Chapter Text
I feel ridiculous.
I honestly do not know what I'm doing here. Or what I'm wearing. But I was struck with the monstrous task of choosing an outfit to throw on today, and because I am so nervous my knees literally wobbled when I opened my door to step out into the hallway, every single item in my closet looked hideous.
I finally settled on a summer dress that is gorgeous but has been slowly wilting in the back of my closet all the same. Beauty has no marker against bad habits, it seems.
Maybe that, in truth, was why I chose to wear it today—as something symbolic. A way of taking into my hands the soft things that I had never thought myself capable (worthy) of holding, and telling them I'm sorry it took me so long.
All in all, it itches like hell.
I guess there's no going back now.
Because I'm standing at Hyunjin's door, my fist raised to knock ... but it's already opening.
I am speechless for a moment—I'd assumed I would have a few precious seconds between when I knocked and when the sight of him undoubtedly knocked me off my feet to collect my thoughts, but here he is, no warning, no preparation time, as usual. Hitting me full-on in the face.
I brace myself for the overthinking to slam in, but instead, all that my whiplashed mind comes up with is fuck, he's beautiful.
Every time I see him, it never lessens. My gaze is swept into his and I am instantly flung back into sunlight-stained rooms, the feel of his sheets sliding over my skin, the soft, quiet vulnerability in his eyes. Hope whispered into my ear like a secret with all the desperation of a falling star.
The Adam's apple in his throat glides down and up, forcing my attention back to the present. "Felix told me you'd be coming," he says by way of explanation, his voice low and rough as sandpaper—as if he hadn't spoken to anyone in a while.
Right. Of course. Felix.
I hadn't seen him since that day—that day of aftermath, of repercussions, when I thought my emotions might very well eat me alive and Felix had sought me out to give me some much-needed advice.
That day was a week away now.
A week I had spent entirely at Seungmin's dorm, eating ramen and my feelings on his couch. No longer hiding from my thoughts, my guilt, my fear, but—processing them. Taking the time to breathe, to talk to my friends, to sort myself out. Clean up all the messy bleeding bits and pieces I had been torn into, dutifully as a mop on the floor, scrubbing away the stains.
I knew I'd need to be at my best when I faced Hyunjin.
And yet, even with that week, even with all that time devoted solely to gathering myself...
I look at him, and I am once again unraveled.
"Right," I say to Hwang Hyunjin, and nod, folding the hem of my dress between my fingers. "Can I come in?"
-
His room hurts to look at.
The memory of that night pierces me like a knife in the gut everywhere I look. I wish I had been drunker, so I would not have to recall every part of this in vivid detail: the chair, the door, the pictures framing the walls, the signature that once captivated me so much accosting my gaze as brightly as a meteor in the sky.
I think if I see his bedroom, I will fall apart.
So I stand, knowing I must look as stiff as hell but not being able to help it. Not being able to make myself sit in that exact same chair, the same start of that night—
There is a puff as Hyunjin drops into the chair instead, leaning back and hooking his elbows over the armrests like some lounging prince. He looks up at me through hooded eyes.
There is nothing that I can read in that expression. Nothing familiar. A slate wiped clean.
It seems I am not the only one who has spent the last week preparing.
Before I can look at him too closely—analyze that gaze like evidence in an English essay—I clear my throat and launch myself into the lines I've spent the past week rehearsing.
"I made a speech." My voice comes out too high, too wavering; I falter, but it's too late to stop now. "As to why we can't ... continue this."
His eyebrows arch. "Oh?"
The sarcasm in that one, calculated word invites a bite into my tone. "Yes, and I spent a lot of time on it, so you're going to listen."
He folds his hands and leans back, waiting. Still watching me with that cool, blank gaze. It feels like a punishment, but I realize I deserve it.
"I don't want to hear your speech, Jiyu," Hyunjin says quietly. "Not if it's just going to be excuses for why you came to my room drunk, kissed me like it meant something, slept with me, and then told me it never should have happened and ghosted me for a week."
God, he's gotten good at hiding his hurt. If I didn't know him better, I'd see his cold, calm expression and think he felt nothing at all. But I know Hwang Hyunjin. I know that his real, authentic self is so burdened by emotion the air is thick with it, and anything less means something is definitely, definitely wrong.
"It's not an excuse," I say. I have decided I will not be anything but honest with him from now until the last time our eyes meet. "It's ... an explanation. You deserve one."
His eyes flash dangerously, but he says nothing—granting me permission to continue with his silence.
I take a deep breath and barrel forward. "We are, by far, the most toxic relationship I've ever heard of." Good start, Jiyu. "We're—you and I—we're not healthy, okay? We both know it. We do things for all the wrong reasons. And I know you don't think that matters, but ... I want you to understand what that means for me.
"All of my life, falling in love has been my greatest fear. Because when I was ten my father left for the pub one night like he always did, except he didn't come stumbling back home reeking of seven different kinds of alcohol and slurring his words so much he couldn't speak. He didn't come back at all.
"I watched my mother die inside every day she had to live without him. I watched her try to piece herself back together after he left, take all of her heartbreak and shove it into a neat little corner she didn't have to think about. I watched her lose herself, waste her life and then waste mine when she didn't have any of hers left. My college fund went down the drain after she was fired; she stopped caring about my education, stopped taking care of me. Just ... stopped. Like a record player if someone had ripped off the needle.
"But she still loved him. She still waited every night, even after he left us and left only ruin behind, hoping he would remember us and come home so she would have the chance to forgive him. She had this—this certain spot, right by the window, with a perfect view of the driveway. She stood there so much she made divots in the floor. I thought that was what love was, okay? I thought love was a weapon designed to cut you in the worst ways and poison you until your heart stopped beating and you stopped playing music.
