I should have expected Hanna’s visit. It was increasingly inevitable. My publicist asked if I wanted to discontinue this project, but I couldn’t.

“Would you like some tea?” I ask as Hanna sits in front of me, the scar on her face faded into a dull pink. She never did bother covering it with makeup: it was a tattoo of her grief.

“Yes, that’d be fine.” She replies primly as she looks around the condo. “I think I liked your house in Cambridge a little more.”

I laugh.

“You know I hated that tiny shack in the woods.”

“But, he insisted.”

“Yes, he insisted.” I smile, taking a slow sip of my own tea.

“You know you don’t have to protect me, even after all of this time.” Hanna says after a long silence. “Junhoe… is gone. Because of me, he didn’t get to become an adult and buy a house or fuss over his forming wrinkles. He can’t be here with us talking about when we were too young to know any better.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Hanna.”

How manys times have I spoken that sentence? How many times have I soothed her over the years?

“I was driving the car, Hayi. I insisted, even though I was drunk out of my mind.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” I repeat. “June knows that, he was just so thankful to be your friend.”

“Write the truth, Hayi. Please. Don’t protect me anymore.”

I sigh, setting my cup of tea down. I look into her eyes, the years of wondering and regrets carving deep lines into her skin.

Back then we thought we were as tall as giants.

But we were only children.

Jiwon and I were playing Mario Kart when we got the call.

Hanna and June had been in an accident, their car had veered off of a bridge in the rain. When they were pulled from the vehicle Hanna was found in the driver’s seat. Her blood alcohol level was above the legal limit and didn’t even have a license.

When Jiwon and I got to the hospital we were told that Hanna had to subdued and taken to another wing. She had become hysterical when she found out June’s condition. He was… unresponsive.

That was the word the doctor used with a solemn expression. Unresponsive.

Jiwon knelt by his side before he was taken to surgery, gently pressing his lips to his hand as if he were a prince that just needed a kiss to wake up.

“I found out about Hanna not longer after she’d moved in.” Jiwon confessed in the hallway as we waited. “I accidentally overheard after walking in on her and June talking.”

June and Hanna loved each other, in a way that no one else loved each other. They didn’t kiss. They didn’t make love.

Instead, they held each other’s souls together.

They both bore the burden of a love they were told shouldn’t exist.

After the accident, Hanna took a break from school and moved back to her hometown for a while. She insisted that she continue to pay her half of the rent until I found another roommate.

And like that, life went on.

---

Jiwon swore his engineering projects kept him too busy to go to our Literature class. He said he had to prioritize, and I could see the exhaustion forming under his eyes.

His arms were stronger as he held me, he had been going to the boxing gym more and more often. I missed him, but I didn’t mind. I knew it was how he had to cope.

(He needed something, when June laid in a hospital room like sleeping beauty.)

Helping him with assignments turned into completing them for him, on top of my own. I wanted to think it was fine, that this was the only way I could really help him.

But… who was helping me?

Before I knew it I was breaking down in tears in the library, my body feeling weak. I didn’t want to be like that, I wanted to be strong for Jiwon and Hanna.

I didn’t think I could hold it all in for much longer. I had been holding it all in for so long. Had I oversaturated myself with Jiwon?

It wasn’t that I was incapable of doing double the work. Why w