North - South

This single step should be ok

Se-ri looked around the boyish room. After having finished the lunch, the Ri had invited her to 'rest a little,' the international code for 'we have to talk in private and you're not invited,' and she was now confined in Jeong Hyeok's old reign. 

It was a place every wall of which talked about a loved child. His piano, still neatly preserved in front of a window. The school notebooks his mom had fondly kept together with his books. So many books. She had been a child with many objects too. It was visible the difference between personal objects and furniture to impress, though, and nobody would have ever thought about keeping her memories. Or maybe yes, maybe Mrs. Hong.

It was while she was lost in bitter considerations of that sort - funny how, even after a decade, the Ri boys were still able to put her in front of the sheer difference between their fates - that the owner of the room knocked at the door. 

The expression on his face was slightly weird when he sat down on his old bed, his eyes roving around with no precise aim.

"Wae?"

"It always feels a little weird, when someone you know as an adult is in your childhood room, I suppose."

"But I've already been there."

"Not in this room."

"How do you know it?" She teased. "You always accused me to peep around."

"Because you did peep around."

"I did because, when you all left the table to smoke, would have I stayed there alone my mom and my brothers would have said that I was unable to make friends," she explained with no trace of awkwardness. Something had happened, somewhere in between running away from his place because she couldn't call home, and being kidnapped by his dad. It was as if they were now in full display the one to the other, as if there was no point in keeping again straight faces, secrets, and untolds.

Her words felt like a little, uncomfortable stinger. In his eyes, the image of a skinny girl. High heels, flashy clothes, and a scratched knee. Someone he should have paid better attention to. His brother had. 

"I'm sorry. For all that happened to you."

"It's ok. It's in the past." Her chin pointed to the piano, something must have happened to him too. "I'm sorry too."

"It's ok. It's in the past," Jeong Hyeok chewed his lips, his body language betraying him. "Were you playing it?"

"Yes..." and suddenly, a realization. Who else if not Ri Jeong Hyeok, weirdo but also a music genius in his past? "Listen, if I play you something, would you be able to tell me what it is?" She didn't wait for his reply but ran to the piano.

One. Two. Three notes.

It took no time. It took an eternity.

Present and past, warmth and snow coiling together.

The few notes Se-ri played were sufficient to freeze the blood in his veins, to move his feet, to move his fingers. It was instinctive. Sitting down. Playing the rest of the song.

When it ended, they were both speechless, the shock on his face having muted the girl too.

It took him some time before feeling able to talk again. "Where did you hear this song?"

"Swiss. Remember I told you I wanted to jump off the train? It was a ferry, actually. Someone was playing on a dock. I don't know, it's as... as if this song has remembered to me that world also could be good. It has given me hope, it has told me that I could have had something. Maybe I didn't know what, but there was something for me too, somewhere. But I never heard the song again, and it seems as if nobody knows it. I don't even remember wher..."