A/N: Hello my lovely readers, I'm back! I'm so, so, so sorry for the wait! It kills me too when authors leave stories hanging, but some things in life are just…priority. In some ways, the past month or so has been pretty challenging, but good things have happened too. For one, I am now engaged to the love of my life, and I also started a new job that I am really liking so far.

Thanks so much to everyone who left reviews and well-wishes for me in my absence! You guys are the best!

Now, to continue with our love story…This update is not super-long, but I promise I am writing again, and there is much more coming! :)

She was gone.

Ji Hoo had always known this day would come. It had been looming in the back of his mind constantly for the past four years, but now it was really happening. Everything was happening so fast he could scarcely process it. One moment, he was vowing to stay in school for another year and help Jan Di finish her courses, to be the white knight he had always been for her. The next moment, Jun Pyo was sweeping Jan Di away from him again in that grandiose fashion he had, as arrogant and demanding as ever, but Ji Hoo hoped Jan Di was happy with her choice. He hoped she would be happy with Jun Pyo. He would have hoped for her to be happy anywhere, even if she was on the far side of the world, as far from him in time and space as she seemed now in spirit, seated on the other side of the table beside Jun Pyo at the restaurant Jun Pyo had rented out especially for their engagement celebration.

With her dark hair curled and styled to frame her face and her dangling rhinestone earrings catching the light and making her eyes sparkle, she looked beautiful tonight, even more beautiful than she had on the night of her high school graduation ball. What he wouldn't give to be there now, dancing with her one last time.

She was the one, the one love of his life, and it hurt to smile at her like he was doing just now and nod his affirmation to an unheard something Jun Pyo had said about the wedding preparations.

It hurt, but it was a tolerable kind of pain as long as he knew she was happy, as long as he loved her a little bit more than he loved himself.

Damn idiot, that's what he was, Woo Bin thought as he took another strong gulp of the bitter wine sitting in front of him.

He needed something stronger.

She'd walked right past him.

He'd called out to her in the airport, and she'd walked right past him to her driver without so much as a glance or nod in his direction.

She'd probably gone back to some old flame she had waiting for her in Paris. A woman like her couldn't be without admirers. Or maybe, like she'd hinted at once before on a night when he didn't want to listen, she had already been matched up with a successful, legitimate businessman in her father's circle.

This was supposed to be a happy occasion, Woo Bin knew. He had always been the life of the party, never one to sit in the corner of the room and sulk over some transient female companion. He had always been closer to Yi Jeong and even Jun Pyo than he was to Ji Hoo, but tonight he felt a kinship with the somber white knight sitting beside him, both of them nursing drinks and feigning enthusiasm while the other half of the F2 looked like they were acting out a scene from some ridiculous rom-com. Jun Pyo had always been like that with Jan Di, but Yi Jeong had gradually devolved since he and Ga Eul had officially gotten together, and tonight was the worst he'd ever seen him. He'd hardly taken his eyes—or his hands—off of Ga Eul the entire evening, and every time he looked at her, she blushed.

Happy as Woo Bin was for the four of them, the whole display was making him sick.

He could just imagine some bastard's rough hands traveling over her slender body and undoing the ties on her dress. A voice thick only with lust calling her name.

Madeleine.

Usually the name rolled off his tongue, but tonight it stuck in the back of his throat like a cluster of marbles, and he wondered if he breathed the wrong way, if the marbles would dislodge and roll backward and choke the life out of him.

It was an absurd concept.

But so was she. He'd never met anyone so hard and yet so...

Sometimes he thought he'd seen a genuine smile. He thought...maybe...her laughter with him didn't have that brittle edge to it that he always heard when she was with others.

Maybe he'd thought so much about it that he'd ended up fooling himself.

Shit. Ga Eul had noticed how quiet he was being. She always noticed things like that, and he was sure it was her highly observant nature that had enabled her to get through to Yi Jeong. He would always be grateful to her for helping his best friend-more like his brother-but couldn't she leave him the hell alone?

No, I'm fine, Ga Eul. Just tired, he placated.

She wasn't buying it. He could tell from the look in her eyes that she was going to have a talk with Yi Jeong when they got back to...wherever they were staying. Somehow he highly doubted Yi Jeong would last long in her tiny apartment.

As for himself, he fully intended to wait out dessert and then get the hell out of this place.

Why did he have to love her so much?

