiness in high school and the minute details from his time as a surgeon- came rushing back to him. In all honesty, he missed the drink and the effect it had on him.

While the brothers bonded over drinks, Y/N’s eyes were fluttering open in room 203. Her gaze was met with an alarmingly empty white wall, the room all too unfamiliar for her confused mind. The sunlight that filtered through the blinds blinded her and her terrified scream echoed down the hallway, causing other patients to call for her aid. Heeseung hurried to her room, panting in confusion when he found her unconsciousness again, her lips slightly moving and tracing the outline of Jake. Jake was bolting back into the hospital with the news and he was whispering words of assurance into her ear, even though he wasn’t sure if she could hear him, and stroking her hair with the span of his palm.

All those events would lead to today, when Nishimura Riki finally learnt of his impromptu return and the day Y/N would finally gain consciousness, even though she was experiencing temporary amnesia. 

“Where am I?” Y/N mumbled, pushing herself up to lean against the headboard. Her eyes squinted, her throat groggy and coarse to hear.

As a response, Jake pushed her shoulder back down and ushered to lay her head on the pillow again. “The hospital,” he whispered. “Remember?”

“What happened?” She grumbled, looking at the two unfamiliar men standing beside her. “Sunghoon?”

Sunghoon, surprised that she even recognised him, had his brows raised as he shyly waved at her.

“Where am I?” She repeated, this time her voice increasing in demand. 

Jake hushed her at that, ushering her to not worry and that she should go back to sleep. The next moment, she was sleeping again and the three men in the room sighed in defeat.

“We should get some lunch.”

Heeseung led Jake to the cafeteria and Sunghoon left to tend to another one of his patients. Back in the day, when Jake was still working, the cafeteria was known for its soggy rice and uncooked dishes. Even the Chief of Surgery Lee Heeseung would complain about it despite his pride for the rest of the hospital but now, he was leading Jake towards the same place that was considered infamous. But the previous lifeless walls were replaced by yellow wallpapers and the drawings of patients from the children’s ward. The tables were circular instead of square and the cheap plastic stools from before were replaced by wood. 

“So much has changed,” Jake marvelled as he looked around the cafeteria.

Heeseung chuckled, guiding him to stand in line for food and passing him a plate. “What, Sunghoon didn’t mention the remodelling?”

“I guess it slipped his mind,” he said, still squinting to read the drawings hung on the walls.

While Heeseung and Jake were busy collecting their lunch from the buffet, on the other end of the cafeteria sat Riki, Sunoo and Jungwon, whispering amongst themselves and stealing glances from their Chief and the unexpected returnee. Riki was not even bothering to hide that he was talking about them, with every word he spoke his eyes lingering on the back of Jake’s head. He leaned across the circular table and closer to his friends, his hand covering the side of his mouth as he spoke.

“Why didn’t you guys tell me he was back?” Riki grumbled.

“You found out before we could tell you!” Sunoo defended and Jungwon nodded profusely. 

Riki rolled his eyes. “It was so embarrassing,” he whined. “I didn’t even know what honorifics to use!”

“It’s fine, I’m sure he doesn’t even care,” Jungwon waved off. “Have you heard anything about Y/N?”

“That girl he brought back?” Sunoo questioned and was answered with nods from the other two.

“I feel terrible for him,” Riki sighed and let his shoulders slump. The ramen in front of him was long forgotten, the air conditioner above them blowing away all the heat and flavour with it. “The Chief called me into his office and showed me her CT scans-”

“And?” Jungwon prodded, gripping the edges of the table in curiosity.

“I’m getting there,” Riki widened his eyes in annoyance. Interrupting has been a habit of Jungwon’s that everyone around him got used to after a few years of being around him but in such moments, even Riki felt vexed. “Anyways, he showed me her CT scans and there really was no hope.”

Jungwon and Sunoo both let out an italicised oh.

“We discussed it for hours trying to figure out a way around it but if even he lost all hope then, man, I don’t know anymore,” Riki continued. 

When the Chief of Surgery had called him to his office earlier in the day, Riki assumed he wanted to know how his trip to Busan went. Perhaps he would be asked to submit a report with attached paperwork and he would walk out with a groan and more work to complete once he got home. For a brief moment, he even considered the possibility of being asked to keep chatter about Sim Jaeyun being back to a minimum. But then he walked in and Chief Lee Heeseung was staring at a pile of CT scans with his fingers massaging his temples. The last time he saw him in such a predicament was when the ground floor of the hospital faced flooding- it was a look that only sat on the Chief’s face if the situation was dire. When he saw Riki, he slipped off his glasses and let out an exasperated sigh.

“Look at these,” he said, pointing to the black and white scans splayed across his table. “Look.”

Worried, Riki scrambled towards him and gathered the scans in his hands. For a brief moment, he looked over them, brows furrowed and mouth contorting into a scowl. “Chief?” He called and was responded with a hum. “These are the scans of the girl Jake was with, aren’t they?”

Lee Heeseung, the man who was known to be composed during any and all circumstances, no matter the stakes, was burying his face in his hands and pulling at the roots of his hair. His eyes watered, the span of his palms running down his cheeks to wipe off excess tears. “Yeah, her name’s Y/N,” he nodded. “You and I are on the same conclusion, aren’t we?”

Riki nodded, too scared to ask who she was and too uncomfortable to offer any consolation. “There’s no hope, Chief,” he responded. “Maybe we could try but-”

“Doctor Nishimura, I’ve tried,” he seethed. “I’ve gone through her scans and medical history for hours and-”

“By yourself,” Riki pointed out. “Let me help this time,” he offered and sat opposite to him.

