Echoes of a Summer Love

In another lifetime

That summer, when Marias's path crossed with Gihoon's, she never imagined it would forever mark the rest of her life. Gihoon's smile was so magical, and the chemistry between them was immediate. The distance that once separated them became so short in a moment, and without thinking, they became one. Few words were needed to understand what they felt. It was an immediate connection that Maria had never felt with anyone else. At that point, she knew what she wanted. Loving Gihoon was so easy. Her heart was on a pink cloud. Nothing else mattered, just him!

Sharing her days with Gihoon was incredible, with so many laughs and great moments. The nights they shared were unforgettable, he made Maria feel butterflies. Gihoon's hands, his scent, his body, his gaze - without a doubt, she thought they were meant for each other. At that moment, she just wanted to stop time and never let him go. She knew that the distance that had brought them together would separate them again.

When the day of Gihoon's departure arrived, he told Maria to wait for him, that they would be together again. After everything they had lived through, she blindly believed him. She did her best to continue with her life, just waiting for the day of their reunion, creating fantasies in her mind of how she was going to hug him and touch him. But life had other plans for Maria.

When she learned that the reunion day would never come, her heart broke into pieces. There is no need to describe how she felt. Among all the feelings she experienced, one of them was powerlessness because there was nothing she could do. She didn't have the chance to go and find Gihoon. He was on the other side of the world. And he had already forgotten her. If Maria could go back in time, she wished she would have crossed the ocean to find him. Given her personality, she just sucked it all up and put it in a box, pretending nothing had happened. Years passed without her grieving that loss.

After so many years, when Maria came home again, she finally reconnected with the past. She connected with so many things, and guess what? In the past, there were those memories and thoughts that she once left behind. The box that she had closed so tightly in the past was opened without warning her, and it held all those memories that she thought she had forgotten. Maria asked herself over and over, how is was possible to feel all those feelings after so many years? But she did. She remembered Gihoon's words, his laughter, his body, his hugs, his dances, his energy for life, and all those good things that were recorded in her mind.

Maria recalled Paulo Coelho's words: "They say that throughout our lives, we have two great loves: one with whom you marry or live with forever, who could be the father or mother of your children... That person with whom you achieve the utmost harmony to spend the rest of your life together."

"And they say there is always a second love, a person you will always lose, someone with whom you were born connected, so connected that the forces of chemistry escape reason and will always prevent you from achieving a happy ending. I assure you that not a single day will go by without you wishing they were here to trouble you."

Maria didn't know that in her mind, there was no closure because she let Gihoon go without confronting him. She had replayed the story in her mind over and over from beginning to end, and she couldn't find the reason that made him hurt her as he did. She wished he could tell her, because only then could she close that chapter in her life, a chapter that will never return.

They were all once but now there are only memories, memories that will never come back.