AAE -- Wishes Of The Heart

Chapter 2

by LoveCR2

edited by All-About-AAE

 

"Sun-Mi, I love you." -- Yoon Hyung-Chul

 

 

Blissful thoughts float in Sun-Mi's drifting consciousness as she recalls those precious words, fleeting wisps so vivid, so real they must have actually happened, yet so outlandish that they couldn't possibly be true!

 

She keeps her eyes closed, letting her mind wander... It's just a dream, a beautiful  dream ... she concludes.

 

No man in his right mind would propose in the middle of a busy street. And to think that she could kiss someone so -- so passionately, in public even -- makes her cheeks burn at the mere suggestion. Such scenes were figments of romance novels and TV melodramas, not the stuff of real life... especially her life.

 

The mattress shakes slightly; she hears the low rumble of snoring from her left, smells the momentary, pungent odor of released gases. Sun-Mi opens her eyes. Her room is shrouded in total darkness, even the skylight above her bed is dark. She turns her head to look, but has to feel to find the mound of bedcovers beside her. The mound stirs with a quiet rustle, causing the mattress to move again.

 

Confusion addles a sleep-dulled mind as she tries to piece conflicting evidence together. She recalls leaving Hyung-Chul in her bedroom, then going downstairs to her father's room, but her mind was too conflicted, and her heart too pained, to find sleep. Eventually, she'd gotten up to clean the kitchen, seen the half-empty wine bottle, and indulged herself to dull the sharp pangs of sorrow, emptiness, and regret.

 

And then...

 

Sun-Mi searches for what happened next, but comes up blank. Nothing... no clue as to how she came to be here...

 

 

... 'Will you marry me? ... Don't go ... Sun-Mi, I love you' ...

 

The words pop into her mind again, along with vivid memories of Hyung-Chul's arms embracing her tightly, holding her close. Of his lips hungrily pressed to hers as they let their fervent passions consume them.

 

Had she gone back to her room, and in a shared state of unguarded inebriation with Hyung-Chul, somehow ended up indulging those desires... in... her... own... bed?

 

The possibility -- both frightening and intriguing at the same time -- shocks the last bits of wooziness from the corners of her mind.

 

"S..s.. senior?" Her whisper trembles with a nervous shiver, but there is no response, just the sound of steady breathing.

 

Sun-Mi feels her left hand for the ring he'd placed on her, and lets out a sigh of relief...

 

... then it was a dream ...

 

Sun-Mi gropes the nightstand by the bed, searching for the lamp switch and presses it. The light comes on, and she sees she is in her father's bedroom, and says a silent prayer of thankfulness, as a vague sense of disappointment settles over her.

 

... then it really didn't happen ...

 

She lies in bed, wondering what she would have done if she had actually awakened with Hyung-Chul in bed next to her... Would it make things simpler, or just more complicated?

 

 

Sun-Mi decides to get up, as she isn't sleeping anyway.

 

She douses the bedside light, and in the faint illumination of predawn through the skylight, tiptoes across the room to the door. Light from a lamp left on in the living room spills in across the bed as she steps out of the room. Sun-Mi pauses and looks back fondly at her slumbering father for a few seconds, before she closes the door and trudges to the adjacent bathroom.

 

Dressed in the shorts and tee-shirt she'd worn in lieu of her usual pajamas -- she wasn't about to go back and face embarrassment by collecting them from her room, with Hyung-Chul there -- Sun-Mi stares at her reflection in the mirror as she washes the remnants of sleep from her face. The images of her dream are still so vivid she can recall such inconsequential details as the color of flowers at the orphanage, and the simple habit that Young-Mi wore to perform her duties for the children.

 

But ultimately, her thoughts linger on that first kiss ... imaginary as it was ...

 

"If only reality lived up to half of the ideal," she sighs, studying her clean-scrubbed complexion critically for any new blemishes. Finding none to add to the long list of defects she mentally maintained, she wonders if the face looking back at her is really one that a powerful, wealthy man like Hyung-Chul would want to see for the rest of his life, when he has a universe of the most beautiful starlets to gaze upon.

 

Fully awake now, Sun-Mi addresses the nagging throb in her temples, remnant of her earlier indulgence. She pads quietly in slippers to the kitchen, to make a cup of the hangover medicine she often served to her father on mornings following his nights of excess.

 

Waiting for the water to boil, she chides herself, "What is wrong with you, Jin Sun-Mi? Admit the truth, you haven't the faintest idea of how to get a man. Young-Mi's right, you're just a fairy-tale Cinderella. The only place you'll ever find love is in the wishes of your heart."

 

Then upstairs, she hears a dull thud of something falling to the floor. Sun-Mi wonders if Hyung-Chul, like herself, is unable to sleep.

 

Her mind goes back to the previous day, the hints he'd dropped at the wedding, the song he'd requested at the club. She had been certain that Hyung-Chul was about to propose. Yet when the opportunity came to commit himself and pop the question, something had held him back...

 

She wonders... was it her mention of considering London? ...

 

Sun-Mi glances toward the stairs as an idea takes shape.

 

"Why not give him one more chance?" she asks herself, as she takes a second cup down from the shelf...