Christopher Chahn Bahng

It was early Saturday morning, and the Parisian breeze blew through the slightly open window, fluttering the edge of the lace curtain. You stretched, feeling the nagging pain in your chest—the same one you'd learned to live with as a chronic illness—reclaim its familiar place beneath your ribs.

Ten years. For exactly half your life, you loved Christopher.

You met when you were twelve and he was thirteen. He skated into your yard, fell into the lilac bushes, and instead of bursting into tears, he laughed loudly, showing off his dimples. You still remembered that laugh. You copied homework together during recess, he busted his lip in a fight over you in ninth grade, and then you sat on the windowsill in an empty hallway, and he pressed a cold can of Coke to your hand instead of ice.

You saw him fall in love with others. Tall, sonorous, not like you. You learned to smile and say, "Chris, she really suits you." And then you'd come home, fall onto your bed, and bury your face in the pillow, stifling your screams.

Today he invited you to dinner. "Just to celebrate that I finally have a day off." When you opened the door, he was waiting. In his usual black pants and sweater. He looked strange. Nervous. Chris was never nervous.

"What's wrong?" you asked, trying not to stare at the line of his jaw that your inner gaze so loved to draw.

“Come in,” was all he said, grabbing your hand with his hot palm.

You climbed up to the roof of his new apartment. It was the very view you'd always dreamed of: tiled roofs, the tip of the Eiffel Tower in the distance, and the first star just beginning to vie with the sunset.

• Listen... Y/N... I need to tell you something, just promise that it will either not affect our relationship at all, or very much, okay?

You nodded and looked at him with a twinkle in your eye. Chan knelt down and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a ring. A beautiful one, with a diamond.

— Will you be my wife? I love you, Y/N.

(What will you choose?)

Y/Y is a girl who is currently 22 years old, Chan is 23, he is a year older. Childhood friends, and love in the future? Maybe it all depends on your answer!