For the next hour, the pair drew diagrams on blank pieces of paper that they never thought they’d find themselves drawing. They were trying to figure out ways to cut nerve pathways without paralysing her and ways to reroute her blood vessels without completely killing her during surgery. The whiteboard in the office was filled with scribbles and notes from what the pair knew of neurosurgery basics and even those tips brought them nowhere to carry out a complicated procedure. It all made no sense, like their professions had no purpose anymore.

“I find this to be really sardonic,” Riki said, letting go of the pen he had been gripping for the past hour. “It feels like all the events in my life have led up to this very moment. But I’ve got nothing. I keep thinking Doctor Ari only taught me neurosurgery so I could come and save this girl’s life and hopefully Jake too but I’m failing her now.”

In literary terms, events like these would be defined with irony or some sort of foreshadowing.

Heeseung looked at Riki only for a second before turning away. He slid his hands down his face again and shook his head, the weight of his words only starting to hit him. “Doctor Nishimura?” He said. “Leave and call Doctor Park Sunghoon for me.”

With pursed lips, Riki slowly left his seat and made his way to the door with his head hanging low.

“Oh, and Riki?”

“Yes, Chief?”

“Don’t beat yourself up for this.”

Sunghoon came barging into his room moments later, worried and confused by the sudden need for him but then he saw Heeseung’s expression of defeat and all the scribbles and notes on the whiteboard and he didn’t need an explanation anymore. He tiptoed to the Chief’s side and wrapped an arm around his hunched back, sobs finally starting to rake his body. “This is gonna ruin him,” he sniffled. “Sunghoon, I don’t know if he’ll survive this.”

Now, Heeseung was sitting across from the very man whose heart he was afraid of breaking, attempting to have lunch with him. There was only so long he could insist that he was doing his best to save Y/N; only so long could he act oblivious to an inevitable death. In his entire career of being a doctor, a surgeon and chief, this was probably his first time breaking some sort of rule in the oath he took or some rule from the doctor’s handbook- he was lying to the guardian of his patient.

“So,” he started. “Jake.”

“Yes?” The man in question chuckled, mixing the ramen in his broth. It had been a long time since he ate Korean cuisine.

“Tell me about Y/N,” Heeseung insisted with a smile. “What’s going on there?”

If Jake was asked how he and some of the other attendings formed such a close relationship with the current Chief of Surgery, Lee Heeseung, none of them would know what to say. Perhaps they became friends around the time of his vulnerability and joy from recently being appointed as Chief of Surgery or it was simply because they got along well but the dignified and talented man has treated them like family. He officiated Jake and Ari’s wedding, let Jay live with him when he was going through a rough patch, treated Sunghoon like he was a brother, took Riki under his wing when he had no mentor, helped Sunoo find passion in plastic surgery and was frequently seen giving relationship advice to Jungwon.

Jake was rather close to Heeseung before he left for Italy. They would often invite each other for a soju at one of their backyards or would cool off with a snack in the office. He didn’t know what it was about him but Jake had always found himself being more open around him since the day they met. Yet even then, when he asked him about Y/N, he wasn’t sure what there was left to say.

“I don’t know, Hyung,” Jake shrugged. “Whatever Sunghoon hasn’t told you, I’ve told you the past few days. I guess she’s just very important to me.”

“That’s it, then?” Heeseung raised a brow. “You didn’t find a good enough reason to come back until her?”

“Don’t take it that way-”

“No, Jake,” Heeseung interrupted, his tone calm and soothing despite the words that he was about to speak. “A week ago, if Sunghoon had asked you to come back, you would have laughed in his face. You only came back because her life depended on it. Don’t you think that she might possibly mean more than just something important?”

“I know that, Jesus, I’m not oblivious,” Jake rolled his eyes. “Listen, I don’t want to talk about this. Can we move on?”

Heeseung sucked in a breath. “Ok,” he said. “Well… I’m planning on giving the title of Chief of Surgery to someone else,” he stated as though it wasn’t a life-changing decision.

“Oh,” Jake responded to match the nonchalance of Heeseung’s tone. “When’d you make that decision.”

“A few months ago.”

Heeseung was lying. The thought crossed his mind exactly two hours ago, while he was on the verge of breaking down with Doctor Nishimura Riki. 

“Wow, well… who do you want to appoint?”

“I mean, it’s not all up to me. The board has a huge say in it-”

“Yeah, I remember-”

“But if it were up to me, I would have appointed Ari.”

Jake stiffened, his grip on his chopsticks tightening. But then his muscles relaxed and he cleared his throat, putting thought into his statement. “She would have been perfect for it,” he agreed.

“Yeah, she would have,” Heeseung nodded. “After she passed away, I thought you could be the next Chief of Surgery.”

Jake connected his gaze with Heeseung for the first time that evening. He wasn’t sure what his reaction was supposed to be or what he was expected to do but when he saw Heeseung’s stoic expression, his eyes almost emotionless and his jaw clenched, Jake realised that the conversation was never about his concerns of who his successor would be.

“Hyung-”

“You should have never left, Jake,” Heeseung stated and stood up from his seat. “You should have just stayed,” he said and turned his back to leave.

vii. La Vita è Fatta Così

“A brain tumour,” Jake stated firmly in disbelief, his arms crossed in disappointment. “Really? A brain tumour? Of all the clichés, a goddamn brain tumour-”

“Ok, I get it, Jake, jeez,” Y/N attempted to calm him down. “I’m really sorry but instead of acting like a parent that just caught their teen smoking, most would start crying at the news.”

“Y/N, I found out four fucking days ago,” he said, raising four fingers in the air. “I’ve shed enough tears since then.”

“Ok, I’m sorry, I was just trying to lighten the mood.”

