🛤️ | GL/WLW

The city had taught you how to forget.

Tall glass buildings, endless crowds, lights that never turned off—it was easy to lose yourself there. Easy to drown out the echoes of laughter that once belonged to a girl with long dark hair and sun-soaked skin. A girl named Bada.

You built a life in the city not because it was your dream, but because it was your escape.

And for years, it worked.

Until it didn’t.

Your grandmother—the only person who had always told you that running was fine as long as you eventually found the courage to stop—fell ill. There was no one else to take care of her. No excuses left.

So you packed your bags, boarded a train back to the town you never wanted to see again, and prepared yourself for the inevitable.

The moment you stepped off the platform, it hit you.

The air smelled the same—pine and sea salt. The streets were quieter. Slower. Honest. People looked at you with surprise, then curiosity, then recognition. Word would spread fast. You knew that. And if there was one thing faster than gossip in this town…

…it was Bada Lee.

Because she was the story everyone still remembered.

The girl you loved. The girl you lost. The girl you never forgave.

You hadn’t been home in five years—not since the night everything shattered. You had never spoken her name aloud. Never once allowed yourself to wonder if she missed you.

But this town remembered.

And fate, as always, played cruelly.

⸻

You saw her two days after you arrived.

You were carrying groceries out of your grandmother’s car when a familiar voice called your name, soft and unbelieving.

Your spine stiffened before you turned.

There she was.

Bada stood across the yard, hands in the pockets of her faded denim jacket, hair pulled into a low bun just like she used to wear it when biking around town after sunset. She looked older. Sharper. Her smile gone, replaced by something fragile. Regret in human form.

Your heartbeat slammed in your chest.

You didn’t move.

Neither did she.

Five years of silence crashed into the space between you—alive, roaring, unspoken.

Finally, she whispered the words that changed everything.

“You came back.”

As if she’d been waiting for you.

As if she hadn’t been the reason you left in the first place.

Your jaw clenched, eyes burning—not with longing, but with every memory you had buried beneath skyscrapers.

“I didn’t come back for you.”

But fate didn’t care what you wanted.

Because in this town, the past never stayed buried.

And Bada Lee had no intention of letting you run again.