January 1951. He saved her life in a city torn apart by war during the Korean War.
December 1953. The soldier is reunited with the governor's daughter- souls scarred and bodies battered, seeking the second chance that Fate has dealt.
Like an unbridled beast, the agony was destroying Seri from within, and she won't ever be the same again.
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This was far from her first experience with grief and loss, but why did it feel as if her soul was bleeding profusely, bleeding through her eyes in the form of endless tears?
Every existing living individual in Korea, no matter North or South, had survived war.
Everyone had undergone some degree of separation; one would inevitably know of some who had died, and others who lost all contact with their loved ones because of the Armistice Line.
The Yoon family was no exception; they had lost friends and relatives, whom Seri would always remember and grieve.
But with war, there was also a looming sense of resignation in the background that helped to justify these emotions.
Call it fate, destiny, God's will, whatever.
The Korean war was senseless, and losses were inevitable. Through the trauma and pain, Seri had mustered strength within herself to move on with the understanding that everything had changed for Korea.
Even on the most despairing of days during the war, there were larger, intangible powers to direct the frustration and pain towards.
But not this.
This heart wrenching pain stemmed from a conscious, sober decision to dig a knife in, and cut a part of her own heart away.
Seri's naïveté had failed to prepare her for the raging onslaught of emotions; she had clearly overestimated herself when she promised Cha Sang Woo to cut off all ties with Ri Jeong Hyeok.
In her desperation to protect him, Seri had somehow assumed she had come to terms with the end of the affinity she had with Jeong Hyeok.
Yet the phone call from him, likely a culmination of a lot of inner turmoil and courage on his part, was the ultimate finality she didn't see coming.
To quietly avoid the Captain was one thing, but to steel her heart to break off the remnants of the connection they shared, demanded willpower she never knew she had.
Her sudden shift in attitude towards the Captain, whom she had relentlessly approached with what was initially friendship and then more, must have completely blindsided him.
If his feelings for her mirrored what she felt for him, he must be equally, if not more, devastated.
But what hurt more, was that she had most likely pushed Jeong Hyeok back into the abyss of darkness that he had tried so hard to escape from.
There was something so heartbreaking yet respectable about the lonesome figure he cut when he gets up each day to face the world, with all the ghosts of the fallen clinging on his battered mind and body.
