Chapter 42.2

Chapter 42.2

Miran, her voice still thick with tears, asked back.

“Then, sniff, what is it? You’re leaving soon, so why are you doing this to me?”

“Because I want to be with you. Until I leave.”

Miran’s lips trembled.

“…Why should I?”

“You don’t like it?”

When Andre quietly asked, her caramel-brown eyes visibly wavered. Reading both the longing and hesitation in her eyes, he didn’t wait for an answer and pulled her close.

“Ah!”

Andre seated her diagonally on his thigh and leaned in. He rubbed his nose against her soft nape and inhaled deeply. Her sweet scent, like a refreshing forest path, filled his lungs.

Miran’s body, fresh from the shower, carried a scent that was similar yet distinct from his own. It was oddly satisfying. He could spend the entire day with his nose buried in her skin, just breathing in her scent.

[Stay with me.]

Andre murmured against her goosebump-covered skin.

Even if she didn’t understand every word, Miran had a sense of what he was saying. However, the fact that Andre would be returning to New York next week was too much of a shock for her.

Long-distance relationships within Korea were already challenging, let alone one with New York.

For Miran, it was no different from Andre leaving for the moon forever. She knew New York was in the United States, but she had no idea where exactly it was located.

When the senior she admired for so long, Seunghyuk, said he was going to New York for film studies, she had taken it in stride. But the thought of Andre going to New York made her feel as if the world had turned its back on her all at once.

‘I just realized I love you.’

It was the first time she had felt such an emotion in her twenty-four years of life. Although it had only been a little over a week since she met him, it was enough time for her to fall in love. She had never felt this way with the boyfriends she had casually dated before.

But to think he’s leaving in a week.

“Will we never meet again? Are you never coming back to Korea?”

The tears she had just managed to stop began to fall again.

Andre gently wiped the tears from Miran’s cheeks with his thumb.

“Don’t cry.”

“Is New York… very far?”

He nodded.

“How long does it take by plane?”

“Sixteen hours. There’s no direct flight; you have to go through an Anchorage Airport in Alaska.”

Alaska is near the North Pole, right? Where on earth is New York?

Miran’s mind wandered over the world map she vaguely remembered from her social studies textbook. If it took sixteen hours by plane—

“The plane ticket must be very expensive…”

Miran’s voice trailed off.

Although overseas travel had become more common since the travel liberalization a few years ago, the only person she knew who had traveled abroad was her friend Jieun.

People inthe Orange Tribe like Jieun would go on romantic backpacking trips to Europe during summer vacations, or go on language study trips to learn English, or even pursue long-term studies abroad like Seunghyuk.

However, most people experienced their first flight when traveling to Jeju Island for their honeymoon or vacation. For Miran, who had never been on a proper trip, New York seemed like a distant dream. Even if she worked tirelessly for years, it might still be out of reach.

Miran wrapped her arms around Andre’s neck and buried her face in his shoulder. With a tearful sigh, resignation set in.

‘D#m1n that quack fortune teller.’

Meeting Andre had given her a faint hope that perhaps the fortune teller’s reading was accurate, but it turned out to be just as fake.

She had always thought such things only happened to tragic heroines in melodramatic movies.

They say first loves never come true, and there is nothing more heartbreaking than realizing for the first time that you love someone, only for that love to end. To never come true.

The reality that the man holding her with his pounding heart, firm body, and warm embrace would soon leave was hard to grasp.

‘Andre must like me too, right? That’s why he wants to be with me until the day he leaves.’