𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗥𝗢𝗔𝗗 𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗘 (a TAELICE adaptation)

PROLOGUE

It was eight or nine years later when I ran into my first love again, it was at the gas station. Just like that, I watched him walked out from the convenience store. I fixed my eyes on him, not really daring to believe it. Tentatively, I asked him. " Do you still remember who I am? "

Holding a bottle of water on his upturned palm, he looked at me and rather placidly answered. " Yes, I remember you. Even if I were to turn ashes, I would still remember you. "

This reminds me of a line of lyrics. " The promise of this lifetime is still missing a goodbye. And henceforth, that scar is unwilling to heal. "

That day was actually not a coincidental encounter. There was a gathering of middle school schoolmates.

Choi Lalisa heard her old classmate, Bang Chan, mention his name, saying that he was taking a short rest at the nearby gas station. After hearing that name, her mind was no longer rational, and not caring about anything else, she said she wanted to go see this " old friend ".

Her old classmate did not thought too much of this, so riding a bicycle, he brought her over there.

That five-minute journey seemed as long as an entire century. Before Bang Chan even braked to a halt, she had already hurriedly hopped off from the back rack of the bicycle and was fretfully casting her gaze around, there was a tinge of anxiousness that was present in her eyes.

When she saw him, dressed in a white button-up shirt and khaki-coloured, active-style shorts, striding out side by side with his comrades, who were also similarly garbed in civilian clothes, she stepped forward almost as if sleepwalking and greeted him.

Until he stated that one sentence—

Lalisa froze. Rubbing her right forearm, she remained silent.

Bang Chan was dumbstruck. What was going on here? Some sort of grievance from a past love?

But judging from Taehyung's open, unperturbed expression, it did not seem to be any sort of unforgettable debt of love that was engraved on his heart and into his bones, and rather, it seemed more like a joking sentence. Yet, the two involved parties weren't smiling either. Just how much of that was true and how much was not? Bang Chan, as an outsider, did not know. However, Chan had, after all, been out in society for a long time already, and the skill of smoothing a situation over was something he did have.

" Tae-hyung, why have you been here all this time at the gas station? You're on some sort of mission? "

Kim Taehyung stretched out his hand and gave a smack to the back of Bang Chan's head.

" What kind of mission can you have at a gas station? We're waiting for someone. Have your older brother come find me tonight. "

Bang Chan breathed out in relief. " My brother's over in Busan. I'll have him go find you in a couple of days. "

" Then just forget it. In a couple of days I'll be heading back to the South Korea and North Korea borderland. "

Upon saying this, he twisted open his bottle cap and guzzled a couple of mouthfuls of mineral water.

When Lalisa heard " South Korea and North Korea borderland ", she returned to her senses. Summoning the courage in her heart, she brazenly stared at him, this person whom she had not seen in more than eight years, scrutinizing even the tiny detail of how his adam's apple bobbed up and down while he was swallowing water.

He practically had not changed at all.

His pupils occupied a relatively larger propitiation of his eyes than the average person, and combined with the outer corners of his eyes that turned upwards slightly, his slender face and back when he wore the button-up shirt of a school uniform, the fluid outline of his neck that showed, this face naturally was the type that exuded deviance and ostentatiousness. However, the lines of the corners of his lips were very soft and pressed together slightly, always appeared as if they were smiling.

Now, with him dressed like this in a white button-up shirt, it truly did seem as if they had returned to the past...

Since meeting him when she was thirteen years old, whenever anyone asked Lalisa, " What kind of boy do you like? ". There's a sentence that always managed to blurt from her. " He has to have a nice eyes... ".

It was as if rooted deeply in her memory was the belief that a man had to have a nice eyes in order for her to think he was handsome. She surmised that even after ten, twenty years, even thirty or forty years, she would still hold his viewpoint.

Bang Chan had originally brought Choi Lalisa here merely to see an " old friend ". Who would have known that this little kerfuffle would arise between these two? He could therefore only say a little of this and that to Kim Taehyung and just find random things to talk about. Taehyung every often would give a few words in reply. In the past, his words had been neither frequent nor many, and if he could speak less, he would.

Soon, two military off-road vehicles drove into the gas station and came to stop in a spot near the several of them.

In the sweltering sun, the vehicle's exhaust fumes carried an unpleasant stench of burnt fuel and made Lalisa's eyes sting.

The person in the driver's seat told them to get into the vehicle. With a pat on Bang Chan's back, Kim Taehyung stated. " I'm going now. "

He jumped into the front passenger seat of the Jeep first while the other people after the other followed suit and got into the vehicles. From beginning to end, he never looked at her again. By the time the two Jeeps had pulled out of the gas station, Bang Chan's entire back was soaked. In a low voice, he asked. " You and Tae-hyung once dated? "

Lalisa shook her head and just brushed over this, not wanting to say anything at all.

That night, in her aunt's house, she was restless and uneasy, as if she had lost her heart somewhere.

It was ten o'clock already, but still she picked up the landline telephone and had the operator dial the Kang family's number.

" You saw my older cousin?! " When Kang-Park Jihyo heard her brief account of what happened this afternoon, this surprised exclamation burst from her lips. " My mom didn't even know he was back. How did you managed to see him? "

Jihyo was too stirred up. Her son, woken by the noise, began to wail.

" Wait a bit. I need to go pacify the little devil first. " she set the phone receiver down. It was quite some time before she came back, saying.

" I don't even know what I should say to you. Lalisa, why did you even want to go looking for him? Have you forgotten just how many times he begged you back then to make up and get back together again? Do you know how hard-hearted you were? It was so hard for him to get even one chance to come back, yet when he wanted to see you, you wouldn't. Lalisa... " She sighed. " Lalisa, what do you even want to do by trying to find him? "

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𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐕𝐨𝐭𝐞!!!