She'd forgotten he wanted her to help him pack some things, an activity that would have been much easier in the jeans she was wearing earlier. Now Ga Eul was standing in Yi Jeong's studio, wearing a red skater skirt with a bowknot waist and a cream-colored satin blouse with her red pumps. Not the same red pumps she had worn to give him that Valentine's gift so long ago. She had worn the heels on those shoes down to the nubs until one day she accidentally broke one of the heels off while running to catch the bus.

Yi Jeong brought a tea set over to one of the tables and motioned for her to sit down.

"You know, you don't have to bribe me with tea anymore," Ga Eul said, taking a seat.

"I know, but I've always been known as a good host. I have a reputation to keep up."

Ga Eul slowly brought the cup to her lips. The tea burned her tongue and tasted bitter. Truth be told, she liked coffee more, with milk and plenty of sugar. Setting the cup down, Ga Eul remarked, "I don't mind packing. In fact, I'm an expert."

Yi Jeong, who had brought his cup up to his lips, looked up at her. "Really?" He took a sip. He'd thought Ga Eul had lived her entire life in the same place, given that she and Geum Jan Di had been friends since kindergarten.

Ga Eul nodded. "My grandmother is living with me and my parents right now. After my grandfather died a few years ago, we helped her move to our house. Then after a few months she moved to my aunt's. Then my uncle's job transferred him to another city, so she's back with us until my aunt and uncle find a bigger place." Ga Eul sighed and shook her head. "Then she'll move again."

"Your parents don't want her living with them?"

Something shifted in Ga Eul's countenance, something Yi Jeong couldn't read.

"Sorry, it's none of my business."

"Oh, no, it's okay," Ga Eul said, picking up her tea again and staring at it. "My aunt is my mom's older sister. She wants my grandmother to live with them."

Satisfied with this response, Yi Jeong scanned the half-filled boxes littering the floor and the other tables. He didn't really need Ga Eul's help. There were only a few more things to be packed away. He wasn't exactly taking a lot with him to Sweden, and anything he thought of after he got there could be sent over. No, what he really wanted was to have a few hours alone with this girl he couldn't seem to stop thinking about since…since…he wasn't sure when it had started. He wanted to have at least one conversation with her that didn't revolve around Jan Di and Jun Pyo and didn't end with her walking away from him in tears.

When he had first met her, he thought that she liked to believe she was different, that she wouldn't fall for his charms, but that deep down she was like all the rest. There he'd been partially right. She had fallen for him, if those homemade chocolates had been any indication—surprisingly he had eaten them, and surprisingly they were delicious. But he couldn't just pass her off as another shallow bimbo with passingly pretty features. She was always studying him, always caring for him, always showing up at the wrong place at the wrong time ready to give him a piece of her mind. It was that caring, honest, determined character of hers that eventually won him over—well, that and the fact that she was more than passingly pretty after being dolled up for their first night out together. He thought he recognized the shade of lipstick she was wearing tonight. It suited her. If only her phone hadn't rang.

She looked up then, and he realized he'd been staring at her instead of the boxes.

"Do you want any more?" He gestured to the tea.

"No, thank you." Ga Eul shook her head. She pushed her cup further into the center of the table. Pulling a hair tie off of her wrist, she pulled her hair into a ponytail, got up from the table, and started looking around. "What do you want done first?"

Yi Jeong stood up also. "I thought we could just pack away the rest of those pots along that far wall. You're going to have to be very careful with them though."

"You know," Ga Eul said, picking up a small pot and examining it. "I thought you would have maids to do your packing for you." She looked back at him and smiled disarmingly.

"You think I would trust them not to break anything?"

"And you trust me?"

Yi Jeong shrugged. "You're a waitress. Don't you have to balance trays full of dishes all day long?"

Ga Eul nodded and put the pot back down, seeming to think about that.

"Besides, you're a potter now. You can replace whatever you break, right?" Yi Jeong strode over and set two medium-sized cardboard boxes in front of her.

"Sunbae, I can't make these. I'm at the beginning of the beginner's classes!"

Yi Jeong laughed. "Calm down. This is why I say girls won't make it. You take things too seriously."

"I do not!"

"See?"

Ga Eul huffed half-jokingly and grabbed some rather pristine sheets of brown packing paper lying on a nearby table. "How about you hand me what you want me to pack, and I'll wrap it and put it in the box?"

Obligingly, Yi Jeong handed her a narrow vase glazed in light blue and tan with a high sheen to it. It dawned on Ga Eul as she handled each piece that everything she created would be mere replicas of some more skilled craftsman's work. Yet here for a fleeting moment she was holding the real things, pieces that would probably be put in museums at some point or auctioned off to the rich families of Cheongdamdong or maybe some that had won the young prodigy acclaim in a foreign land not unlike the one he was traveling to.

Ga Eul handed him another piece, and her thumb grazed his for just a second before she pulled her hand back and cleared her throat.

"So what exactly are you going to do in Sweden? I mean, I know you're getting therapy for your hand."

"I'll be finishing my college classes. Once my hand recovers enough, I'll be tutored in pottery again."

Ga Eul nodded.

"What are you doing?" Yi Jeong asked.

"Ah, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm going to college, of course, but I'm not sure what I want to study yet. To be honest, it happens so suddenly. Like, all you do is go to school for years and years, and then all of a sudden people are like, 'You, what are you going to do with your life?'" Ga Eul sighed, lightly crinkling the paper in her hands as she searched for another vase to put in the box. "I don't know if I can decide what I want to do the rest of my life right this second."

"Well, you have some time." Yi Jeong said, shifting one of the vases in the box. 'And a choice,' he thought, standing up to look out of the window at the streetlights that had just been lit. For a fleeting moment, he envied Ga Eul in all of her uncertainty. There was an open-endedness to her life, a possibility of going one way or the other, that he would never have in his own life. He didn't want to think about that now, though.
"Did you—"

A loud crash shattered his next words. He turned to face the other side of the room, where Ga Eul had gone to retrieve a few pots. She was standing rigidly there, fists to her sides, facing him but staring down at the ground where a mass of pottery shards lay at her feet. Her face had gone ashen.

Ga Eul had known the minute she picked up the pots that she didn't have a good grip on them. That's what she got for trying to carry two at the same time. Bending down to pick the pieces up, she heard footsteps rapidly approaching her and braced herself for a good scolding.

"Ga Eul-yang!"

Here it came.

"Ga Eul-yang." A hand grabbed her arm and pulled it away from the pottery. "You want to cut yourself? Just stay where you are. Let me get the broom from the back closet."

Then Yi Jeong disappeared through a door in the back corner of the room that Ga Eul had always wondered about.

At that moment, there was a knock at the door, and Ga Eul automatically went to answer it, only pausing when her hand reached the door handle because she realized it could be Yi Jeong's father or one of Yi Jeong's many female admirers or any number of people who might not be so enthused by her presence there. So she lingered with her hand on the door handle until she was saved from her predicament by Yi Jeong, who brushed her aside and opened the door himself.

And there, standing on the other side of the door, were two people.

Eun Jae, who looked as surprised to see Ga Eul as Ga Eul was to see her.

Another man who looked strikingly similar to Yi Jeong, albeit taller and a bit slimmer. His look of surprise at seeing Ga Eul quickly faded into a warm smile.

"Ga Eul-yang," Yi Jeong began tentatively, recovering from his own shock. "This is my brother Il Hyun, and I believe you already know Eun Jae."

"Nice to meet you," Ga Eul said, bowing politely.

"Same to you." Il Hyun returned the gesture.

"Ga Eul-yang," Yi Jeong began again, "is my girlfriend."