Love Again

Rescue

"You know, if you didn't want jajangmyeon for lunch, we could've gone somewhere else," Uncle Ju-won commented drily as he watched Anne push the noodles around her bowl for the fortieth time.

"Oh, no, this is great. I'm just suddenly not very hungry. I actually haven't been feeling too well today, I'm sorry uncle," she hastily explained as she set her chopsticks down.

Her uncle leaned back in his chair and assessed her with eyes that missed very little. "Is everything alright Annie?"

Instead of answering right away, she turned and watched the people walking up and down the sidewalk outside the restaurant. It was a lovely day. The sun was out, and a light breeze danced through the trees. When getting dressed that morning, she had opted to wear a simple white blouse tucked into black dress pants and an oversized cream cardigan, choosing to leave behind her heavy jacket as she went into the office earlier that morning. It was such a gorgeous morning, with the promise of warmer days in the air. Even the fine dust particle count was down.

And what a productive morning it had been. She had finalized some contracts and caught a mistake in one of the agreements between ADOR and Sony that would have caused major headaches later on. She also caught up on all of her emails, built out her schedule, and rearranged the knick knacks on her desk.

By all accounts, it was a perfectly lovely day.

But for some reason, all she felt was a strange kind of malaise. She wasn't necessarily sad, or upset. Just perhaps a little melancholy. It really wasn't uncommon for her to feel this way sometimes. According to her therapist, it was just one of the joys of having high functioning anxiety and light depression. Try as she might, sometimes she just couldn't shake her gloom. All she could do was ride it out and take care of herself.

She sighed and turned back to her forgotten meal. "Yes, I'm just really tired today," she told her uncle absentmindedly.

"I see. Well, you know, you can always talk to me about anything or anyone that might be bothering you," he said pointedly.

She slowly dragged her gaze up from her noodles to meet his kind eyes. "I know uncle. And I appreciate that. I promise I will come to you if I need anything, but right now, I think I just need to quietly exist, you know?"

He nodded solemnly at her as her phone buzzed with an incoming message.

"For someone who is trying to find some peace and quiet, you are sure are popular."

Anne barely held back an eye roll as she grabbed her phone and scanned the new messages. Jung Kook. Again. Despite her lack of response, he had proven to be relentless. He texted her almost non-stop since her drunken episode 3 days ago.