“Lighten the moo-” Jake pinched the bridge of his nose and placed a hand on his hip. “Lighten the fucking mood?” He raised his voice.

“You know you’re not scary at all when you’re angry right?”

Conversations as such had been going on since Y/N woke up. The nurses helped her change her clothes and insisted on getting some food in her system. Heeseung and Riki ran a few practical tests on her before ruling that she had finally gained complete consciousness. However, she still couldn’t remember the times she had woken up in between her sleep. So, they had to explain to her where she was and she listened intently with no ounce of concern or surprise in her expressions. It was then that they realised her diagnosis was no news to her- it was something she had been living with for several years.

“Y/N, I’m being serious,” he pressed, clenching his fists at his sides. “You knew all along and you never told me? Was this why you refused to go to the hospital?”

She could only nod.

“Why didn’t you ever fucking tell me?” He strained.

“Because of this exact reason,” she said, extending her arms to point at the hospital room she was in and the pristine white and uncomfortable bed she was laying in. “You would have tried fixing me.”

Jake’s gaze fell to his feet, his lips pursing as he gulped. Slowly, he found himself slouching on the couch behind him, his hair falling onto his forehead. “Then what were you gonna do?” He asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If you never planned on telling me and if you never collapsed that day, what would you have done?”

The answer wasn’t something Y/N needed to think about. With a deep breath, her eyes trained on her fiddling fingers, she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Normally, I would have just moved on to the next country after a couple more weeks.”

“Normally?”

“Yeah, well, I fell for you, Jake,” she stated plainly. “I fell for you. So, I don’t know what I would have done if I never collapsed that day.”

When Jake was still an attending surgeon all those years ago, something that he had always noticed in patients suffering from terminal illnesses, especially those who were convinced their expiration date was looming above their heads, tended to be a lot more honest than they usually were. He was observing the same characteristic in her and it became all too apparent to him that she was currently laying on her deathbed. All those fleeting moments spent in his bedroom and on the roads of Positano, the time he spent reinstating his trust and love for another woman, led to this moment in his life- to find out that he’d be losing another fight.

“You couldn’t have told me after you kissed me? Or even after you sensed that our relationship was becoming serious?”

“What did you want me to tell you? That I fell for you? Or that I was gonna die soon?”

Silence fell upon them again and Jake buried his hands in his hair, tugging at his roots. He desperately needed a shower. “Y/N,” he breathed. “Why’d you kiss me?”

“You’re asking me the same question-”

“What made you think that it was okay to kiss me? What made you think that I’d come out of this without getting hurt?”

“You started having feelings for me long before that night, Jake,” Y/N argued.

“That doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” He pointed out. “If all of that never happened between us, if we never slept together- if we simply had never kissed, then I wouldn’t be in this position.”

“So you’re saying you wouldn’t have cared for me as much if we never fucked?”

“No, Y/N, that's not-”

“You’d be yelling at me about basically the same things and you’d ask me why I had to lead you on and go on dates with you. That’s the only difference it would have made if we never slept together because, Jake, you started having feelings for me before any of that and we’d be in this room regardless of what direction our relationship took.”

“But-”

“And yeah, I guess you’re right. I shouldn’t have kissed you and I should have told you about my tumour. I never should have let things get this far, especially after I found out you were a widower. I was being selfish, I know and I’m a terrible person for that. But are you really gonna stand there and insinuate that you wouldn’t have brought me to Korea if we never fucking slept together?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

This is my destiny, he thought to himself, this is what my life has come to.

Sunghoon was strutting into the room around that time, a bright smile on his face as he waved to the pair that were just coming out of an argument. Sunghoon didn’t sense the awkwardness in the air, instead focusing on the fury of nerves that were bundled up in his chest, excited to meet the girl that elicited emotion from his best friend that had succumbed to isolation for over a decade.

“Hey,” he sang. “How’s my favourite patient?”

Y/N face that was previously contorted into a mixture of rage and guilt was now replaced with serenity. Ever so smoothly, she smiled at him, their argument long forgotten. “Favourite patient?” She chuckled.

“Well, you know,” Sunghoon shrugged, not knowing what other nickname to use. He settled beside Jake, patting his back. “You should go have lunch,” he switched to Korean.

“No, I think I’d rather stay,” Jake nodded.

“Go eat, Heeseung and Jay are downstairs. Go join them,” Sunghoon continued, still oblivious to the heavyweight in the atmosphere.

“It’s fine, ‘Hoon. I think I’ll keep Y/N company,” he breathed.

“You didn’t even eat breakfast-”

“Sunghoon, I’m good-”

“Jake, just go!"

Jake looked between Y/N and Sunghoon and dragged his feet towards the door. Silently, the pair left in the room followed him with their eyes, waiting until he wasn’t seen past the window leading to the hallway. Then Y/N cleared her throat to get Sunghoon’s attention.

“Are you here to yell at me, too?” She sighed, letting her arms bury into the thin blanket covering her frame.

“What?” Sunghoon scoffed, raising a brow in question. “No, I just wanted him to eat.”

“Ah.”

“And I thought maybe you’d like the company of someone other than him.”

The statement brought Y/N a shy smile and she glanced at him through her lashes. He had a sneaky grin, one shoulder shrugging. “I’m sure you have better work to tend to,” she crooned.

“It’s the least I could do, Y/N,” he insisted. “If I want him to be happy, then I’ll need you to be happy.”

“Right,” she lowered her head to look at her hands again. “You still must hate me.”

“In all honesty,” he started. “I don’t.”

Y/N’s eyes snapped upwards to find him pulling a chair towards her bed. “What?”

