𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗥𝗢𝗔𝗗 𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗘 (a TAELICE adaptation)

CHAPTER 1

That night, Jihyo still ended up giving her a phone number.

This number was saved into the address book on her phone. To prevent herself from flipping to it during normal times, the name she assigned to it was " ZZZ ". That way it naturally fell to the very end of her contact list. However, in reality. She had already memorized it after a single glance.

Two years later.

Lalisa sat in the austere break room of a certain gas station in the Inner South Korea and North Korea borderland. Condensation slicked the entire dirty glass window. Outside, goose-down-like snow, in the truest sense of the description, was falling.

" Other people hug, their wives at night. People like us, though, only get to hug their steering wheel at night. " Two freight truck drivers complained. " It's such a snowy day, and it's nearly dark already. It'll be brutal driving in this. "

She had been sitting here for more than half an hour already and was long past to bear it. She rose from her seat and pushed open the wooden door of the break room, walked out to the steps that were blanketed in snow.

Would he come?

She tugged the collar of her parka up so that it reached the tip of her nose.

" Is your friend going to come? " behind her, Chaeyoung, who had run out as well to follow her, shivered as she asked this.

" He should be coming, I guess? " Lalisa was not certain.

Earlier on the telephone, her explanation had been rather jumbled and disjointed. On the other end of the line, he had merely asked for the address and then hung up.

Her feet were numb already from waiting, but still holding on to a thread of hope, she set her gaze on the sights outside the main door. Another half an hour passed. Her fingertips had lost feeling already. She wanted to go back but was unwilling to accept that this was the reality. Right as Park Chaeyoung ran out again for the fourth time, a set of stark-white headlights shone through the snow and over to where they were. A snow-covered off-road vehicle drove in without circling around, stopped directly in front of the steps.

It's originally half-open window was then completely rolled down. The person sitting in the driver's seat was wearing a black, thick padded winter jacket that appeared similar to the combat wear worn by the Special Police, but it was ordinary civilian wear. He wore a hat of the same colour, and in the dimness of the night, his face was indistinct. However, she could still recognize it was him.

" Get in the car. "

Those were the first words he said after yet another two years in which they had not seen each other.

Lalisa ran up beside the vehicle's window.

" The gas station owner told us to head over to the grassland area for a look first... "

" Get in the car. " Kim Taehyung repeated this once more in a tone uncoloured by any emotion.

Feeling awkward, Lalisa turned her head and instructed Chaeyoung to tell the other three men, who were still inside taking shelter from the weather, to come out.

When everyone had gotten into the vehicle, those four people occupied the rear seats and as if it was only right and proper, left the front passenger seat for Lalisa. Hesitatingly, she climbed into the vehicle and then pulled the seat belt strap over, but before she had fastened the buckle, Taehyung had already stamped on the accelerator and was driving away from there.

He still had the same habit, regardless of which of the four seasons it was, his car window would be open.

Winter's night wind gusted in and evoked shivers in the people sitting in the back seat, but they dared not speak out of turn.