Maya

"Why didn't you tell anyone that you're leaving?" I ask him while handing over my tag at the valet booth.

"They wouldn't bother...some of them wouldn't even realize that I left. They're all so drunk," Taehyung chuckles, softly pushing his bangs with the back of his hand.

"Yours?" I turn to look at him, expecting him to hand over his tag as well at the valet booth, but he doesn't, and he keeps his hands stuffed deep inside the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders lifting in a small shrug.

"I don't have one. I used the subway," his answer surprises me, and I realize how foolish I have been to assume that everyone would have a car.

Taehyung

"Let's use the subway then," Maya answers without delay, and it takes me by complete surprise.

To be honest, I have been in a state of trance right from when I first saw her tonight. She looks beautiful as always, in fact, a little more polished than before, and I can't stop myself from admiring how gracefully she has grown up from the pretty and petite Maya—who ruled my thoughts throughout all my days and nights for three whole years, and even a little more than that—to the super attractive woman that she is today.

"Hey, come on. You don't have to..."

"What if I want to?" She cuts me off casually as she takes back her tag from the valet booth and returns it to her handbag and looks at me.

I can't answer that question because it feels as if my heart is beating in my mouth right now. I can't believe it that I'm still so nervous around her.

Without sharing another word, we both start walking out of the hotel premises and out onto the road.

"Do you know any tteokbokki restaurants around here?" Maya breaks the silence first while I was actually admiring our shadows as we walked along the pavement.

"Yeah, there's one down that road on the right," I answer and turn my head a little to look at her as we keep walking.

"How have you been?" Her voice softens even more, and following her line of sight, I notice that she's looking at our shadows too, and the soft night-time breeze is making her hair, as well as mine, to flutter gently.

"Mm, okay..." my voice trails off, causing her eyes to land on me. "How have you been?"

"I'm doing good," she nods with a big smile, looking down at the ground and then straight at the path ahead of us.

"Are you happy?" I ask her, taking a relaxed breath and burying my cold hands deep into the pockets of my jeans.

"Tricky question," she laughs a little, moving some strands of her hair that seem as if they want to keep kissing her face. "Today, I am. Are you happy?" She asks without looking at me, but I'm unable to look anywhere else.

"Not always... it seems so hard to reach," I chuckle softly, and Maya hums in agreement.

I stare into the distance as we keep walking, and she doesn't speak anything more about our personal lives, and I don't too, feeling quite relieved that we aren't discussing my pathetic life. We talk only about the reunion as we finally reach the small tteokbokki restaurant. It is an ancient one with just a few chairs and tables inside, but the interior is clean, and the food is tasty and hygienic.

We settle down at one of the tables after I place the order to the ahjumma who runs this restaurant. Today being Saturday, there's a small booth set up in a corner of the restaurant where a solo singer is doing a live performance with his vocals and his guitar, and he also seems to be taking song requests.

Our food arrives, and just then I leave our table to place my song request to the singer, and he gladly agrees to perform it for me—for us.

Maya watches with utmost concentration as I talk to the singer and walk back to our table, giving her a big smile that makes her reflect it like a mirror before she begins eating.

However, once he starts singing the song, Maya's eyes shoot up from her food to look at me, her mouth slightly agape with shock.

"Wow. It's been so long since I heard this song," she relaxes, leaning back in her seat and enjoying the music with her eyes closed, swaying her head lightly with the rhythm.

"You should listen to your favorite song more often," my words tumble out on their own, earning another look of shock from Maya.

"How did you know?" She's only whispering at this point, and the way my little action made her so reactive is suddenly boosting my confidence and making me feel powerful.

"You told it once when our music teacher asked each one of us for our favorite song during our second year," my answer flows out without any hesitation.

"You remembered?" She blinks her eyes, and her voice mirrors the shock she is feeling within.

I laugh softly.
"I never forgot," my words are punctuated by a few seconds of unexpected silence where her eyes never leave mine, and she isn't eating as well. It seems as if the play button malfunctioned and froze her image for a while.

"Maya?" I wave my hand in front of her face, and she snaps out of her trance, swallowing thickly.

"Eat up, I'm sure you don't enjoy cold tteokbokki," I chuckle, picking up a piece of fish cake and putting it into my mouth.

Maya seems a little lost in her thoughts for a while, and I decide to talk more to her to help her ease a bit. I have no idea if we would even meet each other after tonight, so I might as well muster up all my courage and keep talking to her for all the years I've missed in between.

"Maya, what is your dream?" I put forward a very random question, not even knowing why I asked that in the first place.

