Yoon Seri posts an inquiry about the mysterious piano song she heard in Iseltwald on an Internet forum and an anon commenter picks it up.
A Crash Landing on You AU fiction. #serihawky
Illustration by @chummychurri (Twitter)
Cover design by @edelweir...
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April 12, 2021 9:30 AM Ko Family Estate, Seongbuk, Seoul
Seo Dan gathered her hair and positioned the resin barrette slightly above her ear but couldn't get it to fit in the exact place she wanted. After three failed tries she was ready to hurl it to the mirror but remembered it cost 700,000 won.
It was her fault. No. It was her phone, and its pesky notification and the text message that triggered it.
She glared at her device where she had it turned facing down on her vanity table with a disdainful thud.
What was she doing? She was not going to languish just because of a few words, typed by a person she's come to abhor every single day.
"Your ex gave an interview. I think you should see this. http://nytube.com/3CSqyBM4..." Jin-sook.
Seo Dan knew it was a glaring red flag. She should expunge it from her memory at all cost without any second thought.
She picked up the pin she discarded and tried again. She had no time for those frivolities. She had a summer portfolio to finish, trips to plan, campaigns to oversee. The last thing she needed to do was to find out what an old flame was up to. Why did he give in to an interview anyway? That was not like him at all, he would never leave himself out in the open like that. He was stingy with his words, they would have to pry them out like a dentist pulling teeth. How they intended to do that for an hour or so, she had the faintest clue.
Curiosity ultimately won over spite—or perhaps it was also motivated by that—and had her loading the video.
She had not seen him for months since he decided to formally end things with her in the mountains, followed by that phone call three months later to officially confirm that she had been replaced.
She could almost imagine him seated at the chair much like he was having dinner with their family. His vocabulary would revolve on five words spoken with a withdrawn voice: hello, I'm fine, thank you, are you well, goodbye. She took over answering the longer questions based on the few scheduled chats they shared about where he had been and what he did in those places (which eventually were not a whole lot). But as for him he sat like a human autopilot programmed to answer sporadically. It took a lot of him just to construct more than a few sentences, as though expressing himself was a sin. Like his words didn't matter. It was always: 'I had a good flight. I ate dinner at the hotel,' 'No, I'm not tired. I'm fine,' or 'It was a little difficult but I overcame it' without going too much into detail.
And Seo Dan knew to be satisfied just to hear him confide that much to her, to have him regularly report that he had landed and checked in. She thought maybe he would rather listen, and he did. But trust him not to catch what was said between the lines. For that, Seo Dan would regret not being more honest about her feelings and how he tired her out sometimes. Oftentimes. But her silence was her means of protecting what they had, she should have spoken out more. She should have prodded him with more questions instead of convincing herself that he would appreciate it if she would allow him his silence.
