“Pink is far from my favorite color, but I still find it comforting,” she’d explained one night. “Probably because my mom always bought me pink decor back at home. What can I say, I’m a creature of habit.”

My heart aches with the knowledge that, despite the many years that’d passed since Celeste and I were together, some things remain the same.

I’ve gotten so used to sleeping on Clementine for the past couple of weeks that now, just lying in a bed feels like a forbidden luxury. The silk sheets are cool and smooth against my cheek, and after a few minutes, I reluctantly brush the blankets aside to get up from bed.

A familiar, spicy smell gently wafts to me as I approach the bedroom door.

Haejang-guk, I think, remembering the hearty cabbage and meat hangover soup I ate with my cousins when I visited them in Seoul after college graduation. When we walked into a restaurant at three a.m. after a night of clubbing, I’d been so surprised to see it almost completely full. My cousins explained it’s a common custom for Koreans to eat haejang-guk at the end of a night out to help mitigate a hangover the next day.

I had fun with my cousins, but I never told them that I’d asked them to take me out because Seoul is also Celeste’s hometown, and I secretly hoped to run into her.

Twenty-two-year-old me had known that Seoul is a huge city with millions of people, but she’d still been unable to let go of the naive fantasy that we’d have some miraculous K-drama moment, where I’d catch a glimpse of her on the subway or see her while crossing a busy intersection in Hongdae. Even though I’d started dating James a couple months before and was perfectly content in that relationship, I just wanted to get a glimpse of her, if only to confirm with my own eyes that she still existed after seemingly disappearing from my life forever. I didn’t even want to date her at that point. I simply wanted closure.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t find her during that trip, and I figured it was for the best. When James asked me later that summer if I wanted to move in with him after we’d both accepted our respective positions at Horizon, I said yes, fully ready to start our new life together in San Francisco.

Of course, now I know why Celeste disappeared from my life. And I know that in the same summer I was having the time of my life with my cousins in Seoul, Celeste was going through a hell I can’t even imagine.

I stumble out of the bedroom, my heart squeezing from the pain of both the past and present.