Chapter Text
“Have I ever been in love?” he asks In-hyuk one sunny day as they are winding down in his room back home from school.
In-hyuk looked at him as if he had grown two heads.
“Yahh, wouldn’t you know that better? And what’s with the voice— all sad like a Melo actor? Gave me creeps!”
It starts when Sunjae is 19— The feeling of restlessness. A feeling as if something that should be there isn’t—a shadow of someone missing in his life.
More often than not, Sunjae had caught himself searching for a person in a crowd without knowing who the person was. The urge to follow anyone walking with a yellow umbrella is the hardest to control.
The day before his swim competition, a whisper of a voice talking about ghosts and avoiding water crosses his mind. He dismisses it as pre-competition jitters.
With the dream of joining the Olympic swimming team shattered, he had thought these unreasonable feelings would take a backseat. But it hit him stronger. A sense of loss. Not the loss of his dream but something else that his heart said was more important. The most important.
The day the neighbours across his house moved, the restlessness was the worst. Sleep escaped him. Tossing and turning throughout the night was all he could do. He would find himself getting lost in thought looking at the terrace of the now-empty house. He always finds himself standing five seconds more than necessary to stare at the arched entrance of the house across his whenever he goes out.
As weeks passed into months, the restlessness changed into emptiness. Became a weight on his chest that lingered.
He was twenty when the rain he hated suddenly brought him joy. Especially the rain that came without notice. Which used to be a nuisance brought with it a feeling of nostalgia without a past.
And with the rain came the song. A song which is always at the tip of his tongue but the lyrics escape him. The tune— a distant memory. He starts bugging Baek In-hyuk to help him find the song. But with no words and the ghost of a tune, In-hyuk could help him little.
By the time he is twenty-one, he owns a collection of eight yellow umbrellas.
He is twenty-two when he steps into the world of showbiz.
Weeks change into seasons. Seasons change into years. The restlessness does not go away but fades into the background. Like a pain you have had for so long that you don’t feel it anymore. Like the discomfort in his shoulder. He learns to ignore the way his chest aches when his eyes find someone with a yellow umbrella.
He is 34 when he finds her again.
He is watching her laugh at him when he falls in love with her again.
Except he cannot describe the again.
She brings with her a sense of deja vu so strong at times his breath hitches.
But she brings a lightness to his body he doesn’t remember ever feeling so he embraces it with open arms. Except she seems to be hellbent on escaping him, pushing him away as if she can’t get far enough.
She cites fate as the reason to distance herself.
But fate, he thinks , wants to entangle them. Why else would he , in a room full of people, notice her? Why would her script reach him? Why would a story written by her evoke such a visceral reaction out of him as if his heart has been cut out of his body and he has been left to bleed out?
The missing returns. Restlessness he had locked away somewhere at the back of his mind hits him with full force.
He has to do this movie.
He refuses to believe he is the only one feeling this pull.
And her heart-wrenching voice as she calls for him deep in slumber, the way her fingers curl against his palm confirm his suspicion. Desperation . He is not imagining it. There is an inexplicable interconnection that tethers them to each other.
Despair .
What he feels when she talks about love. Of being in love with someone. Someone that is decidedly not him. He feels the goodbye that she does not voice out.
Fear . If he pretends it is not a goodbye, then it is not the last time his eyes watch her. She walks away and everything in his body screams at him to run after her. But she has drawn a line between them and he respects that enough to not cross it. He wishes her happiness with the person she loves.
Despondence .
On confirmation that it was indeed goodbye.
He is left with traces of her— a watch and a script and words of a song with no tune.
The tune comes to him like sea waves kissing his feet. He rushes to In-hyuk’s studio. The music flows. The memory of unsuccessful attempts to search for a song long ago itches his brain.
Of course , it is a yellow umbrella that brings everything back. Like a blooming flower in spring, an umbrella opens up across the street.
Sunjae remembers .
One lifetime merges into two, into three, into four. A flood of memories in his mind. The only constant— Loving Im Sol to the point of death.
He runs to her. Finds her running to him. Beautiful and selfless. Crying. Her tears pinch his heart.
Lifetimes worth of kisses and tears are shared as snow falls over them as if it’s heaven’s blessing. The cursed fate has passed. Finally, home .
Now, Sol is at his apartment. Her legs draped over his on his couch. And she is jealous . With a cute pout, she denies the allegation. He had to kiss her. He is giddy with the possibility of a future together with Sol so he teases her a little. He enjoys the effect he has on her. He pulls her to his chest and says I love you because he can and she says it right back.
Between them, they have had multiple decades of loss and missed chances. Sunjae is not going to let go of any chances to let her hear I love you , even though the intensity of his feelings for her has surpassed love long ago, accumulating over the lifetimes. Devotion.
She pulls back and looks him in the eye. Kneeling, he is the same height as her as she sits on the couch and tilts her head. Her scent is intoxicating . She leans in. Flashes of the memory from two lifetimes ago of the intense kiss they had shared at her doorway pass his mind, vivid , as if it was but yesterday. The softness of her lips against his— heaven.
She leans in, watches his pupils dilate.
He has spent fifteen years having none but the memory of her curses and gut-wrenching screams.
He has spent another fifteen having some of her and a photograph.
And he has spent a month having the most of her. And death.
And then another lifetime with the ghost of her emptiness .
So, now that Sol is in his arms. In flesh and tangible . He kisses her to devour her. With the urgency to recommit her to memory. She gasps, her hands find their way to the back of his neck and she kisses him back with equal urgency. One of his hands at the nape of her neck, and another on her waist, he pulls her closer, still kneeling between her legs.
He sucks and bites and she responds with equal fervour. Her hands now exploring his back and enjoying the way her caresses make his muscles flex under her finger. She opens her mouth and their tongues meet. He shudders.
They separate for air. Panting, breathless.
Sol smiles at him, her lips red and swollen from their kisses and it is the sweetest and the sexiest sight Sunjae has ever laid his eye upon.
“I love you,” he repeats, with reverence.
Sol reaches for him again and decides that the space between them is still too much and pulls him by the collar of his cardigan. He takes the hint, wraps his palms under her thighs, picks her up and in a swift motion he is sitting on the couch with her on his lap.
Their lips crash again, his right arm supporting her back and the left cupping her cheek. Her hands have made their way to the nape of his neck. He begins peppering kisses on her jaw, his lips finding the way towards her neck and Sol tilts her head back to give him better access, moving her hair out of the way.
When his lips finally touch the junction between her throat and shoulder and he presses an open-mouthed kiss on her overheating skin, she cannot help but let a moan escape her. Her fingers scratch his scalp and his moan vibrates against her neck. She feels him harden against her butt and he knows she felt him. He flushes redder than before, embarrassment colouring him.
He goes to pry her down his lap with an apology ready but never gets to voice it as she shushes his mouth with her fingers.
Before his brain can catch up, she changes her position and now she is straddling him, sitting directly over his erection, her arms over his shoulders.
“Is this okay?” she whispers.
Is this okay she asks, Sunjae thinks, sitting right over the evidence of his desire for her.
Emboldened by her move, he encircles her waist and grinds her over his erection, drawing a gasp from her
“Is this okay?” he asks back with an arched eyebrow
She reaches out and lightly touches his eyebrow with an inquisitive look and wonder, as if in a dream. He knows her longing and desire matches his own.
Their eyes meet.
“Kiss me, Sunjae ah”
He doesn't need to be told twice.