Sunghoon sat beside her, his elbow leaning on the headboard. “I don’t hate you, Y/N,” he said. “Neither does he. I don’t blame him for being angry but if anything, I need to thank you.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s been alone for years, he’s forced himself to be alone for so many years. He denies it but as his best friend, I know he’s been miserable. All of that stopped when he met you, though,” he explained.

“I’m starting to think that isn’t really a good thing, considering my predicament.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he shrugged again. “But now that he’s back, I don’t think he’ll be as lonely anymore.”

Sunghoon couldn’t exactly use words to explain his lack of anger. He was talking to the girl that lied and put his best friend in the same position as he was eight years ago- losing another lover. But the doctor in him spared her some pity. So, he found himself steering their conversation into a more light hearted topic, allowing some sort of laughter and glee to fill the depressing hospital room. 

Sunghoon was showing her pictures of Jake from when he was younger. He showed her his baby pictures, his embarrassing high school pictures, his college pictures where he experimented with blond hair- which eerily accentuated his cheek bones. She was even lucky to watch a few videos of him performing surgery- it was a grotesque sight, but watching him as a surgeon rather than the baker she was so used to seemed almost daunting. 

In the little time they had, Sunghoon was telling her stories from when they were younger. These were stories she had never heard before, the kind of stories Jake wanted to bury in order to maintain the new persona he created in Positano, Italy. In turn, she filled him in on what they had done together in the quaint town and answered the questions that were burning his skull.

“Jake had the balls to do that?”

“Yeah, he’s got dick, dude,” Y/N nodded with a smirk. “But I never expected him to be the clumsy type.”

“Yeah, I know! Who knew he’d grow up to be a surgeon, of all things?”

When Jake came back into their room and peered on Sunghoon’s phone screen, he saw a picture they had taken on their first day as interns at Seoul National University Hospital. It was a group picture, one where everyone stood around each other awkwardly with toothy grins staring at the camera. No one knew each other, except for Jake and Sunghoon because they practically grew up together. While those two stood in the centre of the picture, Jay was standing on the top right corner and Ari? She was standing right behind Jake. 

“I don’t have this picture,” Jake mused, the picture tugging at his heart strings. 

“I’ll send it to you, don’t worry,” Sunghoon said and stuffed his phone into his pocket. Y/N looked between the pair with a soft smile. “Did you eat?”

“Yeah, Heeseung Hyung took us out,” Jake stood straight again, scratching the back of his neck with a hand on his hip. “I haven’t had sundubu-jjigae in so long.”

“Good to know, bud,” Sunghoon stood up and patted Jake’s shoulders. Then, he walked out of the room.

If there was anything that Y/N noticed in the time that she was awake, it was that whenever they patted each other’s backs or shoulders, it was that the impact made loud thumps that usually echoed through the room.

“So,” Jake shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and made eye contact with the girl lying in the hospital bed. “Had fun?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, her smile still intact.

“I’ll never understand you,” he sighed, his hand moving to massage the side of his head. “How are you able to smile at a time like this?”

“Jake, I’ve known this day would come since I was like nineteen,” she said. “I’ve made my peace with it.”

“But what about me?” He whined, pointing his hands towards himself. “Have you thought about what’s gonna happen with me?”

“I have,” she scoffed. “I have, and it makes me sad. So, I’d rather not think about it more.”

“Don’t you think this is a little unfair?”

“What, the fact that I never got to live the conventional life that I dreamt of or that you still have the choice of living your life the way you want?” 

“Excuse me?”

“You think that with my tumour I could have grown up, went to college, gotten married and had kids and done all that crap? When there’s a chance of me dropping dead at any second?”

“Now you’re just guilt tripping me,” Jake argued, grumbling under his breath.

“Yeah you’re right, I’m sorry,” Y/N recoiled, cringing.

“See, I can read you pretty well.”

“Eh, questionable.”

“Y/N.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she giggled.

For the first time since she’d been awake, Jake smiled at her. It was one of those smiles that was barely there but reflected pristinely in his eyes. It was the kind of smile one would give to their unrequited lover, the look of adoration that could swoop anyone off their feet. The new generation would call the look heart-eyes. For the first time that day, Jake kissed her and held her hand.

“Is that why you started travelling?” He was answered by a nod. “Do you know how many people dream of living your life?”

“Yeah, I mean, in theory it’s great,” she shrugged. “It’s even better that my dad funds for everything- hey,” she paused and looked around the room as though what she was looking for would suddenly appear in front of her.

“What, what is it?” He watched her brows furrow with her sudden epiphany.

“Where are my parents, anyway?”

“Oh, crap, we forgot to call your parents.”

Two days later, her parents arrived. Like most expected, they weren’t crying or facing any sort of grief when they saw their daughter laying in the hospital bed. A huge part of Jake was expecting to see them act like the parents he would see in one of those dramatic Korean dramas where they would hug her and demand for the hospital board to do better at their jobs but no- the pair carried themselves elegantly and powerfully, their chins held high as they were greeted by the Chief of Surgery and then Jake, the boyfriend.

When they saw Y/N, they simply asked “why didn’t you call us sooner,” and when Heeseung offered them their explanation, they only nodded and requested for some privacy. Jake wasn’t sure what they talked about in that room but he was confident that it wasn't a fight- he could barely even hear their voices when he pressed his ear against the door.

Y/N’s mother was who people imagined when imagining the heiress of a multi-million dollar company. Though her hair was long, it would always be tied in a bun and her wardrobe consisted of dresses from all the couture brands. A few strands of her hair were greying but she didn’t hide it because it added to her sophisticated nature and her eyes were always narrowed at whatever was in front of her. Hell, she didn’t even look anyone in the eye when she was being greeted by the many staff of the hospital.

Y/N’s father was pretty much the same, too. He was the owner of America’s largest publishing house- he wasn’t expected of being any less than draconian and polished.

