ENCHANTED, kim namjoon

xii. the end

❝When you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.❞ – Before Sunset (2004)

XII. THE END

And so it goes.

They never saw each other again after she set foot on the train.

Nothing in life ever lasts forever.

Baram tried. God, she tried. She did everything in her power to find him. Annoyingly, even her friends, who were honestly qualified for secret service because of their efficiency in locating exes and crushes with just a few presses of their fingers, couldn't find him on social media. She even went as far as to beg her actor friend to give her his connections' phone numbers so she had a shot of finding him through his producer brother.

Was it possible that she just imagined him? It was plausible, but she knew damn well that her Namjoon was real. She had multiple witnesses to prove so.

She gave up after a few months, remembering how the palm reader told them about how they will never meet again. So much for being stardust. Obsessing over finding him would have driven her crazy. She had many things to do, and her life didn't revolve on trying to find someone she can spend her years with.

After some consideration and long discussions with her family, Baram managed to score a scholarship to study at the International Fashion Academy in Paris after she graduated. She was happier than she thought she would be. Despite giving up on her search, thoughts on Namjoon floated in and out of her head. She didn't know what he was doing or where he stood in life as she got an internship in Jacquemus during her last year in the fashion academy, but she knew that he'd be proud of her.

But even though she gave up, she still thought of him from time to time. A few years later, she bought his books and sometimes fed her delusions by ignoring their picture together on the boat completely and looking at his more recent pictures, just to create the illusion that they were fulfilling their old desire to grow old together. But those delusions would end as soon as they start. Life goes on — with or without him.

She thought of him during every half moon. No matter how much she tried, she couldn't escape him.

Meanwhile, Namjoon's brothers were in a state of utter confusion as they saw him walking out of the Incheon International Airport from Vienna with crocodile tears streaming down his face. Once they were told of his situation, they went out of their way to contact every number on the eldest's phone to try and find Baram's actor friend that attended a fashion show with her. In a world where everything was on the internet, it seemed that the only thing that wasn't there was Song Baram.

Every time his phone lit up or rang with notifications, he moved like the speed of light to see if it was her even though he stupidly gave her the number of the phone he accidentally dropped in Han River.

His falasol was practically a ghost. No social media, no sign, no evidence of her existence other than his memories.

He managed to publish a book a year after he graduated. It wasn't the one that was inspired by his trip to Europe, that book was stored somewhere in his flash drive, untouched. The book he wrote, inspired by his trip, was practically a journal, telling his adventure with Baram and how he felt during it. It was his way of immortalizing that day. Immortalizing her.

The title of the book was Serendipity. It was defined as an event happening by chance that results in a happy or beneficial way. To Namjoon, his chance encounter with Baram was serendipitous.