He loved how gracefully she moved in the water when she used to swim before her accident.

He loved how cute she looked when her nose turned red from the cold or from being sick.

He loved taking care of her, bringing her medicine and lending her his coat.

He loved the way her eyes lit up when she saw him waiting for her after class and her emphatic gestures when he noticed her waiting for him.

He loved watching her move around his grandfather's clinic, and now everything there reminded him of her.

He loved her so much he would do it all over again, even knowing the ending, even knowing that she wouldn't choose him.

He loved her so much that he loved her anyway…anyway…always…

Jun Pyo had worked himself up into a frenzy about the reception venue, and Jan Di was already arguing with him over the size of the guest list. Yi Jeong and Ga Eul were snickering and exchanging looks over their creme brulee, but Woo Bin seemed spaced out. Normally, Ji Hoo wouldn't have noticed this since he was always the one lost in the never-ending chasm of his thoughts, but Jun Pyo was talking directly to all of the guys now, waxing not-so-eloquently on the duties of his three best men, and Ji Hoo could see his irritation building at Woo Bin's obvious lack of attention to the matter at hand.

Madeleine hated red wine. Woo Bin had remembered that halfway through his first glass, and after that he hadn't been sure if he was drinking to get drunk or out of some irrational contempt for her alcoholic preferences.

She'd hated this restaurant too, he remembered, because, as she said, it wasn't "real" French food.

The bottle at the table was empty now, and although he sorely wanted to ask the waiter for another one, he didn't want to end up doing or saying something he'd regret, so instead he'd taken to eating his creme brulee slowly, trying to remember what she'd mentioned, in passing, about a maid she grew up with who made the best creme brulee in the world, better than any restaurant in France.

Ella?

Bella?

Ab-

"Woo Bin Sunbae!"

Hmm?

Woo Bin glanced up at Jan Di, who waved frantically at him.

"Yes?"

"Tell him he doesn't get to see me in my wedding dress until the wedding day."

By him, he supposed she meant Jun Pyo.

"Sorry bro, that's the rules," Woo Bin agreed convivially.

"But you are throwing my bachelor party, right?"

He wasn't sure about the correlation between Jan Di's wedding dress and Jun Pyo's bachelor party, but if there was one thing he was good at, it was throwing a party.

"Bro, I got you," he said in English and lifted his glass before realizing yet again that there was nothing in it.

"Waiter!" Jun Pyo's voice boomed out over the empty restaurant. "Get us some more wine." Turning back to the group, he continued, "I know what we should do. Truth or Dare. I'll start."

"Aniyo," Woo Bin protested, glancing over in surprise when he realized that Yi Jeong and Ga Eul had said the same thing.

"Yah, what's the matter with all of you? Ji Hoo, don't you-"

"Sorry, I've actually got to head out. I have to open up the clinic early tomorrow."

"I'll come help you," Jan Di offered.

"You're spending the day with me, remember?" Jun Pyo countered.

"But you're busy in the morning any-"

"Jan Di, it's okay," Ji Hoo interrupted. He bowed to the table. "I'll be leaving first. Congratulations again."

An awkward silence descended as the five of them stared at Ji Hoo's retreating back.

Standing up and pushing his own chair back, Woo Bin excused himself as well.

He followed Ji Hoo downstairs, catching up with him as they reached their respective cars. Just as he opened his car door and was about to get in, Ji Hoo spoke up, much to his surprise.

"Maybe she wasn't meant for you."

Woo Bin froze, his hand resting on the top of the car.

Did Ji Hoo know about Madeleine?

He looked over at Ji Hoo, who was staring out across the street, across the tops of the buildings, across the fog glowing in the lamplight, across the wail of sirens and the laughter of drunks and beneath it all the faint hush of a city asleep, like the darkness might give him the answer.

Woo Bin wasn't sure if Ji Hoo did know something about Madeleine or if he was simply referring to himself in the third person. It was always hard to tell with that guy.

And, shit, he didn't have answers. Who knew who was meant to be and not meant to be?

It was bullshit. The mergers. The acquisitions. The assets. The arrangements.

There were plenty of people who meant for other people to be together in their world. What was the difference between their decisions and the cosmic whim of some distant god or the chaotic results of the winds of fate, blowing people about every which way.

Meant to be.

It was bullshit. All of it.

Maybe people ought to make up their own damn mind for once.

"Maybe," Woo Bin replied, "she just chose a different path."