“We should move you back to The States,” her father spoke.

“I don’t think it’ll make a difference, dad.”

“Do you want to stay here?” Her mother asked.

“I kinda do, yeah.”

“Is it because of that man?” Her father pointed his thumb towards the window, across from it stood Jake with his arms crossed. He was facing sideways, chatting with Doctor Lee Heeseung and nodding into the conversation. “He is quite dashing, no?” He turned to his wife.

“Yes, dad. His name is Jake.”

As she uttered the syllables of his name, Jake walked in with an awkward smile. He had his palms clasped, his back slightly hunched as if he was testing the waters on whether or not it was too early to enter the room.

“Oh, hey, we were just talking about you, Jake,” Y/N spoke with an almost comical monotonous tone, rolling her eyes and lulling her head into her pillow. 

“Yeah, hey,” he said. “How’s everyone feeling?”

“That is a weird question to ask, hon’” Y/N pursed her lips with secondhand embarrassment.

“Right,” he coughed.

“Are you alright, young man?” Y/N’s father asked, looking Jake up and down in concern.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Jake responded, slowly backing away towards the door. “Just thought I’d come and see how things were going. I’ll leave now,” he said and closed the door behind him. They didn’t see him walk past the glass window so they assumed he ran the other way.

“He’s dashing, I’ll agree,” her mother said. “But is he usually this awkward?”

“No, I think he was just nervous to meet you. You guys are terrible at making people comfortable, you know?”

viii. Το Τέλος

Y/N’s parents checked into a hotel not too far away from the hospital and they made frequent visits. Sometimes, they would come back with a snack or two and other times, they came back with stories from the places they visited around Seoul. Y/N would whine about how she wanted to explore too and maybe taste some local, authentic cuisine but her parents would always respond with travelling is all you’ve been doing your whole life, it’s our turn now.

Meanwhile, Jake would make frequent trips between the hospital and his childhood home. His parents would cook elaborate dinners for him and sometimes, he would bring Sunghoon, Jay and Heeseung with him too. The more the merrier, his parents would always say and Jonathan would happily supply them with foreign liquor he collected from various business trips to Australia. Such dinners would usually end with Heeseung having some sort of conversation with Jake’s parents and the other four would still be sitting on the roof, some drunk and the others trying to keep sane.

Around these times, Jake would make his way back to the hospital to check on Y/N. Most of the time, she would be sleeping due to the drugs that added just a few more days to her life but if he was lucky, she would be reading a book while a random movie played on the television. As a patient, there was only so much she could do. She and her parents had opted out of surgery or chemotherapy regardless of Doctor Lee Heeseung and Nishimura Riki’s suggestions, saying that they had tried everything they could a very long time ago. 

“So you’re just gonna let her die?” Jake questioned her parents.

“This is more painful for us than we show, son,” they responded. 

On the nights Jake found Y/N sleeping, he would somehow squeeze himself in bed beside her. He would nuzzle his head in the crook of her neck and wrap his arm around her waist, making sure to avoid the tubes that attached around her body. Sometimes, he would slip right into sleep, letting the scent of her disappearing shampoo encircle his presence. Other times, he’d find himself crying. It was either simple tears that would escape his eyes, slowly rolling past his cheeks and down his chin, drenching the pillow; or, he would find himself sobbing and would hug her tighter like a child hugging his stuffed toy tighter because he was afraid of the dark. Whimpers would rake his body and he would let pleas of her name slip past his eyes in confidence that she couldn’t hear him.

This night was one of those nights where she was still awake. The only English book the hospital had to offer was long forgotten on the bedside table and the television casted a blue light on the soft features of her face. She was smiling at the contents of the show she was watching, which he immediately recognised as the Korean drama they watched all those nights ago, back in her apartment at Positano, Italy. For a moment, he allowed himself to be transported to her apartment again, where the lights were never on and where the paint on her walls tended to chip.

“We never finished it,” Y/N said when she saw Jake strolling towards her. He sat on the little space left beside her, slipping his fingers between hers. “The show’s stupid, but it’s entertaining.”

“Said everyone about every piece of media ever,” he grinned at her.

“That’s not true,” she gasped. “There are plenty of worthy movies.”

“Name one.”

“The Wolf of Wall Street,” she said confidently. “The Great Gatsby, all the Spiderman movies, the first Now You See Me movie, Mean Girls, Babylon-”

“Ok, ok, alright,” Jake surrendered. “Mean Girls? I thought you'd say The Notebook or something?”

Y/N’s expression fell. “Real subtle, Jake.”

“I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I still can’t come to terms with it.”

Y/N could only offer him a hum, her eyes trained on the show in front of her. Jake’s hold on her hand tightened, his chest clenching at the sudden pierce in her heart. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t felt this way since Ari’s death- more precisely, the day he found out she died. His eyes welled with tears and his head hung low.

“I still don’t understand how you’re not more bothered by this,” his voice cracked as he demanded her to look at him. His fingers grasped at her chin, tugging her attention towards him.

“Of course I’m bothered, Jake,” she said, noticing his glassy eyes. Meekly, her hands cupped his cheek, her thumb rubbing circles under his eyes. A tear stained the tip of her thumb and she sucked in a breath. “Ever since I met you, I’ve been bothered.”

“Then why aren’t you trying harder?” He croaked.

“I already have,” she said. “After we found out, my parents poured money into surgeries and chemotherapy and any other treatment that could perhaps cure me but nothing’s worked. You’d think that after so many years, there would be some new technology to save me but I’m a lost cause, honey.”

