Time goes by slowly when they're by themselves. It's quiet - too quiet for them both, in their lonely homes, away from each other.
Yong Soo tries to make up for it by playing loud music on top of war games, so that all he can hear is bounding k-pop and the sound of machine guns. It works until he's brought back to another time where guns featured heavily in his life, and then he turns the game off and cries about his past and his missing brother and about war, except this time there's no-one there to hold him, and that just makes him cry even more. He locks himself in his house, and his siblings come by, Kiku and Leon and Mei-Mei, all but one, but he doesn't let them in, no matter how they beg him to come out, or let them in, or do anything. He just ignores them. Eventually the visits stop. He's alone again. It's what he wanted he tells himself as he gets by on instant noodles and tea, but he still wishes someone was there to cook him proper food, because everything he tries to make ends up burnt.
Chun-Yan tries to make up for it with the sound of people. She throws parties and banquets and cooks all day, inviting anyone, everyone, from her fellow nations to people off the streets. She bounds about, talks to them, hears them laugh and cry and talk and talk, and it's never enough. When she can't be bothered to cook, when she's run out of ingredients or is just too tired, she went to clubs around the world. England, America, France, Japan, Canada. Everywhere she could think of, but never Korea. She drowns her sorrows in pounding music that hurts her ears and alcohol she knows she shouldn't touch. She remembers the last time she had drunk this much, and it just causes her to drink more. And in the morning she wakes with head aches and tears, and cries into the toilet, as her stomach tries to empty itself, and wishes someone was there to hold her hair back.
Then they bump into each other at the most unlikely of places, and it's crazily cliche and they both wonder if it was really a coincidence, because their siblings seem to be much too innocent to be true when they see them next.
It was the supermarket. Yong Soo had been dragged out, finally, by his sister Mei-Mei, the Taiwanese girl insisting that he had to come with her shopping for food, because he looked like a stick, and not even a healthy stick. Being as out of it as he was, he just nodded blindly, and hadn't even noticed as he'd been dragged to a place he knew all to well. His sister, was much to full of energy he had decided, and he could remember when he had been like that, not too long ago.
Chun-Yan had just been shopping, she had guests, and guests needed food, and food meant shopping, and shopping meant a trip to the store. She had busied herself with a list as long as her arm, and the sound of people in her ears. But while she heard them talk, it all blended together, the world monotone and grey, and she kept her mind to herself and her tongue in her cheek.
Yong Soo lost his sister in the vegetable aisle, confused by secretive looks and grins that seemed to wide to be true. She had been muttering along in her native language every now and then, and he was sure she was up to something but didn't know what. That was when he had seen the other woman. Chun-Yan looked lost, her face pale, and deep bags under her eyes, and he wondered for a minute if he looked that way too, and after a moment pondering, decided he most probably did, and a damned bit thinner too. She didn't notice him at first, so he felt content to just watch his ex-lover, were they exes really, yes, they were, he told himself, and looked away.
Chun-Yan saw him examining a cucumber, quite out of the blue, and almost dropped her basket in shock. In her eyes he looked terrible, skin pale and pallid, and clothes hanging limply off a skeletal frame, and she knew, she knew she shouldn't have left him to eat by himself. She missed him, more than anything in that moment, and she froze, because she realised, she hadn't been happy or good or anything the last few weeks. She had been alone. And so had he.
She missed him. He missed her. It was a simple fact, and as she realised it, she dropped her basket in shock, causing a clatter to echo around the store. Causing him to look up. In that moment they shared a look, one soft and secret between them, the world seeming to freeze in place for just a second. And then she was crying, and so was he. Loud sobs from the male, with thick tears that ran down his face in waterfalls. Her own crying was much more silent, not a sound escaping her, just trails running down her cheeks.
"I love you"