Even if it wasn't meant to last a lifetime doesn't mean it wasn't meant to be

Chapter 2

His face softened a bit, as old as Suhye was (She was already an adult. But she had never fully grown out of her childhood yet had she?) she still often seemed like nothing but a timid child.

"It's alright, you can ask if you feel like it's important."

There was a pregnant pause, and he could hear Suhye fiddling with something behind him. What kind of question is she worried about?

"Why did you and Team leader Lee break up?"

There was a moment of quiet after that in which he didn't answer, his hand twitched on the steering wheel, he hoped she didn't notice.

(She did.)

"I'm sorry that was insensitive I shouldn't have—"

"No it's alright. You weren't being insensitive, it's better you hear it from me than some random made up shit from someone else, right?"

"...mmm"

He paused, staring off at the road as he made a turn, seemingly deep in thought about the best way to answer.

He could hear Suhye behind him, mumbling her own anxious apologies.

She leaned into the car door, as if trying to hide herself.

"Well, I guess we were clinging onto the memory of before, back in the first main shelter I mean. We were two people who were madly in love with the... the idea of our old selves; and that is not the same as being in love. So it was no wonder we had no choice but to step back and leave."

He could guess that it was true. They truly had both been clinging onto the past of the shelter, a time filled with kind grandmothers and laughing children, a time that only they could remember.

***

"Hey!"

Kim Rok Soo stumbled forward as someone jumped up on his back from behind him.

"Suhye, please get off."

The girl laughed as she moved off his back and in front of him.

"Hi oppa!"

She beamed up at him as he stood, smiling wider than Kim Rok Soo had ever seen her.

"Hi, happy birthday Suhye."

He smiled at her, a soft, rare smile, the first time he'd smiled like this really. He had smiled before, don't get him wrong, but those smiles were always shared with Choi Jung Soo and Lee Soo Hyuk (among a handful of others).

Those ones were carefree, and filled with a childlike wonder he hadn't had in a very long while. The kind of joy you would see in a person filled with childhood nostalgia that they hadn't experienced in a long, long time.

These smiles he shared with Suhye... were more like a worrying adult, the kind that one would give their own child, or younger sibling. One saying, 'I did that, I was able to make this person the way they are.'

Because he did do that. In the months they had spent together, Jang Suhye had grown. In a good way. Slowly but surely, into a new person, maturing in a way that Kim Rok Soo wished he'd had the chance to as a child. A way that nowadays, very few get to experience. Not filled with the need to suddenly grow up.

Suhye's face practically glowed as she saw him smile. The person she looked up to the most, who never smiled, was willing to smile at her.

"Thank you!" in this moment... she really was too much like Choi Jung Soo, "Well then, let's go eat!"

She grabbed onto his arm and ran forward, excited for her birthday lunch.

Kim Rok Soo could really only smile at her as he was dragged along.