At that, Jake collapsed onto her chest. He didn’t bother hiding his cries and she didn’t care that her shirt was being drenched. She cried a few tears of her own, her hand moving to play with his hair as a form of comfort. The Korean drama was long forgotten, its contents serving the purpose of only background music.

“I almost regret not trying harder,” she sobbed.

“Why?” He spoke into her shirt.

“Because if I tried harder, then maybe we wouldn’t be in this hospital. Maybe we’d be moving in together and maybe we’d be getting married and maybe I would have had kids like I’ve always wanted.”

“I don’t even think we would have met if that tumour was taken care of.”

“Why?”

“Because you never would have started travelling- you never would have come to Italy.”

There was a painfully long silence that followed. She could feel his breath freeze against her chest, her fingers stopping their movements in his hair. His arms moved to hold her waist, pulling her closer against him and eventually, the span of his chest was against hers, his head rested in the crook of her neck, forehead against the pillow. 

“Ari was pregnant when she died,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“She never told me, I had to find out for myself,” he said. “I was only five minutes away from having the life I always dreamed of- the life you always wanted.”

“Why’re you telling me this now?” She was shaking, the arms that wrapped around his back slowly pulling away and pushing against his shoulders.

“Because I love you.”

Jake pulled away from her, his eyes holding a sense of determination. He stood across her bed, his hands fisting on his sides. The salt tracks on his cheeks were as fresh as the grass growing in the garden. As the thought of what to say next, his face scrunched up and he almost resembled a child in frustration from not getting ice cream. If they were in any other conversation or predicament, Y/N would laugh, but she was looking at him with wide eyes, stunned.

“I love you,” he repeated and sucked in a breath. “I love you.”

“Jake-”

“Marry me,” he announced, giving her a firm nod to his decision. “Marry me, even if it’s for a day, a week, a month and if we’re lucky, a year. Marry me and I’ll give you a slice of what you’ve always wanted.”

“Honey, you don’t have to marry me to give me what I want,” she cooed like she was talking to a dejected child.

“I mean it, Y/N. Marry me and-”

“Jake, you’ve given me more than what I deserve,” she gave him an assuring shake of her head.

Jake was kneeling next to her now, her hand clasped between his palms. His expression radiated hope, eyes pleading for her to give him the answer he was looking for.

“You know we can’t, Jake.”

“Aein-”

“Jake,” she repeated. “You know we can’t. You know this will hurt you more than it’ll hurt me.”

Jake sighed dejectedly, scrambling back on his feet as he towered over her. A part of him was embarrassed but the other part of him was still stuck in the images he conjured up in his head- Y/N walking down the aisle in a ridiculously expensive wedding gown and his family and friends gathered around in an intimate ceremony; Jake standing in front of her while Heeseung recited the rite of marriage with tears in his eyes. 

“You’re right.”

“If things were any different, I would have said yes,” she told him, reaching for his hand. “You know that right? I’m really sorry.”

“No, don’t be,” Jake cleared his throat and found himself sitting on the little space left on the bed. “It was a bad idea- but a man can dream, right?” He chuckled; she shook her head with a miniscule smile. 

“I wish I could say yes, Jake,” she whispered and he hugged her, his weight shifting on top of her again. Her fingers returned to his hair and his arms wrapped around her waist again. “But that was a terrible proposal though.”

“Hey, it was last minute. Did you expect flowers and a ring? A string quartet along with that?”

“Yes!”

Over the next few weeks, Y/N’s health declined, just like Doctor Lee Heeseung predicted. The hours she spent on sleep increased and the energy she put into having conversations decreased. When Jake wasn’t around to keep her company and was tending to the duties he missed out on performing as a son, Sunghoon would keep her company. Their conversations which were once filled with laughter, jokes and anecdotes eventually turned into Sunghoon speaking and Y/N humming along and eventually drifting into slumber.

Most of the time she was awake and alone, she would spend her time observing the happenings around her. She would see doctors pushing around patients in wheelchairs and she would watch clusters of families walking down the hallways. She even made a game out of it- to imagine what the respective families were agonised with. If a mother and daughter walked past, she’d imagine that the father of the family was suffering from a throat infection and if a young man walked past, she’d imagine that his sister was probably admitted for a broken leg. It was a cruel and vile game to play, she knew, but in all that she had imagined, no one was doomed to pass away like she was going to.

Sometimes, she would keep an eye out for people she could recognise. It was usually Sunghoon that walked past her room the most. If he was too busy to join her, he would excitedly wave at her with the same smile every time. He would smile at her like he didn’t notice the paling of her skin and the flattening of her hair; like he didn’t notice that it was becoming harder for her to smile. Regardless, he treated her with all the same enthusiasm, greeting her with the handshake they had formulated during their short time together and engaging her in conversation for as long as he could. Heeseung would walk past her room frequently too, and sometimes Jay but they didn’t really exchange words much. Then there was Riki, who would scurry past her room if he managed to keep away eye contact, too scared to be alone in a room with her. Sometimes, he would be accompanied by Jungwon or Sunoo, giving him all the more reason to turn his gaze away from her. If he ever found himself exchanging interactions with her, it would simply be with a ninety-degree bow and then he would be scrambling away all the same. 

On rare occasions, her parents would come to visit but they wouldn’t interact much. They simply would come in to see her and maybe kiss her forehead if they were feeling emotional. Sometimes, they would talk about the technicalities they had to deal with if she were to pass away in the recent future and for the first time in years, she saw her mother shed a tear and her father tremble with his words. The reality of her life became all too apparent by then and everyone around her came to realise that there was no escaping the inevitable.

