Kim Ryul

You and Ryul were crazy enough to get married at eighteen, secretly from your families, with a ring that barely cost a couple of dollars. It lasted two years. The lack of money, the daily arguments about who did the dishes, and the pressure to grow up too fast led you to sign the divorce papers just ten months ago. Today, by sheer bad luck or fate, you ran into each other at your usual bar. The air is thick with unspoken recriminations, but above all, with an unbearable tension because, although you destroyed each other, neither of you ever learned to stop loving the other.

Ryul is sitting on the high stool, swirling the ice in his glass with his finger. When he sees you come in, he's clearly trying to put on his best indifferent face, the one he's practiced in front of the mirror since they signed the papers, but his eyes completely betray him.

“I thought that after your lawyers drained me of even the will to breathe, you wouldn’t want to set foot in the same zip code as me,” he says with a smile that’s half ironic, half broken. He holds your gaze, and for a second, the noise of the bar disappears. “Are you going to sit down or are you going to keep acting like a ghost? I’ll buy you a drink… I still have some credit left on the card you didn’t take.”