Healing Sunshine

Chapter 20.2 - The Goodbye that I Owe You

Jungkook's abrupt rise to his feet caused the attention of the people in the conference room to converge. Everyone followed Jungkook's gaze to also look at that young girl standing at the door. They could see in a single glance that she was a student intern who had just stepped out into the working world.

"What's up with this, Jungkook?" A suit-clad man sitting at the centre of the conference table was eyeing Lalisa with a look of amusement. As if he had thought of something, his expression became increasingly peculiar.

Even that foreigner female journalist also had a look on her face that showed she had made a connection of some sort in her mind.

From the moment she laid eyes on him, Lalisa's mind had gone into a blank daze. Her hand that gripped the edge of the door unconsciously tightened. Her heart went from being filled with wild elation, to feeling released and relieved, to, in an instant, falling into dejection and, with that last thread of hope completely snapped, plunging into an abyss. She at last thoroughly realized that none of it had been a lie, that she had simply been deceiving herself.

Her emotions were fluctuating too quickly, and turmoil swelled in her eyes as well.

He was alive, and he looked as if he was doing very, very well.

She shifted her gaze away.

Jungkook stood with his back towards the floor-length glass window and the warm winter sunshine beyond it, but he was gazing deeply at her.

"Little Uncle Jeon." In a low voice, she spoke those words that she had rehearsed for a long time. "It's been... a long time since we've seen each other."

How long?

From May of 2003 to the present, 2007. Today, it was exactly four years, seven months, and seven days.

After remaining silent for two or three seconds, Jungkook, his voice carrying repressed emotions, answered, "Four years, seven months, and seven days."

The expression on every person's face shifted, astounded by this exact count of days that Jungkook had stated. However, each person simply carried on retaining his or her own fantastical speculations. Only the expression of the newspaper's editor-in-chief, Eunwoo, was the most simple and innocent. Genuinely believing that she was Jungkook's niece, he immediately smiled and began introducing Lalisa to the new, suit-clad, dignified and proper-looking managing editor, Park Jimin and also the newspaper's female, foreign-nationality contracted correspondent, Amanda.

When his gaze turned back to Jungkook, he did not provide any titles or description of his reputation. "You don't need any introductions about your Little Uncle Jeon from me. He, like those other two, experienced the Iraq War and just returned to the country."

"Mm-hmm. I know... They are all journalist heroes," Lalisa responded.

She discovered that her throat was beginning to ache. A searing sensation burned all the way up from her chest into her throat. Each word that she spoke was done with great difficulty. After about two or three seconds of quiet, she said in a low voice, "You guys continue. I'll head back to my work first."

After saying this, she disappeared behind that slowly-closing glass door.

From beginning to end, from when she appeared to when she left, she had stood by the doorway and had not taken even half a step into the conference room.

Slowly, Jungkook sat down. He suddenly really wanted to have a smoke.

In an instant, memories assailed him, surging too fiercely at him. This second, he could even clearly remember that sweltering summer evening in 1997, when, in order to comfort that little girl who, because she had not gotten to see her parents, had sobbed until she was drenched in tears, he had brought her to the cinema in the military compound to watch the representative film of a Hong Kong actor. That empty cinema and the timid look in that little girl's eyes were all recorded in that era in which there had been no romance or love, no flames of war, and even more so, no separations in life and partings by death.