Serendipity: The Amazing Journey Of A Soulmate

50. The one that got away

INNA

The trip back home yesterday has been torture. Since Ella and Reea took my car, it left the rest of us with only two cars available to return to Seoul. To fit nine grown up people in two average cars, along with five tents, blankets and backpacks proved to be more difficult than one would believe. We split into two groups of five and four people and climbed up for the drive. That morning, after the girls left, the mood was off in the campsite. Me and Namjoon were tired as hell, Taehyung was gloomy and hurt, Jimin was feeling down because his best friend was suffering, Julia has been all trip in a killer mood because of her period and was not really having it, especially after she woke up to a missing Ella, so we decided to just grab our stuff and go home. Camping trip over. Mission: failed.

I ended up in the same car with Jungkook who was driving, Namjoon on his right, while I was in the backseat, pressed between the door and a teary eyed Tae. Jimin was sitting on his other side, silently offering him comfort with his presence. Each one of us carried a backpack or a duffel bag in our arms, in order to save more space for the tents, Taehyung clutching the bag in his arms like his whole life depended on it. My heart ached for him, this little beam of sunshine, so innocent and pure.

By the time we entered the city it was already midday, the suffocating summer air combined  with the heat emanating from the concrete streets and all kinds of heavy smells hitting me like a truck. I wish I could stay more in the middle of nature. It felt good to my body and my mind. I craved to get disconnected from the world and I wish it lasted.

But all good things come to an end, other faster and more brutal than others. So here I am, back in this boisterous city, so beautiful yet so annoying at times, preparing to start another day of work. I wonder what events are in store for me this week. The cases have been flooding these past few weeks, more and more difficult which required a lot of focus and hard work to prepare. Not to mention the already messed up case of Mrs. Chung and MonAmi's CEO. I feel like this case alone took half of my years of life.

Stepping out of the elevator, I walk down the corridor of the floor where our company's headquarters are settled and greet everyone I encounter. The main office is filled with people and agitation, the paralegals and the secretaries running around with papers in their hands and the senior lawyers barking requests left and right. I can't say I missed this noise, but it became my routine. My normality.

"Good morning, Ms. Young!" a young girl greets me the moment I pass by the office of another fellow lawyer. She is an intern, someone brought straight from college to witness our activity and help as much as she can with our work. In about a year she will graduate and take her bar exam, hoping to become a lawyer like us. Like me. When she first joined us a couple weeks ago, although she is not assigned to me, we got to talk for a while. She told me about her hopes and dreams, about how she doesn't have a father, but her mother works hard to support her. In exchange, she hopes she will become a legal counselor and make her mother proud. I wished her luck and assured her that with enough motivation, she can do anything. And she has a lot of that.

"Morning, Eunji! And please, call me Inna" I say showing her a bright smile. "Everything going well these days?" I ask, curious about how well she adapted here in our company.

"Absolutely! I'm looking forward to learning new things, as always." she says excitedly and it warms my heart. I used to be like her at 21. I'm not that old, but 6 years mean a lot of time when you fight to save your soul. Now that I think about it, my job has been the only constant in my life, the only thing I was always sure of, my biggest victory. It kept me going because I was doing it with passion. I still am.

"I'm glad to hear that. And I hope my colleague is not too harsh on you," I say tilting my head in the direction of the empty office behind her, where one of our senior lawyers reside usually.