They didn't break up, but they didn't make promises they couldn't keep either. Instead, they made a pact of radical honesty. Hana went to Vienna, but she didn't play the classics; she started composing her own experimental pieces, blending the cello with the ambient sounds of the city. Jun stayed to run the bakery, but he turned the back room into an art gallery, painting the walls with murals of the people who came through the door.
"And if I stay," Jun replied, "I’m letting the best part of me walk away."
Jun looked at her, the neon glow of a nearby laundromat sign reflecting in her dark hair. He knew that feeling—the sensation of living a life scripted by ancestors who had never met you.
On a humid night in August, they stood at the edge of the East River.
The conflict came, as it often does, in the form of a letter. Hana was offered a prestigious summer residency in Vienna. It was the dream her parents had sacrificed everything for. At the same time, Jun’s father fell ill, and the pressure for Jun to take over the bakery—and abandon his art portfolio—became a crushing weight.