As for Jake, there was never a time where he had to walk past her room. If he was in any vicinity close to her room, it was solely for the reason of being close to her or spending time with her. Whenever he was with her, his eyes would hold a heaviness that she wished she could wipe away, but he would mask it with a toothy smile or an anecdote from his day to lighten the atmosphere. There was, however, this one time where she saw him standing outside her room, in front of the large window, with his brother. He looked like he was on the verge of tears, shaking his head and repeating the same phrase over and over again and eventually, his forehead fell on his brother’s shoulder. She couldn’t understand what it was and before she had the chance to ask him, her eyes were already shutting from sleep kicking in again.

“You look worse than yesterday,” Jake observed on a Tuesday afternoon.

“I’m aware, Jake,” she nodded, her voice reduced to a weak whisper. “Come sit.”

Removing his hands from his pockets, he sat beside her on the bed. It was apparent that he hadn’t been styling his hair recently, his bangs covering his forehead and eventually growing long enough to even obstruct his vision. His fingers reached to ruffle his hair, attempting to push it away from his eyes. “Anything interesting happen today?” He asked like he always did.

“No,” came her answer like always. “But I was thinking of something.”

“What is it?”

“I want a proper Korean funeral,” she said without her breath hitching or her voice cracking. In fact, she even had a fulfilled smile on her face, like she was content with the life she led so far. 

Jake, on the other hand, looked at her with bewildered eyes and gaping mouth, His jaw spasmed as he thought about what to say, only to settle with “What?”

“You know, like how they show it in the k-dramas?” She elaborated.

“Yeah, I got that,” he gritted. “But why on Earth are you talking about your funeral?”

Conversations like such eventually became a common occurrence. Sometimes, she would talk about what she wanted her last meal to be or what kind of last words she could say to go down in history. Despite her frail health and disappearing voice, she sure still had a way of humouring her way through heavy discussions. She told Jake all about the souvenirs she left in her apartment back in Positano and asked him to keep her possessions safe. Guard them with your life, she said and only she laughed at her dramatics. 

Eventually, granting her last wishes became an important errand to carry out, judging by the way she could barely keep herself awake and how she would complain about her headaches more than usual. At the smallest alarms, Jake and Y/N’s family would be scrambling to order her favourite food or would be yelling down the hallway for any sort of medical assistance. The medicines ceased to work and while Jake was hoping she would experience terminal lucidity for his own selfish reason, there came a point where her heart stopped beating and even the nurse’s repeated defibrillation, the heart monitor still flatlined.

Before Y/N’s time of death was officially called by the Chief of Surgery Lee Heeseung, she had slipped into a coma for six days. Though Jake didn’t shed any tears in those six days, he was overpowered by a wave of premature grief. Perhaps it was the fact that he simply missed her voice, her human ability to respond to the sentences he spoke and the cries he let out, and even though he knew, fully and consciously knew, that the end was looming closer than he expected, he still held onto the sliver of hope maybe, she still had some time.

In those six days, Jake sat by her side just like he did the first day she was admitted. He held onto her hand at all times and would spend most of the day tracing her diminishing features, attempting to memorise her as much as he could before the worse could approach them. When he would find himself nodding off to sleep, he’d climb into the bed to sleep with her, holding her with more intensity than he thought he could fathom. He would have his meals in her room just in case she gained consciousness and he would watch movies on the small, glitchy television while sitting right beside her. Even Sunghoon couldn’t convince him to leave the damned room of 203.

Perhaps it was on the fourth day that Jake did leave the room for a break. Y/N’s parents had forced him out of the hospital due to their being worried about his well–being. They encouraged him to maybe take a walk or eat at his favourite restaurant, anything that would take his mind off Y/N. So, Sunghoon postponed a minor surgery he had scheduled and took Jake to a bar close to the hospital. This bar had always been famous amongst those who worked in Seoul National University Hospital and it was a place the pair used to frequent back in their golden days when they were still young enough to wake up healthy from a hangover and still had the youth to risk their sleep schedules. While Sunghoon hoped that their time in the would would distract Jake, he knew he was convincing himself of the impossible. Their time at the pub consisted of mostly silence and eventually, a comforting hug that ended in sobs from Jake’s end.

The seventh day soon rolled over in the form of a sunny but chilly Wednesday. The morning had started off as any other for most, Jake finding himself waking up beside the comatosed body of Y/N like he expected. He had breakfast with Jay in the room and stepped out for a brief coffee. But as birds rolled around with the afternoon, so did the declaration of her officially being cerebrally dead. She was legally dead and the news had her parents rushing into the hospital along with Doctor Nishimura Riki and even Jake’s family. Jake, however, insisted that they wait until her heart-monitor flatlined and Chief Lee Heeseung allowed it. That moment rolled around in the afternoon at exactly 15:15.

The next day, Jake found himself in one of Seoul’s many funeral houses. It was one located near the outskirts where it had a grassy backyard with a lone cherry blossom tree. He picked the particular funeral house because he knew Y/N would appreciate the scenery if she could see it for herself. The sky was clear and the sun was shining brighter than the previous day and Jake wondered if the weather was appropriate when the world just faced the loss of a unique and enticing soul. But then again, Y/N was never a fan of the rain either. It’s icky and it means I can’t go out, she would always say on rainy days.

In one of the many chambers lining the funeral house, YN’s picture sat front of centre with white chrysanthemums, single or in bouquets, surrounding her captured smile. Her eyes in the picture held a form of happiness that he hadn’t seen in months and her smile, her bright and toothy smile, would be the last of her gaiety he would see.

A limited number of guests attended her funeral. It was Jake, dressed in a newly bought suit, standing beside Y/N’s parents, greeting everyone that came to pay their respects. It was mostly people from the hospital that visited and of course, Sunghoon, Heeseung, Jay and Riki. Sunghoon spoke for Jake when he couldn’t, guiding away the mouthy guests that only made him cry more. At one point, Heeseung was comforting Riki outside of the funeral house with a hand patting his hunched back. Jake’s time inside the funeral house passed by like a fever-dream and he felt like a ghost.

