Chapter Text
She is shivering.
Arms ridden with goosebumps, a tingling sensation that starts from her neck all the way down her spine. The towel she has used to dry her hair lays forlornly on her lap, and she makes no move from where she now sits on her couch. She has changed into a fresh set of scrubs, her coat packed haphazardly into a bag so she could send it for dry cleaning later -- but her fingers and nose are still numbed, her heart is still racing from what had just transpired half an hour ago.
Songhwa is shivering and it isn’t because of the rain.
She exhales slowly, trying to level herself. This is a feeling she is all too accustomed, one she has quite frankly locked in the deepest recesses of her mind. Yet, a simple touch that lingers moments after is all it takes to unearth every feeling she had sought hard to bury since 1999.
As if on instinct, Songhwa presses a hand against her chest, trying to gauge the way her heart is beating; a little too wildly for her liking, if she is to be honest with herself. It leaves a sort of bitter feeling rising in her throat, one that is akin to all the thoughts she had to push aside lately since her move to Sokcho and her return to Seoul.
She honestly doesn’t quite know what to make of this discovery. It’s foreign. Yet it’s familiar. It’s strange. Yet it’s comforting. A juxtaposition laughing in her face.
One thought settles slowly into her mind. In quiet acceptance. Songhwa nibbles her lower lip, letting herself understand that thought of hers.
Something has definitely shifted between them. Her and Ikjun. Something subtle that has awakened the dormant feeling in her heart, because this is something she has not felt in a long, long time. The rush of excitement, the rescinding feeling of nervousness. The flutter of her heart, the butterflies scurrying into her stomach slowly but surely.
She couldn’t pinpoint when exactly she started to feel this way again, but she reckons it has a lot to do with her return to Seoul. It is nothing glaring or overwhelming in the beginning; it comes in the way she anticipates spending time with him just immersed in a conversation about anything they could think of, the way she looks forward to having coffees or meals with him every day. She lies to herself and says it’s completely normal to feel this way -- after all, she’d been away for so many months, it shouldn’t come off as a surprise that she would miss the presence of her best friend. That she would crave to be in the same space with him, just catching up on all the lost time between them.
She doesn’t acknowledge it in the open that it is only towards Ikjun that she would have this sentiment. A thought she had quickly brushed aside, almost afraid to tread across the line she had so finely drawn between them if she were to dwell on it longer than necessary.
The walls she had built around her heart are crumbling. A crack is all it takes.
She is now extremely aware of the way her eyes would linger at his retreating back, the way her pulse quickens at being in close proximity with him. She used to not care if she didn’t look refined and elegant in front of her best friends, but now, she is self-conscious of the aftermath of a gruelling surgery that lasted several hours; sweat and body odour lingering in the air.
She is suddenly nervous around him, and for some time, Songhwa is well capable of closing an eye to avoid seeing the root cause of this change between them.
Until the rain betrays her. The rain, her solace and comfort, their shared affinity. What was mundane and almost routine for them becomes something that has shaken her usually well composed emotions -- in the glee of that moment, Songhwa was the first to naturally reach out and grab onto his hand tightly, leaping over a puddle of water.
They laughed, and then Ikjun loosened his clasp around her hand. She withdrew her hand immediately, face heating up at the realisation that she had held onto his hand longer than necessary. She didn’t know where to put her hand, so it went back to its natural position on her hip.
She looked at him holding that silly coffee lid above his head - as if it helps in any way, and a laugh threatened to bubble out of her throat. She looked at him with shining eyes, and he mumbled something about hurdles and jumping over them.
He looked flustered, and for some reason, she thought it was a reflection of her own expression. It hit her faster than she would have expected, the why in the way he had fumbled just slightly .
Her smile started to falter, and her mind backtracked quickly to realise that when she slipped her hand into his, as though it was meant to fit in the palm of his hand, her heart had fluttered .
Oh.
She looked at him and suddenly, she wasn’t just looking at Lee Ikjun at the present time.
A flood of memories, a rush of unbridled feelings. Unannounced, uninvited. She looked at him and felt herself being transported to a past that was twenty two years ago.
Oh.
She could hardly breathe at that realisation. At what that entailed. She ran after him but her mind was clouded in thoughts that were far too tangled for her to unravel in seconds.
Everything that happened after that went by in a blur -- once they had made it safely under the shelter of the hospital, Ikjun had turned to her, flashed her that signature grin of his and told her he’d get going to change out of his wet scrubs. Songhwa vaguely remembered fighting to keep her eyes trained on his face, rather than the way the thin fabric had clung against his skin, accentuating the muscles of his bicep she was suddenly well aware of. He told her to hurry up and change too, to avoid getting sick -- and then he was off, jogging towards the other side of the hallway.
Which leaves her in this current predicament where Songhwa is staring into thin air and contemplating everything that has happened between them in the past few weeks. She is now made consciously aware that he is still capable of drawing such emotions from her; the relentless tug of her heartstring, the want of longing to see Ikjun again even though they’d only just parted a mere half an hour ago.
Songhwa is shivering and it isn’t because of the rain. It is because of that realisation that even after all this time, it is still him. The man she had left pieces of her heart with in 1999, the man to which her heart now reacts strongly to, all over again.
It has been, and will always be, Lee Ikjun.