"Dream?" She pauses for a bit and then laughs softly. "Dreams are illusions, Taehyung. I've had many dreams, but everything only ended too quickly and gave me heartbreaks. So I don't dream anymore. I live each day, one day at a time. No big dreams, no big desires. At the end of my life, I only hope that I would be able to say that I lived without regrets," she dabs the corners of her mouth with a piece of tissue, crushing it up thereafter.

"So that is your dream then, right?" I rest my elbows on the table and raise my eyebrows at her.

"Maybe," she shrugs a little. "If you choose to look at it that way. What's your dream though?" Maya moves her almost empty bowl of food aside and rests her jaw on her upturned palm with her eyes holding me captive.

"My dream is to go to bed happy every single night," I look into her eyes that are riveted onto mine.

"That's something I've never thought about," she nods, impressed.

"That's why it's probably still a dream, and it would always be one," I laugh a little at my own silly dream.

"Nothing is unachievable, Taehyung. I'm sure you'll get to your happier days and nights very soon," her words seem positive and hopeful, and it makes me all warm and happy—something that I haven't been feeling lately.

After we finish our meal, we decide to walk a little and then take a subway ride. Just when we are about to descend the subway staircase, I notice an old lady sitting by the side and selling roses.

"어서오세요, 손님! 장미 좀 사시겠어요?" (Hello, dear customer! Would you like to buy some roses?) The old lady greets us and smiles expectantly when we halt our steps.

Going down on my knees to meet her eyes, I smile at her before examining the roses that she has for sale, and my eyes land on the only pink rose that she has amongst all the other red, yellow and white roses.

Picking up the single pink rose whose stalk has been neatly trimmed of all its thorns and wrapped in a pretty piece of fancy paper, I quiz the old lady,
"아주머니, 이거 얼마에요?" (How much is this, lady?)

"100 원" she states sadly when she notices that I'm not interested in the other roses.

"전부 해서 얼마입니까?" (How much is it all together?) I point to all the roses and ask her, and she excitedly begins counting all her roses, making me giggle a little.

"2200 원. 하지만 2000 원에 드릴게요" the old lady beams brightly.
(2200 wons, but I will give it to you for 2000 wons)

I pull out my wallet from my back pocket and hand her two one-thousand won notes.
"저에게 이 장미만 주세요,"
(Please give me only this rose)

She looks shocked, but gives in to my request when I don't give up, and I bid her a goodbye and good night before returning to Maya who is patiently waiting for me to finish shopping.

"You paid 2000 wons for just this one rose?" She sounds surprised as well.

I only smile and don't answer her question right away, and we proceed to take the subway to some random station that's farthest from where we are at the moment.

These kind of carefree moments don't happen often in life, and I'm really enjoying it right now.

Once we sit down inside the subway car, Maya retrieves her phone from her small shoulder bag and checks the time.

"Wow! It's already past 9 pm. I hope you're not running late," she asks me in a concerned manner.

"Don't worry, I'm not. And you?"

"I'm not, as well," she keeps her answer short before she hands me her phone.
"Your contact number, if you don't mind," Maya smiles softly. Anything could have possibly changed over the years, but that smile of hers—one that made me fall hard for her—has not changed one bit.

For a fleeting moment, she looks like the younger Maya dressed in the uniform shirt, jacket and her skirt which always comfortably reached her knees. She never wore them short like most other girls, and I kind of found that very attractive about her, among numerous other things.

Without any hesitation, I get the phone from her hand and type in my contact number, placing a call to my phone thereafter. We both save each other's contact number, and then put our phones away.

This is the first time that I'm sitting right next to her, and that too after so many years, and I just realized that I am still capable of feeling the butterflies inside even after so many years. Those three years were definitely the happiest place in my life that I really wish to go back to. Nothing that happened in my life after graduating from high school has been worth mentioning.

Although I want to talk so much with her, I really don't know what to say or ask, and I end up remaining dead silent, occasionally glancing at her, and then we would share a smile before going back to being silent.

Maya keeps tapping the tips of her fingers against her knee, and it tells me that she is either nervous for some reason or bored. Whatever it is, I don't want her to forget tonight, not when I met her after all these years.

"Are you sleepy or something?" I try to strike a conversation.

"I thought you were sleepy," she giggles, linking her fingers together on the top of her lap.

"I'm not. How will you go back to the hotel? What about your car?" I turn around a little to sit facing her.

"I don't know. I haven't thought about it," she laughs a little, and just then the subway ride comes to an end, and it is time for us to alight the train.

Walking out of the station and onto the roads which are fairly empty by now, Maya hugs her cardigan tight around her body and walks taking unusually slow steps, and I can clearly see that she's still a little nervous.

Why, though? It's just me and her. It's totally understandable that I'm nervous, but why does she seem nervous?

Will she tell him why?
🥲

Published on : 04/21/2022