"So I guarded myself against it. I never let myself love, because I was so, so scared of turning into my mother. Of turning into someone who waited at windowsills for their killers to walk right back in and stab them in the back again. Someone who gave up on their child, their life, someone who just—gave up.
"But somehow..." I choke off, steadying my breath. "Somehow, you walked in without asking and I fell for you anyway."
Hyunjin isn't blank anymore. He's sitting impossibly still, rigid, his languid attitude gone. Instead, his attention is completely, wholly focused on me. On that terrible word that has meant the downfall of nations.
"And it scares me," I tell him, my voice breaking. "It scares me so much, Hyunjin. And then that night ... that night, everything I'd feared would happen happened, and you were going to leave, and I did the only thing I could think of to get you to stay.
"And I ... I knew it would work. I knew kissing you—crossing that line with you—would work. Because I already loved you. And you ... you loved me too. And that was what I thought it meant—please understand me. I thought love was meant to be a way to use people. That's all I'd ever known.
"And I'm so fucking sorry that I did that to you. I was so, so afraid of becoming my mother, and everything I'd done and worked for had turned out to be for nothing because you slipped past every single wall I put up faster than I could keep building them, but it turns out I was never becoming my mother after all—I was becoming my father."
Tears slip past my cheeks. "I used you like he did. Everything I've been doing was what he did. I've been so—god, I've been so fucking consumed by my fear, by my selfishness, that I let my love be cruel. I let it ruin us both.
"We're toxic, okay? Because—because of me. Because you only ever wanted something to make you feel again—something short and sharp and temporary and beautiful—and I only ever wanted to stop myself from falling. To stop myself from wanting you. I knew it would be wrong to ask more of you, to ask you to change for me, but I did anyway.
"And I realize I could've accomplished the same task today by just avoiding you forever, but it felt wrong to have 'this shouldn't have happened' be the last thing I ever said to you. And I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry, and we can't continue—this. Whatever it is. It'll end up breaking us both."
I set my shoulders, done, and exhale deeply through my mouth; I wait for his reaction.
It does not come.
Instead he is completely silent, such a mess of emotions roiling behind his dark eyes I know not even the best hider, the thickest mask, could conceal the brokenness there.
For a long time—long enough my knees threaten to wobble again, and I think I might die if I stand there any longer—Hyunjin says absolutely nothing.
I almost miss it when he says, his voice as soft as sparrow feathers, as soft as sunlight, "Everything you're saying is true."
I let out a forced breath.
In health class, they told us that to minimize injury after a bad fall, the best thing you could do was to roll upon impact. I was dubious then, but now I know for a fact that all the stop, drop and roll shit was a lie: I am rolling, and rolling, and rolling as hard as I can, and yet I still barely manage to swallow the pain that engulfs my bedraggled heart.
"So you agree with me, then? That we should break it off?"
His eyes catch mine, and he flashes me something cracked and chipped and beautiful, some semblance of a grin. "Oh, not at all."
My body screeches to a halt. Every word I'd been thinking of to tell Jisung and Seungmin when they asked what happened to spare myself from the horrible pity I'd see in their eyes vanishes. Just empties right out of my head.
"What?"
"You forgot one part of this story, Jiyu." He stands and steps close to me in one fluid motion, and every bone in my body melts a little bit because it's missed him, and I've missed him, even when I didn't let myself realize it. I could have been cold my whole life but here, with him, I finally feel warm.
"If you've become your father, then I'm your mother. And unlike her, I know what love is." His eyes are burning, burning like coals, flames I can't help but reach for. "And I'm more than happy to wait by a windowsill for you to return."
I have stopped breathing. Somewhere inside my chest, what is left of my heart has ceased to beat.
All I can feel is him.
His raises his hand, gently, and brushes his knuckles across my cheek. "So that's all you have to do, okay? Break the cycle. Make our love better than your parents'." His gaze searches mine in earnest, stars lighting and falling in the spaces behind his eyelids. "I don't care if you break us both. Break me. Ruin me. Ruin me a thousand times—I don't care. Just come back."
I clench my teeth against my sob. "Hyunjin—"
"It's your choice," he says, softly, calmly. Brushes his knuckles against my cheek again, heartbreakingly familiar. Mirroring the movement he'd made all those nights ago, as I was falling, lying together on my bedroom floor. "You don't have to return to me. I know there's not much for you here—just bad decisions and the beer smell you've tried so hard to forget. But no matter what you do, I'm still going to wait, alright? Wherever you are, I'll still be there for you, waiting. I don't mind. I could stand waiting my whole life, in fact, as long as it's for you."
I can't breathe. This—him—it's too much. I had a plan when I came here; it was good, too. I had practiced what I would say, practiced how it would go—how it was supposed to go—and now...
Now, I am on my knees at the mercy of Hwang Hyunjin yet again, my heart in his hands, not knowing how it got there or which one of us placed it in his palms.
I hate that somehow he still can say exactly the thing that will make me break. Exactly the thing that will make me yearn with my whole being to fold myself into his arms again, to give in and let us ruin ourselves. I hate that the only thing I have ever wished for my whole life is to have someone who is willing to wait for me on the other end, someone who will be there no matter what, and now he chooses to offer it, when I am already so weak.
Weak, because every night since three weeks ago I have slept among the memories of Hwang Hyunjin's body between my sheets, his hair spilling over my pillow, and his voice whispering sleep-softened promises in my ear. And since then I have not been able to fall asleep without feeling cold.
I know what an angel looks like when I see one.
You don't even know my surname.
Never date a boy that can break your heart.
People broken in the same places fit together best.
Things like this are made to destroy us.
He isn't even yours to lose.
I know I've seen those eyes before.
But something about him ... well, I'm sure you know how it is.
I could stand waiting my whole life, in fact, as long as it's for you.