A/N: Thanks for the reviews you guys and for all of you who recently started following this story! :) So sorry this is so late. Don't worry, we will see Yi Jeong and Woo Bin in the next chapter.

First set of italics is a dream. The rest of the italics are memories.

Water had flooded the car now, and Ga Eul could but faintly see the reflection of the streetlight on top of the water, way above her head, as she drifted further away from it. In the back of her mind, she knew she was dying, but she couldn't struggle any more. She couldn't fight it. Her limbs had gone limp in the water, and it wouldn't be long before her vision went black. Staring at the glimmer of light as it grew dimmer and dimmer, she sunk down with the car—weightless, invisible.

It was just her now. Even her brother wasn't with her, even though this was his dream.

Or, rather, her dream of him, of what she thought his last moments might have been like.

She couldn't see the light anymore.

Shouldn't her lungs be burning?

Shouldn't she feel some sort of pain? Terror, maybe?

But no, she didn't feel anything.

She guessed that was what being dead felt like.

Ga Eul woke up shivering although, with as many covers as she'd buried herself under when she'd finally reached her parents' home, she should have been burning up.

How can someone who's so hot be so cold all the time?

Yi Jeong had said that to her once, and she didn't know how to respond to it, so she'd giggled and buried her face in his shoulder. Now the memory brought a smile to her face.

Her pleasure lasted only a moment.

Yi Jeong. Madeleine. So Hyun Sub.

Ga Eul sat up in bed and let out a sharp gasp at the pain shooting up her back and into her shoulders. The previous night seemed like a surreal nightmare, except the fact that she was waking up in her old bedroom at her parents' house told her it was not. She hadn't dreamed up Madeleine's attack in the bathroom, losing her phone and her purse, sneaking into her parents' house late at night with the spare key they kept hidden under a plant, and falling into a restless sleep in one of her old t-shirts she'd found in her closet.

She hadn't slept long.

Looking out of the window, she saw that it was still dark out, and she wondered what time it was.

I bet you just loved fairytales when you were little, didn't you?

"Shut up," Ga Eul muttered. She couldn't think about this right now. She couldn't think about what that note meant right now or who Madeleine was or what Madeleine wanted with her.

Sleep. She just needed some sleep, and in the morning she would figure everything out. Everything would be okay. Yi Jeong loved her, and everything would be okay.

Switching her light back off, Ga Eul laid down again and tried to think about a happier time—maybe something from when she visited Yi Jeong in Sweden—hoping it would lead to a good dream, but when she closed her eyes she only saw Madeleine's hard, unforgiving eyes looking back at her. She felt the point of her scissors digging into her throat. She felt her back slam against the tiles, the soreness in her back and her tailbone a testament to how hard she had fallen back against the floor.

Painfully, Ga Eul sat back up and switched her light on again.

What if there were bruises?! She had to attend Yi Jeong's exhibition in a week!

If you are smart, you will go home like a good little girl and stay there forever.

Ga Eul tried to swallow down the panic rising in her throat, but she couldn't stop a few hot tears from trickling down her face.

She did want to stay home forever. Being in her old room reminded her of the nights she used to chat with Yi Jeong, but it also reminded her of breakfast with her parents before school and sleepovers with Jan Di and board games with her grandmother and her brother's loud guitar music whenever her parents were out of the house.

Getting out of bed, she grabbed one of her old stuffed animals from the top of her closet, switched on the light in there, slumped down on the floor, and stared at the open box of juvenile romance novels sitting next to her. When she had moved out, a lot of her stuff had remained at her parents' house, remnants of her childhood that she couldn't take with her to her small apartment but couldn't bring herself to throw away yet. Being 24 years old was like that, she thought. She was not quite an adult and not quite a child. And, too, she wasn't an outsider like she was years ago, the first time she had ever seen Yi Jeong, when she and Jan Di had taken that fishing trip and Jun Pyo had demanded that Jan Di go to that fancy dinner party. But no matter how close she was to him personally, she was still an outsider in his world. She was in the middle—so close and yet so far—and it made her feel like she didn't belong anywhere.

Ga Eul coughed a little and buried her face in her stuffed blue dolphin to muffle the sound. Leaning her head against the closet door, she closed her eyes, but the knots in her stomach wouldn't let her rest. She wanted to hear Yi Jeong's voice so bad, even if he was just telling her she had been a silly country girl all along. Even if he had been right all along.

So Hyun Sub hated hotels—ironic, he supposed, considering how much time he spent at them. He hated the bare tables, the crisp sheets, the picturesque views, the way everything conspired to imitate a home but always ended up overdressed, overly clean, overly perfect, easily soiled.

Like so many things in his life, it was pleasure without comfort, beauty without permanence, existence without meaning.