After a couple hours, Jake was sauntering in the vast backyard, a white chrysanthemum clutched in his hand. His crisp suit wrinkled when he sat on the bench underneath the cherry blossom tree, taking advantage of the shade it had to offer during the sunny day. For the first time in a long time, he liked the loneliness he was feeling at that moment. While sitting amongst the leaves a cool breeze blew past him, a common butterfly flying past him, he thought of all the things Y/N might say if she were sitting beside him.

“The weather is nice.”

“Look at that butterfly!”

“I wish I could buy a cherry blossom.”

“Have you ever tried cherry blossom tea? I heard it’s heavenly.”

If he had to be honest, grief clouded his head so heavily that he couldn’t even picture her in his head, let alone try recreating her voice. He was sure the ability to imagine her would come back soon enough but for the time being, all he had were the pictures and videos left on his phone. He wanted to reminisce, look back at all the trips they took together going around the Amalfi coast and recall all the domesticity they experienced in the safety of his apartment but even if he tried, his mind chose to stay empty. Instead, he was left with the sight of the white chrysanthemum that would forever remind him of her- not the rose that he gifted her on one of their dates and not the bougainvillaea she smiled widely at when he took a picture of her with it, but the flower that gave meaning to death in the first place.

Sunghoon strolled towards him, lips pursed into a straight line and his styled bangs falling into his vision. His hand rested on his shoulder as he sat beside him, his back hunching to make himself comfortable. The pair didn’t bother saying anything to each other. Instead, Sunghoon stared at the flower he was holding, giving his shoulder another squeeze. Only a single tear rolled down his cheek that day and after a prolonged moment, Sunghoon was guiding him back to the funeral home to perform the remaining rituals.

ix. Epilogue

It had been a little over a year since Y/N’s passing away and Jake’s lifestyle went through a plethora of changes since then.

First, it’s worth mentioning that a week after Y/N’s funeral, Jake had a breakdown that almost had him running back to Italy. It would make sense that he went back, he had a business to run after all and his loyal customers were probably waiting for their fix of his confectionarries. He even had two employees to pay. Mrs Giuliani, his neighbour, even left him a sweet message, wishing him well wherever he was. However, Sunghoon didn’t let him leave, he didn’t even let him stand a chance.

“You’re living under my roof and you think you can run away from me?” He had said and threw his packed suitcases back into his room. “Go back to sleep, fucker.”

Jake only went back to Positano, Italy around a month later. He spent his time amongst the comfort of his family members and a lot of his relatives- uncles, aunts and cousins from all over Korea- came to visit him. He also spent a lot of time with Sunghoon, going around Seoul to visit all the places they once used to frequent when they were younger. They even went to the museums they never visited in honour of Y/N because she once said her favourite place to be was in any museum because standing around history reminded her of her purpose to living. 

In that year, Jake made it a habit to fly between Italy and Korea. Caffè Della Bellezza would be run by his employees while he was away so sometimes, he’d find his stay at Seoul would be extended more than it should be. He was only starting to repair whatever relationship he had left with his parents and brother, mending his friendship with Heeseung and Jay too. In that time, he even formed a relationship with Riki and they would frequently have conversations about Ari- or at least, what they could remember of her.

He even kept in frequent touch with Y/N’s parents. He would call them sir and ma’am and on the times that they connected, they would usually be having dinner in a fancy restaurant in the centre of Seoul, talking about the things Y/N never had a chance of telling him. If it were even possible, they were the ones that told him about her childhood and what she was like growing up and how she made the decision to spend the rest of her travelling in the first place.

It took him about a year to come to terms with Y/N’s death but he realised that he didn’t care how long it took. He read somewhere that all the grief and sadness he felt was the leftover love and care he never had a chance of showing her and if that were the case, Jake told himself that he would spend a decade mourning over her if he had to.

But turns out, being around those who loved him was a cure he didn’t know he needed. It had him wondering if life could have been simpler if he never moved away nine years prior, if he would still be a surgeon and living in the apartment he once shared with Ari. Perhaps he would have been living with Sunghoon- but he wasn’t up for dealing with his one-night-stands. Jake even started dating. With the help of trashy online dating apps and sometimes being set up by his peers, he had a few successful dates here and there but he never had the heart to call any of those girls for a second date. 

Overtime, that one year turned into two and then three and eventually, Jake was forgetting the count and only remembered the significant dates. In due course, Jake had come to an age where his life could be summed up to lounging on his balcony with a cup of sweet tea, enjoying the beautiful sunsets of Positano in remembrance of the girl that gave him a second chance, the girl that taught him to live again.

[reader91]

JAY / ‘DRY FLOWER’ COVER

[reader91]

random gifs of sunoo (32/∞)

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[reader91]

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[reader91]

In their last episode, no show would ever:

• give their main character the stupidest death ever

• ignore a character that has been there for 12 years

• have only one fan favorite be there for the last ep

• play two different versions of the same song back to back

• completely ignore a storyline that was introduced 2 episodes before but not completed

• destroy years of development for a character

• basically go against what the whole show is about

I bet the other show runners are laughing so hard right now

[reader91]

[x]

[reader91]

Writing Prompt #691

As she entered the room, the first thing she saw was his body, face-down on the floor, completely unresponsive to the world around him. She sighed.

“Another existential crisis? Really?”

[reader91]

Rachel in s01e01 ‘The pilot’

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Rachel in s01e02 ‘TOW the sonogram at the end’

[reader91]

I'm bored

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Monica Geller Outfits