Vantage || Hwang Hyunjin

~Chapter 61~

You must be thinking, why didn't I try to contact you on my own?

I was afraid. I was afraid your father, knowing how he is, would do something to you, and if he did, I wouldn't have been able to live.

As soon as your uncle told me about everything, I rushed to contact you, because it's safe now. You know, I don't blame him for anything. My family, especially him, always tried to convince me about leaving your father, but I never listened, and now I'm also paying the consequences of not being strong.

I consider myself a strong woman. But when it comes to you, I'm weak, I'm afraid something bad happens to you, and you're my entire life.

I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me, I'm sorry you didn't get to have breakfast again surrounded of love, I'm sorry I missed your achievements at school, maybe your love life, I'm sorry I wasn't there to listen to your worries or to give you advice, I'm sorry I missed your graduation, I'm sorry for everything I missed, my love.

Right now, I want to see you, more than anything. But I have to finish some business first here, so I can leave at ease.

I'm not waiting for you to reply, I understand how overwhelming this could be for you, and I just hope you're okay right now.  

I'll contact you again as soon as I can.

I love you, with my life, my baby.

Mom.

Tears and more tears, that's what I was doing. I started sobbing like a child. I missed her, I was told she passed away, I thought I'd never see her again, and yet she's here, I have the chance to see her again. My happiness was manifesting by tears.

It's true I didn't know how to reply to her, so I didn't right away. I wanted to take my time to arrange my words and write back. As long as I knew she was doing fine, I was at ease too.

She mentioned business. Right now, I'm tired of that word. I just hope it doesn't have anything to do with my father, I want him out of our lives.

The rest of the morning, I checked some other emails, and made a million drafts of what I was going to reply to mom. I just couldn't find the proper words, but I knew I didn't need to rush either.

I got a text from Aeri, she told me to meet her at a restaurant. That made me check the hour, noticing it was already 1:45 pm. Damn, time really flies.

I grabbed my things and got out, locking the door behind me and walking towards the restaurant; it was like a ten minute walk, and the day was beautiful.

We arrived almost at the same time, Aeri was now alone, gladly.

"Hey" I smiled as she came closer, leaning towards her and placing a kiss on her lips.

"What was that for?" She giggled, wrapping her arms around my back.

"Can't I kiss my girl?"

"What makes you think I'm your girl?" She teased.

"Well, last night you were scream-"

"Okay okay!! I get it!" She covered my mouth, looking down. I just laughed at her cute reaction. She turned to me and gave a small peck back, smiling.

"I am yours."

Aeri's POV

We sat down and ordered food immediately, we were extremely hungry.

"How was first day of class?" He intertwined our fingers while paying attention to everything I had to say.

"It was fun! At first they made us do that thing where you introduce and talk about what you expect, blah blah. I took 3 classes today, and I enjoyed them a lot."

"It's marine biology, right?"

"Yup. Did I tell you? I forgot."

"Nope, I asked Felix." 

"Oh. Well, I'm sorry I forgot to tell you that, but yeah, marine biology."

"It's fine, we were busy with magical matters" he chuckled. "So, what are we doing today?"

"I wanted to go to the records building and check about them. I also remembered their shop, so we could go there before."

"Do you remember where the shop was? I mean, the city has changed a lot since then. I'm totally lost."

"There's a corner building that I do remeber it looks the same, I think I can work if from there." I said as the waiter brought our food.

We kept talking about everything while eating, I asked him what did he do while I was in class, he told me about his uncle, what they talked about.

"I also got a mail from my mother."

I almost chocked. "You what?!"

"It was a letter apologizing for not being here and other stuff."

"What did you reply?"

"Nothing"

"Huh? Why?"

"I don't know what to write."

"Tell her how much you missed her! I'm sure words will come up one after another." I placed down my chopsticks, "let's pay and go back so you can work on that."

"No, we need to go first to-"

"No, Hyunjin, your mom's more important right now, we can do that tomorrow."

"Aeri, it's fine" he stood up, ready to pay. "I know she's okay, one more day won't make a difference. Let's go to check out the shop and their names, and I'll focus on my email tomorrow. I need to distract myself a bit too."

"Are you totally okay and sure?"

"I am, trust me." He kissed my forehead and went on to the counter. We paid for our food and headed to the building I had mentioned before, the corner one.

Surprisingly, it was close to where we had lunch, about 5 minutes away.

"If my memory isn't failing, it must be down that alley." I pointed at an alley that looked pretty lonely actually.

"Oh, you're right, I do remember it a bit. The plaza was right there." He pointed at a parking lot.

"Yup. So, let's go." We walked towards the alley, and it was like a Deja Vu. Astonishingly, everything seemed almost exactly like back then, as if it had barely changed as time passed by.

We got to the far end, turned left, which brought me flashbacks of...yesterday? For us, it was just yesterday, but in reality, it was almost a hundred years ago. We walked a few meters more, and turned right this time.

"Impossible..." Hyunjin said.

"I know... no way." I agreed.

The shop was abandoned. It looked exactly the same, but sealed from outside. There were more small buildings and shops around it, but their shop specifically, was abandoned, remaining exactly as it was.

"Hey, look" Hyunjin walked to the side, struggling to move some wood planks from one of the windows.

"It's rotten, maybe I can break it."

He tried for a few minutes, untill he successfully removed both planks from it. He waved for me to come closer, and started to go in.

"What are you doing?!" I whispered.

"Do you think I removed these just to stare if from outside? Come on" he extended his hand to help me go in. I hesitated at first, but eventually agreed.

The shop was exactly the same inside, some things were out of place, but nothing else. The only thing missing was them both, really. I don't know why I felt nostalgic. 

We wandered around the shop, speechless of everything we saw.

"Aeri...come here." I heard Hyunjin from the back room of the shop. I went following his voice, he was holding a paper.

"What's that?"

"It's a letter."

"From who?"

He turned the envelope for me to read it,

"Aeri & Hyunjin"