Autumnal Equinox (JinJi)

Thirteen

How have you been? I missed you

Sadness falls from your eyes

Jisoo looked up at Jinyoung, who was watching her face intently as she listened. His body was tense and she could practically see him shaking with anticipation of her reaction.

His voice in the track repeated the chorus: I'm coming home, coming home. The song was sorrowful and hopeful all at once. It was emotive and melancholic, and she'd never heard his voice sound so wistfully sad and hauntingly beautiful at the same time. The lyrics sounded so personal. She pressed her lips into a thin line. Jinyoung noticed, and he wondered what it meant.

She paused the song and pulled one of the earbuds out.

"It sounds good," she said. Jinyoung raised a brow.

"Really?" he asked.

"It sounds... really different from anything else you've written," Jisoo said. "More... mature, I guess. More... emotionally complex. What's it called?"

"'Coming Home,'" Jinyoung said. He looked down at his hands and smiled. It was his real smile this time. It came out more often now. Jisoo turned to the computer and was about to play the song again when he spoke:

"You know," he said. "Your grandfather talked to me in the hospital while you were talking to your parents."

Jisoo raised her brows. "Oh," she said. "He did? What'd he say?"

The look on her face made him realize that she was worried Harabeoji had said something inappropriate. But he waved his hands to assure her that it wasn't anything like that.

"He talked about writer's block," Jinyoung said. "I said that I hadn't written music in a while was because of writer's block. I said it like a joke, but... it was true, too. When we all went off to college, I just couldn't write anymore. Musically, creatively, I felt stuck."

Stuck. Yes, that was exactly how he felt. Stuck with a major he didn't like, a girlfriend who didn't like him, and a job toward which he had only lukewarm feelings. Stuck in a distorted version of the life he imagined for himself. No writing, no growth, no music.

The last thing he wanted to do was make Jisoo feel guilty. It wasn't anyone's direct fault, as far as he knew, but he could almost exactly pinpoint the start of this stagnant feeling to the last day of summer five years ago. She didn't say goodbye, and when she left, she took the music with her.

Jinyoung swallowed.

"Harabeoji said that writer's block is what happens when you don't live your life honestly, and you won't be able to move on until you go back and fix what's wrong," he continued. "It got me thinking about myself and the kind of life I had in Seoul. It wasn't all bad, but in some ways, it felt like I was going down a road that I wasn't meant to be on, like I took a wrong turn somewhere. Coming home... feels like a chance to go back and take the right turn."

"Overcoming writer's block," Jisoo said gently. "That's a very good way to look at it."

Her stomach churned. She could feel him steering the direction of this conversation dangerously close to the memory of that day. Images of the sky and the sea were rushing back to her, and she was trying to stop it.

"Your birthday is coming up," Jisoo said, wondering if that would change the subject. His brows shot up, and the air cleared.

"Ah," he said, nodding. "That's right." Truth be told, he'd forgotten.

"So, what are we doing?" Jisoo asked. She crossed her legs under the table and accidentally hit his shin with her foot. She felt him shifting in his seat. He looked down at the desk and grabbed the edge of it.