He hated it, yet he preferred it this way, the room as much a pretense as his short-lived affairs.

Hyun Sub swung open the door to the present evening's dimly lit suite, the tall model hanging off his arm tittering at a seductive trifle he had just whispered in her ear.

He did not expect the woman waiting for him and his escort, perched statue-like on a chair in the middle of the room when they entered, a dark replica of a forgotten memory.

"So Ri-ah," he said, not bothering to hide the surprise in his voice.

The woman inclined her head only slightly, not towards him but towards his companion. Her cutting gaze raked over the model's body then back up to her face.

She smiled.

"Darling, aren't you interrupting something?" So Ri asked, the old sweetness in her voice tempered with malice.

"Oppa, who is she?" the girl on his arm whined.

Standing up and smoothing out her black knee-length skirt, So Ri continued, "We have private matters to discuss. Don't worry, I'm sure there are plenty of gentlemen downstairs who would love to give you a place to stay the night."

"Oppa." The girl tugged on his arm.

"Leave." Hyun Sub shrugged his arm away from her.

"But—"

"I said leave!"

Giving the girl a stern glance, Hyun Sub shut the door behind her as she fell back into the hallway, an indignant scowl on her face.

He turned the lock and flicked the overhead lights on.

So Ri pursed her wine-colored lips. Her lipstick nearly matched the burgundy of her blouse, which was tucked into her black skirt in a tight line. She looked as breathtaking as ever, if more severe.

"What a charming creature," she commented. "How old was she? Nineteen?"

"So Ri-ah, how did you know I was here?"

"This is my hotel. It's my business to know who stays here, don't you think?"

"I didn't know you were in Korea."

"I'm guessing you didn't know about your own son's engagement to my daughter, either."

"So Ri-ah, let's...sit down." He gestured to the champagne-colored sofa on one side of the suite.

"Let's not. Don't get it in your head that I came here to see you. I came here to tell you this marriage is a mistake."

Hyun Sub chuckled bitterly.

"Most marriages are," he replied, crossing over to the small bar in the corner of the room. "Something to drink?" he asked. Hyun Sub poured two glasses of wine, foolishly wishing he had her favorite kind. When he turned back around, she still stood poised by the chair she had drawn out, her stern demeanor practiced, unnatural.

"Shouldn't you be discussing this with your daughter?" Hyun Sub asked, carrying the wine over to her.

"My daughter's as much of a fool as I was at that age." So Ri crossed her arms as Hyun Sub approached her.

"You're a foolish woman now." Perhaps he was foolish, for wishing she would look at him in the old way after how much he had hurt her. "Tell me. What can I do for you after all these years?" Depositing the two wine glasses on a small table, Hyun Sub drew closer to her and lightly touched her arm.

She flipped his arm away.

"Don't touch me."

Dropping his arm, Hyun Sub stared at the side of her face for a long moment while she looked past him. All these years later, and she still wore the same damn perfume.

Maybe that was intentional though. Maybe she thought it might help her case.

"Why are you here?" Hyun Sub finally asked when she remained silent.

Her eyes fully met his for the first time since he'd walked through the door.

"Because I need you to convince your father not to go through with this."

"And since when have you believed me capable of going against my father?"

"You can't seriously want this marriage?"

"Why do you want me to? You really must be desperate, asking for my help after all this time."

"Hyun Sub-sshii, you owe me."

"Don't start with that damn nonsense." He surveyed the room with distaste. "You sound like my wife."

"Your wife? The one who's still so attached to her parents she's been visiting them for two years? Do you really think everyone doesn't know what you did to her?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. And you're starting to sound more like her by the damn minute. Leave if you don't have anything useful to say."

Hyun Sub passed her and collapsed onto one end of the sofa, loosening his tie in annoyance. He knew deep down he should feel ashamed, but he hadn't felt much of anything in years, and, to be honest, he no longer cared about trying.

"What about your son? You don't care about he wants?"

Hyun Sub said nothing. He stared out of the window overlooking the sleeping city.

"So you're still a coward, is that it?"

He looked back up at her.

"So Ri-ah, have you come up that much in the world? You couldn't even stop your own daughter-"

"My daughter does what she wants, which, at least, is a hell of a lot more than I can say for you." So Ri grabbed her purse, which was sitting on the coffee table in front of the sofa. "I can see I've made a mistake coming here. Fine then. I'll deal with this on my own terms, and I won't care who takes the hit."

"So Ri-ah."

So Ri crossed over to the door. He heard the lock turn. He shouldn't make her stay, but he couldn't let her go like this.

"Don't you think we should talk about what happened to us?"

So Ri froze.

When she spoke again, her voice was chillingly quiet.

"What happened to us? Nothing happened to us. Everything happened to me."