Star-Crossed Lovers

Chapter VI - Matched in Heaven, Fated by Stars

The two young lovers were a match made in heaven but fated by the stars.

The two had met at the flower shop owned by Jaemin's mother when the young lad was dragged by his second brother to the shop to pick up flower bouquets for their eldest brother's wedding. They had fallen in love at the first sight before the lad managed to embarrass himself in front of the lady by knocking off flower pots on the counter and broke them.

Every weekend mornings, the lad would sneaked into Na's family greenhouse where he would found his love busy attending the flowers alone. They would spent the whole morning together, chatting and keeping up with each other's activities while the lady was doing her work with the helpful lad by her side.

Sometimes, the lad would brought his canvas and some paints when he came. He was studying architecture during that time and loved to paint. He painted numbers of paintings during their meetings but never once did Jaemin saw any of them as he never let her.

They had been keeping their relationship a secret from everyone in both Na's and Lee's household because they were quite young at the time and their families were quite conservative. It was also because of some kind of intense political rivalries between the two families in the town.

However, Yuta knew about their relationship. He discovered them by himself when he coincidentally came to the greenhouse one weekend morning to pick some flowers for his fiancee and found them holding hands, standing too close to each other.

Yuta promised to keep the secret to himself as he could not bear watching her begged for it. He even warned the lad that he would end him himself if he dared to hurt her. He loved her so much, she was the only sister he had.

After two years of hiding their relationship, the lad decided to make it official between them. He went to the Na family and asked her father for her hand in marriage. He was rejected coldly by the father. He was also told that Jaemin had been betrothed to a rich merchant's son, named Jung Jaehyun and they will get married on the following month.

The lad left the house brokenhearted and met his love in the church. No one knew what happened between them. When Yuta found out about what happened and arrived at the place, he saw his sister already lying unconsciously on the cold floor with her lover next to her, weeping.

Everything was happening so fast in that evening and the memories were too vague. The next thing Yuta knew, he was sitting beside his sister's bed waiting for her to wake up. He remembered seeing the empty laudanum bottle lying on the floor beside Jaemin in the church that evening. She might have stolen it from the poison wardrobe in his laboratory.

Yuta was a talented chemist and a young apothecary. Sometimes, he would teach his sister a thing or two about medicines. Maybe she had read something more on her own to know the use of that drug.

The young lad on the other hand, had ended his own life with a dagger stabbed through his heart that evening. Yuta could not even help him because by the time he realized what the lad did, he had already left the world.

Several weeks later, he learned that the Lee family had moved away to another country a week after the funeral through a letter he received from Taeyong, the oldest son and also his childhood friend.

As for Jaemin, she had suffered worse consequences. She was severely depressed. She refused to eat or to see anyone and locked herself in the attic. Her condition was really agonizing. She lost too much weight and her sunken eyes had lost their light and colour. She was no longer the bright girl she used to be.

Her father wanted to call off her wedding with the merchant's son but Jaehyun refused. He had fallen deeply in love with the damsel for God knows why and decided to wait for her until she recovered. He had also assigned the best doctors in town to treat her.

Her misfortune did not end just yet. One day, she left the attic and was found unconscious on the stairs leading to the front entrance of the church she used to attend. No one knew how and why it happened.

When she regained her consciousness on the next day, she looked so confused and it seemed like some part of her memories were erased. To be more specific, she had lost all the memories of her first love. She had forgotten about the youngest Lee.

The Na family decided to keep their mouth shut and hide the secret away from Jaemin. They could not stand the pain of watching her grieving day and night, every single day. When Jaemin's health was finally recovering, she was married off to Jaehyun and he took her away out of the town to another side of the country to start a new life.

The siblings kept in touch through letters, but Jaemin never came back to the town, not even once. Through her letters, she confessed to her brother that she could never love her husband, no matter how hard she tried and no matter how kind and loving her husband was to her.

She also mentioned that she did felt longing for and missing someone but she failed to pinpoint anyone. The thought hurt both her head and her heart. Yuta did not have the heart to tell the truth and told her that everything was going to be fine.

Years passed when she was finally bearing a child and gave birth to a lovely daughter at the age of twenty-four. However, she passed away four years later due to poor heart condition, where some people would claimed it as the broken heart syndrome.

But Jaemin was really happy with the life she had with her husband and daughter. She was just not in love.

Jaehyun never remarried and took great care of their daughter as a single father. He brought the girl back to the town once in a while for a visit to her grandparents whenever they missed their daughter. It was not a routine but it had became a family tradition for them to visit the Villa at least once in a lifetime.

Two hundred years had passed and never once the name of the unfortunate lad had ever been mentioned in the Na's household. Until that night.