***

 

The moment his alarm rang, he woke up and turned it off. He unlocked his phone and scrolled through his messages idly, waiting for it to ring again. Sure enough, after a few minutes of waiting, it began to vibrate. He picked up on the first ring and pressed the phone to his ear, waiting for her to speak. There was silence for a second or so, and then she spoke.

 

"I'm still quite surprised every time you pick up. Shouldn't you hate me, after what I've done? I can't even forgive myself - you should know that, since I've been pouring my guts out to you for what, two months now?" She paused to take a breath before continuing, her voice softer and sadder. "I didn't intend to hurt you, you know. At that time, I didn't think that I was being selfish. I thought that what I did would protect the both of us, prevent us from hurting each other, but that turned out to be a pretty huge mistake since I ended up hurting both of us. I'm sorry. Is it too late to apologise?"

 

Then the line went silent again for three agonising minutes. By this time, he was wide awake and staring at the ceiling, uncertain how he should react to her words. As the quiet dragged on, he found his mind wandering back to the first phone call.

 

***

 

It had been around 4.30am too, but he had been awake at that time. He hadn't slept well in a week, he had been lying awake in bed for hours on end each night thinking about her. So when his phone vibrated and he saw that she was calling him, he picked up with no hesitation. Her voice had sounded scratchy, almost as if she had been crying, as she told him to just shut up and listen to her. And so he did. He listened to her ranting and rambling and wondering about the world in general. And it went on for the next night and the night after that, all the way until now. 

 

It had crossed his mind that there was no need for him to pick up and listen to her, after all he could get more rest and they weren't technically friends anymore. However, even after everything he was still concerned about her, and if he was to be honest he wanted to know what went through her mind. When they were still together (that phrase always made him feel a stab in his heart) he hadn't really known what she had been thinking, and now that he had the chance to find out, it made him sad. If he had tried a little harder, found out the kind of negative thoughts she had been having, would he have been able to make her feel more secure and reassure her that he would always be there for her? Could he have prevented their breakup?

 

***

 

He was jerked back into the present when she began to speak again. "I've actually been listening to a lot of music now, partly because it stops my thoughts and partly because I don't want to talk to anyone. There's this song I really like, the lyrics are good. It's called If I Love You Again by Do Won-Kyung, you could go listen to it." He makes a mental note of it and hums softly so she'll know that he heard her. She's silent for another few seconds, as though she's working up the nerve to say something. And then her words come out in a rush. "I've been thinking about us a lot, the past two months. I know that I was probably being unfair to end things so suddenly and so cruelly, but I never told you why, not exactly. I think you deserve to know, even if I don't really want to say it. But I'll say it, I wanted to kill myself." He's stunned, even though she had told him about her negative thoughts, he hadn't expected her to say something like this. He whispers her name softly, "Taeyeon..."

 

She continues on, her words becoming hesitant. "I loved you and I loved spending time with you, I felt safe around you. But when I wasn't near you, even if it was just for a few hours, I would start to get all those negative thoughts - you already know about them. I would compare myself to all your other girl friends and I would feel so pathetically inferior. In the back of my mind, there would always be this small voice. It would taunt me. You're not good enough for Baekhyun. He makes you happy, but do you make him happy? Your presence in his life is unnecessary. He'll be fine even if you're not there. I hated those thoughts and I really wanted them to stop, but I didn't know how to stop them. In the end, I decided to just follow what they said and I broke things off with you. I thought that would be the end of everything, that those thoughts would finally stop, and they did. But what was left behind was a constant feeling of emptiness. I was depressed," she laughs, "because I had distanced myself from the one person who loved me. Even before that, I had considered the idea of killing myself, but I had never been brave enough to follow through with it. The first night I called you, I had actually cut my wrist before that. It sounds dramatic now, but in the dark it seemed like there was blood everywhere and I thought I was going to die so I called you to tell you some last stuff. And then it turned out that there wasn't that much blood after all and I wasn't going to die but it had made me feel better to talk to you like that. So things continued like this and now I regret everything. I regret listening to those negative thoughts and I regret letting you go. But it's too late to do anything about it now, isn't it?" She pauses and Baekhyun tries to absorb everything he's heard, his mind reeling. "Ah, it's already 5.30am. I should probably hang up and get a bit of rest before I have to get ready for work. Goodnight, Baekhyun. I hope you don't hate me after hearing what I've said." 

 

He panics at how quickly she's about to hang up, and before he can think twice the words are out of his mouth, "Let's meet." It's the first words he's said to her ever since the first phone call, and he can almost feel her shock through the phone. It takes ten long seconds, but she replies. "Sure. 10am at that cafe we used to go to?" He agrees and the call ends and he's left with half an hour before he has to start getting ready for work, which he uses to make sense of everything that she said.

 

***

 

It's 9.50am and he's already waiting outside the cafe, nervous. He doesn't know what he wants to say to her because his mind is still a mess, but he knows that he wants to get back together with her. It's now 9.52am and he spots her across the road. She stops short when she notices him, and both of them stare at each other from opposite sides of the road. A small smile appears on her face as she looks at his, and he's sure he has a stupid grin on his. She looks peaceful, as though all the pain she's been going through in the past few months never existed. This gives him hope, maybe she'll agree to getting back together. But he never gets to know because as she starts to cross the road, that smile still on her face, the car slams into her.

 

It happens so quickly he almost didn't register it. But in mere seconds, she's on the ground, a pool of blood growing in size rapidly. The driver has gotten out of the car, people are gathering round her, someone's screaming. He's screaming. Someone called an ambulance, and they arrive in minutes. When he sees the paramedics, his legs finally move and he runs over to them and demand that he ride in the ambulance with her.

 

He's scared. She's lying so still, and her face is so pale. It sounds painfully cliche, but he can't bear to lose her again. All he can do is hold her hand tightly and pray for her to be alright. When they arrive in the hospital, she's snatched away from him and rushed to an operating theatre. He waits for two, almost three hours before he finally hears news. She's okay, or at least on her way to okay. The doctors are positive that she'll heal fully, and when he hears this his tears stream down his face.

 

He steps into her hospital room and goes straight to her bed. Her eyes flutter open weakly, and this time he's the one to say, "Just shut up and listen to me." He has so much to say, after months of keeping silent, and he may not say the right things but he will try.